Dirt

by Bill Buford

  It was okay. “C’est bon.”

  PDT cocottes were the snub-nosed rockets.

  They were okay. “C’est bon.”

  A Béarnaise.

  It was okay. “C’est bon.”

  It was while frying the fish that my mind wandered. Merlan à l’anglaise is basically fish and chips without the chips. In France, however, there are rules for fish frying, going back at least to Escoffier, and if you didn’t follow them the result would be pas correct. Like the portion of fish: It should be 62.5 millimeters in length. (That extra half-millimeter killed me. Really? People used a ruler; I didn’t, I couldn’t, it was too ridiculous.)

  The egg mixture, the first thing you dip your fish into, is supplemented with a splash of milk and olive oil (really) but is never seasoned.

  The flour, what the fish is dipped into next, is seasoned, and the seasoning must be mixed in with a whisk. (You got that?)

  The breadcrumbs, the fish’s last stop, are made with sliced white bread (only), fresh, the crusts removed, pulverized in a blender, and sifted through a sieve. And they are not—ever—seasoned. They look like a moist powder, less crumb than dust.

  Michel Richard’s brain popped into mine. He used a sieve, too. What he didn’t use was the bread dust. He used the chunky stuff left behind: It was irregular, had texture, produced crunch. He would have learned the rules for breadcrumbs—everyone in a French kitchen learns the rules—but became engaged by what was left over in the sieve. (I had earlier noticed some of his other, modest pieces of rule breaking. In the kitchen, caviar is scooped out on a piece of plastic film tucked tightly around the rim of a bowl. You spoon the caviar off the film to plate a dish. Richard took the idea and made it into floating caviar. Or that raie. To this day, I have never seen a boned raie in France. Richard’s was boned.)

  Raphanel liked my fish: crisp, but not overcooked. It was very good. “Très bien.”

  I was buzzing. The mussels were last.

  My knowledge of the dish hadn’t advanced since my bus-ride contemplation, except that, since then, I had done dishes with eggs and knew that, if I added one to a hot pot, I needed to remove the pot from the direct heat first. Then I would mix everything rapidly, a quick figure eight, knocking the whisk against all sides of the pot: in effect, cooling the liquid just enough to prevent the yolk from coagulating.

  While the mussels were in the sauté pan, I cooked my shallots and made my roux. Three minutes. I added the cream to it. At five minutes, the mussel shells opened. I set a sieve above my pot of creamy roux, tipped in the mussels, the jus running into the pot, added the egg, and whisked the fucker into a froth. It worked. It didn’t curdle. Look at that! I then reheated it briefly on the flattop, poured it back onto the mussels, and walked the pan over to Raphanel. I found myself marveling at what I had done: It seemed right, yellow and creamy and smelling of the sea, even though I had no idea that it was going to look like this.

  Raphanel touched a mussel with a fork. “It is plump,” he said. He seemed surprised. He touched it again. “It is moist. Perfect.”

  He brought it to his lips. “It is warm. Juicy. Again, perfect.” He really looked delighted. (Molto, molto grazie, Italia. I had learned my mussels chops in Italy.)

  He regarded the sauce. “It is yellow. Deep. Once again, perfect.” He tipped the pan. “Oh, but it is runny.” His shoulders slumped. “You forgot to reduce it. What a shame.” Quel dommage.

  I had been so preoccupied with the egg that I forgot to allow the roux to do its work and thicken.

  But I wasn’t displeased. The tests are on that 20-point scale. I hoped only not to fail. Passing was 10. I got 16.5. I was levitating.

  In the event, the result was an average of both tests. I was lucky to have done well on the Practical, because I had categorically crashed the Theory. (Pretty good + disgrace) ÷ 2 = barely passing. But “barely passing” was still passing. It was the worst mark in a class that had miraculously outperformed itself. (Willy was right: Cros changes lives.) But I had passed. I got 11.0.

  * * *

  —

  On the bus, relieved, I felt I was finally learning what I had come for. The French kitchen no longer frightened me. I had much to do, but I believed it was within my ability. On the way home, I resolved to find a restaurant to work in: the next day.

  IV

  In a Historic Kitchen

  The “saintly mères lyonnaises,” who hardly exist anymore, are one of the favorite nostalgic subjects of old gourmets around here. Ah! The mère Fillioux! Ah! The mère Brazier! The mère Blanc of Vonnas! All those who tasted her poularde à la crème talk to you about it like the angel Gabriel had kissed them on the lips….

  What these mourners of the saintly mères miss is not, I swear, the blue-footed Bresse chicken. Go to the mère Blanc’s son in Thoissey, go to her grandson in Vonnas: The chicken will melt in your mouth just like in the good old days of Grandma Blanc. Or forget about the Blanc family altogether, go to Paul Bocuse, come to Alain Chapel’s, and you will see their little chickens have white, sweet thighs as satiny as those of the king’s wench. The creamy Bresse chicken dish hasn’t changed. What the mourners miss is the simplicity: the roaring coal stove, the wax tablecloth, the heavy platter under the pile of crêpes, the local wine of that year taken from a barrel, counted by the pot.

  FROM CROQUE-EN-BOUCHE BY FANNY DESCHAMPS (1976), TRANSLATED BY JESSICA GREEN

  I showed up at La Mère Brazier mid-morning. I asked to see Viannay. I told him, in French, that I’d spent the last few months at L’Institut Bocuse.

  “We all respect L’Institut Bocuse,” he said. “It is very serious.”

  “It is,” I agreed. “And now I’ve come to ask you to take me on as a stagiaire. Not long. Seventeen days. After that I’ll be gone.”

  “Seventeen days?”

  “Seventeen days.”

  He looked at a calendar. “Do you have insurance?”

  Yes.

  “You’ll need to send me an e-mail, promising that you won’t hold the restaurant responsible if you get hurt.”

  “Happily.”

  “Seventeen days. And then you’ll be done? D’accord?”

  “D’accord.”

  We shook hands. “N’oubliez pas l’e-mail.”

  “Oui, Chef.”

  “The kitchen starts at eight.”

  I’d done it. I was in. I turned. I walked out. I rounded a corner and punched the air.

  I called Willy. He was gratifyingly impressed. Everyone wants to work at La Mère Brazier, he said. “Half L’Institut Bocuse would drop out today if they could get in. It is the place.”

  I didn’t mention that I would be booted out after seventeen days. What mattered was I was in the kitchen. I was in the kitchen.

  * * *

  —

  Sylvain Jacquenod was the sous-chef, the guy I would answer to. On my first morning, he was beginning a preparation involving chicken thighs. They had been in the oven for an hour, cooking in fat at a low heat.

  “We’ll do it together,” he said, insisting that I call him by his first name. “But first you must wash your hands.”

  I was embarrassed that I needed to be told but liked that I had been.

  He pulled out the tray, four dozen thighs, bubbling thickly in the fat, and handed me a pair of latex gloves. He was telling me what to do next—in fact, he was in mid-sentence of an instruction—when I suddenly blurted out, “It’s like a duck confit!”

  He paused, only a moment, a slight flicker of incomprehension, but just long enough for me to wonder: Why did I say that?

  “Yes,” he said, “it is a little like a duck confit.” He seemed confused about why he had been interrupted. “Except that a duck confit is made with duck. This is made with chicken.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “A chicken is diff
erent from a duck.”

  “Yes.”

  It was my French. I spoke like a four-year-old. I was, therefore, talked to like a four-year-old.

  “But all birds are really the same, aren’t they?” Sylvain said, trying to be reassuring. “The breasts always cook fast. The legs slow.” These—he indicated the tray of thighs—were left over from dishes that had used only the breasts.

  We put on our gloves.

  First, he said, we remove the skin, working it loose from the thighs, trying to keep it intact. Torn is no good.

  He held up an example—the skin had a distinctly testicular shrivel—and dropped it into a bowl. “We’ll use them in a moment. Next we bone the thighs.”

  They were hot—almost burn-your-fingers hot—but because of the heat the bones came out easily. We put the meat in another bowl. It was oily and not much to look at but scrumptious-smelling. (A kitchen can be a punishing place not to be eating.)

  Sylvain got a clean tray and emptied the boned meat onto it, still steaming, and we pressed it down with our hands. It made a squishy sound. It was a meaty wet brick about an inch deep.

  “Now the skins,” he said.

  He turned them out onto a cutting board, and showed me what to do, scraping off occasional gobs of fat, cutting away stray gnarlinesses, then trimming each skin into right angles like small squares of parchment that could be stacked in a pile.

  Had I been to Burgundy? he asked.

  I hadn’t.

  “Then that is where we will go.” He smiled. “The vineyards, the hills, the wine. Once the weather warms up.”

  He retrieved a block of foie gras from a fridge and sliced slivers off it and spread them atop the now only warm brick of thighs. We patted it down with our latex palms. The foie gras was soft, like butter.

  “We’ll go on a Sunday. With our wives.”

  Ophélie, Sylvain’s wife, was pregnant with their first child, he said. His smile was huge, like a cartoon smile.

  The parchment skins went on top of the foie gras: neatly, each square aligned. They were the roof of the dish. The tray then went into a hot oven—briefly, a flash blast, to melt the foie gras and crisp up the skin.

  Had I eaten at Georges Blanc yet?

  I hadn’t.

  “Oh là là! Ça n’est pas possible!”

  Did I have a car? Sylvain asked.

  I didn’t yet.

  “No? We will go there, too. Maybe on our way to Burgundy. An outing, and I’ll introduce you to Georges.”

  Sylvain, who grew up in a suburb of Paris, moved to the gastronomic capital at the age of nineteen to work for Georges Blanc. (In Lyon, there are two royalties: Bocuse and Blanc. Bocuse = king. Blanc = an aspirational regional governor, with lots of property.) Sylvain remained with Blanc for five years, slowly climbing the ranks until he was chef de partie, the chef of a station.

  He was twenty-eight. Almost everyone in the kitchen was about the same age—late twenties, early thirties—because no one older would have tolerated the pay (bad) or the hours (extreme), and because no one younger would have had a prestigious enough CV to be a candidate for Viannay’s team. The restaurant had high ambitions. The cooks had high ambitions. They were a specific type: Michelin cooks. They had all worked at places with Michelin stars, and every one of them aspired, one day, to have a Michelin-starred restaurant of his own.

  But Sylvain was, I was starting to see, like no one else I had met in a kitchen. He put me at my ease. He made me feel safe, which was not a feeling I had expected to have on my first day. It wasn’t just the informal manner or the chattiness. It was that he smiled, and not just a little but pretty much constantly.

  He had a modestly receding hairline, a military buzz cut, broad shoulders, muscular forearms, and impeccable posture, and was unforgivably trim. Later, at the staff lunch, Sylvain ate nothing. Lunch was called le personnel, served precisely at 11:00 a.m. On my first day, it consisted of sausages with a mustard sauce, boiled potatoes, and a salad of greens and foie gras. I, driven unstable by a morning of kitchen smells, devoured it. Sylvain had a double espresso. Nothing else. I would rarely see him eat, perhaps once a week, twice at most (and when he did, he ate with relish, which was scarcely surprising, since he had to be very hungry).

  Later, I asked him why.

  “La rigueur,” he said.

  “Rigor,” except in French the word (I knew by now) has so much gravitas that it seems more like a branch of philosophy than its English equivalent. Sylvain gave the impression of being afraid of his own spontaneity.

  Except, of course, when he smiled, and when the skin around his eyes instantly crinkled into mini-folds of happiness.

  There wasn’t a lot of smiling in France. My wife smiles a lot and was regularly taken to task for her evidently irritating cheerfulness. Once, when we were having dinner at our local bistro, Potager, a diner at the next table complained: Do you really need to smile so much? But a restaurant kitchen is even more severe. No one smiles there. Ever. Except Sylvain.

  He removed the tray of thighs from the oven, set it on a worktop to cool, and told me to follow him to the chambre froide—the “cold room,” the walk-in fridge—where he pulled out a large plastic container filled with a viscous liquid the color of black tea. It was meat jelly. Sylvain’s weekly duties included making it (a shank of beef simmered overnight in two bottles of red wine, plus several gelatin sheets), because it was used in the restaurant’s pâté-en-croûte. Once the pâté inside the pastry cools, and contracts, the jelly is poured in through a chimney built into the crust and fills up the space. (Once upon a time, I did not like meat jelly, its irritatingly wobbly texture. Now I eat it by the bowlful.) Pâté-en-croûte was also Sylvain’s responsibility. When he was away—and this was later, after his wife gave birth—someone else made it. It was cakey and dry and difficult to swallow. Plates were returned from the dining room, untouched except for a first bite.

  “Come,” Sylvain said. Viens.

  He led me to a narrow corridor in the back, where a dishwasher worked, Alain, and where some very tall shelves held every piece of the restaurant’s kitchen equipment. Sylvain was looking for a “chinois à piston.” A strainer is a chinois, a “Chinese,” because, turned upside down, it looks like a Chinese conical hat. A chinois à piston has a valve that allows you to control the flow of the liquid—like, for instance, the thick, slow-moving jelly that he was about to spread evenly over a tray of neatly arranged thigh skins.

  When it set, the tray was shiny and smooth. You could see your reflection in it. It had a peculiar appeal: like a tray of brownies, with a hard chocolaty top, and, like brownies, it would be cut up into small bite-sized morsels. They were the evening’s amuse-bouche.

  * * *

  —

  Popping peas was next and involves pushing a pea out of its delicate skin: not the pod, which is thick, and which you slit open with a thumbnail to get to the bounty inside, and a lot of fun to do, but the virtually translucent membrane of the pea itself, which is actually no fun at all. I hadn’t known that people did such a thing. But for Sylvain, a pea, undressed, had more flavor than one still wearing its membrane. It was, he said emphatically, the true flavor of France (le vrai goût français).

  I thought of Italy, though I didn’t want to (and in general I tried not to), but the mind can be a slippery entity to manage, and mine was mischievously imagining itself in an Italian kitchen, making an earnest proposal to my colleagues there to start popping their peas, and being met with raucous, belly-wobbling hilarity. In the long history of Italian cuisine, you will not discover a single popped pea.

  To pop a pea, you drop it in boiling water, very quick, drain, and ice. For many people, this is also how you cook a pea. After a few seconds of boiling, the pea is barely “not-raw,” and the instant icing preserves its bright-green color. And, also for many, you don’t do anythin
g else, unless you want to add salt and pepper, maybe some olive oil, and a squeeze of lemon.

  What I hadn’t known is that the same action—hot bath, ice bath—loosens the vegetable’s membrane so that, when you then give the pea a squeeze, gently between thumb and forefinger, the whatsit pops out. (What do you call the inner-pea? Is it, perhaps, just that—an inner-pea?)

  The squeeze, I feel compelled to note, really has to be performed carefully. If it’s done with too much force, the inner-pea splits in half. Half of an inner-pea is no good. You can let a few through—accidents happen—but if there are a lot of split peas, then the whole batch is thrown out.

  Inner-peas—sautéed lightly in butter, with a small ladle of veal stock, and finished with lemon zest—accompanied the sweetbreads, the calf’s puffy thymus glands, which, when done properly, have the airy texture of a slowly roasted marshmallow. But each serving involves a staggering 150 inner-peas. It takes a long time to pinch-press 150 inner-peas from their pea-membranes and not split them.

  * * *

  —

  We flicked off the pointy bits of asparagus stalks. I was familiar with the concern. It was the stalk’s tough outer skin. I had learned to skin it with a peeler, especially if the vegetable was to be grilled.

  “You lose too much,” Sylvain said. (In France, the skin of vegetables is highly respected, and you remove it at the cost of its flavor. Other elements are preserved in the skin as well—like nutrients and complexity of texture—but the only one that really matters is the flavor.)

  Sylvain illustrated the asparagus flick technique with a paring knife. You start at the bottom of the stalk and spiral your way up flickingly to the floretlike head. The pointy bits are little triangles. They look like mini–artichoke leaves, and flick off pretty easily (until you get to the top, I discovered, where the easiest thing is to lop off the floretlike head in its entirety, which isn’t the idea).