Jean-Luc shook his head.
“Sometimes I cut up a hot dog in it,” Alex added, just to see the look on Jean-Luc’s face. “Now, that’s some fancy eatin’.”
“You are teasing me now,” Jean-Luc said, a skeptical look on his face. “You did not do this.”
“I am teasing you,” Alex acknowledged with a smile. “But I did add the hot dogs.”
Natalie chuckled. “Anyway, if you had made either macaroni and cheese or chicken potpie from scratch, you would know that the base of both dishes is a béchamel sauce. By itself, béchamel is quite bland, which is why it is usually cooked with other ingredients and not used as a finishing sauce.” I might not know how to fix a front step or a slate roof, Natalie thought, but I can whip up a béchamel without breaking a sweat.
Jean-Luc piped up: “Velouté was the first sauce I learned. I remember, I was so proud when I got it right. It took forever, as I recall.”
“A proper one can take a long while,” Natalie agreed. “Most French cooking requires time and patience to allow the ingredients to meld and transform.”
“So what’s a velouté?” Alex asked.
“It’s a light roux made with a clear stock, such as chicken, turkey, or fish. The name is derived from the French word for ‘velvet,’ so it’s supposed to be very soft and velvety to the tongue. It’s usually served over fish or poultry that has been prepared in some delicate method, such as by poaching or steaming.”
“May I pour us some wine?” Jean-Luc asked, having opened a bottle and allowed it to rest. “Now all we are missing is some music. On a night like this, cooking with two wonderful women, I feel we should be listening to Édith Piaf or Serge Lama.”
“Sorry. We don’t have a music collection, and my little computer’s speakers are an offense to the ear,” Natalie said.
“I believe I may have a remedy to that,” Jean-Luc said. He disappeared for a moment, then returned with his phone and a small speaker system. “Does anyone have a request?”
“I vote for Édith Piaf,” said Natalie.
“I see you are a woman of old-fashioned taste,” said Jean-Luc. “I approve of this.” The kitchen was soon filled with the strains of “Non, je ne regrette rien.” “So, we were discussing sauces. What is next?”
“Then there’s espagnole,” said Natalie, “which is a basic brown sauce. It’s made from beef or veal stock, tomato puree, and a browned mirepoix, which is the mixture of carrots, onion, and celery that you’re chopping up there. All thickened with a dark brown roux. This sauce is sometimes used as the foundation for boeuf Bourguignon and demi-glace.”
“I’ve heard of boeuf Bourguignon,” said Alex. “But I’ve never had it.”
Natalie and Jean-Luc gaped at her.
Alex chuckled. “It wasn’t on the menu out at the ranch.”
“That does it,” said Jean-Luc. “Tomorrow night, I will bring home some beef and a good Burgundy for boeuf Bourguignon, assuming Natalie would be willing to make it for us.”
“I’d be happy to,” said Natalie.
“So what is it, exactly?” Alex asked.
“It’s beef stew. Really, really yummy beef stew,” Natalie said. Tonight she had decided upon a simple chicken fricassee, which involved slowly sautéing the chicken and the mirepoix, then adding wine and cream, parsley, and thyme. The aroma of sautéing onions wafted up from the stove, perfuming the kitchen and making her stomach growl.
For the first time in a very long while, Natalie felt relaxed, filled with confidence. She knew what she was doing as she moved around the kitchen, adding just the right amount of an ingredient at just the right time. When Natalie first transitioned from merely reading cookbooks to actually putting those skills to work in the kitchen, she felt as powerful as a witch mixing her magical potions. Why had she stopped?
Because François-Xavier took over. He was a classically trained chef, and she had ceded the cooking to him without a second thought. Then after he left, she had been too dispirited to cook for herself.
“What’s the next one?” asked Alex. “We’re only up to three sauces, and you know me: I hate unfinished lists.”
“Sauce tomate. Unlike more modern-day tomato sauces, the classic French tomato sauce is flavored with pork and aromatic vegetables. And then hollandaise is the last one. This is the only one of the five mother sauces that is not thickened by a roux. Instead, it’s an emulsion of egg yolk and melted butter.”
“That sounds pretty basic,” said Alex.
Jean-Luc shook his head and smiled. “It is basic, but it can be difficult because the emulsion can easily ‘break.’ The trick is to make a stable mixture of two things that normally don’t blend together.”
“And you put that on eggs Benedict, right?” asked Alex. “Even I’ve had that.”
Natalie nodded. “Or drizzle it over asparagus, that sort of thing.”
“Do you have to become an expert in all five sauces to cook French food?” asked Alex, popping a small piece of carrot in her mouth.
“Well, yes, but there are others as well, such as a beurre blanc, or a white butter sauce, and a brown butter sauce. . . .”
“And pretty much anything soaking in butter,” Alex suggested.
“You are obsessed with butter, I am thinking,” said Jean-Luc.
“Nat, whatever you’re doing at the stove over there smells incredible,” said Alex, inhaling deeply. “Jean-Luc, you should have seen us growing up: poor Nat trying to make our very questionable food palatable. No such thing as butter in our house in those days.”
“I remember reading about that,” Jean-Luc replied. “You were very young to be doing things like butchering and cooking.”
“In our family everybody had to pull their weight and contribute,” said Natalie. “Cooking was something I could do. Actually, it was the only thing I could do. And now, voilà, we’re ready. Who volunteers to set the table?”
They ate by candlelight at the small breakfast nook in the kitchen, savoring their wine and the meal, swapping stories, comparing Jean-Luc’s childhood in Paris to their upbringing in the mountains of Northern California, and discussing the relative merits of Bordeaux versus a Napa Zinfandel.
Natalie sat back, savoring her wine and feeling at home in the Bag-Noz for the first time in a very long time.
As she headed to bed, Natalie made a mental note to pay her bills, now that she had money coming in. Plus, she needed to make some calls to find an electrician and a roofing contractor willing to come out to work on the island.
But first she was going to write to François-Xavier and let him know exactly what she thought of him, and to tell him, in no uncertain terms, that she wouldn’t take him back, ever. Even if it was an option. Why would she want to be with someone who made her feel bad about herself?
And then maybe she would ask old Ambroisine to curse his new restaurant.
It was past time to step up and tend to her business.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Alex
The next day, Alex awoke to darkness.
There was no glow from the night-light. Fighting panic, she reached out to switch on the bedside light, but nothing happened. The blackness threatened to swallow her. Her heart pounded as she grabbed for her flashlight.
The beam came on, its reassuring light bouncing off the heavy down quilt she had pulled over her in the night. At last, she realized the wind was blowing so hard, it rattled the windowpanes.
Alex felt a surge of relief. It isn’t just me. The forecasted storm had arrived and the whole island was dark. She took several deep breaths and willed her wildly thumping heart to slow.
She couldn’t see much from the window. The sea was a deep gray, roiling under a canopy of slate-colored clouds. For the first time since she had arrived on the Île de Feme, there were no boats out on the water. She wondered what sailors had done bef
ore the days of weather forecasts, and took a moment to imagine being caught on the open ocean in a storm, no land in sight. What it felt like for poor, desperate castaways to catch a glimpse of land, to drag themselves up out of the sea and onto these pebbled shores.
Alex took a deep breath and smelled coffee. And something else. Something yeasty and baking.
She pulled on her jeans, a double layer of T-shirts, and her fleece sweatshirt for warmth, and headed down the stairs.
The flashlight highlighted the spots on the wall that still needed patching. What had Natalie been going through, feeling obligated to François-Xavier’s extended family, worrying about money, anxiously awaiting her next advance? She thought of the look of terror on Nat’s tearstained face at the end of their father’s mandatory exercise, The Trial. Like her sisters before her, when Nat turned ten years old, she was blindfolded and marched far into the wilderness, told to count to a thousand before removing the blindfold, and left to find her way back to the compound on her own, relying upon her survivalist training.
Alex had made it back within three hours. Natalie was lost in the woods overnight.
While working at the dude ranch, Alex once helped a ten-year-old girl to mount a pony and it suddenly dawned on her just how young she and her sisters had been when forced to endure The Trial. It was only then that Alex truly understood: We were too young. We were much too young. We could so easily have been seriously injured or even died.
Oh, Dad, what were you thinking? And, Mom, why did you go along with him?
Maybe Nat was right, Alex thought now as she carefully picked her way down the shadowy staircase. Maybe they had been raised by a madman. No wonder they were all so screwed up—it was a miracle all five Morgen girls survived to adulthood.
She paused in the kitchen doorway to take in the scene: An old-fashioned gas lamp and several candles cast a mellow amber glow around the room, which was warm and redolent of something baking in the oven.
And Jean-Luc stood behind the counter, like a welcoming, benevolent lord of the manor. He was wearing his new striped long-sleeved Breton shirt and stiff jeans, and somehow the outfit looked adorable on the ex-fonctionnaire.
“Bonjour, Alex,” he said, coming around the counter to kiss her on each cheek. He smelled subtly of soap and aftershave lotion.
“Bonjour, Jean-Luc,” she replied. “You’ve been busy this morning.”
“Gas appliances,” he said with a nod. “A warm oven heats up a kitchen in no time.”
“It smells like heaven in here.”
“It is nothing compared to the dinner your sister cooked last night. But I made some petite pastries. I believe you call them ‘morning buns’?”
He held out a wicker basket and unfolded a kitchen towel to reveal several golden buns nestled within, still warm from the oven.
“Wow, this is . . . this is so great.”
“I found baking supplies in the pantry—flour and sugar and the like. I hope Natalie won’t mind.” He set a steaming cup of coffee in front of Alex. “The coffee machine does not work without electricity, but happily we have the simple solution: a drip cone.”
Alex bit into a morning bun, closed her eyes, and chewed with single-minded appreciation. This was one holdover from their childhood that Alex was grateful for, one thing that set her apart from others: She did not take such things for granted, ever. Nothing like the constant threat of the change to make one appreciate the ease of modern amenities and the grace of simple pleasures.
They sat in companionable silence in the dimly lit kitchen, listening to the storm brew outside, surrounded by the aroma of coffee and freshly baked bread, the warmth of homemade food, the sensation of plenty.
“We knew the storm was coming,” said Alex, licking her fingers. “But it still startled me this morning. It’s so dark.”
Jean-Luc nodded. “It is. Did you think to close the shutters in your room? I’ve done so in the public rooms of the house. It helps to keep in the warmth, and makes the house feel . . . What’s the word?”
“Gloomy? Eerie? Forbidding?”
He chuckled and sipped his coffee. “I was thinking mysterious. Even romantic.”
Alex snorted. “All I can think about is water damage.”
“Is it really as bad as all that?”
“We’ll see, I guess. It’s blowing hard outside, but it doesn’t look like the rain’s started yet. I’ll check the attic once it starts coming down in earnest. I wish I had a ladder that would reach up to the roof.”
He frowned slightly. “That sounds dangerous, Alex.”
“But you’d hold the bottom of the ladder for me, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course I would.”
She had been teasing, but the sincerity in his tone made her smile.
They heard a banging from Natalie’s room.
Jean-Luc dropped his voice to a whisper. “I hope we did not wake up her.”
“‘Wake her up,’” Alex corrected him with a yawn.
“Pardon?”
“The phrase is ‘I hope we didn’t wake her up,’ not ‘wake up her.’ Though come to think of it, you could simply say, ‘I hope we didn’t wake her.’ It’s easier.”
“Thank you! I find your language so interesting, though the grammar can be challenging. It does not always make sense, if you ask me.”
“I can believe it. Your language is beautiful, and also challenging, at least to me.”
“Pas du tout,” he said with a quick shake of his head, turning to the sink to rinse the coffee filter. “Not at all. A new language is like any new thing: At first it may seem strange, even frightening, but with time it can feel quite natural, and eventually one learns to stop translating every word and even forgets one is speaking a foreign language. There are times I cannot think of the word in French, but only the one in English!”
“I’m trying to imagine what that must be like,” Alex said. “I’m not having any luck, though.”
“English is a marvelously flexible language,” said Jean-Luc. “You adopt words from other languages easily, make verbs out of nouns, that sort of thing. French is not so flexible. There are many rules that must be followed.”
“What about ‘le weekend’?” asked Nat as she walked into the kitchen. “That was imported from English.”
“Aaah, but not without resistance! Our scholars worry about such incursions into French, whereas I have the sense that you English speakers enjoy adopting other words,” said Jean-Luc, crossing over to kiss Nat on each cheek. “Bonjour, Natalie. I hope we did not wake you . . . up.”
“Pas du tout,” said Nat.
“This is clearly a phrase I need to know,” said Alex, repeating it to herself quietly: “Pas du tout.”
“May I make you some coffee?” Jean-Luc offered. “The machine is not working, obviously, but I found the cone.”
“Oh, thank you, Jean-Luc,” said Nat. “That would be great. So, one of my favorite French words is ‘râler,’ which is sort of like complaining but different.”
“Ah yes. This is a way we French have of declaring our ongoing dissatisfaction with the world,” Jean-Luc said with a smile as he poured boiling water into the cone of coffee grounds.
“But you always seem very upbeat,” said Nat.
“You should have seen me when I was working. I was known to râler with frequency. But here on the Île de Feme, what is there to be dissatisfied with?”
Alex chuckled, passing him her coffee mug for a refill. “I’ve got to hand it to you, my friend. The power’s out, the house is cold, and there’s soon to be rain in the attic, but you’re a happy man.”
He rested his hands on the counter and gazed at her with a strange little smile on his face. He ducked his head and in a quiet voice said: “Perhaps it is the company I keep.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Violette
>
Time went by, the weeks fading into months.
The proclamations during wartime grew in number and severity: The only newspaper we were allowed to read was the Pariser Zeitung. It was full of anti-British and anti-Semitic propaganda, and harped on a collaborationist theme, extolling the beauties of Paris and the advantages of harmonious relations between Germany and France. The trading of other newspapers or other sources of news and information was strictly verboten. The Germans feared information, it seemed to us, and isolated as we were on the island, it was easy enough to keep us in the dark. Henri Thomas, the lighthouse keeper, still had his secret wireless radio, but was able to listen to it only occasionally since the soldiers maintained a constant presence at the lighthouse.
The stories he repeated to us, though, made me wish not to know.
When Bigou, a German shepherd who belonged to Tintin Marie, started to follow the soldiers about the island, it was cause for much speculation.
“C’est un Vichyste,” said the islanders, claiming that the dog had become a follower of the Vichy, a collaborator. “Un collabo.” They joked that it seemed fitting that a German shepherd would return to his countrymen.
Most of the islanders bore up well under the strain, but a few took advantage of the tense situation to indulge long-nursed grudges against their neighbors by passing notes to the authorities at the Vichy mairie, the town hall, turning in their neighbors for invented reasons.
Occasionally some of us received colis familiaux, or packages of supplies from relatives living in the French countryside who had more access to food. According to rumor, people on the mainland had begun bartering in what was called the marché amical, or even buying things on the black market, the marché noir.
But on the Île de Feme we had only what we had.
We were issued ration coupons in variable amounts. Children received the least; the elderly were given a little more, while working people—such as the women who gathered the goémon—were allotted the most. I was issued a few extra coupons due to my condition. Still, food remained paramount on everyone’s mind. It was all we talked about and how we spent our days: tending our gardens, praying for rain, digging in the mud for clams, chipping mussels off rocks, coming up with new recipes for the goémon.
Off the Wild Coast of Brittany Page 19
