French Toast (4 page)

My first reaction to anything new is always “Fantastic!” My husband's is “Why change?” We meet a new couple and I say, “Aren't they nice?” And my husband will say, “They're rather nice”
(assez gentils)
, which means that if he could get to know them over the next two hundred years, he'd have the time to judge.

I am overwhelmingly enthusiastic, my husband less so. I don't suspect everyone I meet of having ulterior motives; my husband is always on his guard. And so on. This doesn't mean he's not a great guy, but we find we do have different viewpoints. Fortunately, we have moved beyond the point of taking sides on who is “right” and who is “wrong.” We just chalk up a lot of misunderstandings to cultural differences.

You come here and you think that (apart from a few details) France is more similar to the United States than many other countries. After all, you could have gone to China or Japan. But in truth, living in France is almost as different as living in China or Japan. Because as the
years go by, you, the American
immigrée
, discover that cultural differences run deep below the surface and that what once appeared to be minor quirks are actually major differences.

French Toast
is the story of what those cultural gaps turned out to be.

The most awesome experiences in France revolve around cuisine. It's one thing to partake of wonderful French food prepared by eminent chefs in four-star restaurants and quite another to turn out full-fledged French meals in your own home twice a day. Fortunately for me, my husband's mother, sister, and aunt are all wonderful cooks and hostesses and generous with their knowledge.

Catching on to French food was both easy and complicated. Easy because I had excellent teachers right in my husband's family. Complicated because, well, deep in my mental pantry, I have a hard time trying to think of what to serve for two full-scale four-to five-course meals a day, seven days a week.

My French sister-in-law doesn't seem to have this
problem. In the family country house, where there are always at least ten people at the table, I watch with wonder as she casually composes each meal. “Now what shall we have for lunch?” she'll query, thinking of all the possibilities and combinations. And before I have the time to say, “Nothing,” which for my French in-laws would be unthinkable in any event, or “Every man for himself,” which would also be out of the question, she has come up with an answer. Or a possible answer: Her final choice will depend on what looks good at the market that day.

An example might be pâté to start with, then
magret de canard
(breast of duck) cut into little fillets, accompanied by fresh peas and new potatoes, followed by a big green salad with a delicious homemade vinaigrette, and finally a big plate of wonderful cheese (Brie, Camembert, a chèvre, a blue d'Auvergne) and then ice cream, cake, or fruit, depending on what went before.

I could report that my sister-in-law goes to this trouble only on weekends, but it's not true. What I just described was a Saturday noon meal. On Saturday night, she proposed a different menu, composed of fresh asparagus with a sauce mousseline, a potato omelette (a family specialty) accompanied by a beautiful lettuce (real lettuce, not iceberg) salad, cheese (again), and a
tarte aux fraises
(strawberry pie). Whatever the spread is, my sister-in-law is afraid we aren't getting enough to eat. What?!

I am in awe not just of how effortlessly she pulls all this off but also of one thing that has never ceased to intrigue me: SHE NEVER WEARS AN APRON. Not only am I incapable of dreaming up daily menus like hers (but I'm improving, maybe in another twenty years?); I can't get
near
a kitchen without staining my clothes. My perfectly manicured and made-up French sister-in-law stands around in a silk blouse and high-heeled shoes as grease spatters about her but never comes within a centimeter of her.

As an American in a French family, I quickly caught on to the system of courses: the first, the main, the salad, the cheese, the dessert, all of which follow one another and aren't served together. Being an American with a sweet tooth, thinking of what to serve for dessert never posed a problem for me. I also adore the cheese course because it's sheer pleasure to select what you want out of the tremendous variety available—the more pungent, the better. The winner on the odor score is the
Boulette d'Avesnes
, a beer-based
vache
(cow cheese) rolled in a red pepper dust. If you can swallow a hunk of this stuff, you can down anything cheesy in France. Philippe perversely loves to bring home a
Boulette
, especially when we're expecting guests. It's a test of character. Remember de Gaulle, who asked rhetorically, “How can anyone govern a country with four hundred and fifty different cheeses?” That may
not be the number, but the point is that there are so many kinds, the number changes every time the story is told.

The best thing about both the dessert and the cheese is that you can go buy them—good-bye homemade hassle. (You can also buy the pâté; no one in his right mind would
make
one unless that person had several hours to kill.) When it comes to actually
concocting
food à la Harriet, well, over the years (thanks to my mother-in-law and my husband's aunt), I managed to get a few main dishes down pat. In fact, I even got to be rather good or, as the French would say,
pas mal
(“not bad”) at
plats mijotés
, those slow-simmering dishes that cook for hours and taste good even a day or two later. When I go to the market and find a cut of meat I don't recognize or a fish whose name means nothing to me, I just ask the
marchand
what it is and how to make it (the result is generally a new recipe), and believe me, these guys know what they're talking about when it comes to food.
Et voilà!

The killer for me was, and still is, the hors d'oeuvre. Anyway, why have one? “Why don't we just move to the essential?” I asked my husband. “Because,” he replied, “if you start with something, even if it's just a little something, you won't be as tempted to eat so much of what is to come.” Not bad reasoning, I thought. So I have made a bit of an effort but have yet to live up to my in-laws' standards. Their first course is so copious
that in the beginning, I thought it
was
the meal. A few bellyaches later, I realized you've got to go easy on the first course if you want to make it to the end of the meal without losing face, or anything else.

None of the above knowledge came easily, but that's okay, because as an American living in France, I can take refuge in the fact that they (the French in general and my French family in particular) have some five centuries of food culture behind them and I have only a couple. So it stands to reason that just
thinking
about all this is an effort for me and as natural as breathing for them.

When I first came to France over twenty years ago, I decided to introduce the concept of The Sandwich As A Meal to my in-laws. This was pre-McDonald's, when people like my father-in-law still returned home for lunch, a four-course affair. My mother-in-law, used to the preparation of two ample daily repasts, embraced my idea eagerly. We hence proceeded to prepare sandwiches for lunch and serve one to my father-in-law, normally the soul of tolerance. He gazed at our creation as if it were a strange living creature and, upon being informed that you ate The Sandwich with your hands, commented ironically, “Well, why don't we all just get down on the floor and throw bones over our shoulders while we're at it?” That, needless to say, was the last time we ever even entertained the idea of fast food in that family. My father-in-law has since died, but
tradition holds. In my
belle-famille
, a sandwich is not a meal.

In spite of their marvelous culinary tradition, the French seem to be turning up their collective noses at fast food less and less (unfortunately). But not
all
the French. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law wouldn't know what “a McDo,” the French nickname for the hamburger emanating from Ray Kroc's ubiquitous chain, looked like if it was plopped down in front of them, and I have a hard time imagining either of them serving sandwiches for the midday meal or getting their impeccably manicured fingers around sliced bread. They're having too much fun doing “real” food.

There's another reason for leaving the kitchen to my French family. My mother-in-law in particular (but my husband, too) has
manies
(obsessions), mostly concerning vegetables. For example, washing salads. In my family, my husband has washed lettuce leaves for the past twenty years. This was after he discovered that I hadn't mastered the technique and probably never would. The technique is separating the leaves one by one and looking at every single leaf to make sure it is perfectly clean and void of those little fleas that prove the lettuce came from a field, then washing the good ones and ripping (not cutting) each leaf one by one into just the right size.
My husband flips out at the sight of an imperfect leaf of lettuce, so, hey, he gets to clean them!

Then there are carrots: You cut out the pithy green inside. Tomatoes: My mother-in-law peels them and gently squeezes out the seeds when preparing a tomato salad. (When I do this, it looks like an ax murder. Her salad is a perfect jewel.) Roasts: Slices have to be thin, never thick. My husband, bless his artistic French heart, would never let a boiled
potato
out of the kitchen unless it had a bit of parsley sprinkled on it. Color! Oh yes, and if you serve a baked potato to my husband or any other Frenchman, he will cheerfully remove every single bit of skin before attacking it. “Only hogs eat potato skins,” exclaims my husband, watching me in horror as I eat the potato,
peau
and all.

Now, in all truth, I
do
actually put on two meals a day, but I am the first to confess that my husband is the one who has the talent and the ideas. In this, he is an exception. I don't know a lot of other Frenchmen who are so gifted in the kitchen. His
blanquette de veau
is to die for. His potato omelette is perfect. He also makes crêpes. (I can make them, but he can both make them and flip them just so.) Whatever he rustles up is simply delicious. And he does it all with that perfect French nonchalance. I admit I am just a teeny bit vexed when, after years of valiant efforts of thinking up menus and making major meals, people say, “Oh, Philippe is such a wonderful cook!” I shouldn't be, though, because he's
also the soul of hospitality and has what we laughingly refer to as the
“syndrome du chef”
—that is, he
likes
to feed people! In fact, I should thank my lucky stars that when guests come, he often does the whole deal and I get so relaxed, I think I'm at someone else's party.

Things are
much
better, though, than they once were. A year after I got married, I decided to take the plunge and invite French guests to dinner. Like a general going into battle, I planned my attack. My strategy was to think out the meal from back to front—that is, retreating from the dessert course methodically back through to the starter (which probably violates all principles of gastronomy, but that's okay). Nerves are nerves, and my first attempt was fraught with errors. My first course was a simple lettuce salad with chicken livers and bacon tossed with a vinaigrette. I didn't consider that not everyone likes chicken livers and some people even hate them. So much for the hors d'oeuvre. I tried not to look crushed as the guests pushed those tender bits to the edges of their plates. I thought the French loved liver!

As for the chicken and rice, I mean, how can you go astray when you serve something as basic as a roast chicken? You can in France. One of my guests, a French friend, kindly requested the sauce, which, in the heat of the moment, I had forgotten to serve. Then there was the cheese course. Since the cheese had been stinking up the kitchen, I had put it in the fridge and had forgotten to take it out. So when it arrived at the table, it was cold
and had congealed—a major booboo at the French table. The crème caramel of course didn't have enough caramel. To top it all off, I hadn't realized how much bread French guests can consume, and I'd had to escape in my apron to the local
boulangerie
just before the cheese course. The evening lurched from one catastrophe to another, until I was convinced that I would never, never entertain again.