From Provence to The Pacific
A Food and Travel Memoir - Prologue and Chapter 1
Prologue
The encyclopedia of food we eat over the course of our lives is a tangible, sensory, and sensational representation of our moment in history, our environment, and economic circumstances. Like a mycelium network, the interconnected threads of these culinary memories are woven into our synapses, resurfacing unexpectedly when our taste buds resurrect long-forgotten flavors.
What is your first taste memory? Is there a dish or fruit you bite into that sucks you back in time like a time traveler to the moment when you first savored it? Marcel Proust famously wrote of madeleines dipped in tea, as his; mine is a simple carrot salad. If I close my eyes, I can see my young self sitting on my favorite red stool in my grandmother’s white tiled kitchen. She has made her salade de carottes rapées, a salad of grated carrots with a little lemon juice, a dash of olive oil, a pinch of salt, and pepper. It is slightly sweet, crunchy, and juicy. There’s a baguette on the table with some salted butter. It is, to my young mind, the perfect food, and I happily eat plates of it. The memory is all the sweeter because it encompasses the love and care with which she prepared the dish, the comforting warmth and safety of my grandparents’ home, and the subliminal knowledge that I am participating in traditions and tasting food that have been handed down through generations.
Our culinary repertoires expand as we age, like a pebble dropped in a pond, the ripples expanding ever outward, touching on diverse foods in different lands and distant shores. This is the story of that ripple effect, replete with unexpected twists and turns of fate and serendipity.
My taste bud journey began in France and England meandering through their verdant countrysides, dipping into azure seas, glacial lakes and well-traveled rivers, alpine vistas, sun kissed ochre-walled-red-tiled-roof villages, savoring the hustle of bustling cities, markets and marches, reveling in the knowledge of artisanal fromagers, boulangers and purveyors of fine food, from pubs to bistros, delis to traiteurs, brasseries to restaurants, all delivering a kaleidoscope of dishes that formed a sensuous, delicious gustatory ribbon of continuity from Hachis Parmentier to Shepherd’s Pie, from Pâté en croûte to Beef Wellington, from Tarte au Pommes to Apple Crumble. The journey wound its way across the Mediterranean, the Atlantic Ocean, and North America, soaking up flavors, aromas, spices, piquancy, and nuances of disparate culinary traditions from Morocco to Greece, Italy to Tunisia, the Straits of Gibraltar to Narragansett Bay, from New England to California, and from Provence to the Pacific.
The places themselves, Briançon, Sisteron, Dignes-Les-Bains, Nice, Antibes, Hauts-de-Cagnes, Ramatuelle, St. Tropez, The Cote d’Azur, The Luberon, Aix-En-Provence, Les Baux, Valence, Lyon, Paris, London, Newport, Boston, New York, Los Angeles, The Napa Valley and Santa Barbara became the scenic backdrop in this decades long circuitous voyage, each village, town, and country imprinting their very essence, their history and culinary traditions on my being and, in turn, my creativity, expressed, more often than not in the food I cooked, and in the words I wrote.
Madhur Jaffrey, the esteemed Indian cookbook author, wrote in her memoir, Climbing The Mango Trees, about a conversation she had with culinary guru James Beard. He asked, ‘Do you think there is such a thing as taste memory? She goes on to write ‘When I left India to study in England, I could not cook at all, but my palate had already recorded millions of flavors. From cumin to ginger, they were all in my head, waiting to be called into service.’ I agree with both of them, as all the flavors of our lives, some bitter, some sweet, or salty, are imprinted in our subconscious.
This book is about rediscovering the interconnectedness between place and time, rekindling some of those savory memories, and what those places, people, and cuisines led to.
Chapter 1 – Serendipity
I am a self-confessed book lover. Anyone who has been to my house or helped me with any of the five moves over the past 25 years can attest to the fact that I have a penchant for books. More than one person has sworn at me for the sheer number of book boxes I move from house to house, but I will tell you that they 'spark joy', in a Marie Kondo way, which is why I keep them. There are art books, books on gardens and design, and a vast collection of cookbooks. There are also historical fiction and crime novels, and I must confess that I have a faiblesse for Jane Austen, and Pride and Prejudice in particular, a book I reread every year or so. There is something so improbable about the situations her characters find themselves in, and yes, I have transported myself to the 19th-century countryside to imagine what that would be like. Haven't you? If there's a definition of the ultimate, in movie parlance, 'meet-cute', I think Elizabeth Bennett and Mr.Darcy win hands down, although some could argue that Romeo and Juliet could give them a run for their money.
All this to say that I have spent quite a lot of time, usually listening to audio books as I cook and bake, pondering just how people meet. If you think about it, we are all here, and by that I mean, present on this planet, as a result of a chance encounter, well, many chance encounters as each generation that precedes us is an amalgam of happenstance. I was contemplating this fact as I thought about the likelihood of a half-English, half-French thirty-something-year-old woman ending up halfway around the world, starting a business for which she had no professional training. There was a series of events that led to my traveling 6,000 miles from home, which began coincidentally with another long journey and, naturally, an improbable encounter.
The odds that a young man from the French Riviera would meet a young woman from Normandy in the late 1930s were minimal, as traveling across the country nearly ninety years ago was a long, tiresome, expensive journey that few would undertake, other than for specialized work, military service, or perhaps visiting an ailing relative.
In this scenario, cue a young doctor traveling over 1,000 kilometers from home by car with his sister, en route to a medical conference. The car breaks down, and by an extraordinary coincidence, this unfortunate event takes place in a town where a friend of the sister resides. They had not seen each other for some time – they had been guides together – but she managed to find her address, and voilà!, the young doctor met his sister's friend. The doctor, with his sister as chaperone – this is 1938 in France, after all, and we're talking about two very Catholic, very formal families - invites her friend to visit her. She does, and lo and behold, the brother is there so they can meet again. You can guess what happens next. Cue the sun setting in the Alps and a big family wedding. This is a true story. It is how my grandparents met.
My grandparents grew up at a time of enormous social and economic upheaval in France. Alexis, my grandfather, was a child of the late Belle Époque (the French equivalent to the Edwardian era). His parent’s wedding photo shows the formality of their lives.
I would love to know the details of exactly how my great-grandparents' relationship came about, as he was an Abbot in Nice. Obviously, a young lady who attended the same parish church turned his head as he gave up his ecclesiastical devotions to marry her. My grandfather arrived precisely nine months later. Born in 1908, he was thrust at the tender age of ten into the role of 'man' of the family after his father died after being imprisoned at the end of WWI. He had a very disciplined upbringing in a strictly religious household, spending four years in Morocco while his father was stationed there during the war. He was then sent away to be educated in boarding schools and subsequently guided and inspired by his uncle, a surgeon who had taken him under his wing, to embark on a medical career.
His mother became a difficult, taciturn woman, devastated by the loss of her husband, left alone to bring up three children. She was not alone in this fate, as more than a million Frenchmen lost their lives in the 'Great War.' Was it the dearth of eligible men that caused my great-grandmother never to remarry? This 'lost' generation had a profound effect on the country's economic and social recovery. Life was simplified by necessity, financial hardship, and the Herculean task of rebuilding the country after much of its industrialized north had been battered by the war.
The country's interwar transformation catapulted the nation from Belle Époque propriety to what was viewed by many as radically modern. Life in the more cosmopolitan parts of France, and Paris in particular, transitioned from one governed by the church, home, and societal hierarchy to one of immense social upheaval.
The cultural explosion of the Années Folles (the 1920s) permeated many aspects of Parisian life as expat writers like T. S. Eliot, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein created a bohemian international community that intertwined itself with French avant-garde literary circles of André Gide, Paul Valéry, and Jean Cocteau in Paris's left bank cafés. Art underwent a metamorphosis: Picasso's cubist work and Dalí, Chagall, and Magritte's surrealist paintings radically altering classical perspectives. Architecture evolved from Haussmann's grandeur to the flamboyance of the Art Deco movement and Le Corbusier's modernist structures. Musically, Stravinsky's jarring rhythms, and jazz, embodied in the music of Sidney Bechet, Django Reinhardt, and Josephine Baker, seduced a newly liberated population, all the while ruffling the feathers of classical traditionalists.
If life in Paris was undergoing a cultural seismic shift, life in the provinces, particularly in more remote parts of France, was still governed by rural traditions.
My grandmother, Genevieve, grew up during this interwar period. Her family had fled the occupation of northern France in WWI and moved to Lyon, where she was born in 1915, only to return to their Normandy roots, settling in Rouen after the cessation of hostilities. She rarely spoke about her childhood, and I have limited knowledge of her education, except to note that as an adult, she had a lifelong fascination with art, architecture, sacred geometry, and classical music. She loved language and literature. I can't help but wonder where, had she not moved to the Alps with my grandfather, where he had established his medical practice, her literary talents and artistic curiosity would have taken her? However, once married, and per the norms of the day, her dreams of city living, or even living by the sea, were swept away as they settled in Briançon, the highest town in France, nestled into a confluence of alpine valleys, tucked away up near the Italian border.
The honeymoon was short lived. Four months after their wedding, World War II began.
France, as with the rest of Europe, was plunged into another devastating war. My grandmother, born during the First World War, gave birth to all her children during the Second, with bombs falling in the mountains surrounding them, the town occupied, the Maquis fighting across the passes, and the local population scrounging up enough food to eat given the severe rationing they all had to live with. It was a fraught and perilous time.
My mother was born into this maelstrom. She has distinct memories of playing in a large ditches in the bombed-out garden, of troops entering the house and breaking doors, of her father’s patients bringing the odd rabbit to barter for treatments, of the liberation, and meeting American soldiers who handed her chewing gum and coffee for her parents, of her mother’s palpable cry of relief at war’s end, and of the freedom to finally be allowed outside unsupervised.
Life across the country slowly, very slowly, returned to normal. It took more than ten contentious years to rebuild the destroyed infrastructure and the thousands of bombed villages, towns, and cities. Families were finally reunited as travel restrictions were lifted. My grandmother was able to see her parents again and introduce them to her children. Rationing ended, finally, in 1949, and once lowly, hardy vegetables such as Jerusalem artichokes and rutabega that helped feed the population during the occupation slowly disappeared from markets. It’s taken nearly seven decades for those substitute vegetables to be acceptable to French palates once more!
In Briançon, my grandfather worked to grow his medical practice, my grandmother ran their busy household raising four children. My mother and her siblings were able to attend school, enjoy their childhoods, and eased into adolescence in their alpine homeland. Little did she know then that in a few short years, a serendipitous meeting would transform her life.
Playlist: From to The Pacific – Chapter 1
Saint-Saëns - The Swan
Maurice Ravel - Bolero
Claude Debussy - Clair de Lune
Fauré - Fantaisie, Op. 79
Tino Rossi - J’attendrai
Charles Aznavour – La bohème
Edith Piaf – Padam, Padam
Charles Trenet – Que Rese T’Il De Nos Amours
Georges Brassens – Je Me Suis Fais Tout Petit
Charles Trenet – Douce France
From Provence to the Pacific – Chapter 1 Menu
Salade d’Endives aux Noix et au Roquefort
Endives Salad with Walnuts and Roquefort
Rotis de Porc au Lait et à la Sauge, Pomme de Terres à la Vapeur, Epinards au Beurre
Roast Pork in Milk with Sage, Steamed Potatoes and Buttered Spinach
Plateau de Fromages
Cheese platter
Pommes Caramélisées au Calvados
Caramelized Apples with Calvados
This menu pays homage to my grandmother’s heritage and would be a typical ‘simple’ dinner served in her parents’ home. The French have always had a love affair with the ‘art de la table’, the idea that gathering around a table to share a meal is an essential part of life. This principle means that meals are not rushed, but rather, savored. One hundred years ago, the rigid formality of dinners dictated that a large number of courses be served. Although the impact of the two World Wars reduced the quantity of dishes served, the structure governing meals remained unchanged. Throughout her married life, my grandmother oversaw the arduous task of preparing three formal meals a day. She wouldn’t have it any other way.
Salade d’Endives aux Noix et au Roquefort
Endives Salad with Walnuts and Roquefort
Bring up the rules of table etiquette to any French person, and you will get a long list of rules to which they adhere. Cooking in France may be less formal than it was in my grandparents’ time, but the rules governing the preparation, serving, and eating of salad are still just as strict. A salad is usually served after the main course, before the cheese course, and dessert. It serves as a palate cleanser and is said to aid digestion. They are usually very simple green salads, possibly with a few herbs and a light vinaigrette. The exception to the salad-after-the-main-course rule is that of a salade composée, a heartier salad that includes ingredients such as nuts (as in this salad) or protein (think Salade Nicoise or Salade Lyonnaise), which can be served as a first course or main course for lunch.
This endive salad is a traditional winter salad. The creamy Roquefort is the perfect foil for the light bitterness of the chicory.
Serves 4 people
For the salad:
4-6 Belgian endives — leaves separated
¼ cup chopped walnuts
2 tablespoons crumbled Roquefort
1 tablespoon finely chopped chives
1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley
For the vinaigrette:
1 tablespoon walnut mustard
2 tablespoons walnut oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1. Place all the salad ingredients in a medium bowl and toss gently to combine.
2. In a small bowl whisk together the vinaigrette ingredients to form an emulsion. Drizzle over the salad when ready to serve.
Rotis de Porc au Lait et à la Sauge et au Romarin
Roast Pork in Milk with Sage and Rosemary
I asked my mother, her sisters, and brother if they could remember dishes their maternal grandmother cooked when they visited the family in Rouen as children. Without hesitating, all of them said exactly the same thing with a wistful look in their eyes. ‘Oh la la, she made the most incredible roast pork cooked in milk!’ ‘It was so tender,’ cried one, ‘It was so delicate, it melted in your mouth,’ cried another. Does anyone have the recipe? I asked. Silence… and so I set about recreating this dish, which featured so prominently in their collective consciousness. I researched old cookbooks, tested, and retested, and I hope I did my great-grandmother’s cooking justice.
Serves 4-6 people
For the pork:
3 tablespoons butter
3 shallots — peeled and thinly sliced
2 carrots — peeled and thinly sliced
2.5-3lb pork roast
Coarse sea salt
4 cups (1 liter) whole milk
4-5 sage leaves
1 large sprig rosemary
1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
2. Melt 2 tablespoons of the butter in a large oven proof Dutch oven (casserole) over medium heat. Once sizzling, add the shallots and carrots and sauté until soft and lightly golden, about 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Spoon the vegetables out of the pan into a small bowl.
3. Melt the remaining butter in the pan, then add the roast and sear on all sides until golden, about 8-10 minutes.
4. Pour the milk into the pan to come three-quarters up the sides of the roast. Add 2 good pinches of salt, and 5-6 grinds of black pepper, the sage leaves and rosemary, and the cooked vegetables. Cover and place in the center of the oven. Roast for 1 hr. 30 – 1 hr. 45 mins, turning the roast over in the pan every 30 minutes or so.
5. The milk will split in the pan at about the hour mark, leaving light curdles in the dish. Do not worry, this is normal. When the roast has finished cooking, remove it to a cutting board. Remove the sage leaves and sprig of rosemary. Using an emersion blender (or place everything in a blender) purée the milk and vegetables for at least 1 minute. This will create a delicious sauce. If you want it to be absolutely smooth, you can pass it through a sieve, but I usually serve this as is.
6. Slice the roast and serve with the sauce, spinach and potatoes.
Pomme de Terres à la Vapeur, Epinards au Beurre
Steamed Potatoes and Buttered Spinach
For the potatoes:
1 lb small fingerling potatoes
1 tablespoon butter (or olive oil)
Coarse sea salt
Black pepper
1 tablespoon finely chopped chives
Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil. Add the potatoes and 2 pinches of salt. Cook until the potatoes are fork-tender, approximately 14-16 minutes. Drain the water away and return the potatoes to the same pan. Add the butter, a large pinch of salt and 3-4 grinds of pepper, the chives and toss to combine.
For the spinach:
Olive olive oil
8 oz baby spinach – washed
2 tablespoons butter
2 shallots — peeled, halved and thinly sliced
Zest of 1 lemon and juice of ½ lemon
Coarse sea salt
Black pepper
Pour the 2 tablespoons olive oil into a large pan placed over medium high heat. Add in the baby spinach and cook until it is just wilted. This will only take a minute or so. Remove from the heat and place the spinach in a large bowl.
In the same pan you just cooked the spinach in, add 1 tablespoon olive oil and the butter. Once the butter has melted, add the shallots, reduce the heat to low and sauté the shallots until soft and golden. Add the lemon zest and juice, stir together and pour this mixture over the spinach and toss to combine. Season with a little salt and pepper Serve with the roast.
Plateau de Fromages
Cheese Platter
There’s an old French proverb, ‘pas de bon repas sans fromage’, which states that a meal is not complete without a cheese course. My grandparents strictly adhered to this maxim, following the tradition that provides for a savory transition from the main course to dessert. Cheese plates, or platters, are always served as a digestif, not an aperitif, in France, following the main course, after a salad, but before dessert. Yes, as with all things related to food in France, cheese has its own particular etiquette.
I can think of few things I enjoy more than a platter of fresh goat cheese, but typically, a cheese plate includes three types of cheeses. A hard cheese, such as a Comté or Beaufort, a soft cheese, such as a Brie or Camembert, and a goat or blue cheese. Simple plates include three types of cheese, for larger crowds, serve five or seven options, accompanied by a baguette and/or a nut bread. Butter is rarely included on a cheese plate, but my grandmother, true to her Norman roots, always had butter on the table! I admit that I love butter with cheese, and so follow suit.
When making your own cheese plate, choose the ones you enjoy and remember to serve them at room temperature.
Pommes Caramélisées au Calvados
Caramelized Apples with Calvados
Desserts in my great-grandmother’s house were simple affairs, often a piece of whatever fruit was in season. This is an easy, quick-to-make dessert that celebrates my family’s Norman roots.
The apples are sautéed in butter and a little sugar, then dramatically set alight with Calvados, an AOC apple brandy made only in Normandy. Be careful when pouring the Calvados into the pan, as it can flare up.
Serves 4 people
2 tablespoons butter
4 Fuji apples — peeled and sliced
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
2 tablespoons calvados (or brandy)
½ cup crème fraiche
1. Melt the butter in a large skillet over meium heat. Once sizzling, add the apple slices and cook for 2 minutes, turn the slices over, add the sugar and cook for 2-3 minutes more. Be gentle with the apple slices, turning them over once or twice more to ensure they are golden.
2. Carefully pour the calvados in to the pan, and tilt the pan towards the heat (if using a gas stove) or light with a match. The calvados will light. Cook until the flame subsides, usually 5-15 seconds. Serve with crème fraiche.
What a wonderful read! And, such an interesting way to weave together a family history memoir. Looking forward to more.
Mary Ann Greenelsh
And the recipes will be fun to try. I brought calvados’s home from Normandy and it disappeared in my move. The photos are lovely!