Lunch in Paris (10 page)
O
VER THE NEXT
few weeks I became a regular customer at the market, walking with my head held high and throwing my melon rind on the ground.
The fish man was expecting me. I picked out my own mackerel, two the same size, slick but not slimy, wiping my hand on the
apron wrapped around the pole. There was a flicker of recognition in his eyes as I handed over my three or four coins.
“
Vous avez un copain?
” You have a boyfriend? he said, holding on to one end of my blue plastic bag.
“
Oui,
” I answered with a half smile.
“Does your boyfriend work on Mondays? Because me,
non
.”
I looked my mackerel straight in the eye.
One slippery little bugger at a time.
Maquereaux au Vin Blanc
Mackerel is perfect for a weekday, because it doesn’t really improve with fancy treatment.
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
5 black peppercorns (or a good grinding of mixed peppercorns)
A few sprigs of parsley
2 whole mackerel, 6 ounces each, gutted and rinsed
Dry white wine (approximately
cup)
Coarse sea salt
Preheat your broiler.
In a shallow roasting pan, place the onions, peppercorns, and parsley. Top with the fish, add white wine until you’ve got
about a ¼ inch in the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle generously with sea salt.
Cook under the broiler for 5 minutes. Gently turn the fish and continue to cook for an additional 5 minutes. If your fish
are slightly larger, give them an extra minute or two.
Serve topped with the onions and a few spoonfuls of sauce.
Yield: Serves 2
A word about whole fish: By and large, Americans are not used to fish that stare back. Whole fish are sometimes hard to find
in supermarkets. I encourage you to go a bit out of your way. If you don’t have a fish market or fishmonger nearby, look for
an Asian supermarket, which will often stock many varieties, sometimes still swimming in their tanks.
Cooking whole fish has many advantages. They are not as fragile as fillets; the skin protects the flesh from drying out and
makes methods like broiling a real option. They look spectacular on the plate; suddenly you feel as if you are eating something
luxurious as well as virtuous. Check whole fish the same way you would a fillet; if the flesh is opaque and flaky down to
the bone, it’s done.
Purée de Céleri
Behold, your new favorite mashed potatoes. Though celery root may look like Frankenstein’s brain, it is among my most smug
Paris discoveries. With a light celery scent and a turnip texture, this mash satisfies both the French passion for smooth
buttery taste and the American vigilance about carbs.
2 pounds (4 medium) potatoes, scrubbed and chopped into 1-inch cubes
2½–3 pounds celery root (1 large or two small), peeled and chopped into 1-inch cubes
2–3 tablespoons butter
Salt and pepper to taste
Fill a stockpot with cold, lightly salted water. Add the potatoes and bring to a boil. Add the celery root and continue to
boil until both are tender, 20 to 30 minutes. Drain well.
Return the celery root and potatoes to the pot, and over a very low flame, mash the two together. (The heat will help evaporate
any water left in the celery root.) Aim for a chunky consistency. This is a rustic purée, so there’s no need to get obsessive-compulsive
about the lumps. Add butter, salt, and pepper to taste. Serve at once or put in a gratin dish, dot with additional butter,
and pass for a minute or two under the broiler.
Yield: Serves 6
Variation: Mix in chopped dill or chervil, or a handful of freshly grated Parmesan or Gruyère just before serving.
Gâteau au Yaourt
If I’m going to make dessert on a weekday, it has to do double duty—-something comforting before bed with enough left over
for breakfast or tea the next day. Yogurt cake fits the bill perfectly; it’s tender, moist, and not too sweet. This is the
first cake Gwendal learned to bake. French children use the empty yogurt pot to measure the rest of the ingredients. The version
I’ve found best adapted to the American kitchen comes from blogger turned cookbook author
extraordinaire
Clotilde Dusoulier. For more of her wonderful recipes, check out
Chocolate & Zucchini
(Broadway Books, 2007).
1 cup plain yogurt (whole milk, please!)
1 cup sugar
A large pinch of sea salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1cups flour
1½ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
Zest of 1 lemon
One 16-ounce can apricots, drained and quartered
Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Lightly oil a 10-inch round cake pan and line it with parchment paper.
In a medium mixing bowl, combine the yogurt, sugar, salt, and
vanilla, whisking until smooth. Add the oil in a steady stream, whisking to combine. Add the eggs one by one, whisking to
incorporate after each addition.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, and baking soda; add to the yogurt mixture; whisk lightly to combine. Stir in the
lemon zest.
Transfer the batter to your cake pan; top with the chopped apricots. Bake on the center rack of the oven for 45 minutes, until
golden brown and slightly risen. A toothpick in the center should come out clean.
Lift the cake by the parchment paper onto a wire rack to cool. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature. This cake actually
gets moister with age, so it tastes great the next day. Simply cover the fully cooled cake with aluminum foil; an airtight
container or plastic bag will make it soggy.
Yield: Makes one 10-inch cake
Seasonal tip: Yogurt cake is like a blank canvas. Feel free to experiment. Instead of the apricots, try fresh raspberries
or chopped pears mixed with a bit of brown sugar. If I’m feeling homesick, I sometimes add a streusel topping as well.
Vocabulary Lessons
I
am trying to improve my French. It is unnerving to live in an apartment full of things I can’t identify. Familiar objects
have become exotic strangers. As I do the dishes, or make the bed, or put away the shopping from the market, I try to give
myself little vocabulary tests:
casserole
(pot),
évier
(sink),
poussière
(dust). “Pillow” is killing me. The word in French is
oreiller
(or-RE-ay)—but I can’t keep hold of it. It doesn’t look like a pillow, doesn’t sound like a pillow, and it certainly doesn’t
bring anything pillowy to mind. The rolled “r” sticks at the back of my throat, to say nothing of all those silent vowels
waiting like wallflowers for me to ask them to dance. How hard would it be, I wonder, to sleep without one?
The radio has become my new best friend. I keep it tuned to France Info, a station that repeats the same news report every
fifteen minutes. What I don’t catch the first time, I catch the second, or the third. I make a point of being home between
two and two twenty p.m. for a program called
2000 ans d’histoire
. Every day the show explores a different subject—a two-thousand-year history of the pyramids or a two-thousand-year history
of the sandwich.
Inevitably, someone has written a book on the subject. The interview is cut with songs and clips from old movies. Charlton
Heston has an even sexier voice dubbed in French.
For the purposes of speaking to actual people, Gwendal and I have divided things roughly into two categories, “Chez la Marquise”
and “Pas Chez la Marquise.”
“Chez la Marquise” are the polite things, the things you could say if you were invited to lunch with the Queen of England:
Je vous en prie
(No sir, after
you
).
Tout le plaisir est pour moi
(The pleasure’s all mine).
“Pas Chez la Marquise” is what Gwendal says when he drops a raw egg on the carpet or stubs his toe:
Putaindebordeldemerde
(@#%$#$!!).
I try out my phrases, haltingly, in the neighborhood. I wave to the Italian man in the window of the pizzeria, mouthing
bonjour
through the window. I put exact change into the hand of my dry cleaner with a flourish and a
Voilà!
On the rue Saint-Maur, there is a fruit and vegetable stand run by a lovely man from Senegal. He has a cousin in New York
(doesn’t everyone?). I go almost every day to buy fresh mint, a cardboard basket of raspberries, or a slice of
halva,
the sweet sesame seed paste that he sells by the kilo. “
Bonjour, je prends des framboises, s’il vous plaît.
” Really, I go just to say hello. I don’t even know his name, but for better or worse, he is my first friend in Paris. The
only person other than Gwendal and my mother who knows if I’m alive from one day to the next.
While I am trying to piece together a vocabulary that will allow me to buy raspberries without sounding like a mentally challenged
walrus, Gwendal is expanding his range in English. Although he is used to giving straitlaced scientific papers at international
conferences, his colloquial English is a mix of spaghetti Westerns, Fred Astaire, and early Beatles lyrics.
One evening, while I was making dinner, Gwendal decided to scrub down the bathroom. He emerged with a bottle of Ajax in one
hand and a sponge in the other. “That was
some
dirty bathroom,” he said, leaning against the door like John Wayne surveying the landscape from the porch of a saloon.
It’s like living with a toddler; I have to censor myself. I never noticed the bizarre way I spoke English until I had someone
mimicking me like a parrot. My vocabulary is a disorganized closet full of fifties slang and phrases plucked from my favorite
nineteenth-century novels. Why be funny when you can be “deeply amusing” instead?