(Not Quite) Mastering the Art of French Living

by Mark Greenside

  When the potatoes are finally ready, I scoop them from the coals, unwrap the tinfoil, and place them in a glass bowl. I remove the hamburgers and sausages from the grill and put them on platters. I bring out six baguettes, mustard, mayonnaise—French people seem to eat mayonnaise with anything—ketchup, which only I use—everyone looks at me suspiciously—along with salt, pepper, and butter, a staple like water and air. Then, la pièce de résistance. I go inside and drop the dozen ears of corn in a huge pot of boiling water, wait two minutes, put them on a platter, and carry them to the table, beaming. Everyone stops talking and stares. It’s a look I’m becoming familiar with.

  “What’s that?” Henri asks, knowing full well, since it grows everywhere in Brittany.

  “Corn.”

  “Yes, but it’s on the cob.”

  “Oui . . . Une surprise,” and I place the platter on the table. “Bon appétit.”

  No one moves, something else I’m becoming familiar with. I figure they don’t know how to eat it and don’t want to appear foolish. I lift an ear from the tray, bite a mouthful—and immediately want to gag. The kernels are dry, hard and mushy, no sweetness, no juice—other than remnants of the boiled water—with the texture of wood or the shells of sunflower seeds. No wonder they don’t eat it. The corn on the cob is garbage. The big hit of the evening are the baked potatoes, even though they’re not russets. Madame P eats four, as happy as if they were a Poire Belle Hélène or banana split.

  Monsieur and Madame P and their family; Jean and Sharon and their boys; Jean-Pierre and Joëlle and their girls; Mr. Charles, Bruno and Françoise; Gilles and Tatjana, Louis and Jocelyne, and Hugo and Nadine and their families, these are my friends and my French family, and short of poisoning one of them, things will be OK. The larder is full, and it will take more than raw mushrooms, green beans al dente, balsamic vinegar, sweet hospital butter, or corn on the cob to empty it. I think . . . I hope . . . I worry . . .

  Dinner for Six

  Hugo and Nadine are coming for dinner. I’ve eaten at their house three or four times, so it’s my turn to cook for them. In the U.S., this wouldn’t be a problem. I’d make a salad, grill salmon or steak, boil or broil some veggies, and serve Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia for dessert. Every course except the Ben & Jerry’s would be on the table at the same time. My friends would arrive at seven and leave by ten, none asking for cheese, most not wanting coffee or tea, half not wanting dessert, and no one expecting a digestif. Not so in France, and definitely not Hugo and Nadine.

  The last time I ate at their house, it was the full seven courses. Apéritifs included Nadine-made warm nibbles—like hors-d’oeuvres at a wedding or an embassy dinner. Alcohol included all the regulars plus Suze, thirty-year-old port, and American cocktails. I had to pace myself, which is the key to surviving a French meal: eat a little of each serving, because there’s always a lot, and the eating goes on forever. Crudités were from Nadine’s garden: butter lettuce, tomatoes, radishes, mint, nasturtium petals . . . The entrée was a whole sea bass—bar—that had been bathed in sea salt, baked whole, and filleted at the table—the moistest, tenderest, most flavorful fish I’ve ever eaten, and I’m a beef guy. Salad was followed by five cheeses. The only ones I recognized were a chèvre and Morbier. I tasted all five because Jean told me it’s mandatory. Desserts were served after midnight: homemade apple tart, Breton butter cookies, fresh fruit, and ice cream, all of which I also tasted, followed by tea and coffee and cognac. We finished at 2:00. I left at 2:30. These are the people who are coming for dinner.

  My first thought is to order out: paella, Vietnamese, charcuterie deli food, but even I know that’s not right.

  My second thought is to take them out—crêpes or pizza or fruits de mer, but that would be lazy and ostentatious, plus they would feel they have to reciprocate and take me out. It would also send the message they’re not worth spending four thousand hours to cook for.

  That leaves option number three: wait for Donna to arrive, which is what I do. I invite Hugo and Nadine and their son Johann and his girlfriend, both of whom speak English and can translate, for the Saturday following Donna’s Thursday arrival. I know she’ll be tired, but I also know I need all the help she can give.

  Meanwhile, I plan. There is no doubt this will be the full seven-course French meal: hors-d’oeuvres, crudités, entrée, salad, cheese, dessert, coffee, tea—with appropriate booze at every course. The possible choices are immense, and so are the possible faux pas.

  Apéritifs and hors-d’oeuvres are easy.

  Appetizers and crudités are trickier. Langoustine, which I now love, is a favorite, but I’ve never actually cooked them. I know you drop them live into boiling water to kill them, then put them in the refrigerator and eat them chilled with homemade mayonnaise. But I’m afraid I’ll drop them in the water and they’ll scream or scramble out and I’ll undercook them and everyone will get sick and die, or I’ll overcook them and everyone will get sick and gag. I know I can buy them precooked, but I don’t trust the freshness, and everyone says it’s a rip-off. So no langoustine for Hugo and Nadine.

  Melon. They’re juicy and sweet, the color of cantaloupe and the size of a large grapefruit. Each person will get a half. To make it more interesting, I’ll fill the hole where the goop and seeds were with port. This is France: you cannot go wrong with alcohol.

  The biggest decision is the entrée. It has to be cooked well, presented right, and tasty. It also has to be plentiful, and it cannot be cheap—like mussels or a plate of pasta. Nor can it be too easy or simple to make. What you cook illustrates how you feel about your guests, how much you respect and value them, unless, of course, they are practically family, like Monsieur and Madame P and Jean and Sharon; then you can be a little more informal and experimental, but not a lot: think green beans, raw mushrooms, and balsamic.

  Rich and fancy are also out, thank God. Ostentatiousness—say lobster—will make Hugo and Nadine feel bad, like why didn’t they serve me lobster. The same is true of prepared food from the charcuterie, Picard, or anywhere else—unless you’re cooking for family. It says, “I don’t have the time to cook for you.” It also says, “Money is no object,” as prepared food is always expensive, and will once again make Hugo and Nadine feel bad they didn’t serve it to me, and next time they will, which guarantees they’ll hate me and my next visit—if there is one.

  I settle on chicken, the Greenside family bird. Every Friday night, every woman in my family served her family a chicken. It didn’t matter in the least that it was inedible, bland, dry, and spiceless. It’s the one meat—besides hamburgers, hot dogs, and steak—I’m comfortable with. In the U.S., chicken is considered a so-so meal, cheap, and low-end. Not in France. In France, chickens—at least the nonindustrial chickens—are prized and expensive but not so expensive as to be ostentatious. It’s also relatively easy to cook—just put it in the oven. I’ll add green beans because everyone loves them (except Jean) and tiny potatoes, baked in the dish with the chicken, soaking in the juices.

  Salad is salad—lettuce, olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt, and pepper. C’est tout.

  Cheese is like the color of flowers, Jean told me: any mélange will do. They will not clash or diminish in effect, as long as there is an ample variety in terms of texture (soft, hard, runny), taste (mild, strong, stronger), and smell (honey, lavender, and toilet). Three to five types will do.

  Dessert is obligatoire. In the U.S., half the people I know won’t touch it, but in France no meal is complete without it. Fresh fruit is acceptable: strawberries with crème fraîche, or cut pineapple, but they feel too unspecial for Hugo and Nadine. The local specialties are Gâteau Breton (a shortbread-like chewy cake), Far Breton (a pudding cake combo of clafoutis and flan), and Kouign Amann (crusty, bready like a puff pastry, covered with caramelized sugar), all of them made with eggs, sugar, and gallons and gallons of butter. I decide to get a tarte aux fruits, a preordered, bakery fruit tart. This is not considered ostentatious. It says, “I planne
d and called ahead and had this specially made for you.” It’s also guaranteed to be yummy, beautiful, and tantalizing—three things that always succeed in France.

  Add fresh bread, lots of butter, coffee (“caff” and “de-”), tea (herbal, black, and green), and lots of booze—from apéritifs to digestif—and there it is, the meal for Hugo and Nadine.

  That’s my menu. I check it with Jean and Sharon and Madame P to make sure it’s appropriate and no one will be offended or disappointed. It takes me three days to finally decide, half the time it took God to create the world. Given the results, I don’t know if that’s something to worry about or not.

  On Wednesday, three days before the dinner, I go to the pâtisserie to order the tart. “Bonjour,” I say, “Je voudrais une tarte pour samedi soir.” Everytime I say this it sounds to me like I’m looking for a loose woman.

  Thursday, I go to the weekly village market in Loscoat to get fruit, veggies, cheese, and maybe the chicken. “Bonjour,” I say to the fruit and veggie lady, “Je voudrais haricots verts et tomates grappe”—green beans and tomatoes on the vine—“pour huit personnes,” and hold up eight fingers. Only six people are coming to dinner, but unlike the U.S., where when you ask for portions for four people, they give you enough for six, in France, when you ask for portions for four people, they give you enough for three, maybe two—so I always add a few more. “Pour samedi soir,” I tell her. I also buy one large yellow onion for stuffing the chicken and three melons. Then I go looking for the potato guy.

  He sells nothing but potatoes. He looks like a potato. He’s dressed in brown from shoes to cap and is always a little dusty, like he just emerged from the earth. He has a dozen varieties in different sizes, colors, tastes, shapes, texture, and skin—everything except russets. “Bonjour, Monsieur,” I say and point to the tiny, round, almost translucent-skinned light-brown broilers. “Pour huit personnes.” He fills a bag, weighs it, and charges me two euros.

  The cheese lady is last. “Bonjour,” I say. “Je voudrais un mélange du fromage pour le poulet.” I know I just asked for a variety of cheeses for a chicken, like I’m feeding cheese to a chicken. Basically, I’m relying on her—on everyone—to realize I’m not as stupid as I sound, I don’t always mean what I say, that they need to fill in the blanks and the logic. Anyone else and she’d ask questions: how is the chicken being prepared? What seasonings? What kind of chicken? What veggies, sauces, wine, etc. With me, she just selects. She chooses a local round chèvre dusted with ashes, a Tomme de Savoie, Bleu d’Auvergne, and a Livarot: soft, hard, blue, and stinky. Perfect. It’s not until later that I realize she’s chosen the same cheese I usually buy to be certain I won’t be disappointed.

  The big question is the bird. Should I buy it now, on Thursday, at the market, or wait until Saturday and buy it at the local charcuterie? The birds are so fresh they lie on the slab with their innards, heads, and feet intact—for all I know their hearts are still pumping. I decide I don’t want a Thursday bird, which may be a Wednesday bird, for Saturday, even though in the U.S., I would have bought it a week ago and frozen it. These birds are killed daily. If the insides are still there, it was killed in the last twenty-four hours. I want the freshest bird possible for Hugo and Nadine, so I decide to wait until Saturday.

  I return to the house and start cleaning everything for Donna. I finish at five o’clock and drive to the airport in Brest to get her. I know she’ll be exhausted from the twenty-one-hour, door-to-door journey, and from the all-nighter she pulled, because her clients always pile on the work before she leaves. She’ll be wired when she lands and asleep in three hours. Except for getting up to nibble and go to the bathroom, I won’t see her awake until sometime Saturday—and that’s only because Hugo and Nadine are coming for dinner. Otherwise, she’d sleep until Sunday or Monday . . . And so it goes.

  She gets up just before noon on Saturday, and the first thing she says is, “We have to clean the house for Hugo and Nadine.” It doesn’t matter that I just cleaned it for her. If she doesn’t clean it, it’s not clean.

  We scrub the kitchen I cleaned, the sitting room no one will sit in, and the dining room, even though I plan to eat outside. I draw the line at the first-floor bathroom. “No one ever uses the bathroom. No matter how much people eat and drink, no one goes. Trust me.”

  She doesn’t.

  It’s when she begins bleaching the second-floor toilet—a room I haven’t visited all summer—that I leave to get the tart, bread, and the bird.

  I push open the pâtisserie door and call, “Bonjour.”

  Madame says, “Bonjour,” and disappears. She returns holding a cake box with a picture of a yellowy creamy cake on the lid. I’m the only person in the store, but she lifts the lid so only I can see what’s inside—like it’s a peep-show dessert and she’s embarrassed, even though it’s gorgeous. The apricot halves shimmer like perfect egg yolks, the strawberries are the “fraises de Plougastel,” sweeter than candy, so red they look fake. “Mmmmm,” I moan, knowing she’ll understand and appreciate that. She closes the lid, ties the box shut with a yellow ribbon, and hands me the bill: ten euros, about thirteen dollars.

  I put the tart in the car and drive to Loscoat for the bread and the bird. I could have bought the bread at the pâtisserie—in the U.S. I would have bought everything in the same store—but in France, land of specialization, I go to the pâtisserie for dessert and the boulangerie for bread. I buy three baguettes—half a baguette a person. I place the bread on the back seat of the car and walk to the charcuterie for the bird.

  “Bon-jour, Madame,” I sing, thrilled to see several birds in the case. “Avez-vous le poulet noir?”

  “Non, Monsieur.”

  “Le poulet rouge?”

  “Non, Monsieur.”

  “Le blanc?”

  “Désolé.”

  I point to the four in the case. They look like poulet to me. I peer in and read the label—“poulet fermier, élevé en liberté”: free-range chickens from a farm. Exactly what I want.

  “Qu’est-ce que-c’est?”

  “Des poulets, mais ils sont tous réservés.”

  “Reserved!” Holy shit. You can’t just walk in and buy a chicken. You have to reserve it in advance. A chicken!! It’s as bad as the bank, where I have to wait a day to withdraw my own money.

  “Combien jour avante c’est necessaire pour réservés?” So I know for next time.

  “Un ou deux jours.”

  I leave shaking my head and go to the other charcuterie in Loscoat, where I rarely go, and it’s the same. All the poulets are réservés, as if this is some fancy resort and it’s holiday season and all the rooms are taken. It’s three o’clock. Hugo, Nadine, Johann, and his girlfriend are arriving at 7:30, and I don’t have the main dish. I’m American and a man—I know they will make many allowances for both of those failings—but not having a main dish is not one of them. They are invited for dinner, and that is what they will expect.

  I have three choices, none good. (1) I could go to Leclerc and buy an industrial bird, which I won’t do. (2) I could cook beef, pork, lamb, or fish, which I don’t want to do. (3) I could drive twenty-five miles to Quimper where the odds are I can find a poulet fermier in the large indoor marketplace. In the best-case scenario, I’ll be back at 4:00 with a bird. Worst case, all the birds will be réservés and I’ll have to cook something else. It can’t be fish, because that’s Nadine’s specialty, and I wouldn’t do her or the fish justice—which takes me back to beef or pork.

  I race to Quimper and go to my favorite secret place to park. It’s full. I go to my second favorite secret place. That’s full, too. It’s a beautiful summer day, and the old town is jammed. Anywhere else, people would be at the beach or a park. Not in France. If there’s an opportunity to shop, people shop, and if it’s soldes time, as it is, there’s a mob. I finally find a parking place on the other side of the river and run to the market. There are at least four boucheries and volailleries at the market, so I’m feeling
confident.

  I stop at the first boucherie I see, almost out of breath from running, and call out. “Monsieur, avez-vous le poulet rouge?” The guy must think I’m addicted.

  “Non, Monsieur.”

  Shit. I’m dead.

  “J’ai du poulet noir.”

  “C’est vrai?” I almost shout. Noir is the best.

  He looks at me like, Is this a joke. Is he on Candide Camera? Why wouldn’t I believe him? Why would he lie? He lifts one from behind the counter.

  “Pour huit personnes?”

  He puts it back, lifts another, and weighs it: 2.7 kilos, 5.9 pounds. It looks to me like a Fiat 500. “Bon,” I say. “S’il vous plaît, voudrais vous coupe le tête et les pieds et nottoye?”

  “Oui. Bien sûr.”

  He cuts off the head, leaving lots of neck, then the feet. He opens the bird and removes the insides, placing the liver in a plastic bag, and hands it to me like it’s a gift. He wraps the bird in paper, puts it in a plastic sack and tells me to cook it at 180 degrees for an hour to an hour and a half, until brown. That’s all, he warns. “C’est tout!”

  I pay him the equivalent of thirty dollars in euros—and I’m happy to do it. This is why, unlike the U.S., chicken is not considered a low-class, cheapo meal. In France, chicken can be more expensive than beef or pork.

  I return home the proud hunter, with a headless, footless, interior-less bird (as if I’d done it all myself), three baguettes, and a tart.

  Donna has the glasses, dishes, silverware, and serving platters laid out on the dining-room table. “Let’s eat outside,” I say.

  “I don’t know,” she says, “It could rain.” Being with me has made her less optimistic.

  “It hasn’t all day, it’s been beautiful.”

  She looks at me and shrugs. “It’s your party.”

  “OK. Let’s prep and see how the weather looks.”