My Life in France Page 27

  We drove and picnicked our way to Sancerre, on the upper Loire, which is gracious countryside and good wine country. Continuing in a southeasterly direction along tiny roads, in alternating rain and sun, we made our way to the Auvergne, in the Massif Central. We were amazed to discover that these back roads seemed as empty as they had been in 1949.

  We made good time, and arrived at La Peetch a day earlier than planned, which allowed us to dine with Les Fischbachers and catch up on their troubles.

  SIMCA, CARRYING A BROKEN wine bottle and glass shards in her right hand, had stumbled, and the glass had sliced down through the space between her thumb and index finger. The cut severed the tendons there, which retracted up inside her hand. She required surgery to find the tendons and sew them together. It was horrid. But the doctor never said “attention,” so Simca went about her business almost as full-tilt as usual. The suture broke, of course, and had to be resewn. This time she was put in plaster, to hold her hand still, but when the cast came off she was discouraged to find she could barely move her thumb and forefinger. She would require months of therapeutic exercise and re-education, with no guarantee that she would ever regain full function of the fingers in her dominant hand. But with her prodigious energy and iron will, I was confident that La Super-Française could overcome any obstacle.

  There were times when Simca’s energy beam could be too much. Before cutting her hand, she had planted just about every kind of bush and tree and flower that would grow at Bramafam (and some that wouldn’t). Now she was injured, Jean was in Paris, Jeanne had her regular duties to attend to, and Laurent was sick. The upshot was that Paul and I were forced to spend precious vacation hours watering the garden so that it wouldn’t broil in the sun.

  A little gray pussycat called Minimouche, daughter of Minimère, resumed her life with us just as soon as we arrived. She was very definitely an outdoor cat, who used humans only for food and shelter. But I felt lucky to have any cat company at all. As Thérèse Asche used to say in Paris, “Une maison sans chat, c’est la vie sans soleil!” (“A house without a cat is like life without sunshine!”) Every morning, Minimouche would dart into the house the instant a shutter was opened, and loudly meow for breakfast. She’d gobble her food down, meow to be let out, and shoot off for a day of chasing lizards. In the evening, she would sit on Paul’s lap while we listened to the news on the radio and I cooked dinner. One afternoon, Minimouche brought us a live field mouse and batted it around the kitchen floor. But it managed to escape, and we had a drama worthy of a stag-hunt. We needed a cor de chasse to announce each new development: the mouse breaks loose from the cat!; the mouse is hiding under the stove!; the mouse is flushed out with a coat hanger!; etc. Mon dieu, quel drame!

  IN JUNE, PATRICIA SIMON, a writer for McCall’s magazine, flew in to write an article about how Simca and I were creating Volume II together. It would be a three-part cover story featuring a number of our latest recipes, timed to the publication of our book. Paul had been hired to photograph us. To make sure things went smoothly, Simca, Paul, and I sat down and planned what we would cook, when to market, and what should be photographed, so there would be no time lost. The next few days would be a bit of a show, of course, but also an important step forward in the Simca-Julia collaboration.

  Patricia was shortish, about thirty-two, with dusky skin, and a very soft voice that was sometimes hard to hear. She liked to cook, and took piles of notes about me and Simca, the names of local flowers, the ingredients in various dishes we were working on, and even the contents of our refrigerators. Paul darted around the kitchen, madly photographing us at work. On a balmy afternoon, he shot a few portraits of me holding a spoon and bowl in front of an olive tree, and was very satisfied with the results. But when it came time to shoot Simca, he grew agitated. “She becomes stiff and self-conscious when you point a camera at her,” he said later. “She was either hamming it up or freezing. I’m afraid those pictures will be lousy.”

  A few days later, Simca, Paul, Patricia, and I drove down to La Napoule for lunch at the two-star L’Oasis, Louis Outhier’s restaurant. We penetrated into his beautiful courtyard and were seated at a little white table beneath a leafy trellis, surrounded by geraniums, palms, and a plane tree. It was a splendid lunch, moving from apéritifs to pâté of fresh duck livers and truffles, thick slices of pain brioche, a timbale, tomatoes and a green salad. But the real reason we were there was for the loup de mer en croûte: a Mediterranean sea bass (a large white-fleshed fish with a slightly softer texture than its American cousin) stuffed with herbs and baked in a magnificent brioche crust in the shape of a fish, and served with a sauce suprême. This dish was originally conceived by chef Paul Bocuse, but our luncheon at L’Oasis was the first time I’d ever tried it.

  The moment it came out of the kitchen—enormous, brown, and glistening—we knew this dish was something special. The maître d’hôtel cut around the edges with an expert sawing motion and lifted the crust off, to reveal the whole loup steaming fragrantly. With each helping of fish we received a portion of crust, a big spoonful of the creamy, buttery suprême, and another of fresh tomato nicely flavored with shallots and herbs. The crust was thin and gently crunchy, and the fish was beautifully juicy, tender, and lightly flavored with fennel.

  If you’ve been cooking for a long time, you can usually guess how a dish is made. Simca and I studied every detail of this remarkable loup, and tried to deduce its secrets. The waiter appeared, and I asked him a few questions, which he was only too happy to answer. “It’s delicious,” we agreed, as we polished off our lunch. “And it really shouldn’t be too difficult to make.”

  The next day we tried to produce a reasonable facsimile of loup de mer en croûte in my kitchen. I measured a whole three-pound sea bass and floured a jelly roll pan. Simca scaled, cleaned, and oiled the fish, then stuffed it with a mixture of parsley, lemon, salt, pepper, and fennel. Using scissors, I cut a fish silhouette out of brown paper and withdrew some brioche dough from the fridge. I rapidly rolled the chilled dough into a thin rectangle, placed the silhouette on top of it, and cut the dough along the paper outline to make a fish shape. Then we laid a second, slightly larger piece of dough over the fish, and tucked it under all around. Finally, we fashioned little fins, eyes, eyebrows, and a mouth out of dough scraps and cut half-moon fish scales into the dough with the large end of a metal pastry tube.

  Simca and I debated whether or not to glaze the brioche crust with egg yolk. When Paul suggested we “Submit it to the operational proof!,” we decided to do half with glaze and half without, to test the difference.

  The loup went immediately into the 450-degree oven, and after twenty minutes the crust started to color nicely. We draped a sheet of foil over the top and turned the oven down to 425 degrees. After about forty-five minutes of baking, our fish tasted just as delicious as it had at L’Oasis. The egg glaze, we unanimously agreed, was worth including. (We did not make the sauce suprême, though it’s perfectly easy to do.)

  Simca and I were gleeful and thrilled. What a simple, flavorful, stunning dish to make—just the thing for an informal party for people who care about food. As we sat around discussing how the crust keeps the flesh juicy and full of delicious flavor, we realized that you could wrap all sorts of things in brioche and bake them without their getting soggy. This would require further experimentation!

  PATRICIA WOULD STAY with us for a week, and the plan was for me and Simca to cook several meals together using recipes slated for Volume II, to show her—and the readers of McCall’s—how we collaborated. Paul would photograph us while Patricia would observe. For the first of these meals, we invited some of our former U.S. Embassy colleagues for a luncheon that included four kinds of experimental hors d’oeuvres and a new type of cherry soufflé. But as we ate our breakfast that morning, Simca suddenly called over on the interhouse phone to announce that she and Jean had decided to go to Paris to vote in the national election. This meant she would not be available for the cooking, or th
e lunch. In fact, she would not return to Bramafam until after Patricia had returned to the States. Hmm.

  “She’s going where?!” Paul said, his eyes going wide. “That’s crackers! Patricia has come all the way over here to write an important piece about you, and Simca just throws it away as if it didn’t matter. I can’t believe it!”

  It was hard to disagree with my husband, but I knew from long experience that confronting Simca over this matter would only make her swell up with indignation and wounded pride. It would be a scene. That was hardly the image we wanted to present to McCall’s. As far as I was concerned, the most important thing to do was to maintain my good relations with Simca. And the best way to do that was to let her go off to Paris without direct confrontation.

  Paul remained unconvinced: “You’re letting her walk all over you,” he muttered.

  With Simca gone, I knew it wouldn’t be worth cooking the experimental dishes on my own. Not only was the book supposed to be a collaboration, but Simca wouldn’t trust my findings if she hadn’t been here to observe them herself. She’d insist that we cook everything all over again, which would be a waste of time. So I made other things for lunch. The food came out just fine, and I hoped that Patricia hadn’t noticed the deepening furrow in my brow.

  “NO MORE GUESTS!” Paul and I said to each other, slumping into our chairs, once Patricia had left. “We need peace and quiet.” For the next few days, we did little and thought of nothing. But the summer solstice was approaching, and as we imagined the Norwegians getting drunk and lighting fires along the edges of their fjords, we decided to celebrate in our own way. We invited two other couples, both food-and-wine appreciators, to dinner at La Peetch, and I gave myself a couple of days to create a meal mostly from recipes slated for Volume II.

  We started our evening off with iced Clos des Goisses champagne, which Paul served in the big bubbly-glass goblets that we’d bought in Biot, the local glassmaking town. The first course was tomates farcies à la pistouille: tomatoes stuffed with chopped eggplant, fresh tomato pulp, basil, and garlic. A poached egg sat on top, like a queen on her throne. Underneath was a lettuce leaf, and the dish was surrounded by freshly made mayonnaise. With this we served a lovely Chablis, Fourchaume 1964. (Paul had discovered this juice at the Cannes supermarché, of all places, and it was better than any Chablis we’d had before.)

  From there we moved on to un feuilleton de boeuf en croûte, a beef tenderloin in a pastry crust. Inspired by our loup en croûte, this dish was like a beef Wellington, only it substituted the more handsome, delicious, and non-damply dumpling brioche crust for puff pastry. The tenderloin was sliced into about fifteen pieces and sauced with a heavenly mixture of duxelle of mushrooms, ham, foie gras, shallots, and Madeira; then the whole was wrapped in brioche and baked. Each slice was served with a bit of crust and stuffing, and a spooning of sauce. An important dish, our boeuf was served with the non-distracting pommes Anna fromagées and pointes d’asperges sautées à la chinoise. This was accompanied by a magnum of velvety Château Haut-Brion, Premier Grand Cru Classé, 1964.

  For dessert we had a so-called pouding pélerin, made of ground toasted almonds, kirsch, and apricots with crème anglaise in a mold lined with lady fingers toasted in butter and sugar, the whole covered by a sauce purée aux fraises et framboises. (The dessert’s name refers to the pèlerins, the old pilgrims who stuffed their pockets with nonperishables like dried apricots and almonds.) Our pouding was accompanied by the nectarlike Château d’Yquem 1962. And we finished with cigars from Havana, brandy, liqueurs, and coffee. Three of the ladies shared cigars, and everyone’s faces were aglow. At about 1:30 a.m., the party broke up. What a splendid evening.

  Paul was extremely pleased with the 191 photos he’d taken of me and Simca for McCall’s—at work in our kitchen; shopping in the markets of Grasse and Saint-Paul-de-Vence; eating lunch on a restaurant terrace in Plascassier that overlooks a stunning view of rolling valleys and mountains, with the sea shimmering in the distance. And as far as we knew, Patricia was going to write a marvelous word portrait of us working in sisterly harmony on Volume II.

  But in private I had reached a pitch of frustration bordering on despair: Simca simply would not listen to anything I had to say. More than ever, she ignored my infinitely careful measurements, challenged my hard-won findings, and continued to force me to spend hours on recipes she claimed to have tried, only to find that they didn’t work at all. It was a sad moment when I realized that collaborating with her actually took longer and caused me more anxiety than working by myself. This perplexed and depressed me. And, for the first time ever, I was looking forward to leaving La Peetch and returning to the U.S.A.

  IN JULY 1969, Judith Jones made her way through a driving rain to 103 Irving Street, where she and I huddled over the manuscript for Volume II. Simca and I had been working on the book for three years, and had written only three of our eleven chapters. Knopf was determined to publish Volume II in the fall of 1970, and so Judith had set a hard and firm deadline of March 15, 1970. That seemed like the day after tomorrow. Could we make it?

  Working with my editor, Judith Jones

  France beckoned, but we had no time for travel now. We yearned to join Charlie and Freddie in Maine, but it simply wasn’t possible. Clackety-clack! went my typewriter, as I bore down.

  I wrote about all the things a cook can do with crabs. Paul sketched crab parts. And we ate heaps of splendid crab bisque. Then we moved on to eggplant, and after some intensive research I wondered if our skin might be taking on a purplish hue from all the eggplants we consumed. In December, Paul and I sat side-by-side at the long Norwegian table in our kitchen, and sorted through hundreds of envelopes and manila folders filled with Sidonie Coryn’s illustrations. There were rough sketches, photocopies of ideas, and finished drawings. We tried to work out the proper flow of visual ideas and to make sure each drawing told the story it should. But Sidonie was not a cook, and apparently had not read the manuscript; she had keyed many of her drawings to the photos instead of to the text. “I feel for her as the illustrator,” Paul said. “We’re asking for an awful lot.” He made corrections on tracing paper to show her how the drawings should look. As for himself, Paul had done ten lobster drawings, a handful of crabs, and was sharpening his pen nibs in preparation for saddle of lamb, a half-boned chicken, a number of beef diagrams, and a step-by-step depiction of how to carve a suckling pig in the French manner.

  The book plodded on, and the solitary nature of writing wore on me. “I am closeted with this tiresome Vol. II,” I wrote Simca. “This is the last book I shall have anything to do with, I think—too damned much work and no let-up at all.”

  Judith Jones returned to Cambridge for another editorial check-up in early January 1970. She was wonderfully supportive. About five feet three inches tall, with shoulder-length blond hair, and lively eyes in an expressive face, Judith felt natural to me to work with. She was kind, perceptive, a bit shy, but thoroughly professional, and tough when she needed to be. She had excellent instincts, and had a sure sense of who, what, and where she was. Paul said Judith reminded him of a beautiful Irish fairy queen. Over three long days, she and I made all sorts of important decisions about the book, from the minutiae of font size to the major decision to reduce our planned eleven chapters to seven.

  Simca and I began to fret. We learned that a counterfeit version of Mastering was being sold in Taiwan for $1.50, and worried about all the snatch grabbing that goes on in the cookbook world. Would someone try to steal our major discovery—how to make real French bread in the home kitchen? There was really nothing we could do to prevent it. And then there were a few recipes we had written five years earlier: we had changed our methods since then, and wanted to rewrite vast sections of the book. Too bad!

  “I need at least five years more to get this book right,” I wailed, but Judith just smiled and held firm to her deadline. There would be no more additions—no more photographs by Paul, no more drawings by Sidonie Coryn, n
o more recipes from Simca.

  When Simca once again began to complain about things at the very last minute, I wrote her: “Alas, this book may not be as perfect as you might wish, ma chérie, but it will be finished.”

  With two days left, I was still testing in the kitchen, taking notes, and clickety-clacking corrections on my typewriter. I was so busy there wasn’t even time to pee!

  Then it was March 15, 1970, and I forced myself to hand in the more or less completed manuscript. Ouf!

  CHAPTER 8

  The French Chef in France

  I. DOCUMENTARIES

  IN 1970, we set out to create our most ambitious French Chef series yet. With a bigger budget than ever before (thanks to the happy fact that both Polaroid and Hills Brothers Coffee had signed on to sponsor our show), we were going to shoot thirty-nine new programs, which, for the first time, would all be in color. Since we were doing things differently this time around, I thought it might be fun to record how French food is actually made and sold in France—to show the traditional butchers, olive-oileries, confectioners, triperies, and wine shops that had been my original inspiration. For this, we’d shoot a series of mini-documentaries on thirty-five millimeter film, which we’d later splice into our regular TV programs. So, when I did a show on, say, “How to Bake French Bread,” we could insert a sequence showing how a real French boulanger made real baguettes in a real baker’s oven in Paris.

  Although I never mentioned this blatantly, I was convinced that our footage would prove to be an important historical document. Mechanization was taking over the food business, even in France, and it seemed clear to me that many of the artisanal skills we were going to record—the making of glacéed fruits, the hand-cutting of meat, the decorative skills of traditional pâtissiers—would disappear within a generation or two. Of course, film itself can fade or break. But if our little documentaries survived, they might be one of the few records showing how food was once made almost entirely by human hands rather than by machines.