On Rue Tatin (8 page)

EDITH’S ENDIVES ROLLED IN HAM
LES ENDIVES AU JAMBON D’EDITH

Every time I talk with Edith (who is no longer a vegetarian) in winter, it seems she has just made and served this typical Norman dish.
“Tout le monde aime ça!”
“Everyone loves it!” she exclaims each time amazed, I think, that she’s hit upon a dish her four nearly grown children like as much as she and her husband, Bernard, do. Joe and Michael ate it once at Edith’s when I was out of town and both told me how much they liked it, so I’ve included it in my repertoire. Not only is it delicious, but it is easy to make. Serve these with a simple red Bordeaux.

2 pounds/1kg Belgian endives

21/2 cups/625ml whole milk

2 dried, imported bay leaves

4 tablespoons/60g unsalted butter

4 tablespoons/32g all-purpose flour

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

10 ounces/300g thinly sliced ham, cut in 11/2-inch-wide strips

2 ounces/60g Gruyère or Comté cheese, grated

1. Place 3 inches (7.5cm) of water in the bottom of a steamer and bring to a boil. Steam the endives until they are tender and have turned a flat blue-green, about 20 minutes. Remove from the steamer and let drain for several hours.

2. Preheat the oven to 450° F/230° C/gas 9.

3. Scald the milk with the bay leaves in a heavy-bottomed pan over medium heat. Remove from the heat, cover, and let sit for at least 10 minutes. Remove and discard the bay leaves.

4. Melt the butter in a medium-size, heavy-bottomed pan and when it is foaming whisk in the flour. Let the mixture foam and cook for at least 2 minutes. Whisk in the milk and keep cooking, whisking constantly, until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a metal spoon, 8 to 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and remove from the heat.

5. Lightly salt the endives. Lay the strips of ham out on a work surface and roll one endive up in each ham slice. Lay the endive and ham in a baking sheet with the end of the ham underneath, so it doesn’t unroll. When all of the endives are rolled in ham and placed in the baking dish, pour the béchamel sauce over all, making sure it evenly covers all the endives. Sprinkle with the grated cheese and bake in the center of the oven until the cheese is golden and the dish is hot, about 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and serve immediately, being careful not to burn yourself.

4
TO
6
SERVINGS

HÉLOÏSE’S APPLES AND SQUASH
LES POMMES ET POTIMARRON D’HÉLOÏSE

Héloïse Tuyéras, our friend and a frequent source of toys, household objects, and clothes for the children, makes this recipe often in winter when apples and squash are both at their best. It is sweet, rich, and irresistible. When there are leftovers they get eaten, slightly warmed, for breakfast!

Héloïse prefers to steam the squash as do I, but it can be roasted as well, which gives another dimension to its flavor.

3 kuri or acorn or other small, dense-fleshed squash (about 31/2 pounds/1kg750g total), trimmed, peeled, seeds removed, and cut into 2-inch pieces

1 tablespoon/15g unsalted butter

13/4 pounds/875g tart cooking apples, cored, peeled, and cut in eighths

FOR THE B
É
CHAMEL:

11/2 cups/375ml whole milk

2 dried, imported bay leaves

3 tablespoons/45g unsalted butter

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Freshly ground nutmeg

1. Preheat the oven to 425° F/220° C/gas 8. Butter a
9 × 13 × 2-inch/22.5 × 35 × 5-cm baking dish.

2. Bring 3 cups/750ml water to a boil in the bottom half of a steamer. Place the squash over the steamer and steam until it is tender, about 12 minutes. Remove from the heat and transfer the squash to the bowl of a food processor. Purée the squash and reserve. If the squash is at all liquid, transfer it to a fine-mesh sieve and let it drain for 30 minutes. Transfer the squash purée to a medium-size bowl.

3. Melt 1 tablespoon (15g) of butter in a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium heat and add the apples. Cook them, shaking the pan and tossing them frequently, until they are golden and turning tender, about 15 minutes. Transfer the apples to the buttered baking dish.

4. To make the béchamel, scald the milk with the bay leaves over medium heat. Remove from the heat and infuse for 10 minutes. Melt 2 tablespoons/30g of the butter in a small, heavy-
bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in the flour and cook the mixture until the butter has bubbled and formed a pale yellow foam, at least 2 minutes. Pour in the hot milk, straining out the bay leaf, whisking as you add it to the butter and flour. Cook, stirring constantly, until the béchamel has thickened to the consistency of very heavy cream. Season to taste with salt and
pepper.

5. Whisk the béchamel into the squash purée and taste it for seasoning. The mixture should be quite highly seasoned.

6. Pour the squash béchamel over the apples, dot it with the remaining tablespoon (15g) of butter, and season it with freshly ground nutmeg. Bake in the center of the oven until the béchamel is slightly golden at the edges and the apples are tender, about 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for about 10 minutes before serving.

6
TO
8
SERVINGS

THREE
               

Brushes with the Law

ABOUT SIX MONTHS after we’d arrived, a friend of Bernard’s who was a reporter for the local paper,
Paris
-
Normandie
, called. “Suzanne, I want to interview you,” he said rather breathlessly. Bernard had warned me he was going to call, that he considered our story something of a scoop. We made a date and I invited him up to my office for the interview. He tiptoed over the building materials, hammers, nails, and rubble in the entryway and gingerly walked up the stairs carefully avoiding the bits of plaster that had fallen on it. My office, by contrast, was a haven of calm and tidiness, though still very basic. He interviewed me all about my book project and the house and wrote a very nice story from it all, which appeared the following week. About a month afterward we received a summons from the
gendarmerie
, or local police station, by mail. The letter stated simply that we were to appear at the police station at a certain time, for questioning. We asked Bernard about it and he had no idea what to say, except that we should show up on time.

We walked to the police station, five minutes from the house, carrying our passports and our
cartes de séjour,
which showed us as legal residents, and any other legal documents we thought might be necessary, including the deed to the house. We were ushered to a drab upstairs office that held a metal desk, where we waited for a good fifteen minutes. Then a gentleman in a suit arrived, and two other men stationed themselves in an adjacent office. The gentleman began to question us, asking us virtually all the questions that had been on the form we’d filled out to obtain our visas. He seemed primarily concerned with where our money came from, and what we were actually doing in Louviers. I explained how I was paid in U.S. dollars, showed him contracts and tax forms, then showed him copies of my previous books. Meantime, the two men in the adjacent office maintained a silent but obvious presence there, sometimes pacing back and forth. I felt like we were in a spy movie, and though I knew we were perfectly legal I started to feel a bit uncomfortable, like I’d done something wrong.

Questions continued. “How many children do you have?” “Where does he go to school?” “Do you know anyone here?” “How long will you stay?” “Why did you choose Louviers?” “What do you drive?”

About an hour and a half after the interrogation had begun it ended; the man shook our hands and told us we could go. We were shaken. We realized that someone in the police department must have read the newspaper article about us and not believed it—cookbook writing is not, after all, a typical French profession. Someone must have obtained our visa application as well, for they followed the questions almost verbatim, except for the few about Joe and school.

We never heard any more from the police. Louviers is a pretty clean little town but it has its dark elements—mostly minor drug dealing. We live near Rouen and Le Havre, however, both major spots for the drug trade, so perhaps they thought we might be involved. Or maybe our foreignness aroused suspicion. Whatever the reason, being called in for questioning was an unpleasant experience, one we hadn’t been prepared for, and one that surprised even our French friends. It was one of the moments that made us acutely aware that we were outsiders.

Added to this experience was the behavior of our landlady, Florence. Instead of her usual friendly greetings we were met with cold
bonjours
, and she kept her distance. I was concerned we’d done something that displeased her, but when I asked her she assured me all was well. She is a good friend of Edith’s so I asked Edith, who said that Florence hadn’t told her anything. We decided perhaps we’d outstayed our welcome, though Florence had continued to insist we stay as long as we like. In any case, the Messy House was nearly ready for us, so Michael speeded up his work and in September, just about a year from the day we moved into the cottage, we moved out. I bought a huge bouquet of flowers and left it for Florence, who was gone when we actually moved, and resolved to stop by at a later date to say good-bye personally. We hadn’t figured out what the cause of her behavior change was and had decided we would just ignore it.

Our first dinner guests at the Messy House were Bernard and Edith. We set up a table in our chilly little dining room, right in front of the window that looked out at the church. A few well-placed candelabra, a white linen tablecloth, and the view made for a very dramatic setting.

We began our meal with champagne and a savory baked apple I’d dreamed up after a visit to the market that was filled with peppered fresh goat cheese and sautéed leeks. None of us are big meat eaters and we all love seafood, so I’d decided to simply sauté three different kinds of fish in butter and lemon, and serve them with a salad of baby greens grown in the garden. I had found baby sole,
rascasse
(scorpion fish), and
daurade
(sea bream), each of which has its own distinctive flavor and texture. Following that was a selection of three different qualities of Roquefort cheese because Edith has a particular fondness for this cheese. Dessert was a tart of paper-thin pastry filled with apples and a sprinkling of fresh thyme.

We were eating and marveling at the view when suddenly Bernard said, “I spoke to Florence about you, and she told me what was bothering her.” We were all ears. “Apparently she had her family over for a meal and they wanted to know who you were. When she explained that you wrote cookbooks, her brother told her she’d better watch out, that you probably worked for the CIA, since the job of cookbook writer is a famous CIA cover.” He was speaking so seriously and with such earnestness that we listened to him, believing every word. When he finished, we both just stared. Then, we burst out laughing. He did, too.

“You’re kidding,” I said. “I’m not,” he said, this time not laughing. “She now thinks you are CIA agents and that you’ve been spying on them.”

Michael and I were flabbergasted. “This can’t be true. If we were CIA agents why would we have been crammed into that tiny little cottage for a year, while Michael worked on this ruin?” I said. “If we were CIA agents wouldn’t we be wealthy?”

Bernard shrugged. “I tried to point out to her how ridiculous that was and how we’ve all known you for so long we would surely know if you worked for the CIA, but she wouldn’t hear it,” he said. Bernard assured us that her husband didn’t share her fear and that, within a few years, she’d forget all about it. Despite this disturbing bit of paranoia, we went on to enjoy our evening in the Messy House, with our friends who had helped make our new life in France possible.

The Subaru station wagon we had shipped from the States arrived safely in Le Havre amidst a
temps de cochon
, or “pig weather,” when it was raining so hard you couldn’t see the lines on the road. The company who shipped the car had warned us to make sure it was completely empty, for they assured us that anything left in it would be stolen. As I looked at the mounds of things we wanted to send to France, mostly children’s toys and books, I thought that a terrible waste of space, but wasn’t about to risk packing the car full.

We worried a bit that the radio might be gone but when we picked up the car it was intact. We signed the appropriate papers and got in the car to drive off into the downpour. When Michael, who was driving, turned on the windshield wipers we realized they were gone. We told the director of the office, who looked at us as if he could not understand what we were saying.
“Monsieur, ’dame,”
he said slowly, enunciating. “Many of these cars arrive with headlights broken and radios ripped out. Your problem is nothing, nothing at all.”

How were we to see as we drove out of the terminal which fed right onto the
autoroute
and its traffic that whizzed by at more than 100 miles per hour? “This is not our problem,” the director said. “You will simply have to buy new windshield wipers. Any garage will have them.” What he failed to explain is that there were no garages within a reasonable distance.

We had no choice but to proceed, gingerly. Michael drove with his head craned outside so he could see, sort of. It was hair raising but we managed to get to the first exit where there was a garage. The windshield wipers they had didn’t fit the car but they worked well enough so that Michael could see the road and we were soon on our way.

What had been a good car in the ice and snow of Maine proved to be just as good on the slick roads of Normandy, and the U.S. license plates—adorned with a red lobster—kept the local police at bay. They weren’t about to meddle with drivers who might not speak French.

The customs police in their imposing skin-tight black pants, knee-high black boots, square-shouldered and silver-buttoned short jackets, and white cross-the-chest holsters were a different story. I always had the feeling their mouths watered when they saw us coming, for they often stopped us. I suppose they were looking for drugs, and cars with foreign license plates must be highly suspect.

I remember getting stopped one day in particular. We had been in France just a few months, so our American driver’s licenses were still legal, as was everything about the car, although this would change after a year when we would have to get French driver’s licenses and bring the car up (or down) to French standards. We dreaded both of those, since getting a driver’s license in France costs a fortune and takes forever, and because bringing the car within French standards involves changing just about everything about it except the steering wheel. As it was I had nothing to fear.

On that particular day I was driving to the supermarket with Joe, whom I had just gotten up from his nap. He was safely strapped into his car seat in the back and we were singing when I turned onto the main road, a bit too quickly I admit. I was flagged over by the police. I swore inwardly thinking it was my speed until I recognized the uniforms of the customs police. The local police remind me of Dupont and Dupond in the
Tintin
stories, rather fumbling, dim, and harmless. The customs guys are something else. They look down on everyone with hauteur, they don’t smile, and with their stark uniforms they look mean. They make me nervous.

I pulled over and stayed in the car as the two officers examined my papers, pulling out my Maine driver’s license and checking it on both sides, then examining my
carte de séjour
, which proved I was a legal resident of France. They kept looking over at me and discussing something in a low voice.

I busied myself by looking around at the interior of our car. It was a mess. There were magazines on the front seat, books stacked in the back, and a varied collection of small child detritus like pieces of cracker and ends of
baguettes
and books and toys. I was embarrassed. Normally our car is relatively tidy, but since moving to France it had become something of a third home as we shuttled between our little house on the river and the Messy House in Louviers.

The officers strode back over and one bent down to speak to me.
“Madame, je vous en prie,”
he began, then Joe started to cry. He had just realized, I think, that he was no longer in his cozy bed but was strapped into the car, not his favorite place.
“Madame, nous voulons examiner votre voiture.”

They wanted to search the car. Oh geez. I looked at him, about to cry myself. I’d been carting boxes all week in between trying to work, the house we were renting was chaotic, and the Messy House was a cold, chilly wreck. I wasn’t sure my spirit could withstand a howling child and a car search at the hands of these snooty, tight-lipped officers.

“I have nothing in here of interest,” I said, agitated. “My child, some books, and a lot of junky paper.” Joe was crying louder and beginning to wiggle with frustration. There is something about a strapped-down child crying in the back of the car, just out of reach, which causes my nerves to bunch up—I can’t stand the thought that anyone might be uncomfortable, particularly when there is nothing I can do about it.

Despite my inner turmoil I didn’t want to defy the customs police, who do not enjoy a humanitarian reputation. I unbuckled my seatbelt and made motions to open the car door. The officers were conferring again in hushed, serious voices. The spokesman returned to me and leaned over.
“Madame, nous avons decidé de vous laisser passer.”

They were letting me go. Whew. What a relief. I had nothing to hide and I still felt like I’d been saved from purgatory. What about all the people who get stopped and do have something to hide?

It was only later as we were on our way home after an uneventful visit to the supermarket that I thought of the contents of my glove compartment. For some reason I was keeping a collection of powdered sourdough starters in there, each in its individual white envelope. Perspiration popped out on my forehead. Oh Lord, what if they had searched the car and found those envelopes? I could just see myself trying to explain what was in them.

“Oh yes, officer,” I would have said as I watched one or the other of them sift out the fine white powder. “It’s just dried
levain
.”

Why, they would surely want to know, would someone travel with dried sourdough starter in the glove compartment of their car? That was a question even I couldn’t answer.

I nearly started shaking as I thought of what a close call I’d had. Then I burst out laughing. “What’s so funny, Mama?” Joe asked from the backseat. I started to say something but I was laughing too hard to reply. I explained it to him, when I finally caught my breath, though the story was not as funny to him as seeing me nearly bent double.

It took us about two years to get used to the
tuyau
system in France. This is an undocumented system that pervades every element of French society and is vaguely comparable to the notion of bypassing the authorities. In its most extreme form it is nothing less than cheating.

We hadn’t been at all aware of it before we moved to France, but once here it kept seeping into our consciousness, baffling as well as intriguing us. One of the first places we saw it at work was with Edith and Bernard, who received shipments of wine regularly throughout the year which they bought through a
tuyau
, in this case a friend who knew the vintner. It simply meant they got the wine for a good price because their friend who knew the vintner grouped all his friends together to buy a large quantity of the wine. This was harmless, legal, and to everyone’s advantage. In fact, once we found out about it we asked to take advantage of this particular
tuyau
, too.