Maman's Homesick Pie

by Donia Bijan

  It was at this time that I began to imagine the marriage of French and Persian flavors, conjuring wild menus in my head, like seared duck livers with sour cherries, or cardamom crème caramel with pistachio tuiles. Like a rumor, first whispered thirty years ago, those once-exotic flavors—pomegranate, saffron, cumin, cardamom—are as common as vanilla today. But at the time they were heralded by messengers like me, elbowing our way for space at the table. For me, it was an indication that I was acquiring French cuisine as a language to be mastered, understanding its structure and its nuances so I could play and dream fluently instead of always translating and losing the essence. So when Marie would say, Pas mal, I wouldn’t think she meant Not bad and take it as a compliment, when in fact she meant, It’s just okay. It could be so muchbetter. I could sit with these young cooks and laugh with them at a joke, not just smile to be polite. The next step, cracking the joke, would be far more difficult.

  Though initially the elite kitchen brigade was suspicious of the new American woman, they soon realized I was not a hobby chef and I wasn’t doing research for an article. In my proper element, without the trappings of a title, I was free to work through the stations, learning the kitchen inside and out so that I could go wherever help was needed. We worked long hours, but it was remarkably freeing to work without distraction. We got one day off a week. There was nothing along the main street in Vonnas other than a café and a pharmacy, so I’d take my laundry on the train to Bourg-en-Bresse, the nearest town, stop for a crêpe, and catch the train home with my clean clothes. Back in my room, I would lay wrinkled chef’s jackets under the mattress to press them—a trick my mother had taught me when we traveled. It was a focused, monastic life that suited me fine. In the kitchen, we communicated with movement and rhythm. There was no pressure to prove anything, just a shared instinct for what needed to be done. Once again, there was no preoccupation with belonging, because I already belonged here. In this remote French village, I could walk into town at dawn in my uniform with my knife pouch tucked under my arm, take my coffee at the café with all the other workers, and be greeted with the particular respect the patrons had for the “kids” who worked for Monsieur Blanc, the chef and proprietor of the restaurant that had put them on the Michelin map. Where else would the townsfolk wave, the gendarme beep his horn, and the pharmacist have special ointments for your burn? I felt linked to this village, and Iran might as well have been on another planet.

  One day at lunchtime, Chef Patrick walked the phone over to me with a big grin on his face. I had a phone call, he said, from Antoine Westermann, the chef of Le Buerehiesel in Strasbourg. He was one of the visiting chefs I had worked with at the Pierre, and I had written to him asking if I might work for him after my apprenticeship at Georges Blanc. Everyone stopped eating, willing me to stay at the table to take the call. They listened intently as I made arrangements. I didn’t realize it was such a big deal for a lowly stagiaire to receive a personal call from a prominent chef and be offered a temporary, un-salaried position. But that phone call elevated my status. Even the maître d’hôtel and the girls at the front desk, who until then had been aloof, gave me a nod every morning.

  It so happened that a few weeks later Monsieur Blanc received a call from Michel Guérard, the chef of Les Prés d’Eugénie, a three-star restaurant in the Aquitaine region. He wondered if any stagiaires could be spared. Monsieur Blanc recommended me, knowing I had already circulated through his kitchen and was ready to move on. I was not expected in Strasbourg for another two months, and with this opportunity to work for Michel Guérard, in a region I knew would boast an entirely different range of ingredients, I fantasized about staying in France, traveling from kitchen to kitchen with my knife pouch in hand, my sleeves rolled up. I wasn’t ready to give up the life of kitchen monk, and I wanted to suspend the future as long as possible. Going home meant command and commitment to one kitchen.

  During my last week in Vonnas, I lingered over the tasks we all did together, standing around a great big butcher block: deveining lobes of foie gras, peeling and slicing apples for caramelized apple tarts, shaping whole wheat walnut boules for the bread baskets. During service I was an octopus, reaching to help in every direction. I wanted them to miss me. We had champagne on my last night. Even the boys from Japan raised their glasses, and Monsieur Blanc, who just the day before, in a rare moment of one-on-one, had taught me how to make his signature tomato vinaigrette, gave me a silver key chain of a chef’s toque, which I still carry today. Though I felt they had already given me so much, to my knowledge, I was one of the few who received any token of appreciation from the house.

  Eugénie-les-Bains was an even smaller dot on the map. I arrived on an afternoon in July when the Tour de France was passing through a nearby village, and there were noisy crowds on the main street, spilling out of the only café. I got a ride to the restaurant, where the staff rushed out to greet me, thinking I was a guest. They continued to be gracious when I told them who I was, and escorted me to the vieux hôtel, used for staff housing. I was offered room and board in an old farmhouse with high ceilings and bright green shutters. My room, simply furnished with an antique canopy bed, a washstand, an armoire, and a big square window overlooking the fields, was a palace compared to that in the lodging house in Vonnas. My mother would have loved this room. I did what I knew she would have done, first opening the shutters and leaning far out the window, putting my toothbrush in the porcelain cup by the sink, hanging my newly washed chef’s jackets in the big oak armoire, leaving my book and radio on the nightstand. Whenever we traveled, she unpacked right away, as if it were forever. I changed quickly and went down to the kitchen, knowing they weren’t expecting me until the following day. I knew the routine. I ignored the curious looks, grabbed a case of peas, and started shucking. Eventually it would be dinnertime, and I would introduce myself then.

  Michel Guérard’s food was radically different from Georges Blanc’s, catering to the spa crowd from Paris. I had come from the land of butter and cream to that of herb-infused broths, olive oil, and steam. The ambience of his kitchen was more playful, with pickup soccer after lunch on the big lawn just outside the kitchen. The sous-chefs rode fancy motorcycles and played pranks. It took me a few weeks to relax and appreciate the lightheartedness of this brigade, but by then it was time to pack and head to Alsace, where I was to begin work at Le Buerehiesel.

  In Strasbourg, my lodgings were in the garret of a small, family-run hotel across the river and down the road from the restaurant. I slept soundly under the sloped beams and watched the sun come up through a triangular window overlooking the backyard. For the first time in months, I had a little bathroom to myself, an incredible luxury. Every night when I came home from work, the proprietors washed and ironed my chef’s jacket and hung it on the back of the chair where I sat every morning for breakfast: a steaming bowl of café au lait and a basket of baguette and croissants with plenty of butter and jam. To me it was the Four Seasons, and I never wanted to leave.

  Monsieur Westermann was the kindest, most sincere man I had the privilege of working for. His kitchen was completely void of ego and showmanship. Enamored with Alsace, he saw himself as a mere vessel between the land and his table. I spent an entire morning riding around with him in his little Renault, searching for the best potatoes. We stopped at farms where farmers took us through their fields, raking dirt with their fingers to dig little muddy lumps for him to taste, all declaring: Voici la meilleure pomme de terre du monde! Here is the best potato in the world! And Monsieur Westermann would laugh and tell them how the guy down the road just claimed his were the world’s best potatoes.

  In this kitchen they weren’t interested in giving me their prep work. I didn’t have to shuck or peel anything. Every day I assisted a different chef de partie, each one meticulous, earnest, and eager to show me what he was working on, assembling luscious mackerel, potato, and crème fraîche terrines, or velvet raviolis, like pillows, filled with braised cabbage and frogs’ leg
s. The pastry chef coaxed kugelhupf dough and soaked purple plums in port for his skillet tart. The salad chef carefully washed his tiny greens and herbs, drying them in old-fashioned wire baskets he spun around, his arms like windmills. Like their boss, these chefs were equally captivated by their terroir. During service I watched their rapture as they plated their parcels. From the corner of my eye, I caught Monsieur Westermann’s tall frame bending to inspect every plate that left the kitchen, his shoulders twitching, his face contorted, eyes blinking wildly. His sous-chef was a burly Alsatian with a Stalin mustache, as jolly as they come, God help you if you screwed up—he spared no words, and hurled them in German. When we all ate together at the long picnic table outside the kitchen, he sat like our papa, making conversation with all sixteen of us, teasing the younger lads and mussing up their hair, asking after our families, scowling at a wrinkled uniform. Between the two of them, they ran a flawless kitchen you would never want to leave.

  I finally understood the world these chefs inhabited. It wasn’t until I had shared their roofs, their meals, their tasks, their worries, that it became obvious: they could never be anything but cooks. And that plain truth spoke to me. I had known it since I was five years old. I had known it as an awkward kid who found grace in the kitchen. In these men, I found kindred souls. They were revered for the work they did day after day, and it was the only work they could do. And because their work was linked to the land where they had grown up, their sense of place was true. You tasted it in their food: they still grated nutmeg into their spaetzle as their grandmothers had, and fried chicken as their mothers had taught them, and dug wild mushrooms from the forest where they had tagged along with their fathers. I faced a riddle: how would I remain true to my homeland when I had learned my craft like a Gypsy?

  Letters to my mother, written dutifully during breaks between lunch and dinner service, expressed my desire to stay as long as possible. Recalling the chilling incident in my kindergarten schoolyard, I joked that I had broken the glass wall that separated me from the French kids. I was reluctant to leave this world, where we shared such fierce devotion to our métier, and I loved the sight of my starched white coat hanging on the back of a cane chair, waiting for me to get to work. But it was time to find my kitchen.

  Purple Plum Skillet Tart

  I find that I tend to construct a meal backward. Where most cooks begin with a bird, or a fish, my square one will most likely be a fruit or a vegetable. I always browse the produce first, and something will wink at me—a gorgeous bulb of fennel, freckled apricots with a rosy blush, purple eggplants. The fennel may send me to Greece to make a stew à la grecque, with white wine, garlic, thyme, and saffron, to serve with grilled lamb chops. The eggplant will most likely send me to Iran, to make khoresht, a rich stew with tomatoes, cumin, tart grapes, and preserved lemons that compliments beef, lamb, or chicken equally well. Serve it piping hot over steamed basmati rice and watch the faces around you soften.

  Stone fruits, such as apricots and plums, almost always send me to the Alsace region of France, where I have fond memories of the pastry chef at Le Buerehiesel making Alsatian tarts. These fruits have a short season, so it’s inevitable that we’ll enjoy them with every meal, saving the superripe ones for making jam and tarts. I love walking to the table with a skillet to present this dessert. Otherwise known as a clafoutis, this rustic and uncomplicated fruit flan is traditionally made with cherries, but plums, apricots, pears, or raspberries are equally delicious. I prefer French prune plums for baking, as they don’t get soggy and their flavor intensifies with cooking.

  Serves 6

  1 cup blanched, toasted almonds

  ½ cup flour

  A pinch of salt

  6 large eggs, separated

  1 cup sugar

  1 cup sour cream

  2 tablespoons butter

  1½ pounds ripe prune plums, halved and pitted

  2 tablespoons honey

  1 tablespoon confectioners’ sugar

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F.

  2. In a food processor, grind the almonds finely with the flour and a pinch of salt.

  3. In an electric mixer, beat the egg yolks with ½ cup of the sugar until pale and thick, about 4 minutes. Blend in the sour cream. Fold in the almond flour. Set aside.

  4. Beat the egg whites with the remaining sugar until soft peaks form. Fold into the yolk mixture.

  5. In a 10½-inch nonstick skillet over medium-high heat, melt 2 tablespoons of butter. Add the pitted plums and sauté for 2 to 3 minutes. Drizzle the honey to caramelize the plums, cooking for another 2 minutes. Drain any excess liquid. Pour the almond batter over the plums and place the skillet in the center of the oven. Bake until the batter puffs up and turns a rich golden brown, about 15 to 20 minutes. If you prefer not to bake in the skillet, simply transfer the plums to a buttered ovenproof baking dish and continue with the previous steps.

  6. Remove from the oven and preheat the broiler.

  7. Sift confectioners’ sugar over the tart. Place the skillet under the broiler about 2 inches from the flame. Broil about 1 minute, until the sugar is caramelized. You can also use a kitchen torch to caramelize the top.

  8. Serve warm from the skillet with a dollop of soft whipped cream and a glass of chilled late-harvest gewürztraminer.

  Tomato Confit

  In Tehran, my mother made tomato paste in midsummer, when she found crates of ripe tomatoes in the market. Jars of tomato paste dried on the hospital roof until the first day of school. On long summer days, when I had nothing to do, I would sneak to the roof and dip my finger into the jars to sample her paste. I couldn’t resist making a dent in the red, velvety surface, and I held the pungent flavor, at once salty, sour, and sweet, on my tongue as long as I could, like tomato candy.

  The next time I tasted anything similar was during my apprenticeship at Restaurant Georges Blanc, where every week we roasted crates of tomatoes for tomates confites. Row upon row of wrinkled, leathery tomatoes lined the kitchen, to appear later, layered in a magnificent dish of buttered leeks and frogs’ legs. I consider them my best souvenir from that period.

  When tomato season is in full swing, we gorge ourselves, and near the end, making these tomato “candies” is a way to make them last. With their infinite versatility, they are delicious on pizzas with olives or anchovies, in scrambled eggs, with pasta, with grilled fish or braised lamb, or with fresh mozzarella and eggplant in a vegetarian lasagna—and sometimes simply drizzled with olive oil and tucked into a crusty roll for a picnic on the roof.

  4 pounds (about 20) Early Girl or any medium-size

  vine-ripened tomatoes

  1 cup extra-virgin olive oil

  Kosher salt

  3 tablespoons sugar

  6 cloves garlic, crushed

  8 sprigs thyme

  1. Preheat the oven to 250°F.

  2. Core and peel the tomatoes, then halve them horizontally. Gently squeeze the halves or use a small spoon to remove the seeds. Strain the seeds and pulp to recuperate the tomato juice to use for sauce or soup.

  3. Prepare 2 baking sheets by lining them with parchment paper and brushing with some olive oil. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of salt, 2 teaspoons of sugar, and the garlic on each sheet pan. Place the halved tomatoes, cut side down, on the seasoned pans, close together but not stacked. Brush the tops with more olive oil and season with salt and 2 more teaspoons of sugar. Tuck the sprigs of thyme in between the rows.

  4. Place the tomatoes on the middle racks of the oven and roast for 4 to 6 hours. They must cook slowly at a low temperature to dry and candy. Check to see if they have released a lot of juice about halfway through, and if so, remove the pans from the oven and use paper towels to soak up the extra liquid. Return the pans to the oven and continue cooking. Turn your oven down if the tomatoes have browned but remain watery.

  5. Remove the tomatoes from the oven when they have a leathery texture and are deep red. Once cooled, they are ready to be used or stored. Use clean gla
ss jars or porcelain dishes to store them, drizzling the remaining olive oil on the topmost layer and sealing tightly. They will keep up to 2 weeks refrigerated, as long as a clean utensil is used to take what is needed with each use.

  Note: You may also prepare the tomatoes as shown in steps 2–3 and roast overnight at a lower temperature, in a 200°F oven.

  Chapter 11

  LEARNING TO COOK is like learning to speak a language with ease and confidence so that you can tell a joke without tripping, sing a song without missing a beat, dream in that language, and wake up with a menu dancing in your head as you run to collect eggs, butter, flour, sugar, and salt to make dough you shape into the moon and stars for a child’s birthday party.

  Paris, San Francisco, Tehran, all claim a part of me. As I looked out the window on the plane home from Paris, I thought about how the kitchens where I was shaped belong to all these places, and yet none claim to be the center. I’ll always negotiate that in-between culture. And I’ll always rely on the longing for these places, and I’ll always be learning to move between them without falling through the gaps.

  When my mother picked me up at the airport, I asked her if she wouldn’t mind taking me to San Francisco so I could look at the Sherman House, a beautiful hotel that sat like a wedding cake on an ordinary street in the posh neighborhood of Pacific Heights. Now? she asked. Yes, now, just a quick peek. I had walked by it numerous times and had entertained unlikely thoughts of maybe someday being the chef there. I knew the Swiss chef who ruled the kitchen; I had actually worked under his thumb for a fortnight but had politely resigned because I couldn’t follow his formulaic approach, which left no room for imagination. Years later I wrote to the proprietors from France, expressing my interest in returning, but this time as the executive chef. I felt as if everything I had ever done was meant to prepare me for this job, in this kitchen. My mother knew they had offered me a position and she was familiar with its exclusive reputation. She understood my need to take another good, long look at the place from the outside. It was late afternoon when she parked across the street, and we watched the white turn to pink in the waning light. One by one, the lights came on in the rooms, a taxi dropped off a lady with shopping bags, and a butler ran to help her in. I felt my mother’s eyes on me. I won’t see you much once you start working here, will I? We sat there till after dusk before driving home, but I could hardly wait to go back.