The return of the non-native passed without drama. I flew from a rainy Kennedy overnight to a rainy Heathrow, changed planes and flew to a rainy Paris. I hung around a bit waiting in ‘Paul’ for my train to a rainy Lyon, but with the help of the Metro got to within a 50-meter dash to home with the wheels on my bag leaving a spray in my trail. I always bring back something that is tougher to find here than a well-stocked Whole Foods, so tucked away in my running shoes were sundry chilies, shelled cardamom seeds as well as Rachel’s favorite Peet’s Coffee hidden away for a birthday surprise. I have given up buying duty-free booze. I used to return with a liter of some expensive gin but have cupboards full of them now as we just don’t drink as much gin as I think we do when I am confronted by the wall of gins in Heathrow. My Mum and Dad drank Gordon’s London Gin, in the traditional green glass bottle. I have discovered that as much as most Dutch gin is undrinkable, the arguable home of Jenever, or gin as we corrupted it to, does produce my favorite, Bobby’s Gin from Rotterdam. Bobby’s, Campari and Antica Formula makes hands down the best Negroni.
It’s always great coming home to France, and doubly so when returning from the US. All the small touches, nuances and peculiarities of the ‘hexagon’ reinforce the prejudices and odd pride in having made the decision to live here rather than there. Cars do not dominate life here as they so evidently do there, there are less of them, they are small, lumpen and functional in Lyon. In the US they seem gigantic, distorted, almost steroidal. People walk and bike here. Sure, people walk in New York, but only the crazy and bike delivery guys lumbering along with insulated saddlebags and handle guards ride bikes. The traffic is ridiculous at all hours of the day, the turn right on a light habit is a killer, and you would have to carry a lock and chain the size of a small child to ensure if you parked it, that upon your return it would still be there. France has poverty, class oppression and racism. It is not defined by it, though, and arguably makes considerable efforts to address those modern societal blights. The US has a visible and obvious problem in that there are lots of places to buy shiny things and places to eat copious amounts of food but the people doing the shopping and eating are rich, predominantly old, white or Asian and the people running around doing everything else, everything else, are from minorities and predominantly from Latin America. There are homeless here in Lyon, camping under semi-vacant local government buildings awaiting redevelopment. But the sheer volume of people living on the streets in the US, living in their cars, living from addiction to fix, their lives spilling on to the ground from suitcases and shopping trolleys is deafening. People are not happy, not in the simple hanging out, going about their day-to-day life, way of being happy. The impression you get is one of desperation, desperate to please, desperate to get ahead, desperate to get through their shift, desperate not to fuck up.
So ambling around Lyon, strolling over to the Sunday market to buy fruit and veg for the week ahead was cathartic. Just seeing families, old folks, the young and hip, the ungainly, the sleek, the full panoply of the French, mixing together without an obvious stratification of the server and the served, nor the desperate need to please, enjoying an unspoken Gallic mutual respect is like taking an emotional shower. I washed off the stench of Mammon by lining up to buy the new season strawberries. I cooked for us, we had some wine, had some hugs, ate some cheese and I felt home.
It became apparent that I had also brought home something else from my travels. By Monday evening Rachel was feeling under the weather and by the following afternoon my abject denial through the act of running through the rain was not working, I had a cold. Here we are, 6 days later and we both still have it and vast amounts of vitamin C, zinc and Wellness Formula have failed to put much of a dent in it. Maybe it’s the combination of travel, the exposure to all sorts of cooties from trains, planes and automobiles and the spring pollen explosions resulted in this malaise. Thursday the 16th was Rachel’s birthday, and we were planning a fun day, but being fully enrheumé, things were low-key. The 16th is also as it happens the feast day of St Honoré. A fitting saint to see their name on the wall of the baker’s as St Honoré is the patron saint of bakers. Honoratus of Amiens was his given name, and he was Bishop of Amiens in Picardy from 564 to 600. Modern sources are sniffy about the origin story as its only source is from a 12th century book called the ‘Lives of Saints’ and it’s all very exciting, lots of miracles and stuff, so seen now as being a bit hagiographic. Anyway, if we take the official line at face value, Honoré was born to a well-to-do family in Ponthieu and being a pious young lad was sent to study with the local Bishop of Amiens, who was called Beat. Sadly he does not seem to have left any poems or verse so he cannot claim to be the first of the Beat Poets, but he liked the young Honoré, who was said to enjoy nothing more than praying and fasting. Upon Beat’s death in 564 the clergy and people put him forward as his successor, but he pulled the ‘we are not worthy’ defense. However, someone upstairs had other plans so he was struck by a celestial beam to the forehead and from the impact point mysterious amounts of special oil sprang forth, which as everyone knows is the last stage of the Bishopric job interview, and he passed it successfully. His wet nurse refused to believe that her former charge was now Bish, and said if that was the truth, then the baker’s peel that she was using in the oven should sprout leaves. It did, and so she planted the burning oven shovel in the courtyard, which grew Jack and Magic Beanstalk-like into a mulberry tree bearing leaves and fruit. In the 11th century, his fame spread to Paris and a baker, named Renold Théreins, gave nine acres of land for the construction of a chapel in honor of Saint Honoré and he became patron saint of millers, flour merchants, bakers and pastry chefs. He also gave his name to a pastry, the Saint-honoré which I have to admit I have not yet tried. The road to the chapel is the chic and renowned Fauborg St Honoré.
Whilst I have been fighting off the worst effects of this most persistent of colds, I have tried to cook hearty and healthy food and did a marvelous stew inspired by Mark Bittman’s Beef Stew with Prunes. Using quasi de veau instead of beef and dates instead of prunes. It’s a great recipe for a slow day, it combines some sugar and the dried fruit and a final addition of vinegar to give a gorgeous agrodulce effect. The weather brightened up finally Friday and in a desperate effort to bring some spring atmosphere I fancied doing a take on salad nicoise as the haricot beans are just coming in to season. I managed to secure some glorious Mediterranean Tuna from the fish guy and the local grocery store is selling home brined olives, so with the sweet small Ratte potatoes and some fresh farm eggs we were good to go. I ground a cleaned salted anchovy with garlic, added some shallot marinated in Sherry Vinegar, Dijon mustard and some good olive oil, I sweetened it with Gratte Cul jam. It’s actually Rose-Hip jam but the French call it ‘Arse scratcher’ for some reason, don’t ask!
Anecdotes and Antidotes in Burgundy 