“Le nez!”
“Le nez!”
“Pas le nez!”
I pulled my hand back as if I were about to be scorched and looked at my boyfriend for an explanation. He explained to me how one never cuts the nose of the cheese. It is considered the pinnacle of rudeness. It’s funny how the French decide what is rude and what is not. I endured countless dinner parties where the main topic of conversation was how backward America was, how insincere and poorly educated we are, how Americans only care about money, how they smile far too much (“What are you Americans hiding that you need to smile so much?”). I even sat through a party once while a drunken Frenchman tried to convince me that most American women have fat calves.
“What?” I yelled over “Is This Love” by Bob Marley. Incidentally, the French love their Bob Marley every bit as much as their Western keg party counterparts. I was sure that I had misunderstood him. “American women have fat what?”
“Les mollets,” he said as he lunged for mine to give them a drunken squeeze. I swatted him away.
“Thanks for letting me know.” I considered pointing out something to him about Frenchmen and their noses. Maybe by asking him if he could smoke in the shower with his honker, but then I decided it would take too long for me to translate. I still was at that frustrating, just-on-the-edge-of-fluency level, the point where I could order everything perfectly in a restaurant, easily buy my groceries, but when it came to humor, I was infuriatingly slow and clumsy. It is very difficult to be funny in another language. Or, at least, funny when you mean to be. It is astonishingly easy to be funny when you don’t mean to be. And the truth of the matter is that I happen to have a fondness for big noses, I secretly feared that I have fat calves, but mostly, I don’t particularly like being rude.
Back at Sunday lunch, my boyfriend’s family had now launched into a sort of ditty that reminded me of when I was eight years old and staying at my cousin’s house, where they had a very elaborate song about not putting elbows on the table. The reason never to cut the nose off the cheese—according to the song—goes something like this: If you always cut the tip off, eventually the last person who decides they want to sample the cheese will get only the rind. “Mon Dieu!” But if you always cut it on the angle, everyone will have just the right proportion of cheese and rind, and everyone is happy. This is a lesson that I will never forget, thanks to my day of Sunday lunch humiliation—one of many. There was also the day of never pouring the wine while holding it by the neck, but that’s another story. If you learn anything from my book at all, just remember: nose, neck, and elbows. You’ll be fine.
* * *
MY FRIEND MARIE’S THOUGHTS ON DINNER PARTIES
FLOWERS THAT TELL THE SEASON
CANDLES, SIMPLE
BEAUTIFUL LINEN, USED SPARINGLY
PEOPLE WHO ENJOY BEING PLEASED
IMPECCABLE FOOD, EVEN IF IT IS CHEESE OR BREAD
AN EXTRAVAGANCE IN SOMETHING, BUT NOT EVERYTHING
THE IDEA OF CREATING A PERFECT SETTING, OR SERIES OF MOMENTS, FOR SOMETHING THAT WILL PASS IN A COUPLE OF HOURS
* * *
L’ASSIETTE DE FROMAGE (THE CHEESE PLATE)
It is easy to feel intimidated by the cheese plate. Especially when you are born in a country where “American cheese” isn’t really cheese at all, but rather a highly processed cheeselike product. Learning about all of the different kinds of cheeses can be a daunting but exciting venture. Now, more than ever, we have a vast selection of cheeses to choose from that come not just from other countries but also from artisanal producers in the United states.
To put together a simple but solid selection, aim for a four-cheese plate, about one ounce apiece, that progresses from mildest to strongest. I prefer to start with a fresh goat cheese, such as a Selles-sur-Cher or Valencay. Some people like to have a triple crème, or a brie or Camembert, but if your taste tends to veer toward the stronger, you can begin with a Taleggio or Epoisses. Despite the vehemence of my French friends who tried to convince me that cheddar was not a real cheese, I do not agree. Any cheese plate of mine must include a real English cheddar. Next is either a genuine aged Gouda or the incredible Roomano (not Romano), both dutch. These aren’t that easy to find, especially in good condition, but they’re incredible. And, finally, a blue cheese—roquefort, stilton, or Gorgonzola.
As for wine pairings: ideally each cheese gets its own little glass, but in reality, it’s not really necessary. Whatever red is left on the table is good for the stinky cheeses and the cheddar, but the Dutch cheese and blue would be better off with a little dessert wine like a muscat/moscato or sauternes, or even something fortified like port or sherry.
A baguette or a Poilâne-like peasant bread should be on the table, but not on the plate itself! It’s also nice to have some fruit on the side—figs, grapes, or dried apricots—and with fresh goat and other really mild cheeses I also like to serve either a fruit jam or apricot/quince paste and maybe a nice aged balsamic vinegar.
Most important, as my fellow foodie and turophile* Chris insists, the cheeses must come from a good cheese shop. most supermarkets just don’t have genuine cheeses. Even if the label claims ENGLISH FARMHOUSE CHEDDAR and it costs twenty dollars a pound, it’s still most likely not the real thing (and in flavor and texture, the fake doesn’t come close). All those great names—cheddar, Gouda, Gruyère, etc.—were bastardized into awful things precisely because the originals are such fantastic artifacts, well worth finding.
WINE
And to finish off the trifecta: wine! The holy trinity. Bread, cheese, and wine. I think I could live on these three things alone. In fact, at times I have.
Until I moved to France, I didn’t know much about wine. All I basically knew was overly oaky Chardonnay (which I confess, I used to like, and now can’t stand). As for red wine, I rarely ever drank it, mostly because I didn’t know anything about it. Then I met a Frenchman from Bordeaux, and everything changed. I learned the years that were the best (’82, ’89), I visited the vineyards (St. Émilion, Médoc, Pauillac), I became a veritable wine snob. My poor family had to endure me on holidays, turning up my nose when they would open a perfectly decent bottle of Cabernet. “Vin de soif,” I would say, which roughly translates as “A decent table wine.” Or if I was feeling less charitable, I’d huff, “Jus de chausette,” which means, “Juice from the socks.” They say that babies are particularly cute and cuddly so that their parents will love and nurture them. But what keeps parents loving their children after they grow up and move to France? Habit?
Soon after I moved to Paris, I spent a ridiculous amount of money on what is arguably the best bottle of wine that exists in the world, Le Petrus, in what is considered to be one of the best years in recent history, 1989. My apartment in the Marais actually had a cave, which lent itself to even more feverish collecting. My Bordelais boyfriend encouraged my enthusiasm, and together we went on a frenzied wine-purchasing binge, and he kept track of them on a computer spreadsheet—the only thing that he was seriously organized about. A couple of years later, my cave was robbed. The French thieves chose to forgo the spare VCR, the racks of clothing, the skis; in fact the only thing they seemed to be interested in was the wine. Three cases were stolen. Mercifully, without the spreadsheet, they missed the Petrus and a few other choice bottles. I breathed a sigh of relief. What luck! My nectar of the gods was safe. Then a few years after that, I lost all my wine, every last bottle, in my divorce from the French boyfriend whom I eventually married.
I drink Italian wine now.
PUTTING ON THE RITZ
On a lark, one spring I decided to go to culinary school in Paris. I figured if I was ever going to do something like that, France was the place to do it. I researched various options online and finally decided on the Ritz Escoffier school. I already had a fondness for the Ritz, since I had joined the gym there. Unlike the United States, where there seems to be a gym on every corner—next to the nail salon and pharmacy—gyms are not very easy to come by
in Europe. An actor whom I had met at a French film festival persuaded me that the best (if not only) place to work out was the Ritz. It didn’t take a lot of convincing. I enthusiastically joined the gym and went three times a week. I jogged on the treadmill next to Gregory Peck, swam in the mosaic swimming pool while the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy tapped away on his portable computer poolside. It was obscenely luxurious, and I loved it.
On my first day of cooking school, I dressed carefully in the provided uniform. (I have always loved uniforms. Some days I actually miss not being able to dress in my high school uniform.) My cooking school uniform was almost identical to the uniform that my mom wore when she attended culinary school years before: checkered pants, white jacket (with RITZ ESCOFFIER stitched in elaborate blue script), and a jaunty white cap. Since the weather was fairly warm outside, I decided to complete the outfit by wearing my favorite sandals.
When I arrived at the school, the chef immediately narrowed his eyes, and with a long skinny paring knife he pointed to my bare toes sticking out of the sandals. He informed me that I was never to wear them again, and if I had been taking the course for a grade, I would have failed on the spot. I gulped. “Oui, Chef.” I got my own back a few days later, however, when he stuck his finger into where I was filleting a giant cod.
Entitled “The Taste of Provence,” the course ran for a week. During that time, we prepared Pissaldiere, soupe de pistou Rouget, the perfect aoli, “Zee Rolls-Royce of bouillabaisse” (as our chef referred to his method of preparing the famous peasant fisherman’s soup, minus any of what a peasant would have actually put in it). It was a hectic, exciting, challenging time, and while I remember very little of what I learned, I’ll never forget the sheer joy I felt during that week—and joy is as important to me as knowing how to expertly debone a chicken.
The translator that the Ritz had hired for the class spoke only basic English, so I ended up as the de facto translator. It was a great personal victory, tantamount to being able to cuss out a French café waiter with authority. (This takes a minimum of two years—at least it did on my part.) I was happy to be of some service to my fellow foodies, and to be able to feel like a teacher’s pet. By this point, Chef had forgiven me for nearly slicing his finger off. In fact I think he found me somewhat useful (at least linguistically, certainly not for my culinary acumen). He would rattle off a long and involved explanation and then turn to me and bark, “Translate!” which I dutifully did.
Every evening, before leaving, the class would sit at a long communal table and eat what we had prepared during the day. After a couple of glasses of carefully selected wine, our chef would loosen up and chat pleasantly with the students. I grilled him about his favorite restaurants in Paris. How did he judge the merits of a restaurant? Was it the lightness of the sauce? The inventiveness of the combination of ingredients? His answer surprised me. The perfectly dressed green salad.
A green salad is the hardest to get right, he explained. It’s always over- or underdressed, usually over—like a starlet at an Oscar party. He told me that recently he had been to a restaurant in the 16th Arrondissement and ordered what turned out to be the perfect green salad. He thought it was a fluke, he had never tasted one so perfect, so he ordered another. Same thing. “If you can get zee salad right, everything else, c’est simple.” He then did the typical French thing of putting his lips together and blowing out dismissively. After a couple glasses of wine myself, I started to develop a pretty good crush on him. I let myself imagine what it would be like to have a boyfriend who was a chef. He would definitely help me master the hollandaise. We would open a restaurant together. I would be a charming hostess, he would be the surly genius in back. It was either the wine talking, or the chef’s uniform, because a few days later I saw him at a fellow classmate’s cocktail party, dressed in a leather biker’s jacket and jeans about two sizes too tight. The effect was devastating. My crush collapsed like a beginner’s soufflé.
BOUILLABAISSE RECIPE
I thought that nothing could compare to the bouillabaisse recipe that I learned while at Ritz Escoffier in Paris. Then I moved to New York and befriended a beautiful ex-opera singer/garden designer and mad chef Marie Viljoen. It could be her company, or her tiny charming Brooklyn apartment (that she blogs extensively about in “66 square Feet”—which are exactly the dimensions of her terrace garden). Mostly I think it’s her dedication to getting it right and not caring about how long it takes. This is definitely a dish that is all about the preparation! Here is Marie’s master recipe in her own words:
This is not an authentic bouillabaisse. There may not be one authentic bouillabaisse, but this is authentically mine. If you have a free day you can make this in one day, or half, since you must buy the fish the same day. If not, make the stock ahead and freeze or start again the next day.
serves 6
One each of three different kinds of fish, with heads, bones, etc., cleaned, scaled, and roughly chopped (for example, snapper, John Dory, rouget, branzino). You can fillet these fish and save the fillets for adding to the soup later, but then you must make the whole thing the same day.
1½ lbs of shrimp, with shells and, preferably, heads. Shell and clean the shrimp, keep tails for soup, and reserve shells for stock.
A lobster if you are rich, two if you know a diver. Reserve tail meat and keep the chopped body and head. No, the green stuff isn’t icky, it’s good. It’s the tomalley. Liver, OK? Keep it. Throw away the gritty sac though (you can’t be squeamish). Also the dead man’s fingers (lungs, blegh…OK, a little squeamish).
3 large onions, chopped finely
1 head (not clove, head) of garlic, chopped finely
2 bulbs fennel, chopped finely
6 tomatoes, skinned, chopped, not finely
2 tbsp tomato paste
2 bottles of good white wine, not wooded, slightly fruity, but dry. It has got to be wine you would drink (and would be very nice if it is the wine you will drink…)
3 bay leaves
3 sprigs thyme
1 bunch parsley
10 peppercorns
1 tbsp sugar
salt
HOW TO MAKE THE STOCK (OR “SOUL” OF THE SOUP)
Pour a healthy splash of olive oil into a large pot. Add onions, then garlic, sauté for about five minutes on medium to low heat, till translucent. Increase heat to at least medium and add fennel and cook another five minutes. Stir not to burn. Add chopped fish heads and bones, and prawn and lobster shells. Stir everything nicely so they’re all in contact with the heat. Add tomatoes and tomato paste, stir again. Add herbs and peppercorns and sugar. Toss in two bottles of wine or until everything is covered. Add water if necessary. It will probably be necessary. Bring to a boil and reduce so that it’s simmering (lots of steam, surface barely shaking), and skim off any scum that rises. Clean the kitchen.
The stock should cook for about an hour. Taste it at this time and add salt. Through a sieve, pour all the stock into a big bowl. You’ll have to do this in batches, as the sieve fills up with bits. Push all these bits very hard against the mesh to get every little drop out. In my extreme moments I have put bits into a blender. I also broke the blender—but the idea is to get every ounce of goodness out of the bits.
OK—now you have a bowlful of stock. At this point I commit another heresy. I reduce it. Just by about a fifth. Which means you put it back into the big, now-clean pot, back on high heat and bring it to a boil, then reduce to a serious simmer, and let it do that for about thirty-five minutes.
There is an alternative, and since I’m going to hell already, I can tell you. It’s…chicken stock. Real is best…but a c-c-c-cube does wonders. Phew, I feel unburdened. I would say I have done it 33.3 percent of the time when for some reason the stock just doesn’t taste right.
FOR THE FINISHED BOUILLABAISSE
Add a large of pinch saffron. Add fillets from two or preferably three kinds of white fish, like the fish mentioned in Chapter Six. They must be sliced into
nice but not uniform bits. Bear in mind that the biggest pieces will take longest to cook and will be added a little earlier than the small pieces. Personally, I like the skin off. boiled fish skin. Brrrr.
Add prawns or shrimp, either in the shell, cleaned; or the naked bodies; or entire, with head (this last will add an additional deliciousness to the soup, if you go for it). The quantity is worked out by estimating how many prawns or shrimp each person may like to eat. If you splurge and buy langoustes, get one each, tiger prawns, one or two each, etc.
If you are having lobster, add the tail meat and claw meat if you live where lobsters have claws. For the superdeluxe version, add dungeness crab claws and VERY fresh lump crabmeat. Add cockles or very little clams, about 1½ pounds, de-sanded by soaking in fresh water for ten minutes.
Add mussels, same and de-bearded, and only if you have a super-reliable fish person or local tidal rock. mussels have made me very sick more than once (but never from my own bouillabaisse!).
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