T
he next week we worked on breakfast pastries in class. If I had to do bread, I’d want to do these. First we did filled croissants. They’re a staple, so it’s important to get them right.
Jean-Yves, one of the French guys at our table, partnered up with me that week, scooting Anne aside. I’d noticed he’d been avoiding
Désirée for the past week or two, and she’d been chasing him again that morning.
“Go ahead,” Anne said. “It’ll be good for us to work with new people”. It was almost the end of October, halfway through our program. I agreed with her. She offered to work with another man at a nearby table, but he looked down his nose at her and declined. He found another guy to work with, and Anne worked with Désirée.
Jean-Yves and I rolled out our croissants on long tables. After cutting the dough into triangles, we stuffed some with chocolate nibs, some with tender almond paste, and the rest with pistachio paste—my idea, like I’d done at home last year.
We rolled them up, took them to the oven, and as soon as they were cool, ate one.
“Look!” Jean-Yves opened a jar of strawberry jam and a pot of
crème fraîche
and set them aside. We daubed it on the hot croissants. “My maman used to serve them like this”.
“Delicious!” I said in English, and he laughed.
“Délicieux!”
he agreed in French. I sat next to him that day at lunch, and he shared stories of growing up on a farm in Bresse, and how their chickens were the best.
Désirée joined us for the croissant desserts. “I’d like to try one of the strawberry croissants,” she said, looking around the buffet, “but none were left. Perhaps you’d make one for me?”
“Perhaps,” Jean-Yves said pleasantly. Then he turned to ask me questions about the US, and if everyone was really like the people on CNN or MTV.
“Do I look like I’m from CNN or MTV?” I asked.
“Non. “
He smiled flirtatiously. “You are much, much prettier”.
Ooh la la, he reminded me of Luc and of the flirtatious French men who dropped their sunglasses and looked appreciatively and appraisingly at every woman on the block.
Désirée left the table in a snit.
Tuesday we made
kugelhopf
.
“Why are we making German pastries?” I asked as we whipped up the dough.
“European Union,” Jean-Yves said as he helped me measure out my ingredients. “Look at Monsieur Desfreres. He looks like he needs smelling salts”.
I laughed out loud. I gathered this was a part of the homogenization that got under his skin. Still, since I’d heard about his wife leaving him, I felt a little softer toward him.
Wednesday we made Danish pastries, but French style, with lots of butter and panache. The cooking school was working on breakfast dishes too, so each day at lunch we really ate “brunch”. Désirée didn’t try to sit with Jean-Yves, Anne, and I that day.
Anne and Jean-Yves each tried one of the Danish I’d made, with poached apricots, amaretto, and toasted almond slices.
“Not bad,” Jean-Yves teased. “If I woke up next to you, I’d be glad to eat one of these in the morning”.
“In your dreams,” I said, but I knew he was teasing. He’d said something similar to Anne a few days ago, and I knew he had a
serious girlfriend in Bresse. They planned to live together when he moved back.
So many people lived together, so few got married. Not me.
What would have happened if I’d slept with Greg, my ex-boyfriend. He had wanted me to. And, to be honest, I’d wanted to. I could understand Jean-Yves and his girlfriend’s desires. But now Greg was on his third girlfriend since our breakup.
Nah. I’d wait.
Wednesday, after school I went to the bakery in the village. I’d been there all week because Maman had thrown her back out. Patricia came once in a while to do the pastries, but they let me do the cakes, petits fours, and mille-feuille. I was in heaven!
I headed toward the kitchen, excited to start baking. As far as I knew, the customers hadn’t noticed any difference. I would have been sure to hear about it otherwise. Odette would have let me know.
Monsieur Delacroix stood in the doorway between the shop front and the kitchen.
“Bonjour
, Monsieur Delacroix,” I said as I passed.
“Bonjour
, Mademoiselle Stuart,” he said, retaining less of his original formality but still with a modicum of professional pleasantry.
He turned toward the hooks that held the aprons and chef jackets. He searched through a few, looking at the embroidered names.
“Je regrette
, I am unable to find yours. I was going to hand it to you,” he said.
I blushed and reached for the apron on the far peg. “This is it”.
He looked confused.
“No name on it,” I reminded him gently. I was the only temporary employee, and he didn’t spend a lot of time in the bakery proper.
“I hear you spent the day with my granddaughter searching for
fèves”.
“Oh yes!” I said, face lighting up with delight. “She taught me all about them”.
He cracked an actual smile at that.
“Naturellement,”
he said. “She’s a Delacroix!” As his face softened, I could see Philippe in him. It endeared him to me in a fatherlike way.
Odette came into the back with a cup of coffee.
“Café
, monsieur?”
“Non, merci
. We do not have the machine for
express
, here, which I prefer. But thank you”.
“Of course,” Odette said cloyingly.
Ick. I turned to go back to my work.
“Mademoiselle Stuart,” Monsieur Delacroix called.
“Oui
, Monsieur?”
“I have received the invitation to your exhibition in two months. I always invite the entire staff to professional exhibitions. We are all looking forward to seeing the culmination of your studies”.
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
“Can’t wait,” Odette said quietly as she left.
A few minutes later, she came back, this time urgently.
“Monsieur?” she said, seeking out Monsieur Delacroix. “It’s the telephone for you. It’s Luc”.
Luc? I checked my watch. It was two o’clock in the afternoon here, five o’clock in the morning in Seattle. The start of his baking day.
Monsieur Delacroix’s face hardened as he took the phone. “Not again,” he grumbled to himself. “Another
problème?”
Thursday morning I arrived at school extra early. Chef Desfreres had told us the school had a special order for four thousand macaron cookies for an industrial client—Airbus, I think. French industries often placed large orders with the school—the price was cheaper, and they got a government write-off for supporting other institutions.
French macarons are not like American macaroons. American macaroons are made of coconut held together by egg white and sugar—tasty but sweet, and honestly, a little unsophisticated.
French macarons, on the other hand, are two light cookies, airy almost, with a thin, smooth shell that crumbles at the slightest touch. The inside of the cookie is chewy and sticky, and the bottom, called the foot, is firm. Between the two cookies is sandwiched a flavored buttercream. French chefs, in their individual
laboratoires
, or pastry kitchens, compete to come up with novel-flavored macarons.
Today, each student was to prepare one hundred perfect macarons in traditional flavors—vanilla, chocolate, coffee, and raspberry—and box them up for Monsieur Desfreres.
Because we couldn’t all be at the oven at the same time, we worked in shifts. As soon as my macarons were done, I carefully made my way back to the table where my butter cream pots waited. I worked next to Anne that day, but Jean-Yves called me over.
“Come see what I’ve made!” he said. Anne and I walked over to the oven where he was taking out a batch.
“I’ve snuck in some ingredients,” he said. “My hundred are done, and I wanted to try something new”.
We tried his jet black anise, or licorice, flavored macarons.
“Fantastique!”
Anne said.
I tried one with rose water. “Different! Artistic!” Like so many other French artists, he’d started with the traditional and spun off into strange but wonderful directions.
It made me think about what kinds of macarons I could come up with.
When I got back to my station, though, I had a nasty surprise. Nearly half of my cookies were crumbled into bits and pieces. I looked at the clock. I didn’t have enough time to mix and bake four dozen more. I had made ten extra as a margin for error. That still left me needing about thirty.
“What happened?” Anne asked.
“I don’t know. When we came back, and this was what I found”.
I would definitely be marked down if I didn’t turn in one hundred macarons in the box marked number seven to Monsieur Desfreres.
“I have twelve extra,” Anne said.
“Thank you,” I said gratefully.
Désirée walked up. “What’s going on?” she asked.
Anne and I looked at each other. The fact that we both thought the same thing without saying anything lent credence to our suspicions. “Some of my cookies were damaged,” I said.
“Don’t worry, they are tricky to handle. But … so many?” Désirée said. “I could give you some extra, if you like”.
This was no time for pride. I swallowed hard. “Thank you”.
She brought four over. I noticed she’d already bagged up some other extras—to take home, I presumed.
Jean-Yves came over and she drew near to him. “Lexi’s have crumbled,” she announced.
Jean-Yves flicked her off like a fly. “Here, I’ll help”.
He brought over a dozen extra, slipping in some of the rose ones, which looked like the raspberry. Unless Monsieur Desfreres tasted them, he’d never know.
Juju barely had enough on her own, but another man from the next table over gave me enough to round up to a hundred. I turned in Box 7 and received a neat smile from Monsieur Desfreres.
Afterward, I had time to come up with a few clever flavor concoctions of my own. I made a batch of macarons from ground peanuts and sandwiched chocolate ganache between them. Then I made some chocolate cookies and whipped a little fluff for the filling. I presented them to Anne and Jean-Yves at lunch.
“Très Americaine,”
Anne said, helping herself to a second.
“Très délicieux,”
Jean-Yves agreed. “What would you call these?”
I grinned. “Nutter Butters and Oreos. Gone uptown”.
Monsieur Desfreres stopped by our table to talk with Jean-Yves, and looked at the macarons. “May I?” he asked.
I nodded. I could tell the others held their breath. He chose a chocolate and fluff one, for which I was glad, knowing peanut butter was not a French taste.
“Bon,”
he said, wiping crumbs from his mouth. He said nothing more but took a second as he left. Jean-Yves and Anne grinned with me. No one spoke. No one needed to. Victory!
Jean-Yves went to make a phone call, and Anne and I talked over the earlier situation regarding my destroyed macarons.
“So, is it Désirée who’s been sabotaging us?” I asked. “She seemed so nice. And in the movies, you know, it’s never the person you think it is”.
“Life is not like a movie, my American friend,” Anne said. “It’s more like math. One plus one equals two”.
I nodded. She was right.
“Plus, she was mad because Jean-Yves is paying attention to you this week”.
“He’s got a girlfriend!” I protested.
“It doesn’t matter. Some people can’t have attention on anyone but themselves. From now on, we’ll be more diligent about watching the other’s work. You have met your first living
faux amie
. There’s no telling what else she may try”.
Sunday morning I met Anne at the train station. She looked nervous.
“Have you ever been to church?” I asked her.
“When I was baptized as a baby. But my family does not go by religion too much,” she admitted. “And I’ve never been to a church that spoke only English”.
“Good!” I said switching to English. “You’ve reminded me of our purpose. Use English, please, mademoiselle!”
We walked in the cool air toward the church. I’d worn gloves for the first time. The air was crisp and fresh as an apple, sweet as pie. After a few blocks I pushed open the large wooden gates to the churchyard and ushered Anne inside.
We walked through the gardens, nearly dormant already, a few branches dangling here or there, waiting to be trimmed for the winter. I entered the church first and held the door open for my friend.
“Good morning, Lexi!” the vicar’s wife said. “And your friend is …?”
“Anne,” I said.
“Good morning,” Anne said in English.
The pastor’s wife smiled at me before answering my friend. “Good morning. I’m glad you could join us. You are visiting France?”
“No,” Anne admitted. “I’m a Frenchwoman. I’m here with Lexi”.
“To enjoy the service—and practice her English,” I said, putting more emphasis on the latter.
“Oh!” A woman handing out bulletins on the other side of the door understood my intention. “We have a wonderful English conversation club. I’ll find a flier for you”.
“Thank you,” Anne said.
We walked down the aisle looking for a seat. I saw Philippe already seated, with Gabby next to him. I bit back a grin.
“How good of you to join us again,” Gabby said. “We’ll miss you when you go back to the United States!”
I saw Philippe hide a smile too. I introduced Anne to them
both, and then we made our way down a few more rows toward the pew where the faithful Buki usually sat.
A few minutes later, the woman who had greeted us earlier brought a brochure for Anne. “I hope to see you there—I am one of the coordinators!” she said. “I will look for you”.
As she turned away, she winked at me. I knew she’d be praying for Anne.
The service went great, especially the worship, and I enjoyed learning more about John. I leaned over during the sermon.
“Are you following this?” I asked Anne.
“Mostly!” she said. She looked triumphant. I knew being proficient in English would help her find a job in the EU if she couldn’t get one in France. I wanted her to get a job as much as I wanted to get a job myself.