Tucked away in the narrow streets of Lyon, an ancient city split by two rivers, modern-day bouchons still dish out the same sort of humble food that was served centuries ago. They’re famous for a type of cooking called cuisine de bonne femme, a particularly generous and hearty style that operates by the motto, “Waste not, want not.” They serve lots of pork, lots of offal, and lots of wine, all on red-checked tablecloths with lace curtains in the windows, wooden chairs and wobbly tables, and worn, dented flatware. They’re the kind of place where you make friends with the table next to yours, where you eavesdrop to hear what’s been ordered and trade oohs and ahhs as dishes are delivered. They’re my kind of place.
If you’ve read this far, you know that I prefer home cooking over restaurant fare almost any day. But bouchons, bless them, are the best of both. They serve the kind of rustic, heartening food that I dream of making, and I don’t even have to lift a finger.
Just imagine this: you and your dining companion (your mother, let’s say) sit down at a checker-top table and order a carafe of (cheap!) Côtes du Rhône. With it comes complimentary pork cracklings, enough to fill a basket as big as a newborn baby. This alone is worth the train ticket from Paris. Did I mention, too, that they are crisp and prettily browned, the color and shape of walnuts, and that on your tongue, they melt dead away? You will have to warn your mother, twice, not to spoil her dinner.
Next comes the first course, served family style to every table, whether you ask for it or not. The waitress comes by with four dishes, which she sets down with a businesslike clunk. One might be a platter of local salami and cornichons, another a white ramekin packed with housemade boar terrine. You might also get a bowl of lentils with shallots and vinaigrette, or a frisée salad that the two of you will talk about for days, spotted with bits of salty ham and hard-boiled egg and sauced with a mustard dressing. There’s no fussy presentation to besmirch with your fork, nor is there any gnashing of teeth over what to order. You eat what you’re given. The well-starched businessmen across the room toast and loosen their ties, and the middle-aged Frenchwoman next to you pulls her knees up to sit cross-legged in her chair.
Next might come oeufs en meurette, eggs poached in red wine and served in a beefy, brothy sauce spiked with lardons. Your mother will scold you for scraping the bowl too loudly, but ten seconds later, she’ll do the same. You can swat her hand if you want to.
When it comes time to order the main course, the waitress will recite the options at tableside and wait patiently while you translate for your mother, who only understood about half of her spiel, which, come to think of it, is actually a lot. You hem and haw. You could have the chicken liver, or tablier de sapeur, a local specialty of breaded, fried tripe. Or there’s a rich, inky stew of pork cheeks, or maybe tête de veau, bits of meat from a calf ’s head that—just warning you—sometimes jiggle like Jell-O on the plate. You will be tempted by the chicken liver, and your mother will consider the breaded tripe, but you both settle on quenelles de brochet, pike dumplings served in sauce Nantua, a creamy slurry infused with crayfish. When you love crayfish sauce, you make sacrifices.
Then comes the cheese. Every table gets their own platter, which is roughly the size of a dinner plate. If you’re in the first seating of the night, the plate will be pristine: six or seven creamy rounds, blocks, or pyramids, utterly perfect and untouched, all for your pleasure. It’s good to be prepared for this, or else you might squeal with glee when the waitress sets it down. If you’re in a later seating, the platter might be slightly picked over, but it’s still beautiful in its way, like a well-worn shoe.
And then, just when you think it can’t get any better, it’s time to place your dessert order. I highly recommend a wedge of lemon tart or, even better, the chocolate mousse, which comes messily crammed into a small cup with a spoon stuck bolt upright in its center. But watch for your mother’s wandering hand. She’s out of control when there’s chocolate around.
The whole thing will top out somewhere around twenty-five euros per person, which will make your heart pound with gratitude. Just make sure you have a place nearby to sleep it off, because that’s going to be important. In a pinch, try one of those cheap hotels by the train station. That’s what we did. It took every ounce of fortitude I had (which, by this point, after so much hearty eating, was really quite a bit) to board the train back to Paris the next day. The bouchon changed everything.
Suddenly all I want in life is a checkered tablecloth and a pair of fuzzy slippers, and a bouchon to shuffle around in. Sometimes I lie awake at night, wondering how Seattle might take to la cuisine de bonne femme, and how communal cheese platters and a hostess in house shoes might sit with the health department. I am still trying to come up with a proper way to thank my mother, although I have a hunch that a recipe for that frisée salad might be a good way to start. That, and a big bowl of chocolate mousse.
FRISÉE WITH HAM, EGGS, AND MUSTARD VINAIGRETTE
you can get a great mustard vinaigrette in almost any kitchen in France, but making one in the States is a little trickier. Different brands of Dijon mustard taste remarkably dissimilar, which is a real problem when you’re trying to replicate a specific, and specifically French, flavor. I have tried many different brands, and my favorite is called Roland Extra Strong Dijon Mustard. It has a wonderful flavor, strong and insistent, but without too much acidity or bitterness. It can be a little tricky to find, but it’s worth the trouble. If your local store doesn’t carry it, ask if it will. Or ask for a slightly more common brand, Beaufor, which is very similar. In a pinch, I also like Maille brand, which is even easier to find. I do not, however, recommend Grey Poupon for this vinaigrette recipe. It tends to have a harsh, bitter flavor.
For a vegetarian version of this salad, substitute shavings of Parmigiano-Reggiano for the ham.
2 large eggs
1 medium head frisée (4 to 6 ounces)
2/3 cup cubed cooked ham
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard (see headnote)
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
3 tablespoons olive oil
First, cook the eggs. Put them in a small saucepan, and add cold water to cover. Put the pan over medium-high heat, and bring to a boil. When the water boils, remove the pan from the heat, cover it, and let it sit for exactly 12 minutes.
While the eggs cook, prepare the frisée. Remove any bruised leaves, and trim away and discard the stem end. Using your hands, separate the leaves. If any of them are more than about 4 inches long, tear them in half; otherwise, leave them alone. Put the frisée in the basket of a salad spinner. Place the basket inside its bowl, and fill it with cold water. Swish the leaves around a bit, and then let soak for a minute or two. This will allow any dirt to fall to the bottom of the bowl. Pull the basket from the bowl, and shake it to remove excess water. Dump the water from the bowl, replace the basket, and spin until the leaves are dry. Turn them out into a serving bowl.
When the eggs are ready, drain off the hot water immediately, and rinse with plenty of cold water. When they are cool, crack their shells and peel them. Coarsely chop them, and add them to the frisée, along with the ham.
In a small bowl, whisk together the mustard and vinegar. Add the oil, and whisk well to emulsify. Drizzle a large spoonful or two over the frisée, and toss well. Taste, and add more dressing as needed.
NOTE: Leftover vinaigrette will keep for up to a week in the refrigerator and is also very good on Bibb lettuce, especially with toasted walnuts.
Yield: 2 large servings or 4 side-dish servings
SO MUCH BETTER
When Brandon moved to Seattle, he brought a lot of New York with him. He brought the pink checked shirt that only he can wear well, his favorite old leather jacket, and a pair of red sneakers that look like part of a Spider-Man costume. He brought a bottle of hot sauce, a dented aluminum bowl that he uses for tossing salads, and a set of fancy skillets and saucepans scrounged up at T.J. Maxx. He also brought a deep-seated need for pizza, t
he kind that only an East Coaster can know. A couple of months after he arrived, I came home from running errands to find him jury-rigging the oven in our new apartment. He wanted, he explained, to make it climb past its factory-set ceiling of 550°F to something closer to 800. He’d taken an old white T-shirt, wet it under the faucet, and draped it over the thermostat prong, hoping to trick the oven into preheating longer and hotter. I came home shortly after the oven hit 700 and the T-shirt started to singe, filling the kitchen with an odor not unlike burnt hair. Sometimes I do miss those long-distance days.
But it is nice to have him around. Before Brandon moved to Seattle, I liked my city quite a bit. I thought I would probably stay here for a while, although I wasn’t sure. But when he joined me, I fell in love. When you want someone to like your city, you go to great lengths to show him all of its best features, which has the unintended but very welcome side effect of making you feel pretty smitten with it yourself. We went to Gasworks Park and watched the seaplanes come in on Lake Union. We sneaked wine into Golden Gardens, a strip of public beach on Puget Sound, and watched the sailboats come and go. We rented a rowboat and paddled around. We walked to the farmers’ market on Sunday morning and spent way too much money on wild mushrooms. We had time now for that kind of thing, for everything.
When Brandon moved to Seattle, he made more friends within the first three months than I had in four years. He spread like wildflowers, in every way. I guess I could have been jealous, but since he shares them all with me, I can’t complain. We may not have any proper family particularly close by, but we have a family of friends, which I am just as happy with. Especially because they’re the kind of family who will come to dinner on short notice and don’t even mind that last night’s dishes are still in the sink.
Take our friend Olaiya, for instance, whom Brandon met about two months after he moved here, when he was working at a local restaurant. Olaiya was hired shortly after he was. Like Brandon, she had just moved to Seattle, only instead of New York, she was coming from Brussels, where she had lived for four years. Before that, she lived on the East Coast, and before that, she grew up in Wichita, Kansas, which means that, like me, she is, or was, a girl of the Great Plains. She is also a very, very good cook. Often, on nights when none of us is quite sure what to eat for dinner, she comes over and we take turns staring at the refrigerator until something materializes. One night, to go with a dinner of burgers from the grill, she roasted some sliced cauliflower until it was caramelized and then doused it with a sort of salsa verde, a lime and olive oil dressing spiked with garlic, cilantro, and jalapeño. It was so good that we wound up scooping the last crispy bits of cauliflower from the bowl with our fingers. She is a keeper.
Then there’s Sam, a New Jersey native who arrived in Seattle by way of Poland (he likes a circuitous route) around the same time that Brandon did. They met in late August, when Brandon was cutting back his schedule at the restaurant to start school again, a PhD program at the University of Washington. Sam was hired as his replacement. On his first day of work, Brandon was in charge of training him, and they hit it off right away, swapping the kind of stories that guys from Jersey like to tell. That afternoon, when Brandon came to pick me up at work, he brought Sam. We drove him home, and Sam told me about a book he’d been reading by Verlaine, I think, or one of those other French poets I’d had to study in college, and I remember thinking, Hmm, that’s very interesting. And also, Hmm, that sounds like torture. I soon learned that Sam consumes books the way most of us consume food, which, though I do prefer to eat, is a quality I much admire. He is one of the most fascinating people I have ever met. He also makes a mean bowl of tabouli and the best sweet tea this side of the Mississippi. He and Brandon invented a ritual called Roadhouse, whereby we sit on Sam’s back porch, drinking tea and listening to old country and blue-grass on the turntable. Before Sam, the only country music I knew was what I had heard in Oklahoma as a kid, and I hated it, but I now have a soft spot for Merle Haggard and Gram Parsons. I think it was the sweet tea that did it.
In the months before our wedding, Sam and Brandon played tennis almost every night, trading off between the community courts in his neighborhood and ours. There has never been better comedy than the two of them on a tennis court. When they serve, the ball actually bounces once before it crosses the net, and Sam does this fun hop thing when he hits the ball. They would come home sweaty and half-starved, and we’d open a bottle of something cold and throw together dinner. Our favorite meal that summer was one of the simplest: a few zucchini sliced into long strips on a mandoline, sautéed and then tossed with hot spaghetti and pesto. We called it “zucchini noodles,” for the way the long slivers of squash mimicked the shape of the spaghetti. We must have eaten it a dozen times.
There is an infinite number of reasons, I think, for loving someone. I love Brandon for lots of things, not the least of which is the fact that we found each other at all. But if I had to name just one reason, it would be this: because he made my home—my city and my little place within it—feel, for the first time, like home. It sounds sappy to say it so plainly, but I think you know what I mean. I wasn’t lonely before he came along. I had no real complaints or grievances. Seattle was good to me. But with him, and everything that comes with him, it’s so much better.
CARAMELIZED CAULIFLOWER WITH SALSA VERDE
i’ve been roasting cauliflower for a long time, but until I met Olaiya, I’d never thought to serve it with a dressing. Needless to say, I’ve now changed my ways. This recipe needs no real guidelines other than this: be sure to make the salsa verde before roasting the cauliflower, so that it has time to sit. The garlic and lime need to mellow and meld, and you’ll notice a marked difference in the flavor after about 30 minutes.
FOR THE SALSA VERDE
1 medium jalapeño, ribs and seeds removed, finely chopped
3 tablespoons finely chopped cilantro leaves
2 medium cloves garlic, minced with a pinch of salt
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
4 tablespoons olive oil
Salt to taste
FOR THE CAULIFLOWER
1 medium cauliflower (2 to 2½ pounds)
2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil
Salt to taste
First, prepare the salsa verde. In a medium bowl, combine the jalapeño, cilantro, garlic, lime juice, and olive oil and whisk to combine. Add two pinches of salt, or more, to taste, and whisk well. Set aside at room temperature for at least 30 minutes and up to an hour.
Preheat the oven to 450°F.
Wash and dry the cauliflower well. Put it on a cutting board, stem side down, and slice it vertically, top down, into ¼-inch slices. You’ll only get about 4 intact slices, and the rest will be a hash of cauliflower crumbs. That’s okay. Put the cauliflower in a large bowl and toss with 2 tablespoons olive oil. (I find that my hands work best for this.) You want each little bit of cauliflower to get a thin coat of oil. If necessary, add 1 more tablespoon. Spread the cauliflower in a single layer on a heavy sheet pan, or if the pan seems crowded, use 2 pans. You don’t want it packed too tightly, or the cauliflower will steam rather than roast. Salt it lightly.
Bake until the cauliflower is tender, golden, and even deeply browned in spots, 20 to 30 minutes, turning once with a spatula. Salt lightly again.
Serve cauliflower hot or warm, with salsa verde on the side for drizzling.
Yield: 4 side-dish servings or 2 larger servings
ZUCCHINI NOODLES WITH PESTO
if you don’t have a mandoline slicer, this recipe alone is worth the investment. We like Benriner brand, from Japan, which will only set you back about thirty-five dollars.
FOR THE PESTO
2 cups tightly packed basil leaves, washed and dried well
½ cup olive oil
3 tablespoons pine nuts
2 medium cloves garlic, minced
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup Parmigiano-Reggiano
FOR THE NOODLES
; 3 medium zucchini, trimmed (about 1½ pounds)
3 tablespoons olive oil
¾ pound dried spaghetti or other long noodles
Salt
Finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, for serving
First, make the pesto. Put the basil leaves in a large heavy-duty ziplock plastic bag. Press all the air from the bag, and seal it carefully. Put the bag on the countertop or floor and, using a rolling pin, pound the bag until all the leaves are bruised. This helps to release their flavor.
Put the pounded basil, olive oil, pine nuts, garlic, and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Process to a smooth, creamy consistency, stopping once or twice to scrape down the bowl with a rubber spatula. Transfer the mixture to a medium bowl, and stir in the Parmigiano-Reggiano. Set aside.
Put a large pot of salted water over high heat.
While the water heats, prepare the zucchini. Using a mandoline slicer fitted with the julienne blade, carefully slice the zucchini into long, skinny noodles, each the width of a strand of spaghetti.
Warm the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the zucchini “noodles” and cook, stirring occasionally, until tender but not mushy, 5 to 8 minutes.
When the pot of water boils, drop in the spaghetti. Cook until al dente. Using a pair of long-handled tongs—or, if you have one, a wire strainer with a long handle, also called a “spider”; that’s what works best—scoop the pasta directly from the pot into the skillet of cooked zucchini. Doing it this way, rather than draining the spaghetti into a colander, means that each strand brings with it a little bit of its cooking water, which will loosen up the pesto and help it to form a nice sauce. Add ½ cup of the pesto and toss the mixture well to ensure that each noodle—zucchini and spaghetti alike—has a thin, even coat of sauce.
A Homemade Life Page 21