by Jean Gill
There, at the distilleries, you can watch men streaming with sweat as they stoke the fires from old bales and steam the essence out of new ones. Steam distillation, John murmured lovingly, the chemist at heart, when he first saw the process, and however often I ask him to explain it to me, it retains for me the magic of microwaves; I just have to believe what I do not understand.
My unscientific methods cause clashes in the kitchen, where I use actual, variable spoons to measure ingredients and where John has a gamut of precision tools – jugs, cups, stainless steel ‘spoon’ measures – and he frequently uses four during one process. I prefer him to be my sous-chef but he has quickly become le chef du confiture as we make enough jam to fill a table at a WI fête.
Why does preserving fruit have such a staid reputation in the UK? What is more sensual than picking ripe fruit, sneaking some bites and dribbles along the way, boiling it in a cauldron (yes, that’s what Macbeth’s witches were really up to), watching the sugar dissolve and the light reflected from the suddenly polished surface, which then bubbles and froths to the magical point of setting. Or rather not-so-magical point of ‘syrup’, disguised as dessert topping and milk shakes but always recognized by the chefs as failed jam.
Inspired by Delia, I once made Seville marmalade, doubling the quantities in my enthusiasm. There was a painfully loud moment when, copying the television performance exactly, I squeezed the muslin bag of pips and pith into the boiling liquid from which I had just removed it – Delia, why didn’t you tell me to let it cool first?
Nursing my raw red right hand, I followed instructions less trustingly and quickly spotted that the pan was going to boil over (perhaps those double quantities weren’t such a good idea) and almost prevented sticky stuff hitting patches of tiled floor. I think it was a week before my trainers lost that squeak that they get from walking in marmalade and even then it was still possible to moonwalk if you found the right spot in the kitchen. Undaunted, I produced two batches, one set like rock and the other like honey. Not what you would call an unqualified success.
Given my past record, I was apprehensive about jam-making with the added complication of French ingredients – unidentified types of pear or peach, I could cope with, but my dictionary let me down again over types of sugar. We passed a happy hour reading the backs of sugar packets and discovered magic sugar. The ingredients assure us that it is suitable for vegetarians – so no gelatine – that it contains various plant extracts, none of which I recognise, and that it makes perfect jam in seven minutes from any chopped fruit, boiled up. There has been no looking back.
When we sample jars at the Dieulefit annual Picodon and local foods market, I can look the stallholder in the eye and ask, jam-maker to jam-maker, what she does with her vanilla pod, knowing that, with a little help from magic sugar, we can try it out at home.
Jam sorted, we expand into chutney but are stumped once more by cultural difference. There is no such thing as ‘pickling spice’ for sale although we can get coriander seeds, juniper berries, dried chillies, bay leaves - you name the spice and it’s there, by the hundred grammes on a market stall.
Neither can I work out what ‘malt vinegar’ is, and when I return to the confiture stall and ask the professional, she tells me that she varies her vinegar with the ingredients – cider vinegar with apple chutney, white wine vinegar with apricot ... I trawl my collection of cookery books for a recipe for pickling spice and find not one, not in the ‘how to make perfect preserves’ nor in ‘everything about herbs and spices’.
I have to thank the hundreds of Americans who post their recipes online for the variations they offer me and I now know what mace is used for – I always wondered. I also learn a little respect for British cuisine. My Cookery Larousse explains to me that ‘chutney’ (there is no French word) is a ‘condiment anglais’ of Indian origin which is ideal with cold meats.
I am doubly proud of my British ancestors, who showed the twin strengths of their native gastronomy; enjoying foreign food (once you can get them to try it that is) and tweaking the recipes with home-grown ingredients and cooking techniques. It might be debatable whether Britain, or its various component countries, has a cuisine at all, but what they do have are fusion experts, their motto ‘Steal and substitute.’
What did we learn about food at school? I am the product of the grammar school system, or rather two systems. My first secondary school (after six primary schools) was a mixed grammar school with a fast lane for one class selected on their high results in English and Maths. This top class then studied three languages and no practical subjects. The very word ‘practical’ carried a sneer.
Being in the top group suited me fine except that my marks were going down the toilet as I had discovered boys and fighting. It came as a shock to move at fourteen to an all girls grammar school in York, where needlework and cookery lessons were part of making me a well-educated woman. The needlework I survived, having already sewed from necessity as the only way of getting clothes which were not bought from M&S and always too big for me (bought for my growth and worn out by the time I grew). My experience did not make me popular however and my report card was scarred with C for Needlework and complaints of ‘dumb insolence’ (if you don’t say it, how can they blame you for it?) from the moment I was caught machine-sewing a pinned seam. I was convicted of gross arrogance for not having tacked it and still enjoy feelings of wild rebellion when I race down metres of pinned curtain material.
Cookery lessons replaced German; hours of entertainment spitting ‘ss’ and ‘ch’ sounds, were exchanged for torture. Not since I’d failed to make a paper windmill when I was five had I suffered such public humiliation for my clumsiness. Anything using a brain and talk, I was fine; anything involving my hands and common sense, I was lost.
The teacher gave up after one lesson, decided I was ‘too far behind’ and set me the task of making a sponge cake every single lesson until the end of the year, when ‘options’ saved me. I suppose that my peers did at least take home some edible product each week and, if they weren’t put off cooking for life, they might have learnt some basic processes – the girls, that is. Boys (in our mirror school) did woodwork and technical drawing. All I learnt was that I couldn’t cook.
What I did at home didn’t count as cooking and reinforced my self-image as a bumbler but, as the only daughter at home of cooking age, I had to take on some responsibilities on the rare occasions when my mother was not home to prepare a meal. My father dreaded this but never enough to take over, which I now know he was perfectly capable of doing. He was unhappy at finding that his packed lunch contained raw carrots and honey sandwiches (well that’s what I liked in mine at the time). He was even more unhappy when he told me that he didn’t like garlic in his omelette and, after I told him that I hadn’t added any garlic, he found out that the eggs had been bad.
At fourteen, I never questioned my responsibilities, not even when I tried to iron sheets by spreading them across four chairs and sliding a bit at a time across the ironing board. No-one else questioned my duty either, rather they made it clear I wasn’t very good at being mother, especially when I risked my own life or theirs by my ignorance, as when I washed the electric toaster.
The ‘food technology’ teachers I have worked with have told me they miss the cooking, the chance to give basic life skills, particularly to youngsters whose parents have none. I ask the daughters, individually, about their education in cuisine and I make a strange discovery. The pupils of one comprehensive school in a small Welsh town can all be recognised by a sort of masonic code, retained from their Food Technology lessons – and that is all they seem to remember. Ex-Penyrheol students can all chant the washing-up song; ‘Glass, silver, cutlery, china, tins and pans, wooden boards...’
For total authenticity, it should be sing-song, with ‘cutlery’ pronounced ‘cutelry’. It is reassuring to know that our dirty dishes are being washed up in the correct order but I am still wondering about the silverware obviously
owned by many Gorseinon families.
Forget abstractions; I discover figs and Jamie Oliver’s ‘sexiest salad recipe’. I steal the idea and substitute goat’s cheese for mozarella ... I must get my ‘fifty ways with goat’s cheese’ into print. The infrastructure is in place – I’m sorry, once a school inspector always unable to speak English. What I mean is that my Picodon-making neighbours recognise me now and might not send me off with a flea in my ear if I offer them the once-in-a-lifetime- opportunity to sell my Picodon recipes at their crèmerie.
A Cavet worker tells me she thought of us suffering the roadworks so close to our house. Yes, we thought of us too. I ask about my wooden doorstops, still ‘softening’ in olive oil, eight months later. Yes, she says, people really do eat them, just as they are. She personally doesn’t even like the stronger, Dieulefitois Picodons, she likes the milder ones and the fresh ‘fermiers’.
I gather from her expression that it is a bit like going for a hotter vindaloo, somewhat macho, to go for the strongest Picodon. I think I might get back in touch with my feminine side and admit that I really don’t like the aroma of smelly socks, the texture of bark and the bitter taste of my ancient Picodons. I wonder what bread would taste like with some Picodon shavings added...
Having stocked up on the Picodons I do like, I then head in the opposite direction to my olive oil neighbour so that I can fill my empty stainless steel ‘bidon’, an oil container, with Dieulefit extra virgin.
It takes ten minutes of shouting ‘Il y a quelqu’un?’ before a brown mongrel appears with a man much older that the producer I met last time. When I introduce myself, very loudly as he is hard of hearing, does this traditional resident, probably born and bred here, think ‘Oh my God another bloody foreigner who can hardly speak French.’? If he does, there is no sign of it. His smile and his handshake are warm as he says, ‘Voisine’ as if this makes all the difference in the world and it is as his neighbour that he introduces me to the grand-daughter, who has been left in charge of sales while her parents are out.
She takes as little interest in me, my sister and olive oil as is possible and tries to hide her knowledge of English. I would have been exactly the same at her age. I buy my five litres, cold pressed (this I am told is no guarantee of quality), traditionally produced (ditto), extra virgin (those are the words that matter – as well as knowing the smile of the man you bought it from).
Every kitchen should have olive oil on tap – and every cellar its ‘en vrac’, a plastic barrel of wine filled from a petrol pump, direct from the cave. You will even get professional labels so that if you choose to bottle it, rather than enjoy a quick five litres, your friends will read that this Côtes du Rhône was ‘bottled by the buyer’. It is the foodstuff of poetry (with a little stealing and substitution);
‘A loaf of bread (dipped in good olive oil), a glass of wine, a Picodon and thou...’
It is tough but I actually say no to the plumber, Tuesday is not convenient for him to install the second toilet. We are going to watch the Tour de France. He is indulgent and tells us to take umbrellas. It is indeed gray on the Monday evening and twenty drops of rain fall, if that. We have now had three months without rain, rivaling last year’s drought but not as unbearably hot. The cloud cover on the Tuesday morning means that we will not fry as we wait.
We have chosen our spot beforehand, avoiding the village of la Bégude (too many people), deciding against the open countryside (dodgy parking, no shade, no chance of getting away afterwards) and we are in a tiny village called Charols, where we can have a leisurely coffee before the fun starts. Two weeks ago, I passed the time of day with a waiter in la Bégude. ‘You’ll be busy here when the Tour passes?’ He shrugged, indifferent. ‘They’ll go past’ he gestured at the street, ‘and that’s it over’. Undeterred, I am looking forward to it.
I was slow to appreciate le Tour, unable to see why my husband spent so many television hours watching men on bikes, when you couldn’t even tell whether the ones you were watching were at the front or trailing two days behind everyone else.
My first moment of revelation was on a school exchange visit, when I crossed the road from the Dali Museum in Figueras, went into a tourist shop and saw a glass case proudly displaying Indurain’s yellow jersey, signed by the great man himself. My nine year old son explained its significance to me and there was something magical about the way we found it. Then, after I’d holidayed in more parts of France, watching the Tour was like flicking through a photo album, Col du Galibier in the Alps, the road through the Pyrenees into Andorra, Mont Ventoux – yes, been there, seen the yellow Tshirt. Finally came the stage of dreaming about house-buying, the stage when I grew very irritated that the television cameras moved on so quickly from that stone mas of character set in its own grounds that I spotted behind the peloton as they speeded through the Vaucluse.
We live fifteen minutes from this year’s route and the crucial stage is between Valréas and the Vercors, the first time for seven years that le Tour has crossed la Drôme so it seems only polite to go along, to cheer and wave. We are among the last to drive along the actual Tour route and I feel uncomfortably like the Queen, accompanied by police motos and cars, crowds already lining up behind the barriers in the villages or setting up their deckchairs by cars parked on every drive opening or field verge.
Charols is just as we hoped it would be and after our coffee, we take up position, sitting on a stone wall overhung by trees. The café staff have hung a banner across the road ‘Richard, Chef du Jour’ and there is no question as to which rider we French support. Despite being over thirty, Richard Virenque is once again wearing the spotty king-of-the mountains Tshirt and giving disarmingly modest interviews. The people of France pay homage to their idols in traditional ways; Virenque was presented with a Saler cow by the Mayor of Saint-Flour, on behalf of the Upra Association of breeders.
Stuff of legends, Lance Armstrong is a strong bet for the final yellow, but he is just too good, too unbeatable and too ... American to capture the French public in the same way. He speaks some French in interview, he is upset about drug allegations, and he does try very hard to be human. More convincing as a human is Tyler Hamilton, upset because his golden retriever, Tugboat, has just been put to sleep. I realise how young these cyclists are when I am told that Tyler was nine when he had Tugboat as a puppy.
On our left is a French woman in her forties, who has in her charge three children and a young woman of about twenty, with Downe’s Syndrome. The four of them are instructed to sit on the wall and ‘ne bougez pas’, not to move, as Madame darts about in front of them, warming up for the ‘caravane’. All four giggle, wriggling with anticipation. On our right is a family, parents and two older children. The boy, probably thirteen or so, looks bored, with the studied disinterest of the adolescent.
An hour before the cyclists are due, preceded by more gendarmes, the first cars of the ‘caravane’ arrive. These are company cars, dressed up like village carnival floats, blaring music and honking as they pass at speed. They are apparently staffed by fluffy coffee beans or elves, who throw freebies to us, the crowd. Madame risks life and limb as she dives for free comics, plastic whistles and paper fans, supported by her four gigglers, who are accumulating little piles of treasure. ‘Ne bougez pas’ she warns them as she gives a 6.0 athletic performance and smiles at us when we pass over the junk which has landed on us.
However old you are, there is something satisfying about catching free gifts; for me, it is a throwback to my sixties childhood when we ripped cereal boxes apart for the 3D paper specs hidden at the bottom. There is also something of life’s unfairness about the freebies not coming your way. Madame is a professional at attracting attention, waving and smiling, her gang of four clinching the handful thrown from each car as it whizzes past. Some of the goodies reach us, probably by misjudgement of the throw, but I note that John is wearing a lanyard with a team logo.
Not much goes further on, to the teenage boy who has half-heartedl
y held out a hand, then retreated further into his shoulders when nothing comes his way. He knew it wouldn’t, it never does.
Then something flies towards him and he catches it. His shoulders lift a bit, he puts it in his pocket, feigning nonchalance, and stands a little nearer the road. More comes his way, he starts to swagger, and by the end of the hour’s procession of mad fancy dress and even madder customised vehicles, the boy is rivaling Madame, waving, shouting and beaming.
The mood is contagious; it seems possible that I giggled when a fake fireman hosed us down from his passing van, but no-one will ever be able to prove it. I buy the Tour souvenir pack of a cap, a yellow Tshirt, a cuddly bear wearing the King of the Mountains spotty ‘maillot’ and an inflatable yellow bag. Of course, I am only thinking of my niece and nephew when I indulge but, even if I weren’t, I would have asked to swop the ‘extra large’ Tshirt they gave me. I muse on this. They took one look at me and grabbed ‘extra large’ out of the boot.
After the caravane is another wait. We know from the free newspaper (one of our first catches), from checking online beforehand, and from the local papers, the time the racers are expected. We have been given two options, to the minute, according to the precisely calculated likely speed. John has warned me that we are too close to the start of the race (about fifteen minutes before they reach us) for the cyclists to have separated out. Also, we are on the flat, which guarantees that there will be a mob going past. We see a flicker coming along the road, then whizz, whizz and – just as the waiter from la Bégude predicted – they are gone.
Two hours’ wait, months of anticipation, for 30 seconds’ excitement. I dismiss the sexist analogies that come to mind (but John seems to think they’re funny). So what did we see? We compare notes to pool anything to add to our experience.
