Читать книгу On Rue Tatin: The Simple Pleasures of Life in a Small French Town - Susan Loomis - Страница 5

The story of our adventure, our move to rue Tatin, began some thirteen years earlier, when I first went to live in Paris. Of course, back then I had no idea that I would fall hopelessly in love with Michael Loomis, then with France. Nor did I ever imagine longing so heartily for the French countryside, the French language, the thousands of things that make French life what it is, from dozens of varieties of bottled water to the sweet creamy butter. There wasn’t any way to know then how deeply and irreversibly seduced I would be by the markets, the restaurants, the French lifestyle that takes its cue from the meal and the table.

It was 1980. The suitcase was big, and it was heavy. It had everything I thought I would need for a year in Paris, including a little wire contraption that worked on a 220 current and would boil water instantly, my favourite earthenware Melitta coffee-maker and a Petit Robert French dictionary, the best I could find.

After months of planning, applying for and getting a student loan, packing and moving, I had finally arrived in Paris for a year’s experience as a stagiaire, or apprentice, at a cooking school for English-speaking students. It sounded like a dream – working all day at the school, taking cooking classes at night with French chefs, and living in Paris on top of it. I was beside myself with excitement. And fear. I didn’t know a soul. I had only been to Paris once before, for a short week when I was barely twenty. I had studied French for years in school but had never really spoken it.

Already concerned about just how I was going to make the $2500 loan I’d gotten stretch for a year, I decided on arrival to take the Métro rather than a cab from the airport to the city. That meant heaving the suitcase up and down stairs, through arcane turnstiles (all of which have been modernized since to accommodate luggage), in and out of Métro cars. It was several very rough hours before I arrived at the apartment where I was to stay with a young woman who had just started working at the cooking school and had offered me her spare bedroom. The apartment was in the ninth arrondissement, not far from Montmartre. I would stay there just long enough to find something of my own.

No one was at the apartment and I was in a hurry. I dropped my bags, shook myself out and immediately ran back out the door to re-negotiate the Métro and report for work.

The apprenticeship was set out in six-week stages, the first of which was that of school receptionist, which meant sitting behind a desk, answering the phone, greeting visitors and dealing with mounds of paperwork. My ideas of a romantic, food-filled year hadn’t included such stultifying work – the only thing that kept me going was peeking at the cooking classes going on in the adjacent room, and knowing that two nights a week I would join the other stagiaires for lessons.

I could hardly wait for the first class. When my work day was finished and the door to the street locked, I followed the other stagiaires to the kitchen. They explained the system to me, which sounded too good to be true. There was a list of perhaps a hundred required recipes to work through during the year, calculated to teach the basics of classic French cuisine, and to prepare us for the year-end exam. All we had to do before each class was to choose the recipes we wanted to work on, in a certain order which went from simple to complex. All of the ingredients would be ordered so that on the night of the class we had simply to run downstairs to the cave, or cellar, where they were kept, and bring them upstairs. We paired up to work, and kept the same partners throughout the year, in as much as everyone’s staggered schedule would allow.

Once I had traded my phone and typewriter for a chef’s knife and covered my street clothes with a long white apron, I was in heaven. Hours to cook, good company to cook with, fabulous ingredients. Never had I imagined produce so gorgeous, so intense in both appearance and flavour. Though my culinary education was relatively broad, from living in England and Germany while growing up, and from having a mother who was endlessly creative in the kitchen and rarely made the same dish twice, it was innate rather than sophisticated. My personal interest in cooking had come rather late in life – it wasn’t until I was in my last year of high school when both of my sisters, who seemed to spend hours in the kitchen baking cookies, were out of the house that I realized I had a passion for cooking. That year and all through college I cooked whenever I had free time. When I wasn’t cooking I was reading about it, planning my next meal, designing my next dinner party. After earning a degree in communications and working on newspapers and in public relations, it dawned on me that I could incorporate food into my professional life, which is what had led me to La Varenne. I wanted to be a food writer, but first I had to learn how to cook.

So here I was in a 200-year-old building in Paris, right near the place des Invalides, basking in the world’s best butter, the fattest fragrant pink garlic, spinach whose leaves were so firm and meaty they stood up on the table instead of lying flat, brown eggs whose yellow yolks tasted like the essence of egg. I thought I knew good apples, fragrant strawberries, juicy pears. But never had I tasted the likes of the fraises des bois I had on a tart at La Varenne, and the pears I sniffed made me want to fold them into cakes, slather them with chocolate, poach them in fragrant herbs and spices.

Everything was so whole. Chickens came with head, feet and pin feathers, and so did the pigeons and quail; the fish looked at me with big, dreamy eyes as I took them from the cooler, the lettuce still had soil clinging to it.

Once my onerous receptionist stint was finished I moved on to washing dishes at cooking demonstrations, a job I much preferred. At least I was in contact with food. I lived in a blessed cloud of ecstasy – about the food, the flavours, the techniques I was learning. I jumped at the chance to run errands to the market, the cheese shop, the bakery. When I wasn’t at La Varenne I took jobs cooking for embassy families, catering bar mitzvahs, making canapés for special occasions. Anything to be with food. Whenever I could I went to spend a day at a bakery or pâtisserie, often getting up at 1 a.m. and arriving when the baker did, so I missed nothing and could still get to work on time.

The chefs on duty with us for our evening classes – terribly handsome all of them, with their crisp whites and their Gallic attitudes – would yell, scream, cajole, flirt, pinch and generally try to pummel us into cooks of some merit. After several hours of cooking we would sit down late in the evening to sample and critique our creations. I always raced through whatever my required dish or dishes were so that I could jump ahead and make something else from the list, usually in the dessert category. I always toyed with these extra recipes, embellishing and transforming them by adding ground walnuts to a gâteau breton, for instance, and pâte sablée to a chocolate charlotte. It was more fun than I could have imagined.

Being a stagiaire at La Varenne was a unique experience, not always easy, but invaluable, like boot camp for cooks. All those long days doing the bidding of the chefs, the hours in the basement peeling garlic for a cooking demonstration, or in the office writing or rewriting something for one of the school’s books that were produced there was ideal training for the life of a freelance food writer!

I had expected, while doing my apprenticeship, to travel on weekends. Before arriving in France, I had joined an organization called SERVAS, which is set up to further international goodwill by supplying travelers with names of host families in countries where they want to visit. The idea is that the traveller stays with the host family free of charge for up to three days and must, in exchange, be willing to participate in whatever the family is doing, be it harvesting grapes, taking care of children or touring the countryside.

I looked through my list and found a family that wasn’t too far out of Paris and called to see if I could come out the following weekend. They were busy but referred me to their daughter nearby who, when I called, said a visit would be just fine. Early Saturday morning I hopped on a train at the Gare Saint-Lazare and was on my way to my first weekend in the French countryside.

When I arrived at the train station in Normandy I was met by a tall, thin, harried-looking woman who drove me to her tall stone house. We entered her huge courtyard with its sculpted privets and riotous dahlias and I saw the image of all I love in France. Solid and square with graceful proportions, it was a maison bourgeoise, its façade a parade of tall windows each hung with a different antique lace curtain. Geraniums and pansies spilled out of window boxes, an antique bicycle leaned against the wall, the wicker basket on its back mudguard overflowing with petunias. She immediately said something to me I didn’t understand, pointed to her three chubby, gorgeous golden-haired children and took off in the car. I was alone and the children immediately started trying to kill each other. I searched frantically for phrases like ‘Be quiet’ and ‘Go to your room’ but, of course, nothing came out. I finally yelled, ‘Arrêtez!’ They stopped, looked at me with their big, wide eyes, and all started to giggle and point their fingers. I searched in the cupboards looking for something to give them to eat and found only one box of organic biscuits – I now remembered that the description of this family included ‘vegetarian’. What else had it included? I wondered, as I chased the children through the freezing, massive, stone-floored house.

My hostess finally returned and dealt with the children: she gave each a heaping plate of steaming noodles with Gruyere cheese and put them all to bed. They were crying, but she simply shut their doors and came back downstairs. We had a quick lunch of the same pasta, with the most delicious green salad I had ever tasted, then she indicated that I should follow her out to the garden. There we worked in almost complete silence, carrying wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of soil, weeds and stones from one part of the garden to the other. I was delighted, eking out bits of conversation as we worked.

I learned that the woman, Edith, who was just a few years older than me, and Bernard, her husband, had just bought the house. She was by profession a painter; Bernard had just started his own company, and they were stretched very thin. The conversation was slow going. Edith didn’t make eye contact, didn’t talk much, and never smiled. I was in heaven. I had always heard the French were cold and somewhat austere – I was experiencing that in spades, and found it so exotic.

We worked for hours, then Edith got the kids, gave them a snack (those organic biscuits), piled them into the back of her green Deux Chevaux and motioned for me to get in beside her. She flew out of the driveway and we careered through the village and down a winding road to the next town, where she had an errand to run. She left the children with her parents – older, more austere versions of Edith – and off we went.

We ended up at an herboristerie, or herb store, that smelled of lavender, rosemary and fresh thyme, and was so calm and peaceful I wanted to set up camp there. Edith bought bread, organic cookies, and a cajot, or crate, full of. soil-covered carrots, leeks, potatoes and cabbages, all organic, then we piled back into the Deux Chevaux, picked up the kids and careered back home. The kids were flying around in the back seat screaming and hitting each other, themselves, the car seats. Edith was perfectly composed. I was a wreck, imagining an accident and a litde sturdy ball of a child hurding through the windshield. We arrived home safely, however, the kids piled out of the car and went to play in the yard. Edith and I went into the house and she began to prepare dinner. It was about 7 p.m.

An hour later her husband Bernard, a short, stocky man with fine brown hair and large brown eyes, arrived. He set down his briefcase, shook my hand, and offered to give me a tour of the house. He spoke decent English, and between us we understood each other perfecdy. It was a huge relief. We got upstairs to the master bedroom; its small bathroom had a pastoral mural painted on the walls, Edith’s work. It was lovely, and freezing. ‘You may want to take a shower before dinner,’ he said, waving to the small bath tub which had a shower attachment. ‘I know Americans like to be very clean.’ Nothing in the world would have induced me to bathe – I could barely keep my teeth from chattering as it was.

Bernard was the picture of civility, as calm and warm as Edith was tense and cool. I started to relax and almost immediately began to understand a bit of French. Edith fed the children and put them to bed, and sometime later the three of us sat down at a candlelit table in the kitchen next to the fireplace, the only warm spot in the house. Bernard explained that the house had an old coal furnace which Edith had to fill several times a day. Even when full it didn’t offer much comfort. Some day they would change it.

Edith had made a simple meal – carottes râpées, a mound of sarrasin buckwheat groats with a garlicky, lemony vinaigrette and braised leeks, a huge garden salad, a Camembert so creamy it melted in my mouth. Dessert was an apple clafoutis. I had nearly died of starvation during the afternoon – accustomed as I’d become to my daily La Varenne snacks of baguette slathered with butter – and the edge of hunger made it taste even more delicious. I was enraptured.

The following morning everyone rose early. Bernard was vice-mayor of the village, so he was off to some function or other. Edith had more plans to work in the garden. The children took care of themselves. I headed for the wheelbarrow and, together and in silence, Edith and I worked until lunchtime. We had soft-boiled eggs, which tasted like molten essence of egg; I watched the children as they stuck little sticks of toasted, buttered bread – called mouillettes – into their eggs, and did the same. I easily made my way through two eggs, the most delicious I had ever tasted. I reveled in the intensely garlicky, tart salad, had more Camembert with the hearty wholewheat bread Edith had bought the day before at the healthfood store, then enjoyed another clafoutis, this time with pears instead of apples.

My train back to Paris left mid-afternoon, and Bernard arrived home just in time to take me. I bid Edith goodbye – there was a flicker of warmth from her, but not much. The kids yelled, ‘Au revoir!’ At the station Bernard bid me a safe journey and told me I was welcome to return any time, and if I needed anything all I had to do was call. He kissed me on each cheek, then was gone.

I was completely charmed. By Bernard, of course, and by the whole experience. I had finally gotten the soil of France on my shoes, visited a tiny, beautiful litde village, stayed in a 300-year-old maison bourgeoise, frolicked with (and yelled at) three darling French children, been inspired by the simple foods I had eaten. I was walking on air.

On returning to the school the next day I suddenly found my French was better – it was finally emerging from my head. I could understand better, and I dared say a few things. My fellow stagiaires gaped at me.

That was the only weekend trip I took. I was too captivated by my life in Paris and five and a half days a week of school. I lived in a chambre de bonne, or maid’s room, with a bed so narrow I had to carefully engineer my body to turn over. My few clothes hung in a small armoire, and I had a sink and small window that let in a flood of light. I loved it. My life was whittled down to the essentials. I showered at a friend’s apartment, used the toilet down the hall, had virtually no housework to do, and the only bills I had were my monthly carte d’orange, or Métro pass, and the 700 French francs (about $175) I paid each month, in cash, for my room. I had no phone and didn’t miss it, no kitchen to mess. The biggest problem with my lodging was its location on the sixth floor, without an elevator, and that was a problem only when I’d forgotten my pen and notebook upstairs. Usually, I just bought new ones.

I subsequently moved into two other chambres de bonnes, each one slighdy better equipped. The best one was in the sixteenth arrondissement above the apartment of the American cultural ambassador. It was the size of a small studio, had an elevator and a washing machine and a bathroom I shared with one other person. For that, I traded occasional cooking services. Another stagiaire, my cooking partner at school, lived down the hall and together we were expected to prepare food for dinner parties when the ambassador and his wife entertained. It was a fine situation except that the ambassadress would call us at the last minute to prepare a meal, and there was never any food in her house. We learned to bring home from school ingredients that would otherwise have gone to waste – fresh herbs, for instance – and we had certain staples on hand. We became very resourceful and expert at making lovely little canapés from canned tuna and fresh bread. The ambassadress seemed happy and for us it was the life of Riley. After months of traipsing down a dark hall to the toilet it was pure luxury to have one at hand and to be able to stretch and not touch a wall with either hand.

But a small cloud had formed over my experience. My French, which I discovered was extremely literary and terribly impractical, wasn’t improving. I was tongue-tied, and even with the chefs I had to concentrate so hard to catch what they were saying that I would fall way behind in classes. I desperately wanted to translate a cooking demonstration for the English-speaking guests, banter with the chefs and the delivery people, have a conversation with a French person that lasted more than two seconds. As it was, I didn’t really know any French people besides the chefs, since everyone who worked at the school came from an English-speaking country. For a while I traded conversation with a Frenchman who wanted to improve his English and it was with him that one of my most infantile romantic ideas was shattered – even though a person is French and speaks English with a sexy French accent he can be crushingly boring. My French didn’t get much better.

The month of August, when all of France goes on vacation, approached. The school would close. Paris was already empty, the weather was stifling, most of the stagiaires had exotic vacations planned. I was scheduled to work through the month, though there was really nothing to do but type up recipes. One day, Edith – from my weekend in the country – called. Bernard had had a terrible accident and would be laid up for three months in bed, at home. She wanted to paint, and she needed someone to come out for the month of August to cook and help around the house. The children would go to day care. Did I know anyone? Without hesitation I said I would do it, and we made arrangements. I had to check with the head of the school to see if I could get time off, something I was certain would be granted. To my surprise she refused. I begged. She relented, though not without letting me know that she wasn’t happy. Evidently, the typing was more important than I’d realized. Nonetheless, a week later I was on the train to Normandy.

Edith was friendlier this time when she came to pick me up. She told me right away that she couldn’t believe I wanted to return after she’d been so rude. She explained to me that she had been completely exhausted and that, frankly, she hadn’t really felt like welcoming an American who lived in Paris and didn’t know why she’d said yes when I called. It was several years before I admitted that I had thought her behavior was perfectly normal.

I arrived to find Bernard in a wheelchair, surrounded by friends, drinking chilled cider and expounding on something. He’d fallen some forty feet off a ladder while pasting up a campaign poster for a friend. Despite the fact that his back and legs were a mess, his spirits were high, his greeting warm.

I joined the circle around him long enough to drink some cider, then went in to see what I could do for dinner. That evening began one of the most memorable months of my life. Edith turned out to be funny, filled with energy and up for anything. I had already glimpsed Bernard and knew he was easy-going – but he turned out to be more than that. Brilliant, always searching to learn, he immediately set up a schedule of daily French and English lessons with me. Edith and I agreed that I would cook two meals a day for the family, and after my first few dinners she began inviting all of their friends, so that each night there were eight to ten people for dinner. I was in heaven, cooking exactly what I wanted within a vegetarian diet – which was fine with me, since I had been a vegetarian for nearly ten years. However, once I began school, it wasn’t long before my vegetarianism collapsed.

Edith, who was supposed to be painting each day, instead decided it would be more fun to show me around, and we roamed the countryside, visiting brocantes (combination junk and antique stores) and markets, visiting her friends, nearby Rouen, pretty villages in the area. She wanted me to see everything, so each day unfolded with a new project.

Throughout the month, which sped by, I got to know Bernard’s parents, who lived on a very modest farm, and two of his three brothers. I met each of Edith’s seven brothers and sisters, all of her friends, and many of her numerous other relatives as we traveled here and there, once as far as Amiens in the north to visit her favourite aunt. I kept urging Edith to paint, to take advantage of my being there, but she preferred instead to amuse herself taking me places, proposing long bicycle trips, or sewing. She made all her and her children’s clothing, and soon I was wearing her vivid, clever creations too.

The days followed a certain pattern. I would prepare breakfast, Edith would get her children off to day care, Bernard and I had our English/French lesson, then the day would speed by while we either ran around the countryside, or stayed home, she sewing while I cooked. In the evenings while Edith put the children to bed I prepared the evening meal and she, Bernard and I, and whoever else had been invited, usually sat down to dinner somewhere around nine o’clock. I made everything from asparagus souffle to peach and yogurt tarts, from Asian tofu soups to layered vegetable terrines to classic oeufs Florentine. I discovered that the lady across the street, Madame Dancerne, had a huge herb garden, raised lettuces, rabbits and chickens. She became my supermarket, and I got plenty of good cooking lessons from her into the bargain. Everyone called me Suzanne and I became something of a novelty.

For the first two weeks at Edith and Bernard’s I was physically present at the dinner table, but the conversation rolled on too rapidly for me to participate, and I would find myself battling sleep halfway through the meal. No one had any mercy, least of all Edith, who spoke like a mitraillette, or machine gun. About the middle of the third week I responded to something someone at the table had said. Bernard and Edith looked at me and laughed. ‘It’s coming, Suzanne, it’s coming,’ they said.

As the end of my stay approached my spirits drooped. I had come to love the family and this turbulent, fun life. They too were loath to see it end, and offered me a room if I wanted to stay on, and the price of a commuter ticket to Paris. I was tempted, but the train schedule didn’t match my long hours, and besides, I was ready to return to the city.

We said tearful goodbyes – I was part of the family by now, and couldn’t quite imagine how their life would proceed without me. Bernard was relatively mobile in his wheelchair and was now going to the office, which was in the village centre within walking distance. The children would be starting school so Edith would have some time to work. I would re-enter my five-and-a-half-day a week routine.

They made me promise to come visit often.

I was delighted to be back in Paris, in yet another chambre de bonne in the seventeenth arrondissement just over the border from the chic huitieme. It was small but had a tiny balcony. The family who rented it to me were sweet and gave me free use of their shower. School was beginning anew and it was good to see all the stagiaires, each of whom had gone in a separate direction for August.

I stunned everyone with my French. Now the chefs couldn’t tease me because I understood them. I was capable of translating, and couldn’t wait to do it. From living with Edith and Bernard I had picked up a very casual, current French, so that my repartie was rapid, and I felt perfectly comfortable. I knew I could avoid even the worst pitfall. And it came my way during my first translation. One of the students asked about preservatives in food. I turned to the chef to translate, and was just about to ask him about preservatifs, when I caught myself – a preservatif is a condom; produit chimique is the term used to describe food additives, and I remembered it just in time!

That fall a reporter for the New York Times who lived in Paris came to speak at La Varenne. She decided later to do a piece on young Americans who cooked for their living in Paris, and I fell into the category. She arranged a time to meet with all of us at a café, and we had a wonderful time. Later she called me to see if I would like to work for her. Her name was Patricia Wells, and I became her assistant.

I would race to her apartment after work whenever I had a free evening, and do whatever job she’d left for me. My favourite one, and the one she and I still laugh about, was testing a cake called the marjolaine, a stunningly rich confection of layered hazelnut and almond meringue with pastry cream and ganache. I would spend the evening making it in Patricia and her husband Walter’s apartment while they were out to dinner, then leave the finished product on the kitchen counter before going home to fall into bed. Patricia would taste it, make some comments, and I would go back to the drawing board. I think I tested it four times over the course of a couple of weeks. Finally one day Patricia called me. ‘These cakes you leave us are gorgeous – why don’t you ever take a piece for yourself?’

It had never occurred to me to do that. I loved leaving a pristine, perfectly frosted cake in the middle of a clean kitchen. I had sampled all the elements as I cooked, so I knew the flavours. And I honestly had no appetite. I had spent almost a year eating more food than most people eat in ten years, and when my work day was done, my appetite was gone.

The year at La Varenne came smoothly to a close. I passed my final exam – consommé with a garnish of brunoise (vegetables cut in tiny dice), roast beef with watercress, mille-feuille for dessert, all made under the piercingly critical gaze of head chef Fernand Chambrette – and earned my grand diplôme. I was ready to move on, but hated the thought of leaving France. By now, I was a regular visitor at Edith and Bernard’s, I had gotten to know Paris well, I had my favourite markets, bakers, restaurants and pastry shops, where I would do day-long stages, or visits, whenever I could. I couldn’t quite imagine returning to the US, but I couldn’t simply stay on, either. Most of the other stagiaires were leaving, so my base of acquaintances would soon disperse.

I got a call from a woman who was looking for someone to open and cook for a salon de thé. It was to be part of an English-language bookstore, and she wanted the food to be American. I went to be interviewed and landed the job. Whew. I could stay on for at least another year. I had a month before the job began so I went back to the US to visit my family. While there I met my future husband, Michael Loomis.

Tall, lean and achingly handsome, he had been invited to a party to meet my older sister, and I knew that so I stayed clear. But circumstances were such that we couldn’t seem to avoid each other. Before our first date I checked in with my sister who waved her hand and said go for it. Within a month, Michael and I were engaged.

I returned to Paris to begin my job. My bosses – two Parisiennes who had lived in the US for extended periods – showed me the café-bookstore, which was a raw space in the sixth arrondissement, a piece of which was destined to become a kitchen. One of my employers, Odile, turned to me and said, ‘It’s yours, do what you want with it.’

That started a month of hunting out the best appliances and fixtures I could find. It was July and burning hot – my memories of that time are infused with a bright heat, exacerbated by the heat generated by arguing to get everything I needed as I learned the French rules of commerce.

Buying an electric mixer stands out as one of my most memorable lessons. I walked into a kitchen supply store and saw the mixer I wanted, which at that time was hard to find in Paris, high upon a shelf. I asked the vendeuse for it by name, and she said they didn’t carry them. I told her they did, and pointed to it on the shelf. Without turning to look, she said, ‘Ça n’existepas ici’ – ‘That doesn’t exist here.’ I was dumbfounded. I pointed to the shelf again, but she wouldn’t look. I wanted to grab her head and swivel it around, but instead, feeling my face get very hot, I raised my voice and said, ‘Madame, j’insiste. Je veux cette machine, vous l’avez, donnez la moi’ – ‘I insist. I want that machine, you have it, give it to me.’

Startled, she turned, climbed up a ladder, got the machine, and hefted it onto the counter. I examined it, paid for it, and walked out with it under my arm. ‘Au revoir, Madame,’ said the vendeuse with her musical accent. ‘Not likely,’ I thought, but went on my way, hot, drenched and still angry. But victorious. Or at least I felt victorious. I had gotten what I wanted. She undoubtedly felt victorious too. After all, she’d made me suffer. It took me a while to cool off. But when I plugged in my mixer back at the salon de the and made my first batch of brownies I forgot it all, and put the lesson I had learned to good use. I wasn’t raised to argue, raise my voice or object. Doing business in France taught me to do all three.

After choosing ovens and mixers, cook tops and sinks, and watching them be installed, I was ready. I tested my recipes and fed them to my employers and their families. Finally, in early September, we were ready to open. Tout Paris had been invited. I had prepared pans of my mother’s sticky brownies, chocolate chip cookies, spice breads, molasses cookies and other traditional American foods which, at that time, were novelties in Paris.

Opening night was a stunning success, and it began an intensely busy year, as my weeks sped away in a flurry of early-morning shopping at the nearby Marche Saint-Germain, where I became friends with the chicken lady and her pâté-making husband. She delivered chickens, heads, pin feathers and feet attached, whenever I had chicken salad or stew on the menu, and she was always giving and asking for recipes. I took my work seriously and put in long hours, trying to live up to the tradition of what I had learned. The customers loved the food, from the hearty chili to the green-flecked zucchini (courgette) cake (which I called spice cake, or no one would have eaten it). My saucer-sized chocolate chip cookies were the biggest hit. One day I stuck my head into the dining room and saw a properly dressed woman eating one with a knife and fork. I shook my head. Only in France.

Michael, a sculptor in the mood for an adventure, had decided to join me in Paris. Before he met me he had been making plans to take a year off, live in Europe and work on his drawing, so moving to Paris fit in with his plans. Four months after I returned he arrived. He was eager to study French since he spoke not a word, and he couldn’t wait to strike up an intimate relationship with the museums of Paris. While I was at work he would be in museums or sitting in a park drawing, or attending French classes. In the evenings we would go to movies, or walk along the river eating Berthillon ice cream, or simply wander the streets of Paris. We were living on centimes and loving it.

I loved my schedule – early mornings at the market, cooking for hours in a music-filled kitchen, filling baskets with buttery cookies and slices of cake, stirring pots of spicy soups and rolling out pounds and pounds of pastry dough. The bookstore became a destination for Parisian literati. The salon de thé was successful. The duo who had begun the enterprise began having problems, however, which made the working atmosphere unpleasant and after a year I was ready to move on. I missed writing, too, and needed time to do it. I had already given my notice and Michael and I had decided that we would go back to the States when Patricia Wells came in for lunch one day. In the course of the meal she offered me a job as assistant on her first book, which was to be called The Food Lover’s Guide to Paris. I refused. I knew how much Michael wanted to get back to the US, and his sculpture studio; I felt I needed to get on with things as well. Patricia persisted, however, pointing out the advantages of working with her.

I was tempted, and when I told Michael about the job he insisted I take it. He would manage for another year and a half, he said. I was thrilled, and grateful to Michael. I knew it was a sacrifice for him. He loved Paris but needed more room than our tiny studio allowed. And he’d discovered something he’d already known about himself, but forgotten. Drawing was all right, but manipulating large pieces of wood, metal, plastic and stone were lifeblood for him.

At about the same time that I accepted the job a friend of mine called to say that a friend of hers in the Dordogne needed help on her farm, to shore up disintegrating farm buildings. She wanted to know if Michael would be available to go there and help. When I told Michael he jumped at the opportunity. He didn’t care that it was five hours south of Paris. It didn’t phase him that the farm family spoke no English and that he himself spoke virtually no French. He didn’t mind that the job would begin immediately. He wanted out of Paris, and he wanted to work with his hands. I saw him off at the Gare d’Austerlitz a few days later, not sure when I would see him again – either he would return to Paris, or I would go down to visit.

Meantime, I started working with Patricia. Ours was a good match, and we spent an intense, concentrated, happy year walking the streets of Paris, sampling every bit of food the city offered. We developed a rhythm. Patricia would choose addresses to visit during the day, and I would plot them on a map at night. We would meet at a café that we wanted to test in the morning, and go from there. Our addresses included boulangeries, pâtisseries, kitchen stores, brocantes dealing in food wares – anything at all to do with food. We would keep going until about 1 p.m., then stop for lunch, and start out again when the shops re-opened, around 3 p.m. Our day ended around 7 p.m., when we would separate for the night to prepare for the following day.

I was in heaven. I was also planning Michael’s and my wedding and couldn’t imagine being happier. We were married in a very simple ceremony presided over by Bernard in the village of Le Vaudreuil. The meal over, we borrowed Edith’s Deux Chevaux and drove to the nearby village of Bec Hellouin. It was a Saturday, and we wanted to go to mass in the abbey’s twelfth-century chapel on Sunday morning, to hear the renowned Gregorian chants. We spent our wedding night in a small auberge, went to mass the next morning, toured the village, then drove back to Le Vaudreuil, returned the car and took the train to Paris. On Monday, Michael returned to the farm and I picked up work again.

Living separately was hard now that we were married. We missed each other so much that we decided I should spend my three-day weekends on the farm, where Danie and Guy Dubois raised geese for foie gras. Right after work each Friday I got on a train that arrived at Brive-la-Gaillard in the Dordogne just before midnight. That first time was magic – Michael picked me up and we drove through the night to the farm, down winding, inky black roads. At the farm the kitchen light was on and on the table was a bottle of the farm’s wine, some fresh rillettes – shredded pork and goose meat cooked in goose fat – that Danie had made that day, a loaf of gorgeous bread and some fresh cheese. Though everyone was asleep it was a very warm welcome, and that midnight snack began yet another phase of my culinary education.

Not only did I get to see Michael every weekend but I became, along with him, part of the extended Dubois family. I already knew them from Michael’s stories – there was Danie, who did everything, including cooking the most delicious meals Michael had ever had, which she served to her family and to paying guests who spent the night on the farm; Guy, the farmer, who had terrible eyesight and was a little loopy but very sweet and a very good farmer. He always went off half-cocked, though, doing wheelies with his tractor as he took a corner too fast, bashing a trailer into one of the walnut trees on the property, leaving his tools everywhere, spewing corn all over the farmyard when he unloaded the trailer. Gilles, their teenaged son, was in cooking school and would return home now and then to stir up the kitchen, and Cathie, their daughter, was a moody adolescent who loved to eat anything and everything. She was skinny as a rail, which frustrated her slightly plump mother no end.

Danie and Guy’s life was a throwback to medieval times. Danie married Guy and was obliged to go to live with him at his parents’ house. As the daughter-in-law she was expected to do all the work around the house, yet she had no rights and no money of her own. Within their first year of marriage she bore Gilles, who cried all the time. She was still expected to do all the work and keep the baby quiet. She was, she once told me, a slave.

Danie is short and solidly beautiful with wavy dark brown hair, soft, intense brown eyes, and a determination rare to find anywhere. She chafed at her position. She worked all the time with no conveniences to help her, so her solution was to do what farm women have done throughout the ages. She bought a few geese and fattened them up for foie gras, which she sold to earn money of her own. With it she bought an iron, so she didn’t have to heat irons in the fireplace any more. Then she bought a washing machine.

Her foie gras was of such high quality that she soon made a name for herself. She convinced Guy they should build their own house down the road from his parents. They enlarged their by now substantial flock of geese. They had a daughter.

Danie continued making foie gras, which she sold locally, doing all the butchering, preparing and preserving with the help of several women from the village. Guy did the field work and helped with the geese. Danie, who loves people and activity and had always felt isolated in their tiny village of less than 100 inhabitants, began taking in paying guests. She devised a program where a group would come for the weekend and they would all butcher and prepare a pig together. She cooked sumptuous meals for the group, regaling guests with dishes she’d grown up eating. Everyone would leave happily on Sunday with parts of the pig preserved for their own use. Danie also did weekends where guests prepared their own goose and all the meals revolved around luscious, silken foie gras. She became even more successful, her foie gras renowned.

Danie’s food was simply the food she had learned to make as she grew up, but it was the most intensely, purely flavourful food I had ever tasted. Her potato galettes were crisp and perfectly seasoned with garlic, her meaty magret de canard so tender you could cut it with a fork, her baked tomatoes the essence of tomato. She made her own cheese, which was creamy and light, her rillettes – a staple on the table – were rich and succulent.

Every weekend was an intense culinary learning experience for me, redolent of garlic and goose fat, filled with newly butchered rabbits, wild mushrooms, green beans harvested in the fields, lively salads, vegetables fresh from the gardens or the fields. There was always a crowd for meals – whether it be paying guests or the postman, Hubert, who timed his daily visit at lunchtime – and we were always racing to get everything done in time. Danie took to showing me once how to do something – like slicing potatoes paper thin with her incredibly blunt paring knife for galette de pommes de terre, or trimming a goose breast, or cutting butter into feathery thin slices (with the same dull paring knife) for her tender, crisp pastry. Then she would disappear, leaving me to prepare meals, showing up to do the finishing touches.

Danie and I became comrades. We worked around the clock either preparing meals, gathering ingredients (which meant going to the nearby village to pick up fresh milk from the dairy farmer, walnuts from the Dubois barn down the road, lettuces from the garden outside the house) or cleaning up.

I loved every minute of being at the Dubois farm, especially those consecrated to food (which was most of them). Each process on the farm had its own gastronomic ritual, so that goose-butchering time meant foie gras straight from the bird, served on bread grilled over the coals. It also meant demoiselles, goose carcasses after the breast meat has been removed, which are highly seasoned with salt and pepper and grilled over the fire. There isn’t a great deal to eat on a demoiselle, but it is considered a rare treat and so tasty that we would all dive in with our fingers. Butchering a pig meant fresh blood sausages and roast pork, and during bean season we had mounds of green beans tossed in garlic and Danie’s own walnut oil. Spring meant fresh wild mushrooms and tiny dandelions tossed in a walnut oil vinaigrette and golden sweet walnut meats from the orchard across the street.

Michael stayed at the Dubois farm for six months. His relationship with the family was a love affair. He never really did become comfortable speaking French, but it didn’t matter. He was raised on a farm so he knew what to do without asking: he repaired farm buildings, fixed anything that was broken (often things that had been broken for years), helped Danie or Guy when he could, amused the children and ruffled the ears of the dog. Now and then he would strike out from the farm across the fields, up and over the rolling hills which were covered in snow in winter and in wildflowers from the first sign of spring. Stone farmhouses and ancient fortified châteaux dot the region, and Michael spent a good deal of time investigating and studying the stone work used to build them, for he wanted to learn the techniques and apply them to his sculptures. The archways of golden stone were of particular interest, and on one of my visits he took me to a spot on the farm where he’d built one, from stone he’d gathered off the land. It looked as though it had always been there.

The end of Michael’s six-month tenure just about coincided with Patricia and me finishing the book. Michael and I took stock and decided that, this time, we would move back to the States – we decided we needed to get serious about our careers, and the US was the best place to do that. We packed up, gave up our studio and shipped our things home and left, I with a very heavy heart.

I returned to France at least once a year after that and dreamed of moving back. Finally, ten years after we’d left, with the signing of a contract for a book that would celebrate French farmhouse cooking, it could happen.