Mastering the Art of French Eating Read online

  Praise for Mastering the Art of French Eating

  “Mastering the Art of French Eating makes you want to be in Paris as [Mah] describes the delight of crusty baguettes spread with butter and jam, surprise glimpses of Notre Dame caught from the bus, nursing a glass of red wine in a café that has mirrored columns and a zinc bar. . . . The book has appealing honesty and vulnerability, overlaid as it is with the pain of her husband’s absence. It will also make you very hungry.”

  —The Wall Street Journal

  “A well written entrée into French dining.”

  —The Daily Beast

  “Our readers were enraptured by [Mah’s] luscious and detailed descriptions of the meals that became the rich medium for a lonely wife’s tentative socializing in a strange land.”

  —Elle

  “A progressive dinner of food, countryside, and the people who make French cuisine the feast that it is. It’s enough to make one hope she gets abandoned in France again.”

  —Minneapolis Star Tribune

  “Ann Mah dishes up a welcoming concoction, a good dose of French history, a personal, vibrant, enthusiastic picture of life in a country she adores, without apology. I am hungry already!”

  —Patricia Wells, author of Simply Truffles and The Food Lover’s Guide to Paris

  “Whether you’re French or Francophile, a long-time connoisseur of French food or someone who’s just figuring out the difference between frites and frangipane, feasting through France with Ann Mah is a delicious adventure. Ann’s writing is lovely, her curiosity boundless, and her good taste assured. Spending time with her in Mastering the Art of French Eating is a treat.”

  —Dorie Greenspan, author of Around My French Table and owner of Beurre & Sel cookies

  “A tour de force through French cuisine, Ann Mah crisscrossed France, learning about all my favorite foods—from buckwheat galettes to the secrets of authentic cassoulet. Her personal culinary tale will have you packing your bags. But if you can’t make it to France, Mah offers delicious recipes, culled from experts!”

  —David Lebovitz, author of My Paris Kitchen

  “Ann Mah goes straight to the essential in this lively, mouthwatering book as she explores the foundations of French cuisine. She even goes where all before her have failed to tread—the wild country of andouillette—to tempt with her stories and her approachable recipes. Bravo!”

  —Susan Herrmann Loomis, author of On Rue Tatin

  “Like a bowl of homemade cassoulet, this book is warm to the touch. Ann Mah writes about her international experiences—and origins—with great sensitivity. She gives us a peek into French kitchens foodies will envy, and no Francophile could resist.”

  —Elizabeth Bard, author of Lunch in Paris

  “From the peaks of the French Alps to Brittany’s buckwheat fields, Lyon’s bouchons to Burgundy’s wineries, Ann takes us all over France in pursuit of its culinary traditions. But at the heart of her story is Paris—and all the love, wistfulness, and deliciousness found there.”

  —Amy Thomas, author of Paris, My Sweet

  “Excellent ingredients, carefully prepared and very elegantly served. A really tasty book.”

  —Peter Mayle, author of The Marseille Caper and A Year in Provence

  “Consistently passionate and emotionally resonant, Mah’s prose brims with true love. . . . A bighearted, multisensory tour of France.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “The author’s investigations into the importance of each dish to the people she meets are beautifully woven together with her reflections on culture, identity, love, and marriage, resulting in an enjoyable and thoughtful read that sparkles with humor. . . . This honest, funny, and eloquent memoir is sure to delight lovers of France, food, or travel.”

  —Library Journal

  “The real joy of this book . . . is in Mah’s mouthwatering, bite-by-bite descriptions of the plates set before her in Parisian cafés, country homes, and hole-in-the-wall foodie hideaways. Francophiles will delight in the smattering of French words and phrases sprinkled throughout every page, and serious cooks will endeavor to follow the lengthy recipes for a signature regional dish included at the end of each chapter.”

  —Booklist

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH EATING

  Ann Mah is a journalist and the author of two novels, The Lost Vintage and Kitchen Chinese. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, Washingtonian, the South China Morning Post, BonAppétit.com, Vogue.com, and other media outlets. In 2005, she was awarded a James Beard Foundation culinary scholarship. Mah currently splits her time between Paris and Washington, D.C.

  If you’d like to receive a special recipe from Ann’s travels in France, email her at [email protected].

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  penguin.com

  First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2013

  Published in Penguin Books 2014

  Copyright © 2013 by Ann Mah

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  A Pamela Dorman / Penguin Book

  Ebook ISBN 9781101638156

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Mah, Ann.

  Mastering the art of French eating : lessons in food and love from a year in Paris / Ann Mah.

  pages cm

  Includes index.

  ISBN 9780670025992 (hc.)

  ISBN 9780143125921 (pbk.)

  1. Mah, Ann.—Travels—France. 2. Gastronomy—France. 3. Cooking, French—Anecdotes. 4. Diplomats’ spouses—United States—Biography. 5. Chinese Americans—France—Paris—Biography. 6. Paris (France)—Social life and customs—21st century.

  I. Title. II. Title: Lessons in food and love from a year in Paris.

  TX637.M34 2013

  641.5944—dc23

  2013016794

  Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.

  The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The Publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The Publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

  Cover design: Ploy Siripant

  Cover photograph: Pamela Keravuori

  Version_4

  To la belle France,

  and her home cooks, fromagers, charcutiers, boulangers, chefs,

  and other food artisans who continue to preserve a fine art.

  And to my husband, who took me there.

  France was my spiritual homeland: it had become a part of me, and I a part of it, and so it has remained ever since.

  —My Life in France, Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme

  The pleasures of the table belong to all times and all ages, to every country and every day; they go hand in hand with all our other pleasures, out
last them, and remain to console us for their loss.

  —The Physiology of Taste, Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks to Deborah Schneider, fellow food lover and Francophile, for her constant encouragement and enthusiasm. Pamela Dorman, whose brilliant editing pushed and inspired me. Kiki Koroshetz, for her keen edits and cheerful efficiency. My friends and former colleagues at Pamela Dorman Books/Viking and Penguin, who worked so hard on this book and welcomed me home with such warmth: Clare Ferraro, Kathryn Court, Francesca Belanger, Carolyn Coleburn, Maureen Donnelly, Bruce Giffords, Kristin Matzen, Patrick Nolan, Roseanne Serra, Maureen Sugden, Nancy Sheppard, John Fagan, Hal Fessenden, Leigh Butler, and the rights team; Dick Heffernan, Norman Lidofsky, and their sales teams. Thanks also to Cathy Gleason, Michael Lin, Geoff Martin, and Katie McGowan. My heartfelt gratitude to Susan Hans O’Connor for her astute editorial suggestions and friendship.

  Excerpts from As Always Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto, edited by Joan Reardon. Copyright © 2010 by Joan Reardon. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

  In France, I am grateful to Jérôme Avenas; Lucette Baudin and her late husband, André Baudin; Solange Brihat; Katia Grimmer-Laversanne; Sylvain Laversanne; Kim Lê Minh; Camille Malmquist; Jennifer Mayle; Alain Miquel; Didier Miquel; Ann Morrison; Judith Pillsbury; Erin Reeser; Steve Rhinds; Arnaud Rohmer; Charlie Trueheart; Anna Tunick; Lucy Vanel; René Vogel; my colleagues at the American Library in Paris—and all the friends who shared their knowledge and helped make Paris feel like home.

  Contents

  PRAISE FOR MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH EATING

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Paris / Steak Frites

  Chapter 2

  Troyes / Andouillette

  Chapter 3

  Brittany / Crêpes

  Chapter 4

  Lyon / Salade Lyonnaise

  Chapter 5

  Provence / Soupe au Pistou

  Chapter 6

  Toulouse, Castelnaudary, Carcassonne / Cassoulet

  Chapter 7

  Alsace / Choucroute

  Chapter 8

  Savoie & Haute-Savoie / Fondue

  Chapter 9

  Burgundy / Boeuf Bourguignon

  Chapter 10

  Aveyron / Aligot

  Epilogue—Rue de Loo

  INDEX

  Introduction

  Before we moved to Paris, in the summer of 2008, my husband, Calvin, and I used to pore over the atlas of France. I would stand in the kitchen cooking dinner, and he would lean on the counter, keep my wineglass filled, and turn the book’s wide pages. He’d read the names of regions out loud—Alsace, Bretagne, Champagne, Provence, Normandie—and we would dream about renting a car and circling the country, a road trip to the regions with the food we wanted to eat. Of course, this being France, that narrowed down the list to almost everywhere.

  We talked about the road trip a lot as we crunched toast on Sunday mornings. We listened to the Charles Trenet song “Route Nationale 7” and dreamed about the route des vacances, about the highway that makes a recipe. We read books set in hilltop Provençal villages and bourgeois Left Bank apartments. And yet I don’t think either one of us ever really thought we would take the trip. At the time we were living in New York, then Beijing, then Washington, D.C., moving every three years or so, blown hither and yon by Calvin’s job as a diplomat. “Maybe when we’re retired,” we said. “We’ll rent a car and drive everywhere in France. . . .” And so the fantasy began anew. But retirement was decades away.

  In the fall of 2007, Paris couldn’t have been further from our minds. We had just moved to Washington, D.C., after four years in China. Calvin was traveling to Asia for work almost two weeks out of every month. And at thirty-two years old, I was struggling to ignite a career as a freelance food writer in a town whose favorite dish was power. But the wonderful, terrible thing about foreign-service life is that you move all the time. Our stint in Washington was for only a year, and by October, Calvin was already bidding on his next assignment. He put France on the list with lots of hope but very little expectation. Yet somehow, against all odds, we found out we were going to Paris.

  In the months before the move, I could barely talk about it. I was petrified that any discussion, any expression of joy, any speculation about supermarchés or métro stops, would jinx everything. It just seemed too good to be true—a three-year sojourn in Paris with my favorite person, a chance to try the 246 varieties of cheese that de Gaulle had joked about, an opportunity to discover the cuisine of la belle France, to taste things that I had both read and dreamed about for half my life. And—the crowning flourish of shaved truffles—we would finally get to take the road trip. So I held my breath as we packed boxes, bought towels and sheets, and ticked off the days one by one. I held it throughout seven weeks of French immersion at a language school in rural Vermont. I held it as I stepped onto the plane in Washington and off it at Roissy, on the RER commuter rail, all the way to the Left Bank. And there, inside our new apartment, my mind dizzy with jet lag and happiness, I lay down on the bare parquet floor, stared up at the ornate crown molding, and sighed.

  Perhaps I exhaled too soon. For we had scarcely unpacked our boxes and picked a favorite local boulangerie when Calvin got called away. To Baghdad. For a year. I stayed in Paris because Iraq was one of the few places in the world where we couldn’t be together. Instead of the shared adventure I had anticipated, I found myself navigating a new country, a new language, and a new culture alone while trying to keep the worry and loneliness at bay. Paris was still its elegant, gold-tipped, gleaming, curlicued self—as heartbreakingly lovely up close as when I’d dreamed about it from afar—but my dream of living there had changed.

  At first I wasn’t sure how to maneuver myself toute seule. I missed my husband like an internal organ, and the city, which had seemed so quaintly formal when we were together—with its bonjours and bonsoirs, and four-course-dinner parties, and cheek kisses instead of hugs—felt a little cold now that I was alone. I wandered with trepidation, conscious of my American accent and Asian face and unsure grasp of French verbs. How could I find a place in this city that was so elegant and so uninviting? It felt like a herculean challenge, which I realized afresh every time I bought vegetables in the market and the vendeur corrected my French. (Me: Un botte de carottes, s’il vous plaît? Him: UNE botte. UNE! UNE!)

  And then, somewhere in the midst of navigating new markets and memorizing new vocabulary, I remembered the wife of another American diplomat, a woman who had lived here sixty years earlier, another trailing spouse who needed a push to find her way: Julia Child.

  Julia Child came to Paris because of the career of her husband, Paul Child. At first she was just another embassy spouse—albeit one who loved to eat—but when she started taking cooking classes at the Cordon Bleu, her path unfurled in a clear direction, one guided by food. Living in France and studying French cuisine changed her life. Food gave her a structure, a reason to ask questions, read history, explore, learn. It gave her a voice.

  As I leafed through the butter-spattered pages of my copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, it occurred to me that the book could provide a basic itinerary for the road trip that Calvin and I had talked about for so many years. The recipes spanned the country—from Burgundy’s beef stew to Provence’s vegetable soup to the cassoulet of the southwest. But although each one offered practical head notes and precise instructions, I found myself wanting more information, itching for the story behind the dishes. Did people from Burgundy really eat boeuf bourguignon? Why was the wild and rocky coast of Brittany fam
ous for buckwheat crêpes? How did pistou—which sounded an awful lot like “pesto”—end up in Provence?

  And then there were the French dishes Julia and her coauthors hadn’t included. Was cheese fondue Swiss or French? Was choucroute garnie French or German? Was there a penchant in Troyes for tripe before the city started producing that most divisive of French sausages, andouillette? (And why was it always labeled AAAAA, as if it were trying to appear first in the phone book?)

  The longer I lived in France, the more I ate. And the more I ate, the more questions I had. I yearned to discover French regional cuisine, and, I soon realized, the only way to truly understand it was to visit the regions themselves, to be curious, explore, taste, learn. In France dining is meant to be a special, pleasurable part of the day; food offers not only fuel for the body but also a connection—between the people who have joined you at the table, between the generations who have shared a recipe, between the terroir (the earth) and the culture and cuisine that have sprung from it. Separate from cooking, the very act of eating is in itself an art to master.

  The story I tell here is of ten different regions of France and their signature dishes, of the link between history and place, culture and cuisine. I chose these ten dishes and regions because of their significance in the United States or, as is the case with Aveyron, because of its significance to me. But the list is not meant to be comprehensive—I could, for example, write an entire second volume on the ten least-known dishes of French cuisine—and there are many regions and foods of France that I still look forward to discovering. This book is also the story of one American woman who was lucky enough to live in Paris for a while, of a solitary year mixed with loneliness and discovery, of creating a home when you move every few years, of building a life that balances work and personal ambition with love and family—and food.

  “People who love to eat are always the best people,” said Julia Child. During my sojourn in France, I met many of these best people, and all of them—from chefs to charcutiers to home cooks to representatives of local offices du tourisme and so many others—touched me with their generosity and kindness, their infectious enthusiasm for their region. I hope this book honors their stories and work and recipes. For various reasons, I have compressed time in some instances, condensing the events of two years into one; I’ve also changed the names and identifying details of some friends and family; the names of the food professionals I interviewed, however, are all real.