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the french

vegetable

garden

On my first trip to France twenty-five years ago, my husband and I spent a whole day at Versailles; when we left the grounds in late afternoon, we were famished. In vain we looked for a cafe, and we were finally so desperate that even an ice cream vendor stationed outside a large park looked promising. I hopped out of the car, and when I asked for some ice cream in my high-school French, the vendor replied, "Grand Marnier ou Chartreuse, madame?" I must have looked puzzled, because he then said what sounded like "Esqueemoo pie Grand Marnier ou esqueemoo pie Chartreuse?" Taking a stab in the dark, I held up two fingers and said, "Grand Marnier." He handed me two Eskimo Pies, flavored with Grand Marnier. Only in France! I thought. The bars were out of this world, coated with a wonderful rich chocolate (not chocolate-flavored paraffin), made with buttery-smooth ice cream, and flavored with real Grand Marnier.

That vendor's ice-cream treat became a symbol to me of how much the French care about their food. On that trip, we couldn't eat enough onion soup filled with melted cheese and crispy garlic bread. We woke up to fabulous flaky croissants served with ripe, fragrant melons and wild strawberries. For dinner we savored leek and mussel soup, pheasant with a shallot cream sauce, breast of duck with a garnish of tiny filet beans, and celeriac mousse. Whether we were eating a snack or a full meal, in the city or the country, the food was superb. For a decade I had been cooking from Julia Child's recipes and loved them, but it wasn't until I went to France that I fully realized it was the culture her cookbook reflected, not Julia alone, that made the food so good.

Back in the early 1960s, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck, along with Julia's television program, first interested me in cooking. Were I to start someone cooking today, I would probably point him or her to the same book. What a great introduction to the basics this book is and what wonderful food it presents. When I pick up my dogeared copy, I can still tell which recipes I followed by running my hands over the pages and feeling the tiny splatters and crumbs. As I page through it, I read the penciled-in notes that say, "Fantastic, Robert loved it!" or "Needs more onions." Given our newlyweds' tight budget in those early days, my cooking was light on the meat and heavy on the vegetables, cheese, and eggs. I would make spinach soufflés, asparagus with hollandaise sauce, quiches with leeks or mushrooms, potatoes mashed with garlic, and, for a splurge, the spectacular molded dessert called Charlotte Malakoff, its almond butter cream layered with strawberries and homemade ladyfingers dipped in Grand Marnier.

Having mastered many French cooking techniques, I was on my way to enjoying great French food at home, but it wasn't until I had my own garden that I could duplicate many of the true flavors of France. Baby leeks in an herb vinaigrette, breakfast bowls of Alpine strawberries, round baby carrots in chervil butter, and numerous salads of baby greens—these wonderful treats and many more had all been previously out of reach. In the ensuing years I've grown hundreds of French vegetables and fruits and found that my cooking has gradually changed, with more emphasis on fresh vegetables and less on cream sauces, pastries, and complicated techniques. My garden style has changed as well. When I started vegetable gardening in the 1960s, I confined my garden to the mandatory rows of identical plants in an area relegated to only vegetables. Those who know me realize that early on I became frustrated with this genre and soon began interplanting my vegetables with herbs and flowers in what is called edible landscaping. It was not until I visited France, however, that I started to plant in small blocks with an emphasis on harvesting fresh instead of preserving much of my garden for winter use. Furthermore, after a soul-affirming trip to the definitive French vegetable garden at the Chateau de Villandry, I occasionally plant beds in decorative patterns and line the beds with defining borders of parsley, chamomile, or dwarf basil—all in the French manner.

Château de Villandry in the Loire Valley of France is probably the most beautiful "vegetable" garden in the world. Here chard, ornamental cabbages, and eggplants are the stars.

My research sources for this book were diverse. To reexperience a formal nineteenth-century kitchen garden like those I had seen in France, I visited the E. I. du Pont estate in Maryland. To gather the cooking information, I interviewed countless growers and cooking professionals about their favorite preparations and presentations. Emily Cohen, French-trained sous chef and onetime pastry chef at the San Benito House in Half Moon Bay, California, helped assemble and review cooking information. The late Tom McCombie, chef at Chez T.J.'s, in Mountain View, California, was of special help and contributed a number of recipes. And, of course, I drew on my visits to France and the many unforgettable meals I had there.

The French home garden is alive and well. A garden near St. Emilion displays chard, tomatoes, and cabbages.

Another further north has a classic fall garden of kale, chard, lettuces, leeks, and cabbages. My visit to the E. I.

Du Pont estate in Maryland gave me another opportunity to stroll through a French style parterre vegetable garden.

how to grow a french garden

Most of the vegetables and some of the herbs commonly used in France are popular in many parts of the world; however, there are some edibles I still associate primarily with France: celeriac, sorrel, shallots, haricots verts, and chervil. Further, while the same vegetable may be popular in many countries, French varieties are sometimes unique. For instance, the French are fond of white and purple varieties of asparagus and artichokes, round baby carrots, and waxy finger-ling potatoes. Both the familiar and the more decidedly French vegetables and varieties are covered in the "French Garden Encyclopedia" (page 25).

There are cultural techniques practiced in France that need special mention here as well. One is a somewhat different philosophy of harvesting, the second is the practice of growing baby salad greens and herbs in what's called a cut-and-come-again method, and the third is the practice of blanching vegetables in the garden. The French are willing to grow specialty vegetables and varieties for which the timing of the harvest is critical, sometimes within hours. For instance, the French filet beans (haricots verts) are exquisitely tender if harvested when tiny (a sixth of an inch across), but tough and stringy if larger or more mature. To achieve perfection, one must harvest them at least once a day. Optimal harvest time is critical for petits pois and especially charentais melons. A charentais melon stays at its peak flavor and texture for only a few hours. The French go to great lengths to monitor harvesting because they feel that perfect haricots verts, petits pois, and melons are worth the extra effort.

Growing Mesclun Salads

Growing baby salad greens in France has a long tradition. Mesclun is the Provençal term for a salad that combines many flavors and textures of greens and herbs. The object is to create a salad that is a concert for your mouth by including all the elements your palate can experience. Sweet lettuces and fennel, say; slightly bitter radicchios and endives; the slightly sour sorrel; plus peppery greens like arugula or mustard. To these are added contrasting textures like crispy romaine and velvety 'Bibb' lettuces. (A recipe for a classic mesclun salad is given on page 74)

Growing a mesclun salad garden is easy and quick, as well as a rewarding way to start growing your own salad greens. Unlike large lettuces grown in rows in a traditional vegetable garden, mesclun greens are sown in a small patch and harvested when the plants are still babies, a few inches tall.

To grow a mesclun bed, in the spring or early fall, purchase seed packets that already combine the many types of greens in a traditional mix or create your own mix by purchasing individual packages of seeds of three or four types of lettuce. Add seeds of a few other greens, for example, spinach, mustard, arugula, or finely curled endive.

Choose a well-drained site that receives at least six hours of midday sun. Mark out an area about ten feet by four feet—a generous amount for a small family. Dig the area well and cover the bed with compost and manure to a depth of three or four inches. Sprinkle the bed with a pound or so of blood meal or hoof and horn meal and work all the amendments into the soil. Rake the bed smooth to remove clods and rocks, and you are ready to plant.

My garden beds are often filled with French specialties. Here a bed of mesclun planted but a few weeks before is starting to fill in, and the baby greens will be ready for harvest in a month.

In the summer my garden bed grows 'Roc d'Or' bush beans, 'Ronde de Nice' zucchini, and baby fennel as well as rosemary and lavender.

Gudi Riter steps away from her recipe testing to plant a small bed of baby salad greens, often called mesclun, in my front garden. First the soil is prepared by applying four inches of compost, and a few cups of blood and bone meal, and working them into the soil with a spading fork.

Once the soil is light and fluffy and the nutrients are incorporated, the seeds from a prepackaged mesclun mix are sprinkled lightly over the soil so that the seeds average from ½ to 1 inch apart. A half inch or so of light soil or compost is then sprinkled over the bed and the seeds and the compost are patted down to assure that the seeds are in contact with the soil.

A label that includes the name of the seed mix and the date is pushed into the soil. The seeds are than gently watered in with a watering can until the soil is thoroughly moist.

A piece of floating row cover is then applied to prevent critters from destroying the bed. To make sure the row cover won't blow away, and critters can't get in under it, the row cover is secured tightly by putting bricks or such at the corners, and along the edges if bird problems are severe.

Mix the seeds in a small bowl if you are making your own mesclun combination. Sprinkle the seeds over the bed as you would grass seeds—try to space them about a half an inch to an inch apart. Sprinkle fluffy soil or compost over the bed, pat it down, and water the bed in well, being careful not to wash away the seeds. If you have problems with birds or many cats in the neighborhood, cover the bed with floating row covers or black plastic bird netting. Anchor the corners of the row covers with bricks or stones. If you are using bird netting, place stakes at the corners of the bed and anchor the netting to them. Secure the sides of the netting with scrap lumber or bricks.

Keep the soil moist until the seeds emerge in seven to ten days. Pull any weeds, but no thinning is necessary. Keep the bed fairly moist, and depending on the weather, you will have harvestable mesclun greens in six to eight weeks. To harvest, either pick individual leaves by hand or take kitchen shears and cut across the bed about an inch above the crowns of the plants. (The crown is the cluster where the leaves join the base of the plant. Cut only the amount you want at each harvest. If the weather is favorable, in the 40-70°F range, keep the bed moist—the greens will regrow, and you can harvest mesclun again in a few weeks.

Garden Blanching Vegetables

Another aspect of French gardening that deserves special mention is the garden blanching of vegetables, sometimes referred to as forcing. While not exclusively French (for example, the Italians commonly blanch radicchio, cardoon, and endive), this technique seems most appreciated in France and is necessary for a few of the popular French vegetables. Because blanching requires detailed attention, it warrants special discussion here.

Blanching vegetables involves a technique whereby light is excluded from all or part of the growing vegetable to reduce the vegetable's strong taste. Vegetables that have been blanched are lighter in color than nonblanched ones and in most cases more tender. Vegetables most commonly blanched are asparagus, cardoon, cauliflower, celery, dandelions, romaine lettuces, and the chicories, including Belgian endive (Witloof chicory), radicchio, escarole, and curly endive (frisée).

We can trace the concept of blanching back several centuries, to the time when vegetables were more closely related to their primitive ancestors—which meant they were often tough, stringy, and bitter. Blanching made them both less strong-tasting and more tender. Nowadays, most modern vegetable varieties are more refined and seldom need blanching, and because forced vegetables are less nutritious and take more hand labor than nonforced produce, they are generally less favored. So why blanch vegetables? Basically because some vegetables have yet to be completely civilized. Cardoon, some radicchios, dandelions, and some heirloom varieties of celery and cauliflower are all preferable blanched, and Belgian endive can be eaten no other way. And sometimes gardener-cooks blanch vegetables simply to alter the taste for a treat. Thus, one might blanch asparagus in order to savor a plump white version of this vegetable, which makes an unusual and historic dish. Or for elegant salads, one might blanch endive to make its curly leaves light green in the center, or dandelion leaves to make them creamy colored, tender, and sweet.

The blanching process consists of blocking light from the part of the vegetable you plan to eat, be it leaf, stem, or shoot. The blockage keeps chlorophyll from forming, and the vegetable part will therefore be white, very pale, or, in the case of red vegetables, pink. A few general principles cover most blanching techniques. First, you must be careful to prevent the vegetable from rotting, since the process can create fungus problems. Select only unbruised, healthy plants to blanch, and make sure not to keep the plants too moist. Such vegetables as cardoon and celery need air circulation around the stalks. Make sure you blanch only a few plants at a time and stagger your harvest, since most vegetables are fragile and keep poorly once they have been blanched. Thus, you would not blanch your whole crop of celery or endive at one time. After you harvest your blanched vegetables, keep them in a dark place, or they will turn green and lose the very properties you worked to achieve.

Let's go through the blanching process in detail with the most popular vegetables treated this way, Belgian endive, curly endive, and asparagus. Belgian endive must be blanched to be edible. To produce those expensive little forced shoots called chicons, grow the plants as you would regular chicory. (For complete information on growing chicories, see the "French Garden Encyclopedia," page 25.)

To blanch Belgian endives and radicchios, cut the leaves off at the crown. In cold climates, dig up the roots, put in a pail of damp sand, and bring them into a cool cellar.

In mild climates, a temporary box with six inches of damp sand is formed around the bed. Spread and secure bird netting to prevent cats from digging.

In the fall cut off the tops of the plants to within an inch of the crown, discard the leaves, and dig up the roots. Once the plants are out of the ground, cut the roots back to eight to ten inches. Bury the roots in a deep crate or bucket in about a foot of damp sand, packing them fairly close together. Store the roots in a dark cellar where it stays between 40 and 50°F. Check them occasionally to make sure the sand stays moist, and water sparingly when it gets dry. Within a month or so the crowns will start to resprout and produce chicons, which are harvested when they reach four or five inches in height. (The newest varieties maintain a tight head without being held in place by the sand. Old varieties must have four or five inches of damp sand packed around the emerging shoots to hold them in a tight chicon.) The plants usually resprout at least once, and sometimes you can harvest them a third or fourth time, after which you should discard the roots.

The most prized curly endives (frisées), also chicory species, are the ones with creamy golden centers and finely cut leaves, and many curly endive varieties develop a light heart without extensive blanching. In France you can still see boards stretched across the tops of curly endive rows a few weeks before harvest. Using boards is a simple but effective way to blanch the centers of these endives.

To blanch asparagus, you need to plan a few years in advance. First plant your asparagus bed much deeper than you would ordinarily—twelve to eighteen inches deep instead of the usual six to eight inches. Then you'll have to wait two years for the plants to mature. To blanch the asparagus, in the spring before the shoots have come out of the ground, mound up three or four inches of earth or sand around the area; when the tip comes up through the soil, reach down into the soil and cut off the shoot six or eight inches below the soil line. The shoot you take out will be perfectly white.

Serve these blanched vegetables with ceremony and give them special treatment. Most have quite a mild flavor and are best featured with light sauces and, because they are so tender, short cooking times. Imagine the luxury of sitting down to a dinner of thick, white, fresh asparagus spears and a salad filled with tender, succulent frilly endive.

Before blanching most radicchio plants are mostly green, not red.

After cutting back, new heads of radicchios are starting to emerge. Many modern radicchios produce tight red heads without this process.

french garden style

In France the home vegetable garden is alive and well. The government estimated in 1994 that 23 percent of the produce consumed in France was grown in home gardens. Most of these edible gardens are what are loosely called potager gardens. Characteristically they are small patches of different kinds of vegetables and are grown through most of the year. Many of the varieties grown in these gardens are of French origin, but predictably, as the world of seed production and communication becomes increasingly global, the French gardener is growing seeds from many countries, including the United States.

Although many French gardens are mostly utilitarian, there is a long tradition of ornamental edible gardening in France, and it is experiencing a revival. Sometimes these beautiful gardens are exuberant informal vegetable and flower gardens; other times they are formal geometric gardens in the French parterre style. The tradition of growing edibles in a formal setting comes from the classic formal monastery gardens of the Middle Ages, where monks tended walled gardens in which the beds were laid out in geometric shapes filled with vegetables and fruits for the table, herbs for seasonings and medicine, and flowers for the altar. Years later the parterre evolved into a strictly ornamental garden design, and edibles were relegated to their own walled area. A tour of French chateau gardens today reveals that while many edible gardens are still walled off and many are quite informal, there are a number of famous edible parterre gardens, the most renowned of which is the breathtaking garden at Chateau de Villandry. If you wish to learn more about French edible garden styles, the book The Art of French Vegetable Gardening by Louisa Jones is most helpful, providing lovely photos of many French gardens, listing plants for edging the beds, and explaining how to feature different vegetables in the beds.

The large dramatic fronds of artichokes, the red and chartreuse foliage of chard, and neat rows of celeriac line the beds at Chateau de Villandry. In classic parterre style, each bed is outlined in clipped boxwood.

To help you design and plan your own French vegetable garden, I had some wonderful gardeners grow prototype French gardens for me so we could describe the process. (In addition, I've included photos of some of my French edible gardens.) The first garden is the Brennan/Glenn potager, grown in California; the other, in the parterre style, is the Will garden in New Jersey. For comprehensive information on starting a vegetable garden, soil preparation, and maintenance, see Appendix A (page 92). For detailed pest and disease information, see Appendix B (page 98).

Brennan/Glenn Potager Garden

A number of years ago I approached Georgeanne Brennan and Charlotte Glenn, then owners of Le Marche, a seed company that carried numerous French varieties. Both had spent much time in France seeking out special varieties and recipes, and Georgeanne even lives in her farmhouse in Provence off and on. I asked them to grow a French prototype garden for me, and they agreed enthusiastically and decided that it would be most typically French to grow a potager garden. Potage is the French word for "soup," and in a gardening context a potager is a garden containing whatever is necessary for soup at any time during the year. Traditionally, the potager garden is planned in little three- or four-foot-square or rectangular plots, which rotate with the seasons, along with a nursery area for young seedlings.

Georgeanne and Charlotte's potager garden was duly planned; I remained in touch throughout the spring and in late June went out to visit the garden near Davis, California. Georgeanne welcomed me and gave me a thorough briefing on the garden before showing me around. She explained that for centuries the potager had been part of most French families' lives, whether in the country or the city. "When I first lived in France," she told me, "it was to me an absolutely astonishing idea that everything I needed was right there in the garden. In fact, this was necessary, because there weren't any stores nearby. But it was tremendously enjoyable as well. Part of the daily experience was to go out in the morning and pick whatever I was going to have for the noon meal. Then in the evening I would go out and choose vegetables for the evening meal. The light and sounds would all be different. Those daily vegetable gatherings slowed the whole day down."

Georgeanne Brennan sows a new bed of beans in the potager garden in Sacramento, California. Small plantings planted in succession are well suited to fresh eating.

The point of the potager garden is to make available a continuous harvest. This means that you are continually starting seedlings to fill in spaces as they appear in the beds. Sometimes, as with carrots and beets, you begin the seedlings in the beds themselves, but you start most vegetables (for better supervision) in the nursery area or in flats or cold frames. You then transplant seedlings into the beds. As Georgeanne put it, "This garden fits into your life; it doesn't dominate it. Once the garden area is prepared, an average of twenty minutes a day is required to keep it up."

Cooking from the potager garden varies both seasonally and regionally. "When you drive through the mountain villages in July," said Georgeanne, "you will see beautiful leeks and cabbages, but three hundred kilometers to the south ripening tomatoes and eggplants appear. The regions differ that distinctively." In the United States, too, such gardens vary from place to place. Thus, if you live in a cold climate, to maintain a continuous harvest, you need to use row covers and cold frames for protection, and you have to mulch heavily in the fall. Such a garden would actually be similar to those in northern France. On the other hand, if you live in a mild climate, chances are your summer garden would resemble a Mediterranean French garden.

I enjoy driving through the French countryside with an eye out for home gardens. The crops in this fall garden include chicories, New Zealand spinach, yellow zucchinis, carrots, fennel, and brussels sprout

The potager garden was grown near Sacramento, California, on the edge of the great Central Valley. Summer temperatures in this part of the country are high, often hovering at 100°F for many days. The winters are mild and seldom dip below the mid-twenties. Therefore, heat is the major gardening problem. When summer really moves in, it is too hot to start lettuce, and if you want to start fall and winter crops, you need to put them out under shade cloth. Lettuce survives the winter if it's started in fall, as do other cool-season crops such as mâche (corn salad), dandelions, leeks, cabbages, and the root vegetables.

When Georgeanne and Charlotte selected vegetables for their garden, they chose primarily French heirloom varieties, those popular in the nineteenth century but still carried by French seed houses. Georgeanne explained: "France is having some of the same variety-erosion problems afflicting most other modern nations. By using nineteenth-century varieties, we could do our share in addressing this problem while still growing exceptionally tasty varieties."

Georgeanne's descriptions of preparation techniques for most of the varieties she and Charlotte grew should give you a good overview of the potager garden. In her detailed explanation to me, Georgeanne started with the two varieties of radishes: 'Flamboyant,' a long red-and-white French breakfast type, and 'Sezanne,' a round one with a magenta top. According to Georgeanne, radishes in France are often served as an appetizer with French bread and butter; for centuries this has been a favorite midmorning snack for farmers. Next, she pointed out the two bean varieties: 'Coco Prague,' a French horticultural shelling type with splashy red-and-white pods and one of the traditional beans used fresh in soupe au pistou, and 'Aiguillon,' a thin filet-type snap bean. The two varieties of tomatoes were 'Super Mamande,' a development from the old 'Marmande' and a good French stuffing tomato, and 'Oxheart,' a flavorful, meaty tomato. Georgeanne's excited anticipation of the coming summer garden became obvious as she talked of the tomatoes. "They'll be ready in high summer, and there's absolutely nothing better than going out to the garden and picking a few before dinner. They are still warm from the day's heat then, and all their flavor and aroma are at the maximum. As you can see, like the French, I love tomatoes and feel that life without them is inconceivable."

Also included in the garden is a winter squash, 'Musquée de Provence,' a fluted buff-colored squash filled with thick, dense, orange meat. Charlotte and Georgeanne keep the squash in the garden until the first frost and then put them in the garage for the winter. One of Georgeanne's favorite ways to prepare this squash is to cube it and cook it slowly with olive oil, garlic, herbs, and grated cheese.

I asked Georgeanne to explain in detail how the potager garden was harvested. In the typical American garden, full-size vegetables are gathered sporadically, but a large harvest of even one vegetable from the potager garden would be unusual. The idea is to do a daily mixed harvest, taking what is necessary for the day's soup, salad, stew, and/or vegetable side dish. Certain vegetables are planted with specific, and sometimes a number of, purposes in mind. For example, the potager gardener might sow chard, beets, and maybe lettuce and mâche thickly in a bed and then partially harvest most of them in a few weeks as thinnings. And some leeks and onions might be harvested young and eaten small and braised; then months later the larger vegetables would be picked and cooked in a different way. And there might be a gathering of a large number of certain vegetables—cabbages for sauerkraut, or tomatoes before a first frost for some sauce—but usually for specific purposes. Mostly the harvest is determined by the needs of the day. For instance, potatoes, after reaching new-potato size, are harvested only as needed, not all at once. A leaf or two of broccoli or a head of cabbage might be picked from the garden and added to a soup. Preserving for the next season is not a primary goal, as the garden produces for most of the year, yielding vegetables and herbs in their ideal state—garden fresh.

My front walk highlighted with red roses and lined with chamomile in the parterre style, also includes beds of rosemary, oregano, parsley, and thyme.

The garden to its left overflows with French varieties of lettuce, carrots, chard, fennel, and Belgian endives.

I was enchanted with the potager garden, not only because of its versatility but also because of its individuality. In just about any yard and climate, a variation of a potager garden can be created to reflect the gardener-cook's personal taste, and the rotation of just two or three little beds yields fresh salad greens -and herbs for most of the year. The potager garden is infinitely expandable, since it's really more a concept than a specific garden plan.

The Will Garden

Jeanne and Dan Will are avid gardeners, and their beautiful herb garden in Brookside, New Jersey, inspired many gardeners in the area. A number of years ago I called the Wills in midspring to ask if they'd grow a French garden for my French book project; they plunged right in with the intention of growing a kind of garden they hadn't tried before. Their usual vegetable garden was an area off the greenhouse surrounded by a wire fence. It was very utilitarian but had not been designed with aesthetics in mind. On the phone I had mentioned the beautiful kitchen and parterre (flower bed) gardens in France, and the Wills became inspired enough to look into the history of the French garden, and to plan their own variation of the classic French garden, distinctively geometric and decorative. With dedication above and beyond anything I expected, in one season they set about creating a miniature latticed garden filled with flowers and French vegetables and herbs.

To help them get started with the vegetables, I recommended a selection of French varieties and some French herbs with which they were already familiar. I kept in touch with Jeanne, who would be doing the day-to-day gardening, throughout the spring and early summer, and in midsummer I went to New Jersey to visit. The garden was simply glorious. It gave a true French feeling, and the vigor of the plants spoke to both the care they had been given and the wonderful condition of the soil. The vegetables, of course, were the primary focus, and they were planted throughout the garden in long, rectangular beds. A latticed fence, painted light gray, surrounded the whole garden.

The French vegetables included 'Lorrisa' and 'Marmande' tomatoes, 'Cadice' bell peppers, 'Arlesa' zucchini, 'De Carentan' leeks, 'Vernandon' haricot beans, 'Paros' chard, 'Cornichon' cucumbers, 'Oak Leaf and 'Mantilla' lettuces, 'Planet' carrots, and charentais melons. Also included were mâche, French sorrel, arugula, a frisée chicory a friend had brought from France, and, of course, lots of herbs: "I was pleasantly surprised with the flavor of the produce," Jeanne told me. "Many of the varieties were distinctly superior to those I'd grown in the past. I noticed that some of the plants were smaller, but they seemed equally productive." All in all, Jeanne and Dan Will were very pleased with their French garden and hoped to keep growing many of the vegetables in the future.

Jeanne and Dan Will's New Jersey French garden was designed in the French parterre style. In the beds are eggplants, bronze fennel, tomatoes, and lots of herbs.

interview

Georgeanne Brennan

Working on a book about food can be dangerous to your figure. For days, as I transcribed the information on French cooking from Georgeanne Brennan, onetime co-owner of Le Marche seed company and author of Potager, I would eat and eat. As Georgeanne described dipping French bread into sun-ripened tomatoes mashed with garlic and basil, off I went to the kitchen. When she described a chard tart with sultana raisins, pine nuts, and honey, I found myself needing a snack. We all know how deeply the French value good food, but Georgeanne's recollections emphasized the fact.

Born in California, Georgeanne went to school in France, where she later married and settled in an old farmhouse in the country. There, far from the supermarket, she and her husband raised goats, and she grew and cooked the family's food. Eventually they moved back to the United States, but Georgeanne still retreats regularly to her old farmhouse in France for weeks at a time to research vegetables and recipes for her books.

One of Georgeanne's descriptions of living in the French countryside exemplifies the French respect for food: "The first time I had fava beans, a local farmer came to the door and said, 'Here are some favas for you.' He saw my blank look and, transported by the first favas of the season, proceeded to show me how to use them. He shelled the beans and asked for a skillet. Then he heated up a little butter and oil and soon stood over my stove, cooking away. He just popped those beans into the oil and butter, added a little salt and pepper, and shook the skillet around for a while. Then he said, 'I'm going to cook my own,' and left me to feast on the ones he'd prepared. They were delicious."

The average French person is passionately involved with good food and, often, with cooking as well. Part of this involvement is because of a great respect for the garden-table connection—whether the produce comes from a local farmer or from an individual's plot. The French consumption of mesclun, a mix of perishable salad greens, is a good example. Instead of sitting down to a head of lettuce and a few tomatoes at dinner, the average family in southern France eats a mixed salad that includes baby lettuce leaves, young chicories, and herbs. "Through the centuries,'' Georgeanne explained, "different kinds of greens were grown in the garden—lettuces, chickweeds, and herbs—and the French refined these combinations. While many French people still grow their own salad greens today, market gardeners offer mesclun to the general public. When you go to the markets in Nice, you see piles of different little mixed greens and herbs for sale by weight. One seller might offer a mix with nine ingredients, another five, and so forth, but the principal selections will include romaine and butterhead lettuce, chicory, chervil, roquette, or any variation thereof. All the elements are there: peppery rockets, bitter chicory, tender butterhead, somewhat crunchy romaine, and slightly anise-tasting chervil. I grow mesclun myself. It's actually very easy to grow and can be harvested within about twenty to thirty days of planting. Just about anyone can grow it—it even works well in a window box.

"I miss French leeks and chervil. I think the leeks you find here in the supermarkets are all wrong. They're two inches in diameter. In France they're usually very small, maybe a few pencil widths, and they're more mild, tender, and flavorful. I grow them in my potager and love to harvest little ones, steam them and serve them warm with a simple vinaigrette. Or cover them with béchamel sauce or serve them Italian style in a tomato sauce. The rich yet mild flavor of the leek is unique."

Chervil appears in one way or another in French sauces, soups, and salads, particularly in northern France. Because it's so perishable, though, it almost never appears in produce markets in the United States. Georgeanne likes to use chervil, with its aniselike flavor, with fish, white wine, and cream. "It tastes refined and doesn't overpower," she said, "so it's very good for delicate dishes."

When Americans spend time in France, they often become passionate about French melons. Undoubtedly, the melon they've had is charentais, a type of muskmelon with a smooth pale green skin. Traditionally, these melons are eaten as a first course, often with a thin slice of salt-cured ham. "This is one melon," Georgeanne reminisced, lighting up as she spoke, "that you'll never forget if you ever have it in its perfect state. You'll crave its taste and smell long afterward."

Those who have grown charentais know, however, that a charentais not in its perfect state is less than distinguished. If underripe, it is flavorless; if overripe, it becomes fibrous and fermented. These melons are difficult to grow, particularly in a damp climate. They need heat for high quality, and they crack open easily if watered near harvest time. The French barely water them for the last six weeks before harvesting. To complicate matters further, the melons are difficult to harvest at peak perfection. As Georgeanne said, "They're tricky. You can pick a perfect one in the morning, and by evening it's begun to ferment. Charentais don't slip from the vine when they're ripe like other muskmelons do. You have to judge ripeness by the feel and aroma of the melons instead. Despite these difficulties, though, if you live in a part of the country with a Mediterranean climate, it would certainly be worth growing charentais with a hope that you will get at least one perfect melon."

Picking and serving produce at the peak of perfection is a crucial element woven throughout French cuisine. When you have your own French garden, you too will be able to savor these vegetables and fruits at their best.

Southern Europeans enjoy many vegetables in common, as reflected in the display of Italian Treviso radicchios next to the more classical French Belgian endives in the market at Aix-en-Provence.