by Ann Mah
Another vehicle appeared in the distance, moving toward us with a modest pace that, at our near standstill, seemed like breakneck speed. As it drew closer, it grew into a mud-spattered black truck. Now I could see a man at the wheel, a small boy bouncing at his side, and an industrial dairy container strapped into the flatbed. How many people on this remote patch of mountain would be driving around hauling milking equipment? Suddenly the truck was directly in front of me. I watched it perform a little jig with the Beetle—each vehicle inching backward and forward, pausing as they drew level to exchange a few words—before the Beetle finally putted ahead. I pulled up to the truck and rolled down my window.
“Bonjour!” I called, craning my neck to peer up at the driver.
A man with leathery skin and cheeks covered in stubble raised his hand in greeting. “Madame Mah?”
“Oui?” Uh-oh. How did he know my name?
“Je suis desolé, mais . . .”
It was the alpagiste. He’d been called down the mountain, he told me, to make an urgent delivery of cheese. Even in my disappointment, I wondered what constituted a cheese emergency.
“I was waiting for you,” he said.
“Je sais . . . j’étais . . .” I began, and then stopped. I had no idea how to explain what had happened, not even in English.
He shrugged. “I’ll be back in a few hours. Or you can talk to my wife. She’s still up there.” And with a quick wave, he took off down the hill. In my rearview mirror, I watched his truck as it rolled down the rutted track.
At the top of the mountain, I found a slope-roofed wooden building that housed a ski lift, dark and shuttered, with empty gondolas dangling inside. Next to it was the Belvédère restaurant, with dark wood panels and a sweeping balcony. In the parking lot, I spotted my nemesis, the VW Beetle, parked neatly in a space as if butter wouldn’t melt in its mouth, its owners probably perusing the lunch menu on the restaurant’s sunny terrasse.
A few yards away stood a small stone house, low and rectangular with a thick wooden door and no windows. Was this the summer cheese-making chalet? At the bottom of the driveway, a sign read VENTE DE FROMAGE—cheese for sale. When I got out of the car and approached the door, a wiry black sheepdog sprang to its feet and started barking. I took a few steps closer, and the dog barked harder, his cry deepening to a growl. I tried all the tricks I could muster, cooing in a friendly voice, searching in my purse for a treat, though I didn’t think I could pass off a crumpled tissue as a ham bone. With his lowered tail and ears pinned flat, this was a working farm dog, loyal to his master and suspicious of strangers.
The dog paced a length in front of me. I took one step closer to the chalet, and he bared his teeth. One step back, and he stopped growling. Several steps back, and he lay down again in the shadow of a tractor, keeping his head raised so he could watch me.
I had come to learn about Beaufort cheese—the principal ingredient in fondue savoyarde—about the Alpine chalets that produce it and the meadows of sweet grass, herbs, and flowers that perfume it. Instead I found myself pinned to the side of my car. I gazed helplessly at a bank of purple wildflowers framed by soaring peaks and a radiant blue sky. But when a breeze whisked along the mountainside, it shook the grass with a rattle, leaving me chilled despite the sun soaking into my shoulders.
* * *
* * *
Eight months earlier, I’d eaten my first cheese fondue, gooey and melty, warmly insulating. It was January, one of those cold, damp Paris evenings, the kind that feel like the inside of an icebox. I had just returned from the balmy warmth of Southern California, where I’d spent the Christmas holidays with my parents. The December weather in Orange County had been just like my childhood—unvaryingly sunny—but for some reason wearing a sundress while trimming the Christmas tree felt unnatural. Maybe I’d spent too many winters away. More likely it was the cloud of displacement that hung over me, a gray, glum fog of missing Calvin that grew grayer as he and I opened our presents together over Skype and glummer as we sat down to separate holiday meals. At my parents’ table, the turkey tasted a little drier, the stuffing a little blander without my husband, but I swallowed it as quickly as possible, before my mother could see the worry in my eyes and start worrying herself.
It was comforting to be back in my parents’ home, to sleep in my childhood room, to be cocooned by my dad’s spicy tofu and unlimited access to TV cooking shows, to have my parents’ housekeeper take care of my laundry. But life there felt unreal, as if I’d slipped into an alternate universe where I was still a teenager with ironed T-shirts, a curfew, and very little privacy. By the New Year, I was ready to return to Paris, to pick up the reins of my routine, to come back to our apartment, which despite its drafty windows and leaky pipes still felt like home. Also, I missed Paris itself—even cold, dark, wintry Paris, where the sun, if there was any, shone for only a handful of hours a day. Being there in the dead of a Northern European winter felt like being part of a club—albeit a foolhardy, light-deprived, sniffling club with permanently cold feet and influenza-bright eyes.
One indisputable benefit of brisk winter temperatures, however, was winter food. Back in Paris I made soup from creamy parsnips and a knobby celeriac, bought a kilo of clementine oranges to brighten my palate and my kitchen counter. In the market I gazed at oysters plucked from icy ocean depths and scallops glistening in shells so delicately pink they could have hosted Botticelli’s Venus. Melted snow created slushy rivers running along city gutters, and hearty fare like cassoulet, boeuf bourguignon, and choucroute garnie started to make even more sense.
One damp evening, when the sky had grown dark at four o’clock, leaving the cobblestone streets gleaming wetly in the yellow streetlamps, I headed to the home of Elena and her husband, Stéphane, who had invited some friends over for a fondue dinner. It was the kind of night that called for buttered toast and a mug of tomato soup eaten in front of the TV, but the promise of Stéphane’s fondue lured me out of the house. As the party’s resident Swiss, he busied himself in the kitchen, rubbing two stout cast-iron, enamel-glazed pots with a cut clove of garlic and then filling them with a mix of grated Swiss cheeses, a tablespoon of cornstarch, a slug of white wine, and a dash of kirsch.
“That’s it?” I peered inside. “No secret ingredient?”
“That’s it.” He placed the pots on the stove and lowered the heat to a minuscule flame. “The secret is the cheese.”
When the cheese had melted, Stéphane lit the Sterno flames under the metal grill of the fondue sets and the thin blue flames beckoned us to the table. We sat, fondue forks in hand, and he whisked the orange, round-handled caquelon pots from the kitchen to the dining room, the molten cheese bubbling slowly within. We plunged cubes of stale baguette into the mixture, swirling them round and round the circumference of the pot so that the thick liquid remained blended.
“Careful,” said Elena, twirling her long-handled fork with a flourish. “If you lose your bread, you have to finish your glass.”
I transferred a cheese-soaked cube of bread to my plate and took a cautious nibble. Through the lava-like heat, the melted cheese tasted soft and creamy, almost buttery, with a toasty, nutty flavor that gave way to a light, boozy finish. We dipped and swirled and sipped wine—a special Swiss white called Fendant—and small glasses of kirsch. Stéphane made sure to keep our glasses full.
“You must never, never, never drink water with fondue.” His tone was very grave. “Only kirsch or Fendant wine. Or, for children, tisane. You know, herbal tea. Anything else and the cheese will form a giant ball in your stomach.” I started to laugh, and he warned me, “Seriously, I tried it once, and I was gravement malade.”
I took an extra sip of kirsch, just to be safe.
Though at first it had seemed impossible that six people could consume nearly five pounds of molten cheese, once we got caught up in swirling and chatting, laughing and eating, the thick, bubbling li
quid disappeared. I passed the bread basket to Elena and waited for her to take a dip. Perhaps, more than any other meal, fondue relied on conviviality, a communal sharing.
At the bottom of the pot, a crust of cheese lingered, growing golden in the heat of the flame.
“La religieuse,” Elena said, her tone reverent. “It’s the best part.” I had the feeling that had she not been bound by politesse, she would have scraped it off and happily consumed the entire thing herself. But being a good hostess, she painstakingly divided the wafer-thin shards of crisp cheese among her guests. The bits dissolved in my mouth with a brittle crunch.
In case you’re wondering, in Swiss homes—and probably in French ones, too—chocolate fondue does not follow cheese fondue, no matter that the long forks are already on the table and the Sterno burners are already lit. In fact, if you mention the idea, even jokingly, you might receive a revelatory, so-that’s-why-so-many-Americans-are-obese type of look from your lean, rock-climbing host. Instead we ended the meal with sliced pineapple, a bright, tropical counterpoint to all the dairy fat we’d just consumed.
“They say pineapple helps digest the cheese,” Elena said.
The French, I was discovering, had an obsession with digestion that I’d only ever encountered before in China. They avoided anything that could hamper the delicate process, reviling cold drinks and ice cubes and embracing hot tisanes and fizzy water. In some families children weren’t allowed to drink water during dinner for fear they would ingest too much air while gulping it down. Though none of us at the table were French, digestion was such a local mania that anyone living in France became familiar with the established beliefs and superstitions. I myself had received several dire warnings, mostly from older women, about my insouciant consumption of ice.
Later that evening I wrapped myself in a long scarf and a lumpy down jacket and left the yellow glow of Elena and Stéphane’s apartment to find the métro home. Outside, the winter air stung my cheeks, but burrowed deep inside my multiple layers, I felt warm, invincibly so, as if all the melted cheese were glowing within me.
* * *
* * *
A few weeks later, I had the chance to consider sustenance, both emotional and nutritional, when I invited some friends over to make dumplings in celebration of the Chinese New Year. Friends? Actually, I wasn’t quite sure how to describe them.
I hadn’t met many new people since Calvin’s departure ten months earlier. This was partly due to my inherent shyness and partly because I felt a little guilty about having fun while he was serving in a war zone. Don’t get me wrong—I wasn’t a hermit—Elena and I met regularly for lunch, my library colleagues and I shared an occasional postwork verre, and Didier and Alain always had a warm welcome and a demitasse of coffee waiting for me at Le Mistral. Still, if I was being completely honest with myself, I had to admit, I was often lonely.
Whereas once I longed for a weekend to recover from my weekend’s social engagements, now the days of solitude stretched in front of me. I spent Sunday afternoons alone at the movies, rushing into the theater after the previews had started, squeezing into the last empty seat in the middle of a row. I explored the flea market at Saint-Ouen, gazing at the antique cookware—burnished copper kettles, thick-walled mustard pots, battered wooden boards—with only my camera to keep me company. The vendors huddled next to their stalls on camp chairs, bundled up and smoking, and sometimes I asked them questions just so I could practice my French. I sought out pretty new pastry shops, buying a single éclair au chocolat or one shell-shaped madeleine, which I’d bring home and split over two days. And as I walked and wandered, I tried to absorb Paris—for myself, because I wouldn’t live there forever, but also for Calvin. I tried to save the funny conversations and quirky moments for him, to brighten his days, and also, I hoped, so I could share my new discoveries with him when he returned. Unfortunately, thinking about him only made me more lonely.
On the métro I watched a young woman sending text messages, laughing as she typed, and I felt a pang for my pals in New York, for our frequent, quick, funny exchanges. I missed my assortment of friends there and in Beijing, the deep well of people who came from different parts of my life. My wish for female friendship, I eventually realized, went beyond Calvin’s absence. Even if he’d been by my side, I would have felt the lack—though I probably would have ignored it, tamped it down, booked a table for two at a new restaurant.
But Calvin wasn’t here. And as the prospect of another quiet weekend stretched in front of me, I decided I needed to stop being patient, or passive, or secluded. I decided to do something.
But what? How did people make friends in this town? I’d heard that Parisians were cold, that they formed their social groups at school and remained within them for life, and maybe it was true. But I was even beyond hoping for a French friend. At this point I’d settle for an extroverted American or an enthusiastic Australian or, really, anyone who shared a common language and maybe an interest in food.
Of course, as it turned out, the answer was food.
I haven’t mentioned it before, but this whole time I had been writing a food blog about my life in Paris. I enjoyed having an excuse to eat, explore, and take photos, and so I continued even though, truthfully, no one read the blog except Calvin and (occasionally) my father. If a blog has an audience of two—and both of them are family members—does it make a sound . . . ?
One day I wrote a post about Krishna Bhavan, a tiny Indian vegetarian restaurant near the Gare du Nord that served dosa crêpes stuffed with curried potatoes, paired with an unapologetically spicy lentil sambar sauce. I didn’t know it then, but blog posts about ethnic-food discoveries in Paris were like catnip for expats. By the end of the day, someone named Colette had left a comment thanking me for the recommendation. A stranger had read my blog!
Colette, as I soon discovered from reading her blog, was American, a pastry chef who lived in Paris with her husband. She liked regional French cuisine and craft beer and whipping up dinner from her CSA basket, all of which I found mildly interesting, but it was her ode to xiaolongbao soup dumplings that made me sit up and bookmark her site. I loved soup dumplings, those little round purses filled with ground pork and a secret slurp of broth, and after four years in China I missed them. Now I had found someone who not only knew about soup dumplings—a rarity in France—she had actually made them herself.
Before I could consider the wisdom of the idea, I had sent Colette an e-mail:
“Would you and Nate”—Nate was Colette’s husband, I knew from reading her blog—“like to come over on Saturday night to make soup dumplings?”
After I hit SEND, the doubts started to creep in. Had I really just invited two complete strangers over to my home on a Saturday night? What if they were murderers? What if they were grifters who lured in lonely young women by pretending to like soup dumplings? What if they didn’t know how to use chopsticks?
A few hours later, Colette had responded. “Sounds great!” she wrote. “What can I bring? How about some broth made from a pig’s hoof? We can use it in the soup dumpling filling.”
I wasn’t just hosting two possible ax murderers for dinner. I was hosting two possible ax murderers and my very last meal on earth was going to be broth made from a pig’s foot. This was going to be either a disaster or the best Chinese meal I’d had since moving to Paris.
* * *
* * *
The second time I ate cheese fondue was during a raging August heat wave. I had traveled to Annecy, the capital of the Haute-Savoie region, to do more fondue research. Such was my dedication to my subject that record-breaking temperatures couldn’t stop me from ordering a big pot of melted cheese and eating until the grease came out of my pores. Not the sticky swath of humidity that lay draped over the city. Not the amazed incredulity of my B&B owner when I asked her for a fondue-restaurant recommendation.
To combat the heat, the restaurant,
Le Fréti, had moved all the tables and chairs outside onto an adjacent square. I joined the throng of tourists—because let’s face it, only tourists would eat fondue in a month without an r—and breathed in the lightly toxic scent of Sterno. When the orange caquelon pot of bubbling cheese arrived, I speared a cube of bread and took a lazy dip. The fondue hit my palate with a creamy punch and tiptoed away in a breathy hint of wine. But after a few turns around the pot, I couldn’t continue. A light sheen of sweat covered my forehead, and my stomach curled into a rapidly tightening knot. No, I hadn’t taken a single sip of water during the meal (I’m not crazy). It simply turns out that ninety-degree heat actually repels one’s hunger for gently bubbling, melted cheese.
The next day I asked Daniel Monbeillard if he’d ever eaten fondue in a heat wave. He is head of the Petit Mont Blanc, a group of villagers who have banded together to raise a modest herd of Tarentaise cows and make Beaufort cheese.
“Jamais,” he replied, giving me the type of look you might receive before being bundled into a straitjacket.
We were sitting on Monbeillard’s patio, outside his home in Saint-Bon Courchevel. Geraniums spilled from window boxes, bright splashes of color against the honey-colored wood of his chalet. In the small garden, a condominium of cages housed a family of gray rabbits that were making a steady, quiet crunching sound (yes, he eats them). Oversize honeybees tumbled in and out of drooping roses, and the last of the season’s blackberries hung from a thorny bush. It was the type of gingerbread home kept by energetic grandparents, the kind who produce pots of homemade jam and are good at handyman projects. As Monbeillard and I discussed the particulars of Beaufort cheese, we could hear the wails of his small granddaughter resisting her afternoon nap inside the house.
The Petit Mont Blanc, the collective of Saint-Bon villagers led by Monbeillard, employs a small team of alpagistes to tend their herd of cows. During the summer months, the alpagistes lead the cows to herb-flecked Alpine pastures, climbing from 1,150 meters to 2,160 to 2,500. The commune owns a chalet at each elevation, where twice a day the alpagistes make cheese from the fresh milk.