Still Dreaming of Food in France

I wrote this a year ago, when I was under the very heavy influence of French food! Actually, I still am, but I've been able to cook some of the things I ate there, and enjoy the memory and perspective that these foods are native, home, comfort.

I loved the regional quality of the food and realized that while there was a strict adherence to seasons, what resonated with me was the adherence to tradition. People have knowledge of when foods are at their best, at their peak. The best time may only last a week or two, but there is an embracing and an excitement in the joy of that food...that one food has everyone's attention...and has had, at that very moment of the year, for maybe thousands of years. So here then, is my outsider's food viewpoint on the regions we visited, and the stars of French winter cuisine:

Paris
What the heck can I say?!! Paris is the light of the sun! The air! The energy! The attitude! There is shocking confidence in a bowl of pureed vegetable soup, mache tossed with viciously expensive olive oil and salt, a plain fluffy omelet, bowtie pasta with truffle cream sauce...that I will think of for the rest of my life.

The food is pricey but the cafes are jammed day and night---not with tourists, but with locals intent on eating spectacular meals...every time they eat. They take no prisoners; they don't suffer excuses. I expect that churning out mediocre food here is a death penalty offense!


Alsace-Lorraine, Strasbourg
Strasbourg, in the Alsace-Lorrraine region, is a fast train trip from Paris to another universe. The area is rocky and densely wooded. Here, where it must be chilly all year round, sausage and boar and sauerkraut run true.

There's no messing around with soy milk/low fat/dressing on the side, please! Drapes are heavy, interiors glow, and a meal is a meal with all the parts. It seems that there is a rock-star-grandmother-cook in every kitchen and you're not going out to play in the cold until you've provisioned up on food so satisfying...that you could play in the cold of outer space. Without a jacket!

Normandy/Brittany
The salty seaweed Atlantic is the first flavor here. Farmhouses that have braced against storm for a few hundred years nestle in the centers of their green, green fields. Like stones in a river, all that could crack and break away is long gone, leaving the hardest, most enduring core behind.

The delicacy of food from the ocean meets the chill of life on land in oysters stewed in their shells with cream, garlic and herbs, prawns on a bed of dark, fresh, salty seaweed with heavy thick, tangy mayonnaise, fish baked in bream...The clear star of this show though, is an unusual omelet. The egg is whipped to froth, poured into a pan, and cooked over a wood fire. It is never flipped, but is so deep and thick that it browns very darkly on the cooked side. Folded onto the plate and served with lobster...the intense smoky flavor is an astonishing revelation.

OH! Provence!
There are so many fresh markets! It's bitter wintertime, but the view down a street would suggest spring or summer. Every vegetable, every piece of fruit is succulent and lovely. Is it true, or have I been mesmerized? Even the produce in the supermarket draws me in to fill a basket though I have no kitchen or refrigerator---I just want to possess those radishes and red currants! The ten year olds preach caution, but I can't help myself. Good thing it's cold because the rental car is my refrigerator now.

Dinner in a restaurant run by a chef who is a disciple of Escoffier, was an experience of worship. Each course was a masterpiece. Delicate cream of leek soup; tiny quail breast stuffed with golden raisins---then encased in a thin layer, a gelee of roasting juices; a "box" of mashed turnip filled with shredded roast beef and tender peppercorns; a roasted pear stuffed with hazelnut chocolate beside a poire William granita so delicately balanced in flavor that I kind of lost my mind for awhile.

I like to taste food in my head before I actually taste it. The sight and smell of food on the plate is thrilling as I think of how it was prepared and how it came together in this moment...this dinner though was so unusual, so surprising that I just enjoyed it without thought. I was overwhelmed, completely.

La Petite Dejeuner
The thread running through everyday was the boulangerie breakfast. We'd blunder into tiny shops and stand thoughtless and speechless in view of the array. Someone was always climbing over and around us to get their baguette and rush out! We'd stand there----unable to decide between almond or chocolate, something custard filled, apple or pear tart---or cherry or rhubarb! Plain bread,croissant, sweet bread, do we need some jam? Two weeks wasn't enough time to get routine about this---would it ever be routine? I just don't think so...my heart would pound every time I'd hear the door jingle open!

Our last Supper
Coming to the end of anything so sweetly intense is hard, but this experience had two tracks running. I had to separate from Emma and Harrison, and I had to give up eating and get back to cooking.

I'd been deep asleep every day, under a cozy down comforter, awakened by the smell of fresh coffee. Someone's gift to my morning---their creativity, their sensibility to how a comfortable day should look---smell---start. I wondered if people love what they smell and taste in my cafe as much as I love what other people prepared for me?

Our last breakfast was pastry, grabbed at the train station. We spent the day traveling to Paris from Avignon and then visited the catacombs and the Arc de Triomphe. Dinner was the meal that most mattered to me that day. We took a brisk evening walk along the Champs Elysees and a metro train to the coziest of the bistros on Ile St Louis. We had loved a late night pastry fest there, when we first got to Paris. French waiters are supposed to be so sassy and irritable...we'd only found sweet ones. This night though, our last, we had dinner while busy people hurried past on the sidewalk outside; a storm was approaching. Occasionally, they stared at us through the steamy windows...I think I saw envy on their faces!

For our last dinner, we had a country charcuterie/fromage plate (assiette). Ohmy. The plate was overloaded with several kinds of interesting cheese, salami, ham, terrine, cornichon pickles, and baguette slices. It was an inspiration to look at, and a blessing to eat! What a sweet life!