The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted (47 page)

A Reader’s Guide

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love-sickness,” Robert Frost once wrote. I wanted to explore lovesickness, the kind that’s held so dear because it’s lost; however, I didn’t want to write a novel that felt like an ending. I wanted to write a novel that was about creating a new beginning. That’s why
The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted
is really two love stories told against the backdrop of a house that is famous for its love stories—acts of devotion, miracles of the heart, and cures for brokenness. And because the novel began as a feeling of lovesickness, it was my job to give story to that feeling with language and my own reserve of longing.

One way that I went about this is through the senses—in particular, taste. I wanted to write about food, not solely as food but more as family, culture, history, art, and, perhaps most of all, a measure of vitality. In the novel, Heidi has shut down her senses in order to feel less, to suffer less. When her senses start to return, one of the strongest is her sense of taste. She’s in France, after all, where the sense of taste is exalted.

A quick look at the acknowledgments page reveals how much of this novel was inspired by real-life events. (Let me quickly add that my husband is alive and well.) We spent six weeks in France while I researched this novel—with our kids in tow, one of whom was close to Abbot’s age and another close to Charlotte’s. I saw Paris and then the South of France through their eyes. It was my daughter who coined the phrase “antique graffiti.” It was my son who accidentally ran into the Plexiglas in the crypt of Mary Magdalene. There were the small white snails, the warthogs, and the paper globes lit on Bastille Day, bobbing on sticks as the children paraded through the tiny village of Puyloubier. We were also robbed, followed by a torrential downpour, and, yes, there was an injured swallow.

But what’s essential to the novel is the pivotal role of food—whether the desserts Heidi made with her mother after her mother’s lost summer, or the art of pastries that she can’t bring herself to return to, or the meals offered to her by Veronique.

The creation of a meal can begin as one of Frost’s poems
and as a novel sometimes does—as
a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love-sickness
. And when you turn to a recipe, it’s a desire to re-create—a meal, yes, but also a moment, a feeling.

The family house in Provence, so full of lore in the novel, is one that I built in my imagination because I was so enchanted by the house of Elizabeth Dumon. Elizabeth runs a bed and breakfast at Bastide Richeaume, which sits at the base of Monte Sainte Victoire. And it was there, in Elizabeth’s dining room, that we were served the meal that becomes pivotal for Heidi in the novel.

After we’d been home from France for a while, I wanted to return to that meal. I emailed Elizabeth, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to write down the recipes—the meal exists, I assume, in her head or maybe even as a feeling, something she knows by doing, by heart.

I let it go for a while, convincing myself that it wasn’t possible to return to a moment, a feeling, anyway.

But eventually I got restless again. This time, I tracked down Eric Favier, the owner of Chez Pierre, a very well-known French restaurant in Tallahassee, Florida. I’d met Eric a few times and decided to chum up to him while my husband and I were eating at the Cheese and Chocolate Bar inside of Chez Pierre. This entailed eating a lot of cheese and chocolate, which I did (extremely happily) while I cajoled Eric into sharing a few recipes.

A day after my request, the recipes arrived: a tapenade, a Provençal chicken, and russet potatoes. I also decided to try to make something I picked up at Chez Pierre’s Cheese and
Chocolate Bar—a balsamic reduction to accompany brie and bread.

Eric is a native French speaker. His English is Frenchesque. When I received the recipes, there was still some translation work to be done. A
robot coupe
?
Vers
in a bowl? Eric is also a French chef with thirty years in the kitchen, and had left out important details because he expected us to know these things on a gut level. He measures salt by the palm of his hand. He never explains amounts or degrees. Three hundred fifty? That kind of talk is for amateurs. I had to ask Eric for a lot of clarifications.

As the day on which I planned to cook the meal drew near, I mentioned the project to others with nervous anticipation. I told my favorite pastry chef in town, Linda Richards, who owns The Cake Shop, the bakery on which (with Linda’s blessing) I based Heidi’s shop of the same name. Linda sent in some dessert recipes for me to try.

While picking up my kids, I yammered on about my project with the founder of their school, Betsey Brown. Betsey’s mother, it turns out, had a very simple family recipe from her grandmother—chicken in a cream sauce. It seemed appropriate, in honor of the family lore in
The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted
, to try an easy Provençal recipe with four generations behind it. I added that recipe from her mother, Sara Wilford, to my menu.

I was determined to recapture the atmosphere of our original Provence meal as well. Our house is not equipped with anything close to the Dumon dining room, so I decided
we should eat outside. In moments of cooking downtime, my kids helped me haul out a table and chairs, mismatched like those in Heidi’s family’s house from the novel. My three-year-old filled a vase with flowers. My daughter took pictures.

As we sat to eat, a friend showed up, dropping off one of my sons. She was a caterer who’d had very famous people on her guest lists, including Richard Nixon (who didn’t show at the last minute—his daughter went into labor and he and his wife rushed to the hospital instead) and Leona Helmsley (who insisted that my friend tell her how many times she rolled her spanakopita). I asked her to join us. So now we had a small party—my older boys, my daughter, the three-year-old, a good friend, her son, my husband, and our dog, a food-grubbing collie.

The tapenade was just as I remembered it. The truffle oil gave the potatoes a hint of something exotic, one I’d never have been able to put my finger on. The chicken was completely different, but delicious in its own way. Best of all, the tiniest drizzle of Balsamic reduction made the creamy brie pop. The chicken in cream sauce was dreamy. The desserts were amazing. The rosés, so popular in Provence, were cool and lightly fruity. The weather was even Provençal—unusually dry for Florida, breezy and sunny.

Had I re-created the meal that inspired Heidi’s pivotal moment in the novel? Not exactly. It was, instead, a strange and wonderful afternoon in my yard with mismatched chairs, the three-year-old feeding his crusts to the collie, the older
kids and my friend and Dave and I all talking at once in the dappled shade of our Florida pine.

Still, the act of trying to re-create the moment satisfied something in me. It wasn’t the food alone that had created the meal in the first place, and it wasn’t the sole thing keeping that moment alive in my mind. Food isn’t simply food. It’s about slowing down a moment in time, attaching it to smells and tastes, and allowing it to expand. I know that this meal on my lawn—born of longing, lovesickness, homesickness, a lump in the throat—has become a memory that will linger.

In fact what lingers now is the image of all of us in the gloaming, bringing in the dishes, the table, and the mismatched chairs, feeling full and content. The lights came on in the house, and a new kind of commotion kicked in as Dave and the kids started washing dishes. Before locking up for the night, I called in the dog, who’d been nosing lizards in the hurricane flowers, and he came bounding across the lawn.

FROM ERIC GASTON FAVIER, OWNER OF CHEZ PIERRE

OLIVE TAPENADE

Put in your robot coupe (food processor) one bunch of seedless olives from Nice (Picholine). Add pepper, garlic, and a little bit of anchovy paste to your taste. Mix until it becomes a nice spreadable paste.

PROVENÇAL CHICKEN

RUSSET POTATOES WITH TRUFFLE OIL

BALSAMIC REDUCTION

Quite simply, you first heat up balsamic vinegar until it’s boiling, then simmer it until it gets thick, which should happen in an hour. Remember that an 8-ounce bottle of Balsamic vinegar will yield not quite two ounces of reduction. Very little is needed to provide an exquisite counterpoint to the cheese. At Chez Pierre’s Cheese and Chocolate Bar, I had the balsamic reduction with a double creamy brie on French bread.

A FOURTH-GENERATION PROVENÇAL RECIPE FROM SARA WILFORD

PROVENÇAL CHICKEN IN CREAM SAUCE

1½ tablespoons butter

1½ tablespoons olive oil

1 small chicken, cut into eight pieces

16 whole baby onions, peeled

1 cup heavy cream

¼ cup dry white wine

Flour

Salt and pepper

1 teaspoon dried thyme

Chopped fresh parsley

Coat chicken pieces in flour, salt, and pepper.

Transfer contents of skillet to cocotte or other deep serving dish if desired, sprinkle with parsley and freshly ground pepper, and serve with rice.

DESSERT RECIPES FROM LINDA RICHARDS, OWNER OF THE CAKE SHOP

Linda’s Cake Shop cake and icing recipes are top secret, so I couldn’t score those. But these are two fantastic dessert recipes that she offered—one very French and one from the heart
.

FRENCH APPLE TART WITH CRÈME ANGLAISE
Tart/Pie Dough:

2 cups unbleached flour

1 teaspoon salt

⅔ cup vegetable shortening (cold
)

2 tablespoons unsalted butter (cold
)

1 tablespoon sugar

4 tablespoons ice water

Mix dry ingredients together, cut the butter and shortening into the dry mixture, add the ice water and stir until the dough just comes together.

On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough to create a 12×14-inch rectangle, transfer the dough to a cookie sheet, arrange the chopped apple mixture in the center of the dough, and fold the edges of the dough over the apples, leaving the center exposed. Bake at 375 degrees for 45–50 minutes.

Apple mixture:

5 lbs. of apples (I use a variety of apples
)

1 tablespoon lemon juice plus the zest from 1 lemon

¼ cup light brown sugar

½ cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 tablespoons butter

Peel apples and slice thinly, toss with sugars and lemon juice, zest, and cinnamon. Place the mixture in the dough, dot with butter, and bake.

Crème Anglaise

2 cups milk

5 beaten egg yolks

⅔ cup sugar

⅛ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Scald milk in the top pan of a double boiler, then slowly stir in egg yolks, sugar, and salt. Place the custard on top of the double boiler and stir constantly until the mixture starts to thicken; as the mixture cools, beat to release some steam. Add the vanilla. Serve warm alongside the apple tart.

DESSERT FOR ROMANTICS

This is a favorite that Linda threw in as a romantic. She used it to woo her new beau. I love it because I’m a chocolate fanatic
.

Crust:

1½ cups graham cracker crumbs

½ cup toasted pecans

½ cup chocolate chips

6 tablespoons melted butter

¼ cup brown sugar

¼ cup sugar

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and pulse until mixed. Press ingredients into a springform pan and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

Filling:

8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature

¼ cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, melted

¼ cup heavy cream

Combine all ingredients in the food processor and mix until smooth. Add mixture to cooled crust and refrigerate until set.

Optional: Place fresh strawberries or other berries on top and/or drizzle with white chocolate.

To further your
Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted
experience, explore these websites:

Bastide Richeaume
http://www.bastidedericheaume.com

Puyloubier
http://www.puyloubier.com