My Life in France Read online

  Raised in an aristocratic household in Normandy (her grandfather produced Benedictine, a cordial liqueur), she had been brought up partly by English nannies, and could speak decent, if heavily accented, English. She was mad about food, and her specialty was pastry and desserts. She was intensely energetic. Although she never attended college, Simone had channeled her vigor into things like bookbinding, at first, and then into cooking, her true love. She studied at the Cordon Bleu under the famed chef and author Henri-Paul Pellaprat, whom she also hired for private cooking lessons. She had extensive knowledge of the cuisine of her native Normandy, the northern region of France, renowned for its rich butter and cream, beef, and apples.

  Simone’s second husband, Jean Fischbacher, was a lively Alsatian and a chemical engineer at the L. T. Piver perfume company. (Her first marriage ended in divorce.) For Simca and Jean, the subject of food was a precious and meaningful thing. During the war, they had faced terrible deprivations: Jean had been captured by the Nazis, and Simca sent him messages sewn inside prunes that were delivered to his prison camp. A humorous and cultured man, he had nicknamed his wife Simca after the little Renault model she drove: he thought it was funny that such a big woman (she stood over five feet eight inches tall—lanky for a Frenchwoman) could fit into such a tiny car.

  Simca and I had met earlier that year, at a party for French and Americans involved with the Marshall Plan. Knowing we were both food-obsessed, our host, George Artamonoff, the former president of Sears International, introduced us. Simca and I hit it off right away. For the next hour we talked about food, food preparation, food people, wine, and restaurants. We could have kept talking all night, and agreed to meet again.

  A few days later, Simca introduced me to another Gourmette, Madame Louisette Bertholle, a slim, pretty woman with cropped dark hair who had spent time in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Grosse Pointe, Michigan. She was married to Paul Bertholle, the European representative of an American chemical company; they had two daughters. Louisette was a dear person, small and neat, with a wonderfully vague temperament. As Paul said, she was “every American’s idea of a perfect Frenchwoman.”

  Louisette, me, and Simca in the Roo de Loo kitchen, using the famous mortar and pestle and a tamis to make quenelles

  Simca and Louisette, it turned out, had been working on a cookbook that they hoped to publish in the United States. (Simca had already published a slim brochure of recipes, Le pruneau devant le fourneau, about prunes and prune liqueurs, for a group of prune-boosters.) Louisette had contributed a few dishes, but, as Simca told it, it was she who had worked like a madwoman to muster over a hundred recipes for their book—ideas garnered from her own experiments, her mother’s notebooks, her family’s cook, restaurant chefs, the Gourmettes, and so on. She had sent the recipes to a family friend in the U.S.A., Dorothy Canfield Fisher, a successful author from Vermont and a member of the Book-of-the-Month Club’s editorial board.

  In her reply, Mrs. Canfield Fisher did not mince words: “It won’t do,” she wrote. “This is just a dry bunch of recipes, with not much background on French food attitudes and ways of doing things.” Americans were accustomed to eating lots of meat and processed foods, she said, and French cooking was virtually unknown there. “You’ve got to preface the recipes and tell little anecdotes—something that explains the whole way the French do things in the kitchen.” Mrs. Canfield Fisher ended her letter with a suggestion: “Get an American who is crazy about French cooking to collaborate with you; somebody who both knows French food and can still see and explain things with an American viewpoint in mind.”

  It was good advice. Through a friend of Louisette’s, the would-be authors had placed their collection of recipes with the small New York publisher Ives Washburn. Washburn had agreed to produce and distribute the book, and had given their material to a freelance food editor named Helmut Ripperger, who would get the book into shape for the U.S. market.

  It sounded like a wonderful idea, a modest little book filled with tried-and-true French recipes written just for American cooks. I wished them bonne chance!

  ALL THIS COOKERY talk made me eager to put the finishing touches on my own recipes and to start teaching. My ideal pupils would be just like the kind of person I had been: those who aspired to be accomplished home cooks, capable of making the basic themes and variations of la cuisine bourgeoise, but didn’t know where to begin. Simca and Louisette and I discussed this idea, and discussed it some more, and before long we had agreed to start up a little cooking school of our own, right there in Paris!

  With their knowledge of food and local connections, my recent experience at the Cordon Bleu and access to American students, it seemed a logical step for the three of us to make en concert. We unanimously agreed that our fees would be nominal—just enough to cover our expenses—and that our classes would be open to anyone who wanted to join them. Louisette offered the use of the kitchen in her rather grand apartment on Avenue Victor Hugo, on the Right Bank, once she had finished renovating it. I offered to place an ad in the U.S. Embassy newspaper. In a nod to the Gourmettes that had brought us together, we decided to call our venture L’École des Gourmettes.

  V. L’ÉCOLE

  IN DECEMBER 1951, Life magazine ran a damning article entitled “First, Peel an Eel,” about the Cordon Bleu. In it, the author, an American named Frances Levison, recounted her six-week elementary cooking course with Chef Bugnard in an arch, amusing style. She made much of the school’s small rooms, non-working ovens, ancient knives, lack of basic supplies, “cryptic” teachers, and the French “attitude toward hygiene and water, neither of which has much appeal for them.” Perhaps she overstated her case for the sake of drama, but her facts were basically correct.

  In Paris there was a cry of alarm over what impact the Life story would have on the school. But when Simca and Louisette discussed it with Madame Brassart, she waved her hand dismissively and denied the school had any problems whatsoever.

  In mid-December, Chef Bugnard told me that, since the article had appeared, “nothing has been done to improve matters” at the school. And when I attended two cooking demonstrations there just before Christmas, I couldn’t help noticing that there was no thyme, not enough garlic, a broken basket, and no proper pot for cooking nids de pommes de terre. Hm.

  ON JANUARY 15, 1952, Paul and Charlie celebrated their half-century birthday on either side of the Atlantic. Paul was alternately vexed by his advancing years, and buoyed by his theory that “old age is a state of mind and a function of mass hypnosis rather than an absolute.” He took to quoting the phrase Illegitemus non carborundum est (“Don’t let the bastards grind you down”).

  Over in Lumberville, Pennsylvania, our country cousins Charlie and Freddie began their demi-siècle celebration with iced champagne and continued on in a sort of free-floating bacchanal all night long.

  In Paris, meanwhile, the celebration of Paul’s fiftieth birthday was our most impressive party yet. We had six couples for dinner. So that I could avoid hopping in and out of the kitchen all night, we hired Chef Bugnard to cook for us, a maître d’hôtel to serve, and another man to pour wine. Jeanne-la-folle was beside herself with excitement, and she provided enthusiastic help in the kitchen. Paul hand-lettered invitations, and we made spiffy “medals” of colored silk ribbon, enamel pins, and nonsense inscriptions for each guest (mine was labeled “Marquise de la Mousse Manquée”). Paul chose the wines from our cave to match an elaborate menu that Chef Bugnard and I composed: amuse-gueules au fromage (hot pâtes feuilletées topped with cheese, served in the living room with Krug champagne); rissolettes de foie gras Carisse; filet de boeuf Matignon (served with a nearly perfect Bordeaux, Château Chauvin 1929); les fromages (Camembert, Brie de Melun, Époisses, Roquefort, Chèvre); fruits rafraîchis; gâteau de demi-siècle; café, liqueurs, hundred-year-old Cognac; Havana cigars and Turkish cigarettes.

  Three days before the party, Paul awoke with a swollen and aching jaw. At breakfast he couldn’t even bite into
a soft piece of bread without rising three feet out of his chair in pain. Was it a sign of Creeping Decrepitude? Was it a psychological reaction to turning fifty? Or was it just plain bad luck? Furious at himself, he swallowed fistfuls of Empirin tablets to ease the pain, but they had no effect. “What a cynical little twist of the knob on Fate’s machine,” Paul despaired. The dentist diagnosed Paul with an advanced case of pyorrhea: eventually three of his teeth would have to be pulled. For now, the dentist ground down the surfaces of Paul’s afflicted teeth, scraped away calcareous deposits from under the gums, and injected lactic acid into the pocket.

  By Monday evening, Paul had a fever and was hardly the Birthday Boy of our dreams. To make things even more interesting, he had bitten his tongue while it was numbed. Nevertheless, the party went off magnificently.

  Paul smiled handsomely in a brilliant-green wool waistcoat with brass buttons, a bright-red tie, and bright-red socks. I wore a wreath of tiny roses around my head, to which I added a golden crown given to me by Hélène Baltrusaitis. Chef Bugnard performed magic in the kitchen, and we all agreed it was one of the finest meals we’d ever eaten, anywhere, anytime.

  A FEW DAYS after the party, our vague plans for a cooking school were snapped into sharp focus when Martha Gibson, a wealthy, fifty-five-ish Pasadenan, called to say she wanted cooking lessons. The next day, a friend of hers, Mrs. Mary Ward, called to say she’d like to join in, too. Then a third American, a nifty forty-year-old gal named Gertrude Allison, called with the same request. All three of them had plenty of free time and money in hand.

  There was only one problem: we three profs weren’t quite ready for them. Louisette’s kitchen renovation was not finished, we had not discussed menus or even our teaching format, and we had never cooked together before. But is anyone ever completely ready for a new undertaking, especially in a profession like cooking, where there are at least a hundred ways to cook a potato?

  Tant pis, we decided: we have three students and three teachers—allons-y!

  L’École des Gourmettes convened its first class on January 23, 1952, in our kitchen at 81 Rue de l’Université. We focused on French food, for that’s what we all knew, and classical technique, as we felt that once a student has the basic tools they can be adapted to Russian, German, Chinese, or any other cuisine. There was much discussion parmi les professeurs, as we all had different methods. Whereas Simca and I tended to take a scientific approach (i.e., we measured quantities), Louisette took a more romantic approach (she’d use a pinch of salt or a splash of water, and worked out her recipes by instinct).

  My colleagues had a lifetime of eating and cooking in France, and had been working on a cookbook together. I had learned how to clean and carve all sorts of things, make wonderful sauces, and sharpen a knife; plus, I brought an American practicality to such questions as how to shop, cook, and clean without a staff (something that Simca and Louisette did not have a grasp of at all). It took us a bit of time to get used to working side-by-side, but ultimately the combination of our three personalities meshed very well indeed.

  Every Tuesday and Wednesday, we’d begin our class at ten and would end at one, with lunch. A typical menu would include poached fish, beef knuckle, salad, and a banana tart. Beforehand, we’d pool our money and shop for ingredients; then we’d type up detailed notes on the menu, steps to take in preparation, and the techniques we’d be using. The atmosphere of our classes was just what we’d hoped for—homey and fun, informal but passionate. Everyone was free to comment or criticize, and if mistakes were made we discussed what they were and how to avoid them. In one of the early classes, we made a leek, potato, and watercress soup; instead of using cream, we used some old milk, which curdled. It was embarrassing, but we soldiered on. We teachers were learning just as much as, if not more than, our students!

  L’École des Gourmettes

  We charged seven thousand francs (about twenty dollars) for the first three lessons, which worked out to six hundred francs apiece per lesson. That included everything, plus about three dollars’ worth of wear-and-tear on our kitchen per lesson.

  Chef Bugnard giving a class at our école

  My friends in the markets were fascinated by our école. The darling chicken man on la Rue Cler gave us a special price, and was most anxious to give our students a demonstration on how to choose a fine bird. The butcher felt the same way about his meats. Dehillerin, the cookware store, offered a 10 percent discount on all student purchases. Jeanne-la-folle enjoyed the classes hugely; she’d arrive at one to eat leftovers and help clean up. Minette was interested, too, though she felt she wasn’t getting her share of leftovers.

  We were lucky in our early students, for they were enthusiastic and hardworking. Martha Gibson and Mary Ward were both widows, and very pleasant, but neither had found a passionate calling in life. Gertrude Allison had spent three years in the cafeteria business, had studied home economics at Columbia University, and had a sound business sense. She ran an inn in Arlington, Virginia, called Allison’s Little Tea House, which catered mostly to officers from the Pentagon at lunchtime and to family groups in the evening. Gertrude said she had taken several cooking classes in New York with the English chef Dione Lucas, whom she found adept but not very precise. I quizzed Gertrude about the economics of her restaurant. She charged $1.75 to $3.50 for dinner, she said, adding that studies showed that restaurateurs shouldn’t pay more than 6 percent of their gross for rent.

  One Wednesday, Paul came home to join us for lunch, and he brought Mary Parsons, the USIS librarian, who lived in the same hotel as Mary Ward. We served sole meunière, a mixed salad with chopped hard-boiled eggs, and a dessert of crêpes Suzettes flambées au Grand Marnier. As he watched us bustle about the kitchen, Paul was surprised to see how much fun both the students and teachers were having.

  Our pupils had not had much exposure to wine, and kept making uninformed statements like “Oh, wine, I don’t like it.” When Mary Ward said, “I never drink red wine; I like only dry white,” Paul took it as a personal insult. “That’s like saying, ‘I never talk to French people; I only talk to Italians,’ ” he said. Then he offered her a glass of red wine he considered quite good, a Château Chauvin ’29, a flowery, well-rounded Bordeaux. Mary took one sip and said, “Hey, I never realized red wine could taste like that!”

  As a result, Paul agreed to give the class a lecture on wines. He explained how to match individual wines to specific food, how to store bottles, cork them properly, and so on. At the end, he served us all a fine bottle of Médoc 1929, and won three new converts.

  THE LONGER WE LIVED in Paris, the more the city and its residents got under my skin. We especially enjoyed le groupe Foçillon’s evenings chez Baltru. It was a memorable bunch. Louis Grodecki, known as “Grod”—the intense, thick-lensed Polish art-historian—was about thirty-nine, and was a medieval stained-glass specialist. He had made an important discovery at the Abbaye de Saint-Denis, which dated the original building back to the sixth century, much earlier than his archaeological rivals had. He reveled in his triumph.

  Jean and Thérèse Asche had become dear friends of ours. She taught grammar school, and Jean was a professor of the history of structure at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. He was on a strict dietary regime due to the lingering aftereffects of his time in Buchenwald: forced to carry heavy rocks there, he suffered from compressed disks in his back; of the sixteen hundred men in his unit, only two hundred survived the camp. The Asches remained hearty, intelligent, and sensitive people, and Paul and I loved their company.

  Our luminous hostess, Hélène Baltrusaitis, remained perhaps my closest friend in Paris. Jurgis, however, seemed to grow more sour, prickly, and egocentric every day. Paul took to calling him Yoghurt. He seemed to ignore his son, Jean, a sweet boy who didn’t have much direction. Paul made a point of talking to the boy and gave him lessons on how to paint with watercolors. We had even agreed that, if the Baltruses were killed in a plane crash, Paul and I would raise Jean.
/>   But people are constantly surprising. Jurgis, we were shocked to discover, was a genuine war hero. In the early 1940s, Hélène’s stepfather, Henri Foçillon, had escaped to the United States, where he broadcast anti-fascist messages back to France on clandestine radio. But in his haste to escape, Foçillon had left behind a mass of incriminating papers in his country house, filled with the names of French Resistance fighters. The house, near Chaumont, was occupied by a group of German engineers, who, as far as anyone knew, had never stumbled on the papers. After a year, the engineers were suddenly transferred elsewhere. Jurgis learned that a new batch of Germans was due to arrive in two days. So he made his way from Paris to Chaumont, broke into the house, found the papers, and destroyed them just before the new contingent arrived. He had undeniably shown selfless bravery.

  IN SEPTEMBER 1952, our four-year stint with USIS would automatically terminate. What would happen to us then? No one knew. Despite our best efforts to divine the future, no information of any kind was forthcoming from Washington, D.C. For all we knew, Paul might be offered another post abroad, be recalled to the U.S.A., or be rudely shoved out of government.

  I grew depressed at the thought of leaving Paris. Our three-plus years there had been so glorious, had passed so quickly, and had left us with so much more to learn and do, that the very idea of decamping left me cold and disgruntled. Many conversations along the theme of “What Shall We Do Next?” ensued, and the upshot was a fundamental decision: if we were to leave government service, we’d try to find other work in Paris and stay for one more year—at least.

  SIMCA, LOUISETTE, AND I had, for diplomatic and psychological reasons, renamed our school L’École des Trois Gourmandes, which I roughly translate as “The School of the Three Hearty Eaters.” Anita Littell, wife of Bob Littell, head of Reader’s Digest’s European office, and a couple of other women had signed up for a class, but before we began this session Simca and I spent hours practicing by ourselves.