Lunch in Paris (8 page)
Gwendal’s grandmother Simone grew up in Morocco, and although she’s been back in France for almost fifty years, her recipes
(and her reminiscences) often nod toward warmer climes. This recipe uses couscous, a North African staple, instead of bulgur;
it has a lighter consistency and a sweeter finish. Trust me on the grapefruit juice—it wakes up the whole dish.
2 cups medium couscous
2 cups flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fresh mint, finely chopped
4 tomatoes, seeded and chopped
1 cucumber, seeded and chopped
½ cup golden raisins
¾ cup oil olive
cup freshly squeezed pink grapefruit juice (approximately 1½ grapefruits)
cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (approximately 1½ lemons)
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
½ teaspoon ground cumin
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
Juice of ½ grapefruit, to squeeze in just before serving (optional)
Put the couscous in a large bowl and add 1 cup boiling water. Stir and let couscous rise while you chop the herbs and vegetables.
In a small bowl, cover the raisins with boiling water, let stand.
Whisk together the olive oil, grapefruit and lemon juice, and salt.
When the couscous has cooled a bit, fluff it with a fork and then sift with your hands to separate the individual grains.
Add the herbs, tomatoes, cucumber, raisins, and dressing, and toss to combine. Season with the cumin and black pepper and
give it a final stir. This dish is best left in the fridge for a few hours before serving, so the flavors have a chance to
settle.
I like a bit of extra acidity in my summer salads, so I usually squeeze in the juice of half a grapefruit just before serving.
Yield: Serves 6–8
Cabillaud Poché aux Poireaux et Mayonnaise Maison
This is the dish that made a convert out of me. The fish couldn’t be simpler; the leeks have just enough mellow sweetness.
Add a dollop of silky mayonnaise to the side of your plate, and grab a tiny bit with each forkful.
1 bouquet garni, a mixture of fresh herbs (parsley, coriander, bay leaf, thyme, dill) still on the stem, tied with kitchen string
or left loose
A few black peppercorns
Coarse sea salt
3 pounds boneless cod fillet, at least 1-inch thick
Lemon wedges
12 small leeks, the skinnier the better
3 tablespoons olive oil
Coarse sea salt
The key to success is to have everything, from the bowl to the eggs, at room temperature.
1 egg yolk (only the freshest, preferably organic—remember, you’re eating it raw)
Scant ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
½ cup safflower, sunflower, peanut, or mild vegetable oil
For the cod: Partially fill a frying pan large enough to comfortably hold the fish fillets with cold water and add the herbs,
pepper, and enough salt so you can taste it. Bring to a boil.
Turn down the heat, add the fish, and simmer (tiny bubbles will rise to the surface) until the flesh is firm, about 8 minutes
per inch of thickness. Discard the herbs. Remove the fish with a slotted spoon to a serving platter. Serve warm or at room
temperature with lemon wedges.
For the leeks: Trim the hairy roots and cut off the tough dark green leaves (you can use these for stock). You should be left
with a white stalk and just a hint of pale green at the top. Starting a few inches below the top, slice up through the center,
turn the leek ninety degrees and slice again, separate the inner layers with your fingers, and wash thoroughly. The result
will look like an oniony feather duster with a solid handle and some stringy fringe.
Line a large baking sheet with aluminum foil and arrange the leeks in a single layer. Drizzle with olive oil, rubbing it around
to make sure all the leeky fringe is well coated. Cook at 400ºF for 30 minutes, until the leeks are tender when pierced with
a fork. Sprinkle with sea salt. Serve warm or at room temperature, alongside the fish.
Yield: Serves 6
For the mayonnaise: Combine the egg yolk, mustard, and salt in a small mixing bowl. Using an electric eggbeater, beat the
yolk mixture while adding a few drops of oil at a time. When the mixture begins to thicken and set, add a thin but steady
trickle of oil. The mayonnaise will not take more than a minute or two to puff up.
It’s never happened to me, but apparently there are days when the mayonnaise just won’t take. There are old wives’ tales about
not making this while you have your period—or maybe it was just my father-in-law’s theory. It is important to add the oil
drop by drop at the beginning, to make sure the emulsion holds.
Yield: Makes about ½ cup
Pregnant women or anyone with an allergy to raw eggs should be advised.
Salade de Fenouil
The morning after Gwendal’s birthday party, we all went for a walk on the old customs trail, which hugs the cliffs of the
Brittany coast. Gwendal’s dad picked some wild fennel, rubbed the fronds between his fingers, and held them under my nose.
The earthy licorice smell is one of my purest memories of France. Fennel is one of the few vegetables in Paris that is available
year-round, so I serve this with fish in the warmer months and with roasted chicken when the weather turns chilly.
2 medium bulbs fennel
Juice of ½ lemon
Best-quality extra-virgin olive oil, or truffle oil
Coarse sea salt
Fresh dill, chopped, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper
A handful of pomegranate seeds (optional)
Slice the fennel as thinly as possible. Arrange it in a thin layer on a platter, squeeze over half a lemon, and drizzle with
olive oil. Sprinkle with sea salt, dill, and a grinding of black pepper. In the fall, when pomegranates appear at the market,
I add a handful of the ruby red seeds.
Yield: Serves 6
Pixie Dust
W
here the hell is Tinker Bell when you need her?
As anyone who has ever read
Peter Pan
will tell you, little girls can’t fly all by themselves. They need help, they need magic. Up until now, I’ve been fortunate
in that department. It’s not that I can pull a rabbit out of a hat or make a quarter appear from behind my ear, but among
my family and friends I have a certain reputation for making hard things look easy. Some people call it mojo, my grandmother
calls it
beshert.
I’ve heard it described as panache, charm, or just dumb luck. My mother calls it “pixie dust.” I’d always had a healthy supply.
And now it was gone.
Gwendal and I were in New York for Christmas, staying at my auntie Lynn’s apartment in Manhattan. A blizzard had smoothed
the hard edges of the city, blanketing the streets in silent white. In preparation for the storm, we had gone out for supplies:
all the ingredients for pancakes, plus
The Band Wagon
and
All About Eve
. It’s just as well that it was snowing, because after three months apart, sightseeing was just something we did between sex.
Truth be known, if Gwendal hadn’t been there, I probably would have been hiding under the covers anyway.
My five-year plan was at an all-time low. The Internet start-up had collapsed; my master’s thesis was finished but my adviser
had rejected my subject for a PhD. Every job I’d interviewed for in London wanted to know if I had a work visa. I was out
of ideas and very nearly out of money. I’d come back to New York in mid-October to do some consulting for the first museum
I worked for out of college. Back in the fluorescent-lit basement office where I had photocopied as an intern, I felt like
my life was moving in reverse.
The only thing moving forward was us.
Gwendal was definitely on an upswing. He had just defended his PhD and, finally inching away from engineering toward the world
of movies, had found a job at a Paris cinema archive, in charge of the digitization of their collection of films.
We had been
not
talking about me moving to Paris for months. I was having trouble imagining the free fall—no school, no job, no idea how
to pick up my dry cleaning. Nothing but love. It sounded crazy, even to me.
The only thing that seemed more impossible than going to Paris was staying in New York. I saw the smug faces of family and
friends, heard the self-satisfied recitation of twenty years’ worth of “innocent” chatter:
Elizabeth, the flaky one, the pretentious one. Elizabeth with her head in the clouds and her nose in a book. Elizabeth, with
her fancy education and English ball gowns and French lovers
.
Right back where she started. And she still can’t earn a living.
I wanted to cover my ears and stamp my feet like a four-year-old. Clearly, coming back to New York would be a sign of defeat.
They would be vindicated and I would be miserable. I needed a handful of pixie dust. I wanted to throw it in their faces and
run.
High above the city streets, Gwendal was making things sound irritatingly simple.
I know what I want. What do you want?
Next.
True, I had started writing for a few art magazines before I left London, and although the start-up had burst with the Internet
bubble, I still had a nice “online editor” credit on my résumé.
“You can write from anywhere,” he said as I leaned into him.
Here’s good,
I thought.
Right here
. Even as I let the tension ease from my body, I could hear the “but” rising in my throat. What was I trying to tell him?
That I loved him, but he wasn’t part of the plan. That I was creeping toward thirty—all right, creeping toward twenty-eight,
but still—and soon there would be an
accounting
. An invisible tally: all the sour cherry martinis and little black dresses in one column, everything I was supposed to have
accomplished in the other.
As I hid my face in his shoulder, I couldn’t see forward or backward. I couldn’t think about what dream I wasn’t chasing or
who I might be disappointing.
It is amazing how you can make the right decision for all the wrong reasons.
W
HEN THE WOMAN
behind the counter at JFK saw the size of my suitcases, she smiled. “Going on vacation?” she said. “Study abroad?”
“I’m going to live there,” I answered, and her face did this weird, twisty thing around the mouth.
“That’s so
brave,
” she replied as she loaded me up with extra luggage tags—in case I wanted to come home and forgot my real address.
In the departure lounge of the airport, my stepfather, Paul, gave me a hundred dollars in cash. “Just in case,” he said. I
imagined myself running through the forest, slipping under barbed wire, dogs on my tail, forced to bribe the border guards
in order to get a first-class seat on the Eurostar. The money was clearly
meant to buy an emergency supply of Americanness—the financial equivalent of a three-pound sack of Tater Tots.