My Life in France Read online

  I, in the meantime, had finally packed myself off to Paris for three weeks. I cooked with Bugnard, taught classes with Les Trois Gourmandes, ate with the Baltrus, and immersed myself in cookery-bookery with Simca. What a tonic!

  OVER THE SUMMER and into the fall of 1955, I finished my chicken research and began madly fussing about with geese and duck. One weekend I overdid it a bit, when, in a fit of experimental zeal, I consumed most of two boned stuffed ducks (one hot and braised, one cold en croûte) in a sitting. I was a pig, frankly, and bilious for days, which served me right. I was also running a continual set of experiments on risotto (finding just the right water-to-rice ratio), how to make stocks in the pressure cooker (determining proper timing, testing poultry carcasses versus beef bones), and various desserts. This sort of research was a challenge to our ongoing Battle of the Belly.

  “No man shall lose weight who eats paella topped with Apfel Strudel,” Paul noted, after doing exactly that.

  We had been horrified to notice that baby blubber seemed to bounce on so many people in the States. In Germany, meanwhile, a large figure denoted social status. Our goal was to eat well, but sensibly, as the French did. This meant keeping our helpings small, eating a great variety of foods, and avoiding snacks. But the best diet tip of all was Paul’s fully patented Belly Control System: “Just don’t eat so damn much!”

  At Christmastime, Paul was felled by a nasty infectious hepatitis. After a recuperative stay in Rome in the early days of 1956 (where I discovered fennel salad and the toothsome little Roman peas), we had decided to eat carefully, exercise rigorously, and eschew alcohol. As a result, he had dropped ten pounds and tipped the scales at 173. I had lost eleven pounds and weighed 158, which made me feel less middle-aged than I had in the U.S.A.

  Come February, all of our off time was spent composing letters for the hundreds of valentines we sent out around the globe. Valentine cards had become a tradition of ours, born of the fact that we could never get ourselves organized in time to send out Christmas cards. With our ever-enlarging network of family, friends, and Foreign Service colleagues, we found that Paul’s hand-designed valentine cards—usually a woodcut or drawing, sometimes a photograph—were a nice way to keep in touch. But they could be labor-intensive. One year’s design was a faux stained-glass window, with five colors in it, each of which had to be hand-painted in watercolors—which took hours. For 1956, we decided to lighten up by doing something different: we posed ourselves for a self-timed valentine photo in the bathtub, wearing nothing but artfully placed soap bubbles.

  BY THE SPRING OF 1956, we decided it was high time to start entertaining again. But our first dinner party revealed that our once-crack team of hostess/cook and host/sommelier was woefully out of practice. We had no salad forks, we forgot to clear the cocktail clutter unobtrusively, and we spent the evening rushing about in a breathless rush. This was not up to our usual standard. We liked to treat our guests as if they were royalty, so as to be fully prepared for those occasions when we would be called upon to entertain actual royalty!

  For our second dinner party, I served les barquettes de champignons glacées au fromage, canard à l’orange, and glace maison aux marrons glacés. A week later, I tried boeuf à la mode, endives braisées, and a dessert of désirés du roi for friends. And now the old “Pulia” entertainment engine was humming along beautifully.

  I got a note from le prince, Curnonsky, who had broken several ribs in a fall. The doctors, he wrote, had put him on “un régime terrible” that did not allow for cream, salt, sauces, or wine. Such a bland diet must have been a torture for the old gastronome.

  Health was much on our minds that season. Over the Easter weekend, I had to go into a private Klinik in Bad Godesberg for an operation. Two years earlier, I had undergone surgery in Washington to remove uterine polyps, but it had not, apparently, gotten to the root of the matter. “I feel just fine,” I said, but the German doctor insisted that an operation was best for me. His Klinik was in a grand Victorian mansion painted all white. The surgery was routine. I was not concerned, but poor Paul half convinced himself that “polyps” equaled “Julia is dying of cancer.” This was not true, of course, and he knew it, yet he was so worried he hardly slept a wink and even developed a slight fever that night.

  Paul thought about death much more than I ever did. In part, this must have come from the early demise of his father, his mother, and his older sister. Paul had also been traumatized by the death of Edith “Slingsby” Kennedy, his serious girlfriend before the war. She was a sophisticated older woman, and they had lived together (unmarried!) in Paris and in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She had died of cancer just before the war, and he remained haunted by her death. Also, our friends were aging now, and some, like Bernard De Voto (whom we didn’t know very well), had recently died.

  After Benny’s death, Avis De Voto, who had two sons to care for, had spent months rearranging her life. Once things had settled, she took a recuperative vacation to Europe in the spring of 1956. Luckily, we had arranged a vacation at just the same time, so we met up with her in London. We had a fine time there, walking and shopping and socializing.

  Avis was small, dark-haired, and full of opinions. The better we got to know her the more we liked her. One night she introduced us to a six-foot-seven-inch-tall moose of a Harvard economist named John Kenneth Galbraith. We had quite a lot in common with him, and as we all sat in a loud basement restaurant, we compared notes on time spent in India, art, and global politics. It clearly did Avis good to be out amongst lively friends. And after the dolors of Plittersdorf, it did us good, too.

  Avis, Paul, and I crossed the Channel on a beautiful day and met up with Simca and Jean Fischbacher in Rouen, where the war-damaged cathedral was finally being repaired. Ever energetic, Simca had phoned ahead to arrange a special lunch for us at the Hôtel de Dieppe, where the chef, Michel Guéret, specialized in canard à la rouennaise, a celebrated pressed-duck dish seldom used anymore. What an experience!

  Avis De Voto with Chefs Bugnard and Thilmont

  We began with trout stuffed with minnows and a wonder-sauce made of herbs, white wine, and butter. Then on to the famous, ritualized canard. The duck itself is a special strain bred from a domestic female “covered” by a wild male, which produces handsome dark-feathered birds that are full-breasted and toothsome. They are killed by being smothered, so as to keep the blood inside the body (an example of the lengths the French will go to for a special meal). Chef Guéret roasted two of these ducks on a spit for us, all the while basting them with a wonderful duck-blood sauce he’d prepared at a side table. The birds became mouth-wateringly brown on the outside and roasted very rare on the inside. When they were done, he deftly carved off the ducks’ legs and wings, rolled them in mustard and crumbs, and sent them back to the kitchen to be grilled.

  He very carefully peeled the skin away from the breast, and carved the meat into thin slices, which he sprinkled with finely minced shallots. These would be poached in their juices, a little wine, and delicate seasoning, in order to point up the natural flavor. Next the chef wheeled a great silver duck press up to our table. It looked a bit like a silver fire extinguisher with a round crank-handle on top. He cut up the carcass, put it into the canister of the press, and turned the big handle on top. As the pressing plate descended slowly inside the canister, we could hear the cracking of bones, and a stream of red juices dribbled out of the spout into a saucepan. Adding a dollop of red Burgundy wine to the press, the chef turned the crank again, to squeeze some more. He continued like this until the carcass had finally rendered its all. It was a fabulous ritual to watch, and we marveled over Guéret’s every move with rapt attention.

  Finally, it was time to eat. We began with the tender slices of breast slathered in sauce, and then the nicely crisped and crumbly grilled legs and wings. We washed these delicacies down with a splendid Pommerol. Then we had an assortment of cheeses, glasses of very old apple brandy, and cups of coffee. It was a tour de force.
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  Normandy was filled with apple blossoms, flowering chestnut trees, and the warm earthy smells of early spring. We drove slowly toward Paris, savoring the landscape, exploring the ruins of a Cistercian monastery, and wandering around old villages where the houses had thatched roofs.

  Paris was gorgeous and packed with people. We took Avis for a drink at the Deux Magots, and dined in tremendous style at L’Escargot, where we were surrounded by rich Americans in blue mink and ended our meal with perfectly ripe strawberries and champagne. From there we wandered over to Notre Dame, now illuminated at night by big banks of searchlights, making for a rather dramatic effect. Finally, we ended up at Le Caveau des Oubliettes Rouges, where we sang old French folk songs until one o’clock in the morning. We left with a feeling of pure happiness.

  After packing Paul off on the train to Germany, Avis and I dropped by Mère Michel’s to see if her famous beurre blanc had withstood the test of time. The answer: yes, though it tasted no better than ours.

  While I reconnected with Bugnard, the Baltrus, and the Asches, Avis spent a wonderful day in La Forêt de Rambouillet with Simca and Jean Fischbacher, returning to the hotel that night with a great armload of lilies-of-the-valley and a beaming face.

  Germany was a frigid, wet fifty-two degrees when I returned. Paul and I had to don our English tweeds to keep warm. We looked at each other and sighed. After the glories of la belle France, where all of our impressions were heightened and magnified by the companionship of our friends, it was hard to avoid the conclusion that Plittersdorf was a miserable dump.

  IN JULY 1956, we read in the Paris Herald that dear old Curnonsky had died. The prince élu des gastronomes had fallen off his balcony to his death. Was it an accident, or suicide?

  I had seen him in Paris, briefly. He had not looked well, and complained bitterly about the strict diet his doctors had prescribed. At one point he muttered, “If only I had the courage to slit my wrists.” What a tragic and bitter end. One couldn’t help feeling that he was happier now than in his final days, and that his passing marked the end of an era.

  BY THE TIME my forty-fourth birthday rolled around in August, Paul was immersed in an enormous show in Berlin called “Space Unlimited,” about the U.S. space program. It drew capacity crowds and was deemed a “phenomenal success.” For weeks I hardly saw my husband, and found myself to be an unhappy “widow.” Well, I reminded myself, Avis is a real widow, so imagine how she must feel.

  Paul’s success with “Space Unlimited” had been noted in the halls of power, and by the fall of 1956 “they” had decided they needed Mr. P. Child back in Washington, D.C. The main USIA exhibits department there had become a shambles, and he was the man to fix it. So we’d be moving back to the States again, which came as welcome news. I was itching to say auf Wiedersehen to Woodenhead (who had given Paul poor marks for administration) and the Plittersdorf way of life.

  Once again we were packing up and preparing to move on, like nomads. And, once again, we felt the tingle of excited apprehension about returning to our native soil—now the land of “Elvis the Pelvis,” Nixon-lovers, and other strange phenomena. But this time, something was bothering us: ever since Paul had been investigated, we had grown slowly but surely more disenchanted with working for the U.S. government. Paul felt he was doing important work but was not being recognized for it, and I was getting good and sick of uprooting our lives every few years.

  “Maybe,” we confided to each other, “there is more to life than this.” But what else might we do? And where might we do it?

  II. THE DREAM

  WE ARRIVED BACK in Washington, D.C., in November 1956, and almost immediately dove into the task of renovating our little jewel of a house at 2706 Olive Avenue. It was a 150-year-old, three-story wooden house, on the outskirts of Georgetown. We’d bought it in 1948. Over the last eight years, we had rented it out, and now it was showing the wear and tear. Luckily, we had banked enough rent money to spiff up an office/guest bedroom for me and a studio for Paul on the top floor, rework the wiring, plug a ceiling leak, and expand the kitchen. What fun to feather our own little nest, the only nest we actually owned.

  Using a small inheritance from my mother, I bought a new dishwasher and a sink equipped with an “electric pig,” a waste-disposal grinder. (No maids for me!) Then I decided I needed a new stove. One day we were visiting a gourmand friend, Sherman Kent, whom we called Old Buffalo; with a ceremonial sweep of the hand, he showed me the stove in his kitchen. It was a professional gas range, and as soon as I laid eyes on it I knew I must have one. In fact, Old Buffalo sold me his. It was a low, wide, squat black number with with six burners on the left and a little flat-steel griddle on the right. I paid him something like $412 for the stove, and I loved it so much I vowed to take it to my grave!

  Paul, meanwhile, had finally been promoted from FSS-4 (Foreign Service rank four) to FSS-3. He now earned a whopping $9,660 a year doing exhibition work.

  Our neighborhood was technically in the city but had a nice small-town feel, because everyone marketed at the same place, or met at the post office or in the barbershop. Though I would have preferred to live in Paris while working on French Cooking for the American Kitchen, one huge advantage to living in the States was that I could do on-the-ground research about what kinds of produce and equipment were available to our audience.

  “It is great fun being back here to live. I never could get the feel of it when we just passed through,” I reported to Simca. “One thing I do adore is to be shopping in these great serve-yourself markets, where . . . you pick up a wire push cart as you come in and just trundle about looking and fingering everything. . . . It is fine to be able to pick out each separate mushroom yourself. . . . Seems to me there is everything here that is necessary to allow a good French cook to operate.”

  But American supermarkets were also full of products labeled “gourmet” that were not: instant cake mixes, TV dinners, frozen vegetables, canned mushrooms, fish sticks, Jell-O salads, marshmallows, spray-can whipped cream, and other horrible glop. This gave me pause. Would there be a place in the U.S.A. for a book like ours? Were we hopelessly out of step with the times?

  I decided to ignore my doubts and push on. There wasn’t much else I could do. Besides, I loved la cuisine bourgeoise, and perhaps a few others would, too.

  Simca, meanwhile, was suffering from la tension (high blood pressure and jumpy nerves). This was a sensitive subject for me, as my mother had died young of high blood pressure. “You must pay attention to your health,” I cautioned her. Simca didn’t take criticism well, so I tried to illustrate my point by telling her about Paul’s twin, Charlie Child: “Everything he does is at full speed, like a rocket taking off,” I wrote. He lived each moment “as if it were the supreme one, requiring every ounce of energy. You are the same. You have to let a few things . . . slip by you, rather than being pitched at the highest key. . . . Force yourself to relax at times. It is not necessary to do everything as though your life and honour depended on it.” I doubt my words had any effect on her.

  IN THE SPRING OF 1957, I began to teach cooking classes to a group of Washington women who met on Monday mornings to cook lunch for their husbands. Later that year, I commuted once a month to Philadelphia, to teach a similar class to eight students there. A typical menu would include oeufs pochés duxelles, sauce béarnaise; poulet sauté portugaise; épinards au jus, and pommes à la sévillane.

  I was now an experienced teacher. The night before each class, I would type up the menu and list of ingredients. (Usually I’d forward copies of these menus to Simca, who was teaching a group of U.S. Air Force wives in Paris.) Teaching gave me great satisfaction, and soon my days fell into a comfortingly regular rhythm.

  Most of my time was spent revising and retyping our now dog-eared, note-filled, butter-and-food-stained manuscript. In retesting certain dishes in my American kitchen-laboratory, I discovered that hardly anyone used fresh herbs here, that U.S. veal was not as tender as the French, that our
turkeys were much larger than their birds, and that Americans ate far more broccoli than the French did. This on-the-ground reporting would be crucial to the success of our book, I knew, but it could also be exasperating.

  “WHY DID WE EVER DECIDE TO DO THIS ANYWAY?” I wailed to Simca, after discovering that my beloved crème fraîche was nearly impossible to find in America.

  IN JANUARY 1958, Simca and Jean made their first visit to the United States. Jean could only stay a short while, but Simca stayed for three months. She hadn’t slowed down one bit, and rushed about visiting friends and former students in New York, Detroit, Philadelphia, and California. In Washington, she and I went on shopping/research expeditions and gave a few lively classes together in our Olive Avenue kitchen, where we demonstrated dishes such as quiche aux fruits de mer, coq au vin, and tarte aux pommes. She was thrilled by America, and sampled our food and drink with vast enthusiasm, including drugstore tuna fish, frozen blinis, and—her favorite—bourbon!

  We had a fine time together, but our manuscript remained far from finished. We had promised to show the Houghton Mifflin editors what we’d written so far, but we were a little nervous, because it was seven hundred detailed pages on nothing but poultry and soups. Added to that, our recipes did not appeal to the TV-dinner-and-cake-mix set. We had discovered this fact, with a bit of a shock, when we attempted to place our work in a few of the mass-circulation magazines. Not one of them was interested in anything we’d done. The editors seemed to consider the French preoccupation with detail a waste of time, if not a form of insanity.

  Yet I had run into many Americans who had gone to France and been inspired by the wonderful taste of the food there—“Oh, that juicy roast chicken!” they’d exclaim. “My, that sole normande!” Though some returned to the U.S. convinced that such wonders could only be achieved by the magic of being born French, the savvier ones realized that the main ingredient in such succulent dishes was hard work coupled with proper technique.