Lunch in Paris (12 page)
“It’s just like that here. If you want to do something different, if your head sticks up just a little, they cut it off. It’s
been like that since the Revolution. You know the saying,
Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Egalité,
equality, is right in the middle. Everyone has got to be the same.”
Of all the stories Gwendal has told me, before or since, this is the one shocked me the most. Never in my life, not once,
had anyone ever told there was something I couldn’t do, couldn’t be.
By the time he finished talking, I was sitting straight up, ready to pick a fight. I was furious on his behalf. He was so
smart, so focused. He could do anything. Gwendal was still lying on the grass, enjoying the sunshine. He didn’t look bitter
or enraged. That’s just the way it was, and it wasn’t going to keep him from taking an after-lunch siesta.
“What kind of country makes a deliberate policy of squashing the best and brightest in favor of mediocrity?” I said, brow
furrowed and mind racing. “And what kind of guidance counselor is
that,
who tells you you’re going to fail before you even
start!
I was off to the races, my own little monologue. “But you’re doing it,” I said. “You work with films every day now.”
He opened his eyes and looked at me. “When I finished my PhD, I had a thought for this woman and her book. How do you say
it? ‘One down, one to go.’ ”
The sun was fading as we folded our flannel sheet and stowed the glasses in the pocket of the picnic basket.
It occurred to me as we walked down the hill toward home, hands lightly intertwined: if I chose Gwendal in part to confound
expectations, maybe he chose me for the same reason.
Cake Salé aux Lardons et aux Figues
Somewhere between a tea cake and a quiche,
cake salé
is a marvelous invention; it often graces buffet tables at parties. You can vary the filling as you choose—olives, hazelnuts,
feta, bacon, artichokes, and sun-dried tomatoes have all gone into the mix at one point or another. This is one of my favorite
combinations, adapted from
Cakes Salés et Sucrés by
Christian Ecckhout (Editions Aubéron, 2007).
1¼ cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
7 ounces lardons, pancetta, or bacon, cut into ¼-inch cubes
4 eggs
¼ teaspoon fine sea salt or table salt
½ cup olive oil
½ cup whole milk
8 dried figs (the tender, partially rehydrated kind)
2 packed tablespoons chervil, chopped
1 cup grated Comté cheese, lightly packed
Preheat the oven to 325°F.
In a small bowl, sift together flour and baking powder. Line a 9-by-5-inch metal loaf pan with parchment paper (I use a brilliant
red silicone version instead).
In a small frying pan, fry the
lardons
until they have rendered their fat; drain on a paper towel.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs and salt. Add the oil and milk; whisk until light and foamy.
Add the flour mixture to the egg mixture and whisk until just combined. Don’t overwork the batter—a lump or two is fine.
Add the remaining ingredients and stir lightly to combine. Transfer the batter to your loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour, until a
toothpick comes out clean. Cool for a few minutes in the pan, then unmold onto a wire rack and cool completely. Place the
loaf on the picnic blanket (or coffee table) and let your guests cut themselves a slice. Store wrapped in aluminum foil.
Yield: Serves 8–10 as an hors d’oeuvre
Salade de Haricots et de Pommes de Terre au Pastis
Pastis
is a refreshing summer
apéritif,
particularly beloved in the south of France. Here it adds a licorice kick to crunchy beans and creamy potatoes.
2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon pastis or anisette
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
cup extra-virgin olive oil or more, up to ½ cup, to taste
1½ pounds small red potatoes, halved or quartered
¾ pound haricots verts, extra-thin French green beans, blanched
1 small red onion, minced
½ cup flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fresh thyme (if you can’t find fresh, skip it)
½ cup tiny black niçoise olives
Combine the first 7 ingredients for the vinaigrette in a glass jar or other airtight container. Shake vigorously to combine.
You can make the vinaigrette several days in advance.
Place the potatoes in a pot of lightly salted cold water, bring to a boil, and cook them until tender (20 to 30 minutes).
Meanwhile, trim the beans and blanch them in lightly salted water for 3 to 4 minutes. They should remain bright green and
retain their snap. Drain and rinse them under cold water; pat them dry with a paper towel.
Drain the potatoes. While they are still warm, place them in a large bowl with the onion, parsley, thyme, olives, and green
beans. Add the vinaigrette and toss to coat. Leave in the fridge for an hour so that the flavors have a chance to blend. This
salad is best served at room temperature.
Yield: Serves 4–6
Financiers aux Framboises
With a raspberry in the center and crisp golden edges, these little cakes are pretty enough for a
pâtisserie
window. This recipe comes from my Argentinean friend Fernanda, who has the looks of a beauty queen and the sweet tooth of
a five-year-old. She once brought an entire batch of these to a lazy Sunday picnic—they disappeared before sunset.
¾ cup turbinado (raw) sugar
¾ cup plus 2 tablespoons ground almonds
cup flour
10 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
4 egg whites
A pinch of salt
1 egg yolk
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
½ pint raspberries
Preheat the oven to 450°F.
Pulse the sugar in a blender or food processor to obtain a fine powder. (Sometimes I just bash it in the bottom of the bowl
with a potato masher.) Combine with the ground almonds and flour.
Meanwhile, melt the butter over gentle heat; let cool.
Whip the egg whites and salt into what the French call a
mousse,
just till they’re frothy. This takes no time at all, 10 seconds max. You should stop when you have liquid underneath and
bubble bath–like foam on top. Gently fold the egg whites into the dry ingredients.
Fold in the egg yolk and vanilla. Then add the melted butter. Don’t panic; this will look like a flood—just continue to fold
gently and the butter will incorporate itself.
Spoon large, drippy tablespoons of batter into nonstick mini muffin molds; I use flexible silicone ones. Gently place a raspberry
in the center of each
financier
. Don’t push it in too far, or it will sink completely during baking. Bake on the center rack for 10 to 11 minutes, until
the edges are crisp and golden, the insides tender.
Let the
financiers
cool 10 minutes in the pan. Transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.
Yield: Makes 25 mini financiers
Fig Fest
G
wendal was away at tap-dance camp (you heard me) and I was left to my own devices in Paris for Bastille Day. My friend Courtney
had recently moved to London to write a book, and we decided to make a girlie week of it.
I’ve known Courtney since my senior year of college, when we bonded over being stranded back on a snowy hilltop in Ithaca
after spending our junior year abroad in Europe. Smart and bitingly funny, she is also modest to a fault. She was a reporter
for the
Miami Herald
at the tender age of fourteen, and by the time I got around to visiting her in DC a year after graduation, she was a staff
writer for a local news magazine. When we got to her apartment—a perfect storm of books, papers, empty Diet Coke bottles,
and other feminine debris—I noticed a small blue and white package on the bookshelf.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Oh, those are the M&Ms from Air Force One,” she said, not looking up from what she was doing. I still haven’t gotten the
full story.
Courtney arrived on Monday. With Gwendal gone, we could
do all the things you can’t do when boys are around—namely, shop, flirt, and totally pig out.
Actually, the pig-out would have to wait, because our first destination was a party for Paris Fashion Week. If New York fashion
parties were an accurate predictor, we would be drinking heavily, but no one would be eating anything at all. I’d been invited
by Wendy, a PR person I knew back home; the label she represented was hot with the art crowd, and I was thinking of writing
a story. In the three months since I’d moved to Paris, I hadn’t been to a single party. I was eager to get dressed up and
go somewhere,
dying to talk to somebody other than the guy who sold me my zucchini.
When a non–fashion person gets dressed for a fashion party, there’s no sense in straying too far from the obvious—black with
a little cleavage and the highest shoes in the closet. Balanced precariously on one of our two folding chairs, I wrested my
black lizard sandals from the crawl space in the hall, where I had stored nonessentials that I didn’t want to trip over every
morning. I had managed to squeeze two of my mother’s vintage handbags into my luggage allotment. I popped in lipstick and
ID—not for bars, no need here, but Gwendal told me I should carry identification at all times. Unlike England or the United
States, the police in France have the right to randomly stop you on the metro and ask for your paperwork.
The party was on the other side of the river, in a residential district behind the Luxembourg Gardens. This, I’m guessing,
is the Paris equivalent of how-the-other-half-lives. We heaved open a set of cathedral-sized double doors that revealed not
a courtyard but a private
street.
It was like walking onto the closed set of a movie—Paris 1900. Narrow two-story houses lined either side of a cobblestone
lane. Wisteria vines hung from the roofs and small cherry trees littered the ground with white blossoms. Without
a single glass of champagne between us, Courtney and I were already stumbling around like drunkards.
“There must be special lessons in French high school,” muttered Courtney, almost turning her ankle. “On how to walk down a
cobblestone street in stilettos.”
“Yup,” I said, grabbing her arm to steady myself for a graceful entry. “Right after Balzac.”
It was easy to see where we were going. The front garden was lit with candles; there was a table stacked with empty bottles
and someone playing the guitar, very badly. I had a brief thought for the French neighbors, whose families have probably owned
these houses since Napoleon. They must love it when the Americans come to town. It was the designer’s birthday, and I arrived
with an elaborately ribboned box of chocolates from Gérard Mulot, a fancy pastry shop in Saint-Germain.