My Life in France Page 14

  The Michels were extremely friendly and forthcoming, and during a lull, the chef invited us into her kitchen to show us how she made her famous sauce in a brown enameled saucepan on an old household-type stove. I paid careful attention to how she boiled the acidic base down to a syrupy glaze, then creamed tablespoon-sized lumps of cold butter into it over very low heat. When we sat down to eat a carefully poached turbot crowned with a generous dollop of beurre blanc we found it stunningly delicious. The whole evening was filled with a sense of glowing satisfaction.

  Back in my Roo de Loo laboratory the next day, I whipped up a few batches of beurre blanc à la Me`re Michel, then wrote up what I believed to be the first clear and comprehensive recipe for the sauce. The final test came one evening when I cloaked a conger eel in beurre blanc for a small group of friends. It was of a perfection historique.

  WE THREE GOURMANDES were a good combination of personalities. Louisette contributed some valuable suggestions of the novelty type—how and where to add flourishes of, say, garlic, shallots, fresh peas, or strips of tomato—which were thoroughly French but in the American spirit. People in the U.S.A. loved food novelties. Simca and I were more straightforward chef-type cooks.

  Simca was roaring along on her recipe-testing and note-taking in a very professional way, sometimes for ten hours a day.

  As for me, I knew nothing about publishing, other than that it was a cutthroat game, but I had decided that cookbook writing was just the right job for me. I found myself working for entire days on the manuscript with hardly a break. The house was becoming a wreck, but I hardly noticed (and Paul was understanding). Late one afternoon, our friends the Kublers drove up unexpectedly in a big red Jeep. We all trooped out to Chez Marius for supper. It was fun. But as soon as I got back to Roo de Loo, I sat right down at the typewriter and stayed there till 2:00 a.m.

  Now that I had started writing, I found cookbookery such fulfilling work that I intended to keep at it for years and years.

  VIII. FRENCH HOME COOKING

  ONE NIGHT, at a dinner chez Bertholle, there were a dozen people at the table. The eight women and three of the four men began shouting at each other instead of talking—a French habit. They were having a fine old time arguing about Catholicism versus mysticism, about America’s policy in Morocco, car accidents, how to mix a rum sour, and so on. I dove headfirst into the verbal maelstrom. But Paul, the only quiet one at the table, was miserable. He whispered that he wanted to leave. Well, this was one of our differences. On the way home in the car we had a spat. It began as a disagreement over what I saw as Paul’s wish to withdraw from Life and go live in an Ivory Tower, and then it somehow devolved into a silly argument over Time magazine. Of course, the nub of our argument was probably something else entirely, like the uncertainty of our future.

  The U.S. government still hadn’t decided what to do with us. Our time in Paris was extended “temporarily.”

  In October 1952, the cold, gray, wet curtain of winter gradually dropped down around Paris, and word came down from on high that Paul would not get the coveted job as PAO for Marseille after all. The current PAO, who had been on an extended home leave, was returning to work. The news was deflating, but Abe Manell assured us, “You may still have a chance for the job.” Two new possibilities had opened up: PAO in Bordeaux, or exhibits officer in Vienna. Paul and I talked it over and decided that we both loved France, spoke the language, had friends and contacts there, and were just not ready to leave yet. So—Bordeaux was our preference.

  IN NOVEMBER, I received a letter from Sumner Putnam, head of the Ives Washburn publishing house, about our book, tentatively titled French Home Cooking. “After a year of frustration, we are still a long way from a completed book,” he wrote. “The big job now rests on your shoulders and you must be the absolute boss of what goes into the book and what stays out.” He noted that Ripperger’s work on the big book was “by no means polished,” and said, “You may want to throw out his efforts entirely.”

  He continued: “The American woman who buys French Home Cooking will probably resent advice on how to arrange her kitchen, set her table, handle a skillet or boil an egg: she learned those things from her mother or Fannie Farmer, don’t you think? She expects a book that will show her how she can give her cooking the French touch. . . . If the recipe . . . can’t be easily used by the stupidest pupil in your school, then it is too complicated.”

  Putnam’s letter set off a frenzy of discussion amongst us authors, our husbands, and our friends. He seemed serious about publishing French Home Cooking, and he had absolutely charmed Louisette when she had visited him in New York a year earlier. But I had learned from friends in the States that Ives Washburn was not a very well-respected house. Mr. Putnam had money, apparently, and had gone into publishing as a hobby; he knew little about cooking, did little advertising for his books, and was said to keep slipshod accounts. We were committed to him morally, but not legally, for we had signed no contract and he had paid us no advance. He wanted to see a polished manuscript by March 1, 1953. How should we respond?

  Simca and Louisette argued that we should stay the course with Ives Washburn. We were unknown authors, they pointed out, and Mr. Putnam was a nice man who liked our book. What good would it do to rock the boat?

  I was not convinced. Though I quite appreciated that we were unknowns, I saw no reason to crawl about on our bellies. I felt that our revamped book was good enough that, in the right hands, it would sell itself. We were professionals, we had a clear vision, and our book was going to be something new and exciting. I even predicted, without modesty, that it might one day be considered a major work on the principles and practice of French cooking. Therefore, I saw no reason to waste our efforts on a no-account firm.

  We talked and talked, and finally agreed to proceed with Ives Washburn—for the moment.

  On behalf of the Trois Gourmandes, I wrote Sumner Putnam, explaining that the new version of French Home Cooking would not be just another collection of recipes but, rather, an introduction to the methods of French cooking plus recipes. Our approach would build off the Bugnard/Cordon Bleu system of teaching “theme and variation,” as well as the methods we three had developed in our École des Trois Gourmandes classes. We’d write in an informal and humane tone that would make cooking approachable and fun. But the book would also be a serious, well-researched reference work. Our objective was to reduce the seemingly complex rules of French cooking to their logical sequences, something never before attempted either in English or in French.

  “It is not enough that the ‘how’ [of making hollandaise or mayonnaise] be explained. One should know the ‘why,’ the pitfalls, the remedies, the keeping, the serving, etc.,” I wrote. “This is a new type of cookbook.” I concluded: “Competition in this field is stiff, but we feel this may well be a major work on French cooking . . . and could continue to sell for years.”

  Mr. Putnam did not reply to my letter. Nor did he respond to our chapter on sauces, which I had sent him by diplomatic pouch. It was very odd.

  In the meantime, I sent three top-secret sauce recipes—for hollandaise, mayonnaise, and beurre blanc—to four trusted confidantes, for them to test in real American kitchens with real American ingredients. We referred to these ladies—Dort, Freddie Child, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, and Mrs. Freeman Gates (a friend of mine)—as our “guinea pigs,” and asked them to try making each sauce just as we had described it and to give us honest feedback. “Our object is to explain ‘how to cook French’ for beginner and expert cooks,” I wrote in a cover letter. “Do you like our vocabulary? Do you care about such a book?”

  IX. AVIS

  IN THE SPRING of 1952, Bernard De Voto had written an eloquent complaint about the quality of American-made cutlery in his “Easy Chair” column in Harper’s Magazine. He was incensed about stainless steel, which may have been rust-resistant but was also resistant to keeping a good edge. This happened to be a favorite complaint of mine, too. So I wrote De Voto a fan note
and enclosed two non-stainless French carbon-steel paring knives.

  I got a lengthy, stylish letter back—from Mrs. De Voto, writing from their home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her name was Avis. She was the one who used the kitchen knives in their household, it turned out, and had suggested the subject to Bernard. Not only was Avis a stylish writer, she was a devoted cook. So began a regular correspondence back and forth, mostly about food.

  Avis’s letters gushed for five, six, seven pages at a clip. In one she wrote about a wonderful pipérade—an omelette with peppers, tomatoes, bacon, and onions—she’d had at a restaurant in Paris. The sense memory of that dish had lingered with her ever since, and she wondered how they made it. So Paul and I tracked the place down to have a look. It was unremarkable-looking and crowded inside, with people shouting and a radio blaring. I wouldn’t go back there, but the pipérade was indeed excellent, and I took mental notes.

  I sent Avis a copy of our sauce chapter, and explained about the troubles we’d had with Ives Washburn. She wrote right back, saying she thought our manuscript had the potential to be made into a splendid book, and asked permission to show it to Houghton Mifflin, her husband’s publisher. Avis pointed out that Houghton Mifflin was well established, had plenty of mazuma, and had a cooking expert on staff, a Mrs. Dorothy de Santillana, who would know how to evaluate the manuscript from a culinary standpoint—a skill that Ives Washburn clearly lacked. Avis vouched that Houghton Mifflin were honest, generous, and wonderful to work with.

  I was thrilled. But when I brought this idea up with my colleagues, Louisette balked: she felt we had an obligation to keep working with Sumner Putnam. I disagreed, saying that, in light of no advance, no contract, and, lately, no communication from him whatsoever, we had no obligation to the publisher. After some hedging, Simca sided with me. Louisette, feeling guilty, relented.

  With a sigh of relief, I dashed off a note granting Avis permission to show our sauce chapter to Houghton Mifflin. Then we Trois Gourmandes crossed our fingers and got back to work.

  ON TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28, all of France’s best-known eaters, drinkers, food-sellers, preparers, and writers gathered for a fabulous banquet in Paris. These evenings were costly and could be taxing on the digestive system, and up until now we had always declined to go. But this one was special: it was in honor of Curnonsky’s eightieth birthday.

  There were 387 guests, each of whom was a member of one of the eighteen gastronomic societies of Paris. I belonged to Les Gourmettes, and Paul belonged to Le Club Gastronomique Prosper Montagne (named after the legendary chef, whom many club members had worked with). We couldn’t help noticing a few cold stares from the Gourmettes when we sat at the Prosper Montagne table. But we had decided the Montagnes would be a more interesting lot, because they were all food professionals, whereas the ladies were enthusiastic amateurs.

  The crowd was hearty and festively dressed. The women wore fancy hats, and the men wore brightly colored ribbons around their necks, medals, gold chains, badges, and rosettes (based on medieval guild symbols) signifying that they were important. It was snazzy and fun, and those in the know could point out to us Ignorants the difference between un chevalier du Tastevin, un chaîneur des rôtisseurs, and un compagnon de la belle table.

  On my left sat an aubergiste-chef who owned a two-star restaurant in the countryside. On my right was a big-shot butcher from Les Halles. Paul was bracketed by the men’s wives, and we made a jolly sextet. Each place had nine glasses, and over the course of the meal we were ushered through a wonderful array of juices from a Pineau des Charentes to an 1872 Armagnac. The foods were superb, too: oysters, turbot, tournedos, sherbet, partridge, salad, cheeses, and ice cream. (The turbot and partridge were special “creations” to honor Curnonsky.) It had required sixteen chefs, no doubt working themselves to exhaustion, to prepare this magnificent feast.

  The birthday cake was a massive ziggurat, eight layers high, decorated with eighty candles and florid fondant-sugar outbursts by a Parisian pastrymaster.

  After coffee, an aged member of Le Cercle des Écrivains Gastronomes with flowing Einstein-like hair stood and gave a lengthy tribute to Curnonsky. After fifteen minutes of ponderous oration, the audience grew restless. After twenty minutes, there was a noticeable babble of talk around the edges of the room. After half an hour, the venerable homme de lettres began to pause every few minutes to glare and scold the crowd: “If the art of eating is the only art you are capable of appreciating, and the literary art means nothing to you, then I suggest you go home!”

  Each of his asides was met with genial cheers and whistles.

  When he finally lumbered to the end, there was loud applause and all sixteen of the chefs trooped out from the kitchen. Curnonsky beamed with pleasure, and kissed the top three chefs on both cheeks. It was now 12:45 a.m., and as more speeches began we drifted out homeward.

  As a final salute to the great gastronome, twenty-seven of Paris’s leading restaurants had little brass plates made with Curnonsky’s name engraved on each. They were fixed to the best seats in every establishment. Anytime he felt like it, Curnonsky could call up, say, Le Grand Véfour, and his place would be automatically reserved and he’d be served a meal free of charge.

  MY STEPMOTHER, Phila, had an operation to remove a polyp from her intestines. I arranged a three-minute call to Pop, in Pasadena. Once he’d told me the polyp was benign, we had another two minutes and forty-five seconds left on the call. With the urgent news taken care of, you never know quite what to talk about in those situations. I said: “Well, I guess you Pasadenans are pretty glad about Ike’s election results.”

  “Glad? I should say we are!” Big John thundered. “Why, who wouldn’t be? Everybody’s glad! But of course you people over there, you wouldn’t know how the country feels—all your news is slanted.”

  This was hard to take, especially from the man who read only the right-leaning L.A. Times. For the record, Paul and I were avid devourers of the New York Times, the Herald Tribune, Le Figaro, Time, Fortune, The Reporter, Harper’s, The New Yorker, even L’Humanité, not to mention the flood of embassy cables, intelligence briefs, and twenty-four-hour wire-service and ticker sheets pouring in from around the world. So—whose news was slanted?

  A few days later, I received a note from my dear stepmother, Phila, telling me that her health was fine and asking me to please stop riling Pop up about politics, as it was too upsetting. Then my brother, John, chimed in, and told me to keep my liberal views to myself. Ye gads!

  I wrote Pop religiously every week, but now that I couldn’t mention politics, or my general philosophy of life, it would be pretty dull going. He was a darling man, a generous father, a real do-gooder in his community. In fact, he had everything it would take to be a real world-beater—except that he grew violently emotional over politics (so did I, but I was training myself to be more intellectually objective). He’d gone to Princeton, but was not intellectual, and was intolerant and incurious. He absolutely dismissed Paul as an “artist” and “New Dealer,” which meant that there could be no real affection between my father and me. He was an example of how not to be. It was too bad.

  IN THE FIRST WEEK of January 1953, we received a letter from Avis De Voto, which I read aloud to Simca and Louisette:

  I’ve just finished reading your manuscript. I must say I am in a state of stupefaction. I am so keen about this proposed book that I am also feeling that it can’t possibly be as good as I think it is. . . . I want to take the manuscript to Dorothy de Santillana’s house right away. I know she will take fire as I have. . . . If this book makes out as I believe and hope it will it is going to be a classic, a basic and profound book. . . . I like the style enormously. It is just right—informal, warm, occasionally amusing. . . . If it gets the right publisher it wont matter how long it takes to test and try out and edit. If the publisher is interested he will wait until you have finished your book. Alright. I just got D. Santillana on the phone and I’m going to her house tomorrow with t
he manuscript, which I hate to let out of my clutches. She is excited. . . . We will now join in a moment of silent prayer. . . .

  X. A CURRY OF A LIFE

  ON JANUARY 15, 1953, Paul turned fifty-one, and was informed that it was “98 percent sure” that he would be named public-affairs officer for Marseille after all. We’d have to start the new job almost immediately, probably in March, our embassy sources said. But as we hadn’t gotten official orders yet, it was all very hush-hush.

  My first thought was: What wonderful luck! We could have been sent to Reykjavík or Addis Ababa, but instead we are staying in France! My second thought was: A sudden move to the other end of the country will be tough on our cookery-bookery, not to mention the Trois Gourmandes classes. We’ll manage, somehow.

  The impending shift got the old beehive buzzing. We romantically hoped that Paul’s salary would double (after four-plus years in Paris, he had yet to receive a single raise or promotion), or that the ambassador would request that we do nothing but travel slowly around France, learning new recipes, taking pictures, and making friends. We’d be sipping tea and reading the morning paper when Paul would suddenly say, “I think it would be a smart idea to have calling cards printed before we go down to Marseille, don’t you?” Or we’d be walking along the Seine and I’d blurt out, “I simply won’t take a house that hasn’t got a wine cellar. I don’t care what they say!”

  But then the horrors of moving would creep up on us. “Honestly, I groan when I think of starting over in a new place,” Paul grumbled. “No wonder newborn babies cry so much. . . . If variety is the spice of life, then my life must be one of the spiciest you ever heard of. A curry of a life.”