Paris in Love (19 page)

Today it hailed. The sky was actually the color of pearl, and when hail struck the roofs opposite my study, it bounced quite visibly. At the very top, the hail bounced from the ornate metal ridge that runs down the gable and formed little arches in the air, as if tiny fountains bloomed on the roofs.

This evening we ate at a sidewalk bistro. As twilight drew in, our waiter turned on a heat lamp. Across the street, a man played melancholy sax, leaning against the iron railings of the church. Winter is coming to Paris.

T
he American media warn us at every turn that Christmas is a time of overindulgence. Women’s magazines bulge with articles about how to avoid the buffet table, not to mention an extra ten pounds. But to be honest, that siren song of temptation has never bothered me much. English Department holiday parties tend to offer a dispiriting selection of cheap wine accompanied by three kinds of hummus. And I shed surplus calories by wrestling a five-foot tree into submission, grading my Shakespeare students’ final papers, and fighting the lines to mail late presents.

My immunity was strengthened by my postcancer mood. Our kitchen used to be stacked with cookbooks and crockery, until I decided that it should be an ascetic feng shui retreat in which I would cook meals full of antioxidants. In one pot, because I gave all the rest away.

And then came December in Paris. Overnight our neighborhood covered market, Marché Saint-Quentin, was transformed into the movie set for a Dickens musical, complete with garlands and strings of lights. Our favorite
fromagerie
put out boxes of
tiny quail eggs and three hitherto unfamiliar kinds of chèvre, produced only for the Christmas season. I was staggered by a mound of fresh mushrooms, big and ruffled like hats for elderly churchgoing fairies. It was only when the
marchand de fruits
asked me if I was quite sure I wanted that many that I realized this particular fungus cost the same as our rent.

Paris is always a materialist’s playground, but December is in a class by itself. One day I wandered into the gourmet department of Galeries Lafayette to find that it had sprouted tables piled high with decorative flourishes for holiday baking: jars of edible gold leaf, silver stars, candied violets. The display was designed to tempt the unwary shopper not to gluttony per se—but rather to the pure beauty of food, to the ways it can be decorated and dusted and presented, turned into something that can take your breath away. I instantly succumbed to a wild desire for Staub mini-cocottes, enameled in a shiny burnt crimson. I bought eight of them, kissing the dream of an austere kitchen goodbye. Surely antioxidants taste better in cocottes.

But I didn’t stop with cocottes. I bought a hand mixer that resembled nothing so much as a rather dangerous vibrator, rose-tinted Himalayan salt, and lavender-infused mustard in a moody violet color. It seems that Parisian ladies eschew leek soup in December, and spend their time crafting elaborate meals from ingredients few Americans have heard of. In short, I fell prey to the French version of holiday indulgence.

I made it home with aching arms, no gifts, and—more crucially—no bread. I was confronted with a grumpy Alessandro, who squinted at the Himalayan salt and demanded to know how I could possibly have forgotten to buy a baguette. By the time I came back from the
boulangerie
, Anna was chasing her brother through the apartment with my vibrating mixer. I ignored them
and baked a chicken slathered in violet mustard. Honesty compels me to admit that the chicken was not a success. The children regarded it with the kind of expression with which a Californian greets a furry toilet seat cover. French children probably greet purple chicken with squeals of delight rather than demands that their parents hit the street for KFC.

Still, I began going to bed thinking about food. The remnants of a leg of lamb smeared with anchovies and butter could turn to a smoky broth, which then became fennel soup with spicy sausage (a recipe borrowed from Gordon Ramsay). I made the soup in a big pot. Then I put a few crispy sausage rounds in each cocotte, poured in some soup, and dripped spirals of spicy oil over the top. This felt a little like cheating: was I supposed to use my cocottes only to serve food baked therein? I felt sure that the Parisian answer would be a resounding yes. But then I remembered that when my parents were newly married and very poor, my mother served a group of unwary poets a silky meat pâté—made from cat food. My crimes pale in comparison.

I moved dreamily from one meal to the next. I used the cocottes to bake little chocolate cakes for a dinner party, mixing the very best chocolate—Michel Cluizel’s—with splashes of Grand Marnier and a whole carton of eggs. Under the giddy influence of a Parisian December, I gave each cake a generous dab of crème fraîche and topped it with a translucent star made from pure spun sugar. The cakes looked gorgeous, but after my guests ate them up, their faces turned a bit green. Later I realized that the recipe promised a cake for ten, which I had poured into six pans.

Crème fraîche began entering the apartment in buckets, disappearing down the gullets of my family, my friends, and myself. In New Jersey, the children used to have pizza every Friday night
and clamor to go to the Peppercorn diner for grilled American cheese on white bread. In Paris, they learned to smile at fennel soup and lick the spoon when they were finished.

Ascetism was relegated to the closet (unfortunately, so were my “thin” jeans). I finally discovered the allure of indulgence—along with a newfound appreciation for the luxury of time, born of being on sabbatical, free from committees, office hours, and classrooms full of students nervously waiting to be tested on
Hamlet
. I learned to think about food as being beautiful rather than just fattening or nourishing, as we Americans are too prone to doing. Throwing a cold pizza in the oven is easy; eating prepackaged sushi from the grocery store is even easier. Popcorn for supper so that one can work straight through the meal? Why not?

I am making only one New Year’s resolution this year. I’m ignoring the obvious: my overly tight clothing. Instead I will take my Parisian Christmas with me back to New York City in the fall. My cocottes will remind me that food is meant to be served to others, to be beautiful, to be original (even violet-colored), to be dreamed over. They will remind me that indulgence is not a virtue we should keep for the holiday season alone, and that saving time—when it comes to food—is more sinful than virtuous.

My Parisian December went a long way to mending a crack in my heart caused by the words “the biopsy was positive.” To eat as the French do is to celebrate life, even to indulge in it.

Galeries Lafayette has put up its Christmas lights! The huge building has been transformed to a glowing set of rose windows that hark back to eighteenth-century Russia, or Versailles: a time when the display of beauty, its gleam and luxury, was of paramount importance. Of course, Alessandro pointed out that these windows beckon not to worship but to shop.

My favorite Galeries Lafayette holiday window is set with an exquisite dinner party scene: crystal chandeliers, fabulous dishes, tiaras scattered between the plates, wine glasses draped in pearls—all of it being enjoyed by assorted marionette bears. One has a wineglass in each paw and a tiara tipped over one ear. He raises the glasses drunkenly, toasting all the children outside the window.

The streets are suddenly filled with men selling chestnuts, roasted over oil barrels. Alessandro and I bought some, wrapped in twists of newspaper. They split open from the heat, showing sweet yellow insides. We walked along slowly, nursing the warm packages in our hands, eating smoky, slightly charred nuts.

Due to my disinclination to chop off chicken heads, my butcher whacks them off for me, but he leaves the knees: black and red, hardscrabble knees for running hard. Parisian chickens are
much more chickenlike than Mr. Perdue’s; furthermore, eggs come ornamented with tiny feathers. My children shriek: “Butt feathers!” Having grown up on a farm, I like remembering the sultry warmth of newly laid eggs.