On Rue Tatin

by Susan Herrmann Loomis

  After the meal, we borrowed Edith’s Deux Chevaux and drove to the nearby village of Bec Hellouin. We wanted to attend mass in the abbey’s twelfth-century chapel on Sunday morning, to hear the renowned Gregorian chants. We spent our wedding night in a small auberge, or inn, went to mass the next morning, toured the village, then drove back to Le Vaudreuil, returned the car, and took the train to Paris. On Monday, Michael returned to the farm and I picked up work again.

  Living separately was hard now that we were married. We missed each other so much that we decided I should spend my three-day weekends on the farm, where Danie and Guy Dubois raised geese for foie gras. Right after work each Friday I got on a train that arrived at Brive-la-Gaillarde in the Dordogne just before midnight. That first time was magic; Michael picked me up and we drove through the night to the farm, down winding, inky black roads. At the farm the kitchen light was on and the table was set with a bottle of the farm’s wine, some fresh rillettes (shredded pork and goose meat cooked in goose fat) that Danie had made that day, a loaf of gorgeous bread, and some fresh cheese. Though everyone was asleep, it was a very warm welcome, and that midnight snack began yet another phase of my culinary education.

  Not only did I get to see Michael every weekend, but I became, along with him, part of the extended Dubois family. I already knew them from Michael’s stories—there was Danie, who did everything including cooking the most delicious meals Michael had ever tasted, which she served to her family and to paying guests who spent the night on the farm, and Guy, who had terrible eyesight and was a little loopy but sweet and a very good farmer. He always went off half-cocked, though, doing wheelies with his tractor as he took corners too fast, occasionally bashing a trailer into one of the walnut trees on the property, leaving his tools everywhere, and spewing corn all over the farmyard when he unloaded the trailer. Gilles, their teenaged son, was in cooking school and would return home now and then to stir up the kitchen, and Cathie, their daughter, was a moody adolescent who loved to eat anything and everything. She was skinny as a rail, which frustrated her slightly plump mother no end.

  Danie and Guy’s life was a throwback to medieval times. Danie married Guy and, through obligation, went to live with him at his parents’ house. As the daughter-in-law she was expected to do all the work around the house, yet she had no rights and no money of her own. Within their first year of marriage she gave birth to Gilles, who cried all the time. She was still expected to do all the work and keep the baby quiet. She was, she once told me, a slave.

  Danie is short and solidly beautiful with wavy dark brown hair, soft, intense brown eyes, and a rare determination. She chafed at her position. She worked with no modern conveniences, so her solution was to do what farm women have done throughout the ages. She bought a few geese and fattened them up for foie gras, which she sold to earn money of her own. With it she bought an iron, so she didn’t have to heat irons in the fireplace any more. Then she bought a washing machine.

  Her foie gras was of such high quality that she soon made a name for herself. She convinced Guy they should build their own house down the road from his parents. They enlarged their by now substantial flock of geese, and their family, too—Cathie was born.

  Danie continued making foie gras, which she sold locally, doing all the butchering, preparing, and preserving with the help of several women from the village. Guy did the field work and helped with the geese. Danie, who loves people and activity and had always felt isolated in their tiny village of less than one hundred inhabitants, began taking in paying guests. She devised a program where a group would come for the weekend and they would all butcher and prepare a pig together. She cooked sumptuous meals for the group, regaling guests with dishes she’d grown up eating. Everyone would leave happily on Sunday with parts of the pig preserved for their own use. Danie also did weekends where guests prepared their own goose and all the meals revolved around luscious, silken foie gras. She became even more successful, her foie gras renowned.

  Danie’s food was simply the food she learned to make growing up, but it was the most intensely, purely flavorful food I’d ever tasted. Her potato galettes were crisp and perfectly seasoned with garlic, her meaty magret de canard so tender you could cut it with a fork, her baked stuffed tomatoes the essence of tomato. She made her own cheese, which was creamy and light; her rillettes—a staple on the table—were rich and succulent.

  Every weekend was an intense culinary learning experience for me, redolent of garlic and goose fat, filled with freshly butchered rabbits, wild mushrooms, greens harvested in the fields for flavorful salads and vegetables fresh from the gardens. There was always a crowd for meals—whether paying guests or the postman, Hubert, who timed his daily visit at lunchtime—and we were always racing to get everything done in time. Danie took to showing me once how to do something—like slicing potatoes paper-thin with her incredibly blunt paring knife for galette de pommes de terre, or trimming a goose breast, or cutting butter into feathery thin slices (with the same dull paring knife) for her tender, crisp pastry. Then she would disappear, leaving me to prepare meals, showing up to do the finishing touches.

  Danie and I became comrades. We worked around the clock either preparing meals, gathering ingredients (which meant going to the nearby village to pick up fresh milk from the dairy farmer, walnuts from the Dubois barn down the road, lettuces from the garden outside the house), or cleaning up.

  I loved every minute of being at the Dubois farm, especially those consecrated to food (which were most of them). Each process on the farm had its own gastronomic ritual, so that goose-butchering time meant foie gras straight from the bird, served on bread grilled over the coals. It also meant demoiselles, the goose carcasses after the breast meat has been removed, which are highly seasoned with salt and pepper and grilled over the fire. There isn’t a great deal to eat on a demoiselle, but it is considered a rare treat and so tasty that we would all dive in with our fingers. Butchering a pig meant fresh blood sausages and roast pork, and during bean season we had mounds of green beans tossed in garlic and Danie’s own walnut oil. Spring meant fresh wild mushrooms and tiny dandelions tossed in a walnut oil vinaigrette and golden sweet walnut meats from the orchard across the street.

  Michael stayed at the Dubois farm for six months. His relationship with the family was a love affair. He never really did become comfortable speaking French, but it didn’t matter. He was raised on a farm so he knew what to do without asking, and during his six-month tenure he repaired farm buildings and fixed anything that was broken (and had been broken for years), helped Danie or Guy when he could, amused the children, ruffled the ears of the dog. Now and then he would strike out from the farm across the fields, up and over the rolling hills, which were covered in snow in winter and in wildflowers from the first sign of spring. Stone farmhouses and ancient fortified chateaux dot the region, and Michael spent a good deal of time investigating and studying the stonework used to build them, for he wanted to learn the techniques and apply them to his sculptures. The archways of golden stone were of particular interest, and on one of my visits he took me to a spot on the farm where he’d built one, from stone he’d gathered off the land. It looked as though it had always been there.

  Michael’s stay ended at the same time that Patricia and I finished the book. Michael and I took stock and decided that we would move back to the States. We thought we needed to get serious about our careers, and the United States was the best place to do that. We packed up, gave up our studio, and shipped our things home. I left with a very heavy heart.

  I returned to France at least once a year after that and dreamed of moving back. Finally, ten years after we had left, with the signing of a contract for a book that would celebrate French farmhouse cooking, it could happen.

  DANIE’S STUFFED TOMATOES

  TOMATES FARCIES

  When tomatoes are fat and juicy this is the perfect way to serve them, as I learned from Danie Dubois so many years ago. Our family loves them so I make
at least two per person; with a green salad, bread, and a simple dessert they make a filling summer meal. Use tomatoes that are ripe and firm and not too soft, so they hold up in cooking.

  2 slices fresh bread (about 2 ounces/60g each)

  1/2 cup/125ml whole milk

  4 pounds/2kg juicy tomatoes

  Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

  2 tablespoons/30ml extra-virgin olive oil

  1 medium onion, minced

  2 garlic cloves, green germ removed, minced

  8 ounces/250g button mushrooms, trimmed, wiped clean and diced

  13/4 pounds/875g lean ground pork

  1/4 cup/10g fresh tarragon leaves

  1 cup/10g loosely packed flat-leaf parsley

  2 large eggs

  1. Preheat the oven to 425° F/220° C/gas 8.

  2. Tear the bread into bite-sized pieces and place it in a small bowl. Cover it with the milk, press the bread down so it is completely covered, and let it sit until it has absorbed all the milk, about 30 minutes.

  3. Slice the top off of each tomato and reserve it. Remove the seeds and most of the inner pith of the tomatoes and discard. Lightly season each tomato inside with salt and pepper.

  4. Heat the oil with the onions and garlic in a medium skillet over medium heat. Cook, stirring, until the onions are translucent, about 8 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and transfer the onions and the garlic to a medium-size bowl. Add the mushrooms to the pan and cook, stirring occasionally, until they have given up their juice and are tender, 5 to 6 minutes. Transfer the mushrooms to the bowl of onions and garlic.

  5. Add the bread and milk to the ingredients in the bowl, along with the pork. Mince the tarragon and the parsley together and add it to the bowl along with the eggs. Blend the mixture thoroughly, using your hands. Season with salt and pepper and blend well. Cook a teaspoon of the mixture and taste it for seasoning—adjust if necessary.

  6. Evenly divide the stuffing among the tomatoes, pressing it firmly into them, and mounding it above the edges of the tomato if necessary. Place the tops of the tomatoes atop the stuffing and bake until they become a deep gold, the stuffing is completely cooked, and the tomatoes are tender, about 1 hour. Remove from the oven and serve, drizzling the tomatoes with the cooking juices in the pan.

  6 TO 8 SERVINGS

  THE DORDOGNE POTATO CAKE

  LA GALETTE DE POMMES DE TERRE DORDOGNE

  This is the potato galette I learned to make from Danie Dubois, on her farm in the Dordogne where Michael spent six months. She serves it often and always with roasted goose or pork. It makes a fine first course or an accompaniment.

  6 garlic cloves, green germ removed

  1 cup/10g loosely packed flat-leaf parsley, plus additional for garnish, optional

  5 tablespoons/75g fat such as lard, goose, or duck fat

  31/2 pounds/1.75kg waxy potatoes, peeled

  Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

  1. Mince the garlic with the parsley and transfer it to a small bowl. Add 3 tablespoons (45g) of the fat and mix thoroughly, to make a sort of paste. You may make this ahead of time and refrigerate it, covered.

  2. Melt the remaining 2 tablespoons (30g) of fat in a large, nonstick skillet with sides that are about 3 inches (71/2 cm) high. You will need to slice the potatoes paper-thin for this dish and the best way to do that is to use a European-style vegetable peeler. “Peel” (or slice) the potatoes right into the hot fat, stirring them occasionally so they don’t stick and seasoning them regularly with salt and pepper as you add them to the pan. It will take about 20 minutes to slice all of the potatoes into the pan, and the potatoes will cook evenly as long as you remember to stir them from time to time. They will stick together somewhat, so gently break them apart as you stir.

  3. When all of the potatoes are sliced into the pan, season them one more time with salt and pepper and stir so they are all coated with fat. Add the garlic and parsley mixture and stir so that it melts evenly throughout the potatoes, then cook until the potatoes are deep golden on the underside, a generous 10 minutes.

  4. Carefully invert the potato galette onto a large plate, then slide it back into the pan, golden-side up, and cook until the underside is deep golden, about 15 minutes. To serve, place a serving plate on top of the pan and invert so the galette falls onto the serving plate. Garnish with flat-leaf parsley leaves if desired, and serve.

  6 TO 8 SERVINGS

  TWO

  House Hunting

  I FLEW TO FRANCE on my own for two weeks to find a house for us to live in. I had dreamed of returning, hankered after the life I had known, my friends, the fragrance of golden butter, fresh bread, and coffee that is so much a part of the French way of living.

  By now Michael and I had our two-year-old son, Joseph, a chubby, curly-red-haired bundle of sweet energy and constant motion, and we thought it would be wonderful for him to grow up bilingual. Moving to France to live while I researched a cookbook would give him that chance. Michael was personally less enthusiastic about the idea of going to France, because he had no inherent passion for the country. But doing creative work and being with his family is what’s important to him, and France, he decided, would offer him that.

  After poring over the map of France and considering every region we knew and some we didn’t, Michael and I had decided we would live in Normandy. We wanted to be near Paris and near friends, and we’d grown to love the Normandy coast on earlier trips. So on arriving I took the train to Le Vaudreuil, where my by now dearest friend Edith Leroy met me at the station. She was delighted at the idea that we were moving back, and had not only asked if I would stay with them while I looked for a place to live but offered her help.

  After making coffee and toast, which we enjoyed with her homemade blackberry and red currant jelly, we began plotting how I should go about looking for a house. I decided to consider anything within a thirty-minute drive of Edith and Bernard’s village. We didn’t care if we lived in the village, but we wanted to be close to it, since we knew almost everyone who lived there and were comfortable with its rhythm. After our breakfast I went out to the village café and bought newspapers, brought them back to the house, and checked the ads. I made several appointments to see houses, and the following day set out early to look.

  Mostly what I looked at were contemporary bungalows, which didn’t fit my romantic notion of a house in the French countryside. I spent another day looking, going all the way to Vernon in the east, to Houdan in the southeast, and Honfleur in the northwest, though that was getting pretty far afield. I didn’t find a thing.

  After two days, I regrouped. A friend of Edith’s, Christine, said I was going about it all wrong and offered to accompany me the next day. “I’ll show you how we rent houses here,” she said. The next morning we headed off into the countryside, stopping to ask everyone we saw if they knew of anything to rent, including hailing a tractor and asking the farmer. We discovered a few places but nothing fit my criteria. I was looking for space—both Michael and I worked at home—proximity to a choice of schools for Joe and shopping (so I didn’t have to live in the car), charm, and a low price.

  I decided to try the realtor in Le Vaudreuil. Edith, out of curiosity, came with me. The man had nothing to rent but as we flipped through his book of available properties he pointed out two houses for sale, both in nearby Louviers. Michael and I had no money to buy, so I discounted them. Not Edith. “Allez, Suzanne, let’s go look, it’ll be fun. I’ve always wanted to see what these places looked like inside.” I decided I could take a break from my house search, and away we went in the realtor’s car.

  We arrived in Louviers, a mid-size town whose center is a tasteful blend of ancient and postwar architecture. It was badly damaged during World War II—burned by the Germans on their way through—and, like so many towns throughout France, it had to rebuild itself quickly afterward. The rebuilding was done with style—capacious shops and lodgings, cream-colored stuccoed buildings with sharply sloping slat
e roofs. A boulevard surrounds the center of town, with small streets leading off of it into the heart of the town where a central cherry-tree-lined square serves a multitude of purposes. Mostly it is a parking lot, except on Saturdays when it hosts the farmer’s market that transforms Louviers into a vibrant, colorful fête. The square is also used for special presentations: go-kart races; a twice-yearly, town-wide garage sale where individuals set up stands and sell everything from antiques to children’s trading cards; a spring plant and flower sale.

  Another large, grassy square, which is about a five-minute walk from the main square, is bordered by homes and the police and fire stations. It is here where, regularly, huge stages are built and theater performances and concerts are held, and big tents are erected for traveling circuses.

  The River Eure runs through Louviers, and it is in the midst of being rediscovered. The current mayor and his administration want to resurrect its banks, which are mostly wild and overgrown, making it a focal point of the town. A kayak club is already based on it at one end of town, and there are a few paths alongside it that are pleasant to walk along, though they eventually peter out into wild growth. The river was long ago diverted into several canals that once powered the textile mills. Houses built along these canals are generally large and prosperous, and they have private, often fanciful wooden bridges across the water.

  The streets of Louviers, which are generally very busy during the day and empty quickly after 8 P.M. when shops close, vary from wide—the main boulevards—to extremely narrow, winding, and cobbled. There are many ancient buildings in Louviers, mostly on narrow, cobbled streets, and many are three stories high and just the width of a single room.