Mastering the Art of French Eating

by Ann Mah

  But what does this have to do with the bouchon?

  Remember that for most nineteenth-century canuts life revolved around the mâchon, the morning meal that was often the bright spot of an otherwise dreary workday. It was in the bouchon that they chatted, networked for jobs, complained about their silk prices, debated local politics—and, in all likelihood, plotted demonstrations. Is it too big a leap to suggest that some of the world’s first organized labor movements were fueled by salade lyonnaise?

  Lest you think that I’m grasping at straws, I’d like to refer to an article, “Sur un coin de table, le mâchon lyonnais,” by Bruno Benoît, from the French journal Le Dossier: Casse-croûte, which posited this very theory that silk workers hatched the canut revolts over the mâchon.

  The daytime meal, whether the mâchon or lunch, was more than just a chance to refuel between morning, noon, and night. It was more, as well, than a restful pause during the day—more even than a chance to laugh with colleagues and commiserate over the evil boss. It was—for the canuts at least—an opportunity to gather, debate, and organize, to try to change their world. I imagined their motto could have been “If you want to go fast, eat alone. If you want to go far, eat together.”

  It was so simple. Obvious, really. Salad, lunch, and work—they had been linked all along, a sturdy triumvirate of food, rest, and camaraderie. It took a trip to Lyon to remind me that food has the power to unite, that the act of eating can create a community.

  And wasn’t a community what I’d been looking for all along?

  * * *

  * * *

  In Lyon I had faithfully learned the importance of lunch. But a few weeks after my trip, back in Paris, my lunches remained the same: a small carton of Greek salad, some hummus spread on a few crackers, eaten alone at my desk. I usually enjoyed the quiet time, reading the newspaper online or catching up on e-mail. But as the days and nights without Calvin wore on, as my evenings at home continued to mirror my lunches—a bit of food eaten in front of the computer—the loneliness started to engulf me once again. At the office I listened to my colleagues make quick phone calls about grocery lists—“Oui, chérie, I’ll pick up some lemons, pas de problème”—before bustling home to walk the dog. In the métro I saw couples on their way to dinner parties, juggling large bouquets of flowers; in the street I passed groups of friends cheek-kissing each other hello.

  I had hoped that through my job, I would find a community—and, to a certain extent, I had—but it hadn’t lifted me out of my solitude.

  “Why don’t you invite one of your colleagues out for a drink after work?” Calvin said one evening over Skype. “Marie-Claude? She sounds nice.”

  “Oh, no. I don’t think so.”

  We were having a difficult video chat. Already our connection had broken twice, which always made me extra anxious, and now my patience felt brittle.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not that kind of office culture. People don’t socialize outside of work. They go home and spend time with their families.” I didn’t try to hide the note of resentment in my voice.

  Calvin pushed his chair back. “It’s almost August. I’ll be home for vacation in two weeks,” he said evenly.

  “I know. I’m sorry, I know you want to help.” I hated the anger that flashed through me sometimes, the self-pitying feelings of abandonment. I wanted to move away from those emotions, but too often they pinched me, little demons with sharp fingers. I didn’t want to fight with him, not about a decision that had been made months ago. How could I argue with him while he was in a war zone working twelve-hour days and I was living a life most people—including, at one point, myself—only dreamed about?

  “I know you’re not having an easy time. I really, really do.” His brow furrowed into familiar lines, and as I looked at his face, so beloved and dear, my shoulders dropped. I would have given anything for a hug from him at that moment. But at least we had Skype.

  I felt awful the next morning, guilty and sad the way I always did after snapping at my husband. But as the day wore on, Calvin and I exchanged jokey e-mails about our downstairs neighbors—the tiny couple who complained constantly about . . . well, everything—and my mood started to brighten. By lunchtime I was ready for a little salad and a few quiet minutes to send Calvin another e-mail.

  “I’m going out now. Do you need anything?” Marie-Claude appeared by my desk. Une femme d’un certain âge, she’d worked in the fashion industry before becoming an office manager and still wore high heels every day.

  “No, thanks. I brought my lunch.”

  “À tout à l’heure,” she said, and turned toward the door, before hesitating. “I’ve been meaning to ask—where do you buy that salad? It looks so fresh.”

  “There’s a Greek traiteur on rue Jean-Nicot. You don’t know it? Elizabeth told me about it.”

  “It is where, rue Jean-Nicot?”

  “It’s a little side street off of rue Saint-Dominique. If you go out of the building and turn right . . .” I paused. “You know what? I’ll come with you and show you where it is.” I stood up and reached for my handbag.

  “Really? Oh, c’est gentil! Thank you! I would appreciate that so much!” She held the door open for me. “I love Greek food. My brother lives in Athens,” she said as we walked out into the bright summer day together.

  It wasn’t lunch. It wasn’t even le mâchon. But it was a start.

  Salade Lyonnaise

  During my visit to Lyon, I ate salade lyonnaise at every meal except breakfast. The city’s bouchons usually serve it as a rib-sticking first course—often followed by a hearty hot dish like stewed tripe—but it can also be a satisfying lunch or a quick supper, especially because except for the lettuce, all the ingredients are kitchen staples. For a truly classic version, use dandelion leaves instead of frisée.

  Serves 4

  2 heads frisée lettuce or, if in season, 2 bunches of dandelion leaves

  ¼ pound bacon (unsmoked is traditional, but I like a slight tang of smoke)

  Vinaigrette (recipe follows)

  4 slices pain de campagne or rustic sourdough bread

  2 cloves garlic, peeled

  4 eggs, at room temperature

  Wash, sort, and dry the lettuce. If using dandelion leaves, remove the hard stems and tear the leaves into bite-size pieces. Cut the bacon into lardons, or ¼-inch-thick matchsticks. Prepare the vinaigrette. Lightly toast the bread and rub one side with a clove of garlic. Cut the bread into ½-inch cubes for croutons.

  To prepare the coddled eggs, bring a large pot of water to a boil. Lower the eggs gently into the boiling water and cook for 5 minutes, adding 30 seconds if your eggs are jumbo. Drain them immediately and run cold water into the pan to stop the cooking and to cool the eggs so you can handle them. Gently crack and peel the eggs, taking care not to tear the white—the yolk should still be runny. Rinse the peeled eggs to wash away any bits of shell.

  In a frying pan over medium-high heat, cook the lardons until they start to crisp and most of their fat has rendered. Remove them from the pan. With the flat side of a chef’s knife, lightly crush the remaining clove of garlic. Add it to the remaining bacon fat in the pan with the bread, turning the cubes so that they are lightly toasted on all sides.

  In a large bowl, toss the lettuce with the vinaigrette. Scatter the croutons and bacon over the salad. Arrange the eggs on top and serve family style.

  Vinaigrette

  2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

  1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

  4 tablespoons mild-tasting oil, such as olive or canola

  Salt and pepper to taste

  In a small, lidded jar, combine the vinegar, mustard, and oil; cover and shake to combine. Season to taste (but not too much, given the saltiness of the salad’s other ingredients). Taste with a piece of lettuce and adjust the seasoning if necessary.
/>   Chapter 5

  Provence / Soupe au Pistou

  I used to sleep through the night—seven, eight, nine hours of pure rest, curling beneath the downy duvet on our bed, lulled even further into my dreams by the deep, even breaths of my husband next to me. Our bedroom windows edged the courtyard, and the room was dark and quiet, a calm oasis of retreat, unlike the rest of the apartment, which faced the busy boulevard and was bright and noisy. I loved our bedroom, loved changing into my pajamas and crawling between sheets that smelled of laundry detergent, loved reading a few pages of my book until my head started to droop, whereupon I would turn out the lamp, kiss my husband, and drift away. But then Calvin left, and I stopped sleeping.

  Insomnia. It was like a foreign movie I never wanted to see, filled with dark images that ran on an incessant loop through my exhausted brain. I worried about the dangers of Iraq—helicopter crashes, enemy fire, friendly fire—each fear exploding in my mind with a blinding charge. I worried about Calvin’s health: the constant pressure, the cafeteria diet of fried food, the lack of exercise. And then there were the other worries: my aging parents, my stalled writing projects, my health—dear God, my health. My stomach growled. Did I have an ulcer? I felt dizzy. Was it the flu? Or was I having a stroke? I searched phantom symptoms on my cell phone, the glow of the screen lighting up my face, driving sleep further and further away.

  I avoided bedtime, watching TV or surfing the Internet, staying up later and later until the clock edged past one o’clock, two o’clock, late enough for me to hope that I’d fall asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. Eventually I’d crawl into bed, read a few pages of my book hoping my eyes would close—they never did—turn out the lights and stare at the ceiling for a couple of hours. I’d finally drop off around four o’clock in the morning and then force myself to wake up a few hours later.

  But on the night before Calvin came home for vacation in August, something else kept me awake until the small hours—not just anxiety but also excitement. By the time I climbed into bed, his flight from Baghdad had landed in Amman and he had begun the final leg of his thirty-hour journey home. I stared at the ceiling as time dripped away in a slow leak, impatient to throw my arms around him. Even though we had chatted with each other every evening by Skype, even though we knew the minutiae of each other’s life right down to what we’d eaten for lunch, even though Calvin seemed unchanged—brimming with encouragement, quick with a pun—I needed reassurance that our months apart hadn’t distanced us. I needed the wobbly image on the computer screen to become real again.

  Calvin arrived home in the soft violet light of early morning, before the city had started to shimmer in the noonday heat, waking me with a lively trill of the downstairs bell. It seemed to take him forever to walk up the stairs, but then there he was, his brown hair slightly ruffled, with scratchy cheeks and the faint eyebrows that were so incredibly dear to me. I saw only a glimpse of them before I flung myself into his arms for a hug that squeezed all the anxiety of the last few months out of me.

  “Did I wake you up?” His voice was muffled against my hair.

  “I was so excited last night I couldn’t sleep. I finally drifted off at about four. Are you tired? Hungry?”

  He mumbled something else. “Hungry,” I thought he said. Or maybe he said “Happy.” They both made sense. For the first time in months, I felt genuinely hungry and happy, too.

  * * *

  * * *

  Parisians take croissants very seriously. So seriously that some will never, ever reveal the address of their favorite boulangerie for fear it will become too popular. I’m willing to bet that friendships have been lost over diverging viewpoints on the ratio of crunch to yeasty tenderness. But I promise you there is no croissant as crisp and flaky or as sweetly buttery as the one you eat, still warm from the oven, on your first morning in Paris after a long absence. Outside Poilâne bakery I watched Calvin eat his, shattering the shell to reveal supple layers of pastry. One, two, three bites and it was gone, leaving only a drift of golden flakes as evidence. He licked the crumbs from his fingers, and when he smiled, his whole face seemed to relax.

  As we walked past the prim boutiques that line the rue du Cherche-Midi, I bit into my own early-morning treat, a pain au chocolat, and brushed the crumbs from my shirt down to the sidewalk. For once there were no Parisians to censor me for eating on the street, no sarcastic calls of “Bon appétit!” as I walked and chewed. Lost in its early-August haze, the city was empty.

  We turned the corner onto rue de Vaugirard, passing a gaping construction site, a lone bustle of activity. Suddenly a booming crash destroyed the calm—a falling load of concrete debris perhaps, or a backhoe knocking the metal edge of a Dumpster. Beside me I felt Calvin jump, a sharp, quick movement as if I’d pinched him.

  “What’s the matter? Are you okay?”

  “It was just kind of loud.” He shrugged, but his eyes looked wide.

  I squeezed his arm, but the truth was, his reaction had made me feel a little wide-eyed myself, all quivery limbs and nervous energy. Now I realized that the endless days and weeks, the duck-and-cover alarms and convoy attacks, the safety and suffocation of an insulated compound, the complete absence of children’s voices and leafy trees and cooking smells, the sixty-five-year-old roommate jockeying to use the bathroom first every morning—it had all taken its toll. I would never truly understand Calvin’s life in Baghdad. His experiences there, both the prosaic and profound, were shared by his colleagues, not by me, his wife.

  While I kneaded my fretful thoughts, Calvin seemed awfully quiet, too. We paused at an intersection to wait for the light to change.

  “I wanted to ask you something.” He fixed his gaze on the oncoming traffic.

  “Sure.” My hands felt damp and I surreptitiously wiped them against the hem of my shirt.

  “Could you make spaghetti and meatballs for dinner tonight?” Now he glanced over at me, his face brimming with hope, as if only I could help him.

  I grabbed his arm, hugging it close. “Of course!”

  The light changed, and we crossed the street, heading in unspoken agreement toward the grocery store, where we bought ground meat and canned tomatoes, parsley and Parmesan cheese. After all, life-changing work experiences come and go. But homemade meatballs and red sauce are forever.

  That night we gorged ourselves on wine and meatballs and glorious forkfuls of tomato-drenched, cheese-dusted pasta. We stored the remaining meatballs, along with their precious sauce, in the freezer. Because the next morning we were off, following a heavily trodden path toward sunshine and dry heat, droning cicadas and the purple haze of blooming lavender fields. Like so many Parisians before us—like all of them really, if the city’s empty streets and métro were any indication—we were heading toward vacation.

  * * *

  * * *

  I know it’s a little, well, cliché to be captivated by Provence, a region that has made the fortune of not a few travel writers. But I am—I can’t help myself. These are some of the things I love: Proud pink villages perched on hilltops. The relief of moving from sharp light and heat into cool shadows. Unapologetic ice cubes tinkling in a glass of rosé. Hell, unapologetic enjoyment of rosé. The gusty wind known as the mistral, rough and cleansing. Unfiltered olive oil decanted into recycled juice bottles, bought at a roadside stand. Lavender-scented breezes tumbling into car windows. Tangy Provençal accents. Vineyards and fields shadowed by the looming bulk of the Luberon Mountains. And most of all, the thing I dream about fifty weeks of the year: open-air markets that brim with bright summer produce—speckled beans, soft-skinned peaches, mint-scented tomatoes—all bursting with delicious possibility.

  We had first visited the village of Bonnieux four years earlier, when we were living in Beijing. Back then I could barely pronounce the word merci, yet the Luberon region, located between Avignon and Aix-en-Provence, instantly felt familiar and beloved. Part
ly it was the hot desert brightness, reminiscent of my Southern California childhood. Or maybe it was the food and wine and the sweet art of doing nothing. Whatever the reason, I felt at home there. And yet there was also something else, a European exoticism that captivated me—a cheese course before dessert, shops shuttered in the afternoon heat, a game of boules played in the dust of the village square.

  On that first visit, we inhaled soft air into our scarred lungs, reveled in the stars and silence, devoured plates of fresh fish, salad, and fruits, raw and unpeeled. When our vacation ended and we left Provence, I felt like weeping. “We’ll come back,” Calvin promised, partly as a way to comfort his overemotional wife but also because he’d loved it, too. And we had come back. For four years in a row, we’d rented the same stone house from a friend’s mother, who had also become a friend. Now we were back once again, more in need of a vacation together than ever before.

  At the Avignon TGV station, we stepped down from the train and into a blast of air so arid and hot it could have come from a hair dryer. We found our rental car at an agency located just steps away from the station and headed east toward Apt, whizzing along country highways, searching for familiar landmarks. There was the cornfield that bordered the road, the red-earth cliffs cresting against the sky, then the olive grove with a vintage truck parked outside. Each of them felt significant, concrete proof that our vacation had begun.

  The engine of our tiny Smart car strained as we ascended the hill to Bonnieux. We passed the pigeonnier and, across from it, the farm stand run by the white-haired woman who’d given me a recipe for courgette-flower fritters. On our left the solid church, built during the late nineteenth century and considered ugly by locals; straight ahead a roundabout. And then, in rapid succession, the newsstand, the hotel (the nice one), the other hotel (the not-so-nice one), the baker, the butcher, the café, the pharmacy. I ticked off each shop as we drove by, relieved to find they’d all survived another off-season.