On Rue Tatin (23 page)

Another Parisian adventure, certain to make Joe hate the city even more. But we’ll counter it soon with a visit to the Science Center at La Villette—a favorite spot—or some other event that will redeem the City of Light in the eyes of a young boy.

RUSTIC APRICOT SORBET
SORBET RUSTIQUE AUX ABRICOTS

When apricots are in season at the market the air is filled with their honeyed scent. We love to eat them fresh and in tarts and compotes, but I think our favorite way to eat them is like this—frozen with a hint of sugar and lemon juice. I often make an apricot tart and serve this apricot sorbet alongside.

NOTE
: Chilling the poached and puréed apricots before freezing them makes for a better-textured sorbet.

1 cup/250ml bottled water

1/2 cup/100g sugar

1 pound/500g apricots, pitted

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

1. Place 1 cup/250ml bottled water and the sugar in a small saucepan over medium-high heat and bring to a boil, stirring all the while. When the sugar has dissolved, add the apricots, return to the boil, and reduce the heat so the liquid is simmering gently. Simmer the apricots just until they begin to turn tender, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and cool completely.

2. Purée the apricots and their poaching liquid in a
food processor until smooth and slightly foamy. Strain the mixture if you like, through a fine-mesh sieve, to remove any bits of skin. (This isn’t necessary, but it does produce a finer, more sophisticated sorbet.) Chill the mixture in an airtight container in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour and up to
24 hours.

3. Just before freezing, whisk in the lemon juice. Transfer to an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

ABOUT
6
SERVINGS

PEAR SORBET
SORBET AUX POIRES

Just this year a young grower has begun coming to the Saturday market with crates of pears and apples. While his apples are big, reddish to green, and beautiful, his pears are exquisite. He grows Comice, Louise Bonne, Beurré Hardy, William, and several other old-fashioned varieties, each with its distinct color, flavor, and texture. I have never tasted pears with such sweetness and perfume.

He handles the pears like eggs, placing each gently on the scale then in a bag so he is sure not to bruise them. Since his arrival at our market, pears have become a regular part of our diet. We eat them fresh for snacks and dessert and I’ve prepared them cooked just about every way I can think of.

I made this sorbet early on in pear season with Williams, which are fine and delicate with just the slightest tartness for balance. I recommend making it with any aromatic variety.

11/2 pounds/750g ripe pears, peeled and cored

5 tablespoons/65g sugar

2 tablespoons/30ml freshly squeezed lemon juice

1 egg white

1. Purée the pears in a food processor until smooth. Add the sugar and lemon juice, process until combined, then add the egg white and process just until incorporated and the mixture becomes just the slightest bit foamy—this will take less than 1 minute.

2. Chill the mixture for at least 2 hours. Transfer to an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

4
TO
6
SERVINGS

FIFTEEN
               

Early Morning
Swim

THE WEATHER in Normandy usually begins to turn fragrant and clear in May. Then, we get warm days with cool mornings, brilliant sun that outlines everything with a distinct clarity. Everything about May is magic after the gray months of February and March, and the tumultuously unpredictable wet month of April.

Edith and I start waiting for these fine days at the end of April, like a beggar waiting for a coin. I in Louviers and she in Le Vaudreuil watch the sky, check the forecasts (she looks in the paper, I talk to a local farmer—the most accurate weather source I know). Finally we remind our families that once again, it’s time for us to go swimming.

Going swimming in and of itself doesn’t require permission, of course. It’s the hour we choose to do it that means everyone must be forewarned. Once we’ve deemed the weather fine enough we meet three mornings a week at 6:45
A
.
M
. to get on bicycles, ride through the villages of Le Vaudreuil, Val de Reuil, and Léry, until we get to the manmade lake called Lac des Deux Amants, Two Lovers’ Lake. There we rest our bicycles against a willow tree and ease ourselves into the water. Fine weather is relative. For our needs it must not be raining, and the temperature must promise to reach into the high sixties during the day, so that it warms up the water just slightly.

I savor every moment of our early morning adventure, beginning with waking in the morning in our large bedroom whose walls we painted with such surprising success. Lying there warm and cozy under the down comforter, it is almost unthinkable to get up and dress and go out, yet there is a deliciousness to it, too. I tiptoe into my swimming suit and clothes then slip out of the house with my towel under my arm. Still half asleep, I fumble for my car keys and get in the car to drive through the empty streets to Edith’s. The only people about at that hour in our town and her village are early morning workers. Even the bakeries aren’t open yet, though the air is filled with the aroma of fresh bread.

Edith and I look at each other and shake our heads, agreeing that we are a little nuts to have left our respective beds. Then we get on the bicycles and head out for our ride, which is almost completely flat until right before we get to the lake when it rises and falls a bit. It is hardly a physical challenge, however, but instead pleasant exercise.

In May we still start out in the dusk of early morning, when the sky usually looks like the mottled skin of a purple eggplant. The bicycle ride takes about 20 minutes, so by the time we get to the lake the sky is almost all pale blue with traces of night sky still on the horizon. The vast lake is the central feature of the Base de Loisirs de Léry-Poses, a recreation area that includes picnic sites, mini-golf, a small animal farm, and a running and bicycling path. Beyond the lake on the horizon are lush green foothills punctuated by white clay cliffs, like the cliffs of Dover. The train to Paris runs by one side of the lake but other than that it is a haven of calm. When the weather is good it is, as the French say,
noir de monde
, so popular that it is black with people.

Save for a lone fisherman or two we’re the only ones at the lake early in the morning. Often, there’s a heavy mist shrouding the shrubs and trees and hovering over the water, which makes me feel like the Lady of the Lake risking all to walk in. We know there are no man-eating beasts in this lake that was once a quarry and is deep and cold, though Edith is continually coming up with stories about huge big-toothed fish, infestations of various noxious weeds, unusual algae blooms, all calculated to send a
frisson
up my spine. She knows I have an intense intellectual love of water, and a physical fear of its wetness. I am terrified of drowning, I hate feeling underwater plants against my skin, I worry about something pulling me under the water, yet I love to swim.

Once we’ve begun this spring and summer ritual we don’t stop until the coldest days of October (except for the various vacation periods during the summer when one or the other of us is away). Not every morning is warm but we go anyway, unless the rain is falling too hard to see. There’s a challenge in going, and the bike ride serves to warm us up, so even if the air and water are cold, it feels good to get wet.

We often start out in long pants with heavy scarves around our necks and we judge the temperature by the point at which one or the other of us begins to feel warm, pedaling for all we’re worth. Usually, the middle of the village of Léry right before the
boulangerie
, which emits its mouthwatering aromas each morning, is where the blood gets going. That’s about halfway through our trip, so we know that by the time we reach the water we’ll be warm enough to go in.

Still, it’s not always easy, once the bikes are parked, to peel down to the bathing suit and actually put a toe in the lake. The lake bottom is small stones that hurt the feet and it’s a challenge to walk out far enough to dive in. Edith is always the first in the water, tiptoeing her way in as I cautiously follow. On mornings like these I ask myself, and we ask each other, why on earth we’re not home in our cozy beds. Then she dives in. I wait a bit, certain I’ll die of shock if I submerge myself too quickly, then finally jump in, too. It is so cold we shout and scream sometimes, laughing so hard, so hysterically, that if anyone were around they would think us crazy. Twenty strokes later we’ve convinced ourselves the water is warm. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. At the start and toward the end of the season it simply isn’t, but it still feels wonderful. It wakes you up to your toes yet your heart stays warm and beats fast, a reminder of all that is good and wonderful in life.

Often, a brace of ducks swim far out on the lake and their quacks filter through to us. We quack back, acting like kids for the quick twenty minutes we’re in the water, swimming to our goal, which is a huge oak tree that leans out over the water. We reach it, and if there is time we go farther. My schedule is more restricted than Edith’s, so I usually determine what we should do. Some mornings, those that herald a hot day, we both wish we could just unfold easel and writing tablet and stay at the lake all day.

The goal of being home, cleaned, and dressed by 8
A
.
M
., so that I can walk Joe to school governs the morning, however. I walk gingerly out of the water, bruising my feet on the stones. “I must talk to Bernard about these stones,” Edith says each morning. “He should put sand in here, just for us.” Bernard is the genius behind the development of this manmade lake, and he keeps a close eye on it, helping supervise the crews that maintain it. We don’t really expect him to order sand for the lake bottom, though it would make our morning swims that much nicer.

Back on our bicycles, refreshed and invigorated, we speed home through the villages, waving at acquaintances on the way as they make their morning trip to the
boulangerie
, or head off to work in their cars, all dressed up. We imagine their lives, smugly thanking our lucky stars that we each work at home (Edith painting her canvases and me writing and cooking) so that we can be out at 7:30 in the morning bicycling instead of driving off to work.

When I return home after a swim, Michael and Joe are usually just finishing breakfast. I race upstairs, my skin still cool from the water even on the hottest of days, and change into my working clothes—usually a skirt, blouse, and sandals. A quick cup of tea and it’s time to walk Joe to school. Everything seems brighter, clearer, more effervescent on swim mornings. Joe and I laugh as we walk along, and I return home after seeing him line up at the ring of the bell, hungry to start my day.

Sometimes Edith and I go swimming on a Wednesday, which is not a school day for Joe. Since he sleeps in on those mornings, I can take more time. We swim longer, and we often vary our route home to stop at our friend Michel’s bakery, for a freshly baked
baguette de campagne
, a long sourdough loaf made with part whole wheat flour, which is still warm when we arrive there. We take it to Edith’s, where I make the coffee and she assembles breakfast—butter, jam, and big bowls to sip our coffee from. We set ourselves up in her huge back garden under the apple trees. Her children are still asleep, the dog, César, is jumping to catch the fresh, warm figs that hang heavy on the tree in the corner of the garden, the few chickens Edith keeps are mercifully quiet. It’s heaven. We always “remake the world” as the French call discussing and solving the current issues of the day. By 9
A
.
M
. a pleasant drowsiness begins to take hold of both of us.

Tempted to stretch out on one of the
chaises longues
in the garden, I instead kiss Edith good-bye and head for home. These mornings are delicious but not geared for efficiency as once I’ve slowed down it’s hard to pick up the pace again. But that doesn’t really matter, since Wednesday is our weekend.

When I began swimming, Michael looked askance at this early morning ritual. He didn’t quite understand why I would give up an hour or more of precious sleep to go swimming in a freezing lake.

But one morning last summer when Joe was staying with friends of ours in Burgundy for a week and the two of us were alone in the house, I convinced Michael to go to the lake with me. Instead of driving to Edith’s as I do, to save time, we bicycled the entire way—about a half hour trip—met her, then continued on to the lake and plunged in. The water was relatively warm—if it hadn’t been, Michael would never have gone. An early morning mist hung over it, and the ducks were out and quacking. By the time we had done half our swim the mist had evaporated and the sun was out. The three of us were alone in the lake. It was pure, peaceful heaven.

I looked at Michael. He was swimming and diving like a loon. “This is fabulous,” he exhaled, water dripping from his head. He swam off, way out into the center of the lake, while Edith and I did our usual route. We stayed for an hour, swimming, talking, enjoying the peace and solitude.

Then we got on our bicycles and rode by Michel’s to pick up a
baguette
. He and his wife, Chantal, think we’re crazy and when they saw Michael with us they just shook their heads and laughed, “You too?”

We went to Edith’s and prepared our usual breakfast, taking it out under the apple trees. It was bliss, and we lingered until mid-morning, dunking lengths of
baguette
slathered with butter and jam into our bowls of coffee. Finally, Michael and I roused ourselves to get home, so we could get some work done. On arriving at the house Michael parked his bicycle and came in, ruffling his hair.

“That was fantastic,” he said. “I’m not saying I’d do it every day, but I get it now.”

RED PEPPER AND TOMATO SALAD
SALADE DE POIVRONS AUX TOMATES

This salad comes from the mother of a friend of ours, Michel Amsalem, a baker and pastry chef who is a French Algerian Jew. She came to France in the sixties when many French Algerians were repatriated, bringing with her family recipes for food that is colorful and savory. I had heard about her cooking long before I tasted it, particularly this salad, which Michel says he eats by the bowlful. It is traditionally served as an accompaniment to couscous, though I’ve found lots of other ways to serve it. One of my preferences is to warm it with slivers of air-cured ham and delicious black olives from Nyons, though I also like to simmer eggs in it, serve it simply with slices of fresh, crusty bread, or alongside roast chicken or lamb, where it lends a bright, flavorful counterpoint.

21/2 pounds/1kg 125g red bell pepper, grilled

1/3 cup/75ml extra-virgin olive oil

1 large garlic clove, green germ removed, minced

1 pound/500g fresh tomatoes, peeled, cored, half the seeds removed, and diced

Fine sea salt, optional

1. Remove every speck of skin from the grilled bell peppers without rinsing them, because you don’t want to rinse away any flavorful juices. Remove the core and white pith inside and scrape away all the seeds, then slice the flesh into strips that are about 1/4 inch/.7cm wide. Reserve.

2. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil and the garlic together in a medium-size skillet over medium heat. When the garlic is sizzling add the tomatoes, stir, and cook them until they have given up almost all of their liquid. They will still be a bit chunky, which is fine. Remove the tomatoes from the heat and stir in the peppers and the remaining oil. You may season the salad lightly with salt if you like, though it really doesn’t need it. Let cool to room temperature and serve.

4
TO
6
SIDE-DISH SERVINGS

Grilling Peppers

To grill a pepper, place it on a gas burner with the flame turned up high, and turn it frequently until its skin is black and blistered all over. Transfer it to a paper bag and close it, or to a tea towel and wrap it up, and let it cool to room temperature. Slide off the skin and remove the stem and the seeds from the interior.

Alternatively, place the pepper under the broiler—about
1 inch from the heat—and turn it frequently until the skin blackens.

MICHE’S APRICOT JAM
LA CONFITURE D’ABRICOTS DE MICHE

I thought I already had the best recipe for apricot jam until I tasted Miche’s. Miche is Edith’s aunt and she lives about five minutes away from us in Louviers. In her eighties, she is the voluntary grandmother to all of Edith’s children and nieces and nephews, which numbered twenty-eight at last count, and in summer she buys kilos of apricots to make this jam for them. This is a favorite for spreading on buttered bread after one of our early morning swims.

Miche is categoric—she makes the jam in small batches, uses as little sugar as possible, and cooks fruit for as short a time as she can get away with. She also refuses to put apricot pits in her jam—a typical French custom—for in her mind, anything that interferes with the pure, fresh apricot flavor is blasphemy. She’s right; her apricot jam is out of this world.