Mastering the Art of French Eating

by Ann Mah

  Keep your pan lightly oiled (if it’s too greasy, the batter won’t spread evenly) and continue adjusting the heat until it’s at the correct temperature—not too hot or cold. This requires some patience, but as they say in French, the first crêpe is always ratée, or failed, the one you feed to the dog or cat. Actually, for me the first three or four are flops, but I eat them anyway.

  Serves 4

  1 cup buckwheat flour

  1 cup all-purpose flour

  Pinch of salt

  Salted butter

  Crêpe fillings

  Grated cheese (Emmental or Gruyère is traditional), thin slices of ham, eggs, sautéed spinach, caramelized onions, goat cheese—let your imagination run wild!

  Mixing the batter

  In a large bowl, stir together the buckwheat and all-purpose flours and a pinch of salt. Add 3 cups of water. With your hand (yes, your bare hand), stir the ingredients vigorously and continuously for 2 to 3 minutes until a smooth and homogeneous batter is formed. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours and preferably overnight. (This is an important step; it allows the buckwheat to absorb the water and creates a batter that spreads more easily.)

  Cooking the crêpes

  Stir the batter. If it seems too thick, add a small dash or two of water until the batter’s consistency resembles light cream.

  Heat an 8-inch nonstick skillet over a medium flame for a minute or two (you want the crêpe to cook quickly, but you don’t want the butter or batter to scorch). Stir the batter thoroughly. Melt a tiny sliver of butter in the pan. Using a ladle, pour about ¼ cup of batter into the pan, swirling and shaking in order to spread the batter across the surface and create a very thin, even layer. This takes some skill and also requires a hot—but not too hot—pan. (If the batter is too thick, and doesn’t spread fluidly, stir in more water, a tablespoon at a time.) Cook for 60 to 90 seconds, until the edges start to brown and curl away from the pan. Shake the pan sharply—if the crêpe detaches, it’s ready to be flipped. If it sticks, allow it to cook for a few more seconds. Toss the pan to flip the crêpe or slide a spatula underneath and turn it over. Cook the other side until golden, about 30 seconds.

  For a galette complète

  Place a small handful of shredded cheese and a thin slice of ham in the center of the crêpe. If desired, crack an egg into a small dish and add it to the center, using a spatula to contain the white and prevent it from running everywhere until it has set. Cook over medium heat until the cheese has melted and the egg is done. Form a little package by folding two sides of the crêpe around the egg as best you can, like a loose burrito, taking care not to cover the yolk. Serve immediately.

  Chapter 4

  Lyon / Salade Lyonnaise

  Some ideas appear in the shower, magically whole and crystal-clear perfect. Others creep up on you gradually, sucked up through the subconscious the way a carnation absorbs dyed water, slowly drinking through its stalk until all the petals are blue. My idea to find a job was of the latter variety.

  I know. I was supposed to be writing—another novel, a flurry of magazine articles. I should have been pitching travel stories until my fingers fell off from typing. But establishing freelance credentials in another country takes time, and I was still new in town, still trying to separate the fresh ideas from the clichés. Protective of their territory, my fellow American-expat travel writers hadn’t exactly welcomed me with open arms or shared lists of e-mail contacts (not that I expected them to). And my editors, used to articles from me about Asia or Washington, D.C., were confused by my shift in focus. I heard the word “no” a lot: No, thanks. Not for us. I’m not seeing this. Or—the most common form—silence.

  As for my new novel . . . Well . . .

  “Did you make any progress today?” Calvin’s voice, transmitted from Baghdad over the Internet, sounded tinny and echoey through my computer’s speakers.

  “On Le Projet? Not really.” Le Projet was my second novel, the one I was allegedly writing—all fifteen hundred words of it.

  It was my favorite time of the day—cocktail hour—when I poured myself a glass of wine, shook some cashews into a little bowl, and met my husband. Virtually, that is. Every evening we chatted by Skype, our voices and images transported over two thousand miles in the blink of a modem. Baghdad is one hour ahead of Paris (two in the winter), and so we started and ended our days at about the same time, a confluence of schedules for which I was grateful. Somehow sharing almost the same time zone made him seem not quite so far away.

  “It’s so weird,” I continued. “Every morning the same thing happens. I make myself a cup of tea, sit down at my computer, and . . . log in to Facebook.” We laughed, but I was serious. Ever since Calvin’s departure a month ago, my discipline had been washed away by a sea of cat videos. The life of a writer was not for the faint of heart, or the thin of skin, or the flighty of mind. But I am only human, and I wrestled with bouts of self-doubt and sensitivity and entire afternoons lost to Google searches for narwhals. And now, without Calvin, I struggled with something else: isolation. I had a few friends whom I saw as frequently as social boundaries allowed, perhaps once or twice a week. But I interacted with no one on a daily basis, not even—as I had hoped—the apartment building’s gardienne, who left our mail on the doormat. I craved human contact, to be part of a community. And so, being American, I set out to find one the only way I knew how: work.

  “Have you heard back from any bookstores?” Calvin reached to pour another glass of wine, and the image on my monitor distorted, his tender blue eyes and generous mouth dissolving into a blur.

  “Nyet.” I had left my résumé with a handful of anglophone bookshops in the hopes that someone was looking for a clerk. So far none had responded.

  “Well, perviy blin komom.” Calvin had several Russian phrases that he trotted out from time to time. They all sounded the same to me.

  “Uh, never drink vodka on a Moscow balcony in January?”

  “The first pancake is always a flop.”

  I hit my head with my hand. “How do I always forget that one?” If Calvin had been standing next to me in the kitchen, I might have leaned over and given him an affectionate squeeze. But as we were gazing at each other through our laptops, a pixelated smile had to suffice.

  “How about you?” I asked. “How was your day?”

  He launched into a tale of office politics, which I followed as if it were a soap opera. I found Calvin’s colleagues fascinating, though I’d never met most of them. I often thought about them at the gym or while washing dishes, wondering if Anjali had eaten at any of the restaurants I’d recommended in New York or if Timothy had chosen Addis Ababa or Kuala Lumpur for his next assignment. Clearly this was another sign that I needed to get out more.

  “And then,” Calvin continued, “just as I was heading back to the dorm from the DFAC”—the military dining facility—“a duck-and-cover alarm went off, and I had to wait in a bomb shelter for the all clear. That’s why I was a little late tonight.”

  “Were there any bombs?” I took a sip of wine and resisted the urge to down the whole glass.

  “I did hear some this time,” he admitted. We both fell quiet, and the silence stretched between us, broken by faint electronic creaks and scratches. “Don’t worry,” he said eventually. “I don’t think there were any direct hits.”

  This, then, also haunted my solitude: fear and worry, twin demons that crept through my thoughts, darkening my imagination. I tried to smother them, tried to distract myself by looking for a job or worrying about the whiteflies attacking my window-box planters. But there were words I couldn’t bring myself to say: Mortar fire. Body armor. Car bombs. Attacked convoys. Rationally I knew that Calvin spent most of his time in a fortified embassy compound in the protected Green Zone, reportedly one of the safest places in Baghdad. When he traveled within Iraq (which was more ofte
n than I liked), he and his colleagues rode in armored vehicles, accompanied by armed bodyguards. But this was my husband we were talking about—my nearsighted, kindhearted, beloved husband. My favorite person in the world. My anxiety knew no rationality.

  “Should we talk the same time tomorrow?” Calvin pushed down the top of the empty Styrofoam take-out box that held his dinner and moved it to the side of his desk.

  “Oh, I can’t! I almost forgot—I’m volunteering tomorrow night.”

  “Where?”

  “At the American Library in Paris.” The English-language library was near the Eiffel Tower. Edith Wharton used to be a member—and Gertrude Stein. “They host weekly author readings. I’ll be helping with the drinks, pouring wine and passing around peanuts.”

  “Mmm, red wine and peanuts. That reminds me of . . .”

  “Peanut butter and jelly?”

  “Doesn’t it? Do you think everyone thinks so?”

  “Maybe I can conduct an impromptu survey tomorrow night.”

  “I can’t wait to hear all about it.”

  I smiled at him, and his eyes crinkled in response, just for a second losing the shadow of perpetual fatigue caused by the pressure of his job, the seven-day workweeks, the worry that his wife was too isolated.

  “I think this is a great idea.” It was almost imperceptible, but in his voice I thought I heard a faint note of relief that I was finally getting out of the house.

  * * *

  * * *

  Calvin was right. Volunteering at the American Library was a great idea. No, not just great. Utterly fantastic. A lucky break. Because if I hadn’t volunteered that night, I would never have known about the job opening for programs manager, the person in charge of inviting writers to talk about their books. It was a part-time job so perfect I would have eaten a big plate of andouillette to get it. Happily, all it took was an interview, during which I managed to convince the library director, Charlie Trueheart, that my experience as a former editorial assistant and first-time novelist meant I was highly skilled at handling the special neuroses unique to authors. When he offered me the job, I felt giddy with happiness.

  Now it was early summer, and after a couple of months of brainstorming meetings, gossip over the electric kettle, birthday cakes, and happy hours, I felt enormously grateful to be part of a team. Sure, there were small crises—like the time a famous, bestselling author forgot about his speaking appearance, leaving me scrambling to find a replacement at the last minute. Or the time I miscalculated metric centiliters and spent an entire month’s wine budget on three cases of half bottles. But these mishaps were tiny compared with the comforting exoskeleton of routine the job gave me.

  My colleagues were a mix of French people who had studied in the United States and Americans who had dual citizenship with Ireland, which gave them the right to work in Europe. (I have never met so many Americans carrying Irish passports as in Paris.) They were all friendly and collegial, chatting with me in English and using the informal tu right away when we spoke in French. And yet, despite the bilingual setting, the office felt comfortingly American, right down to the communal kitchen that smelled of stale coffee and the flock of fresh-faced summer interns imported straight from New England. I had been too proud to admit it to anyone, but ever since Calvin’s departure I’d struggled to feel at home again in Paris, where the telemarketers repeated themselves loudly and slowly to me as if I were a child, where the cashier at the grocery store refused to break a fifty-euro note, where a polite smile was often met with a blank stare. I sank into the American Library’s friendly familiarity, so lulled by it that I had no idea I was making an enormous cultural gaffe every single day.

  I began to get an inkling of the error of my ways one sunny afternoon, when I’d been on the job for a few weeks. I had picked up a salad for lunch—stepping out into beautiful mid-June sunshine and crisp breezes—and brought it back to eat in the office. At my desk I speared a piece of cucumber with one hand and checked my e-mail with the other.

  “Ooh, that looks good.” Elizabeth, the children’s librarian, appeared, weaving her way around the desks that made up the open-plan back office. “Did you go to the Greek traiteur?”

  “Mmm, yes. Thanks so much for the suggestion.” I pointed to my plastic container of Greek salad and stuffed grape leaves. “I’m so happy to find a light lunch around here. I was having this recurring dream where I opened the office-supply cupboard and found a chopped-salad bar.”

  She laughed. “Have a good lunch!” she said before tossing her purse over her shoulder and heading out the door.

  I resumed scrolling through my e-mail, pausing when François, the quietly intimidating collections librarian, hurried by my desk. “À plus tard!” I said to his swiftly retreating back.

  “Bon appétit!” called the reference librarian, Lisa, as she breezed past, a plastic bag swinging from one hand. Was it my imagination, or did she shoot a disapproving glance at the food on my desk?

  Silence descended in the office, which was normal—this was a library, right? But it felt odd without the companionable click of other keyboards. I got up and walked over to the adjoining room of the office and out into the reading room. Even the front desk had a skeleton crew of volunteers. Where was everybody? I checked the kitchen, where I found José, the elegant, gray-haired circulation manager, eating a sandwich and reading a magazine. “Enjoy your lunch,” I whispered, backing out of the room.

  * * *

  * * *

  How do you spend your lunch break? I’d always thought of the noonish hour as a chance to step outside, run errands, and pick up a salad or a sandwich, which I’d scarf down back at my desk.

  As it turns out, in France the lunch hour is used for . . . well, eating.

  According to recent studies, 60 percent of French people enjoy their daily midday meal in a restaurant. Compare this with almost 60 percent of Americans, who eat at their desks while continuing to work. I was one of them. Every day I lunched at my desk, trying hard not to drop crumbs on my computer keyboard, and every day I became increasingly aware of the silence around me.

  Though a flurry of recent news articles has reported the demise of the traditional French lunch break, I witnessed the inverse among my colleagues. Even when they heated up leftovers or nibbled on a baguette sandwich, they preferred to dine in the small office kitchen, seated at a table, with a napkin and proper cutlery. After they finished eating, they read a book or took a walk and didn’t return to their desks until the entire hour had elapsed. No one ever said anything to me, but their daily disappearance spoke volumes. So did the employee regulations, which encouraged a lunch break in muscular language. The idea of eating mindlessly and hurriedly in front of the computer was unwholesome to the point of being unhealthy.

  Of all the meals eaten in France, I’d argue that lunch is the most important. It’s an opportunity to draw a line between morning and afternoon, a chance not only to satisfy hunger but also to refresh the mind. French children are taught the art of lunch, dining every day in the school cafeteria on four courses, including cheese. For adults a government-mandated, employer-sponsored program helps fund the midday meal, distributing meal vouchers called tickets-restaurants (nicknamed tickets restos and accepted by restaurants and take-out shops) to workers whose offices lack a canteen. According to the Code du Travail, or French labor code, employers are required to offer a pause déjeuner for every six hours of work. In contrast, only twenty-two American states—fewer than half—require a meal break.

  Are the United States and France two nations separated by the midday meal? Even our differences in lunch vocabulary seem to indicate our diverging attitudes. Take, for example, the salad, a typical lunch choice from Washington to Paris, Chicago to Lyon. In France there is the salade composée—a pile of lettuce topped with organized piles of cheese and cubes of ham, or flaked tuna and blanched green beans. The very
name, that word—“composed”—is that a message? Eat me, the salade composée says, and you will be as serene and unruffled as my name implies. In contrast are American salads: tossed. Quick and convenient, thrown together at a bar, they’re a combination of ingredients and dressings that each person chooses for herself.

  The longer I worked at the American Library, the more I thought about lunch. And the more I thought about lunch, the more I contemplated salad. American salads, like chilled iceberg wedges draped in creamy blue-cheese dressing. French salads, like my favorite, lyonnaise, with its contrasts of bitter frisée and salty bacon, tart vinaigrette and quivering poached egg.

  “Stop! Stop!” Calvin protested as I described the latter during our nightly Skype chat. “You’re making me too hungry. Any talk about food is like torture.” Calvin ate three meals a day at the embassy’s dining facility, which offered a completely inoffensive menu of bland American classics.

  “We’ll eat some when you come home,” I promised.

  “I can’t wait.” He smiled at me, and for a moment it felt as if we were in the same room together, as if I could reach out and touch him.

  “How many weeks until your vacation?” I glanced at the calendar on my desk. “Five? Oh, no, six.”

  We both fell silent. It felt like forever.