The Perfect Meal (19 page)

So I was in good company when I invited myself to spend the weekend with our friend Charles. He owns homes around the world, including one on the heights of the Alpes-Maritimes above Cannes.

Since life at Villa America inspired Fitzgerald to write
Tender Is the Night
, I used the train trip to refresh myself on houseguest etiquette by rereading it, in particular the dinner party scene that ends in an extravagant gesture by the manic Nicole.

Rosemary watched Nicole pressing upon her mother a yellow evening bag she had admired, saying, “I think things ought to belong to the people that like them”—and then sweeping into it all the yellow articles she could find, a pencil, a lipstick, a little note book, “because they all go together.”

Though Fitzgerald describes the flowers at that dinner, the clothes, the conversation, and, naturally, the booze (Veuve Clicquot champagne), he doesn’t mention the food. Whatever Americans went to the Riviera for, it wasn’t to eat.

Not so the French. Colette, described by Janet Flanner as “an artistic gourmet in a country where eating ranks as an art,” embraced the local cuisine, particularly its fiery garlic, which can burn like chili. Most of her meals, wrote Maurice Goudeket, began with

a crust of bread dipped in olive oil, lavishly rubbed in garlic and sprinkled with coarse salt. Cooked garlic seasoned every dish and in addition, throughout the whole meal, Colette ate raw cloves of it as if they had been almonds. Lunch consisted of Provençal dishes only: green melons, anchoiade [anchovies pounded with garlic, oil, and vinegar and served as a dip with raw vegetables], stuffed rascasse, rice with favouilles [small green crabs], bouillabaisse and aioli [garlic mayonnaise].

Purists accuse the Blue Train of ruining the local cuisine. As tourists flowed in, restaurateurs arrived from Italy, Sicily, and Corsica to feed them. They overwhelmed the less flamboyant local dishes. “Provençal” became shorthand for any dish of pasta or seafood with a sauce of tomato, garlic, onions, and olive oil. The same ingredients, with a few olives, hard-boiled eggs, and anchovies, constituted so-called salade Niçoise—salad in the style of Nice. Anyone who has suffered this cuisine will not be surprised to hear that a local remedy for a head cold is water in which you’ve boiled a rat.

These dishes invariably incorporated herbes de Provence. The curry powder of French cuisine, this mixture is just as imprecise about its ingredients. Thyme, oregano, and rosemary are standard, but after that, it’s a question of what’s on the shelf: marjoram, basil, tarragon, sage, bay, fennel seed, lavender, dill weed, chervil, even mint and orange zest—anything that assaults the nose with an herbal tang. No wonder unscrupulous dope dealers passed off herbes de Provence to their dumber clients as cannabis.

Fortunately, local producers are fighting back. The Co-operative du Producteurs d’Herbes de Provence has opened a shop almost next door to us in Paris, from which they sell a mixture that, they insist, is the only true and authentic herbes de Provence: 26 percent oregano, 26 percent savory, 19 percent thyme, and 3 percent basil. The young man in charge of the shop dismissed supermarket varieties as fakes. “You know where most of their herbs come from?” he hissed. “Poland!”

T
he Cannes into which I stepped from the TGV was a town I barely recognized. A chill wind, precursor of Provence’s annual curse, the mistral, stirred dust along streets that I knew only in film festival time. For those ten days in May, journalists jam the lanes of the old town and Maseratis with Emirate license plates park nose to tail along the Croisette. This was a different Cannes, obviously, with not a Maserati in sight. Maybe the food would be different, too.

Wedged into Charles’s daffodil-yellow sports car, we zoomed away from the station and headed north, into the mountains that climb behind the narrow coastal strip.

“I thought we might have lunch in Mougins,” he said.

“At the Moulin, you mean?”

Inwardly, I flinched. At festival time, the Moulin de Mougins is a favored hangout of movie people, with prices to match. Its sea scallops smoked over pine needles and served with black truffle risotto can set you back a sum that, elsewhere, would cover an entire meal.

“Well, I’d prefer somewhere more modest,” Charles said, “but if you’d really like . . .”

“No, no. It’s fine,” I said hurriedly. “Let’s slum for a change.”

In a large but mostly empty restaurant in Mougins, I had white bean soup enriched with a trickle of truffle oil, followed by a decent lamb stew and crème brûlée. Not a trace of tomato sauce in the entire menu, or of herbes de Provence. To be fair, tomatoes would have struggled here. Almost no vegetation grows on these crags—just sad, stately cypresses and those twisted olive trees that can root in a few handfuls of earth. The rest is rock. Thyme and oregano sprout in the cracks, but you take your life in your hands to harvest them.

We climbed, switchbacking along narrow roads buttressed by dry stone walls, snaking through villages that showed little sign that plastic or steel had ever been invented. Up here, you made do with what the mountains gave you. Rough-hewn chestnut beams might date back to the Middle Ages. Windows were asymmetrical and misshapen, their iron hasps and hinges thick and rusted, hammered out in the local smithy. Frames were carpentered to fit the panes, rather than vice versa. Glass had been more precious than wood.

Charles’s home is in the hilltop village of Cabris. Three centuries ago, it was a farmhouse attached to the château of the Marquis de Clapiers-Cabris. Peasants tore down the big house in 1789, hauling away its stones to improve their own homes. All that remains is a crumbling arch, once the grand entrance, and the paved Place Mirabeau that extends to where the cliff drops 1,800 feet toward the Mediterranean.

Cabris

Just before dinner, we walked to the edge and looked down. Below, terraces hardly bigger than a living room sustained olive trees and fruit trees. Beyond, the coastal plain spread to the darkening Mediterranean, the ocean that, to the ancients, was the middle of the earth.

“When the mistral blows,” Charles said, “the air clears. You can see Corsica, a hundred and ten miles away. People from the village come up here to watch.”

Maybe they are also looking for Antoine de Saint-Éxupéry. From childhood, the pilot-philosopher who wrote
The Little Prince
spent summers in Cabris. In July 1944 he took off from Corsica, flying a P-38 Lightning, and never returned. Some wreckage and the remains of a body were recovered off Marseilles. Most assume he chose to quench his increasing depression in the Mediterranean’s hypnotic blue.

W
e ate at L’Auberge du Vieux Château. It wasn’t a long walk—just next door.

I thought I knew every variation on Kir, but for our aperitif, the chef, Emilie Guetet, produced a new one: champagne and lychee liqueur, with, in the bottom of the glass, a tiny spoonful of
confit de pétales de rose
—rose petal jam. Though tasty, it hovered in that troubled area between refreshment and display, next to the my tai with an orchid in it or sambuca with a flaming coffee bean floating on top. Should we drink it or simply, like a flower arrangement, admire it?

Over the next three hours, we worked our way through a menu of authentic Provençal delicacies, faultlessly prepared on our behalf by Cyril Martin and proprietor Anne Loncle. A soup of locally grown pumpkin was followed by a tiny stuffed squid, accompanied by sautéed zucchini, then a few spoonsful of
boeuf bourguignon
on a tile of oil-fried bread, with a curl of homemade paprika fettuccine, then wedges of goat cheese with a salad of
mâche
. Colette might have preferred more garlic, but in other respects she would have been delighted.

Living well is the best revenge. Dining with my friend and host Charles.

After dinner we walked around town. Nothing in this landscape was soft. It had worn down the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Moors, and within a few centuries, it would have seen us off, too. Unlike the hot hill towns to the north, in the Luberon or Vaucluse, it resisted romance. Fitzgerald never wrote about it, nor has any movie star bought a house here—for fear, perhaps, of being reminded how little he matters. Its only cultural associations are French. Saint-Éxupéry’s mother and widow both retired to Cabris, and the town named a tiny square in his honor. André Gide summered here, preying on its schoolboys but also, to the surprise of all, fathering a daughter; more proof, like that rose confiture in our Kir, of a capacity for the unexpected.

P
rovence did have one last surprise for me.

The next day, we drove down to the Saturday market in Antibes. The
halles
, roofed but open-sided, already jostled with shoppers and vendors. Zucchini flowers, so rare in Paris, were heaped everywhere. Hot chilis, too, which offend the Parisian palate. A whiff of herbes de Provence led me to the spice merchant, who sold rosemary, oregano, dill, bay, and mint separately, in their own dishes, next to crimson paprika and yellow turmeric—all the flavors of Provence but each one individual, respected for itself.

At the end of the market, where it opened onto the paved square, I glimpsed flames.

“What’s that?”

“Oh, the
socca
man.”

I looked blank.

“You don’t know
socca
?”

“Should I?”

“Good heavens, yes.”

A cart was parked half outside the market. Within a metal hood about the size of the brick ovens used to cook pizza, flames roared from a liquid gas cylinder. Watched by his wife, standing behind a table, the
socca
man poured thin batter onto a wide metal dish attached to a long handle and slipped it in under the flames. The upper surface began to bubble and brown.

“What’s in it?”

Madame pointed to a sign hanging on a column.

SOCCA. Farine de Pois Chiche.

Huile d’Olive. Eau. Sel. 3 Euros.

The man slid the pancake onto a square of foil. The top was brown, the underside pale. Madame dusted it with pepper and slashed it into finger-food-size pieces.

I picked one up—it was almost too hot to touch—and munched.

“Wonderful!”

Chickpea flour, olive oil, water, and salt, with a bite of white pepper: Who could have imagined such simple ingredients could taste so good?

“You find
socca
all along this side of the Mediterranean,” Charles said. “I’m surprised you never had it before.”

So was I. But would it have tasted the same in Paris or London or New York, or even here, during festival time? Probably not. This was something to be eaten with cold stone underfoot, the mistral whipping up dust, and market people crying the merits of their cheese and fish. When time grinds away all of lesser value, this is what remains. “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

Saint-Éxupéry said that.

Fourteen

First Catch Your Burger