Chef Lauriot was very careful with his money. This meant that he drove himself and me very hard. To make a few extra francs, he had agreed to cater a party of 800 at the civic center in Macon. These folks were attending an annual green-grocers convention. Yes, there were still small business persons; in the U.S., such persons had long since gone bankrupt, driven out of business by supermarket corporations.
To prepare for this large party, the chef and I boned 35 ducks, stuffed them and made galantines. My 59 year old brain has not retained that memory; or, perhaps someone should hypnotize me to activate the traces that have gone rusty. We also had to cut up and marinate 105 roosters.
We drove the coq au vin, the galantine, cases of canned petits pois provided by the grocers and many crates of wine to the civic center. The chef and I and one assistant hired for the occasion personned the kitchen. When we arrived, there were 60 waiters, and they set to work, popping corks out of bottles of red wine in order to slake the thirst of 800 becs fins.
We had to work with 5 small stoves. Imagine reheating that much food on 5 stoves! The chef decided to close all the doors to the kitchen in order warm everything up, including us.
I have no idea how the 800 green-grocers liked their lunch, but I’m sure glad the dessert was an ice cream cake!
Monday, September 20, 2010
28. HOSTELLERIE BOURGUIGNONNE—Diet of Wurms
We had a refrigerator, but it was usually crammed full with live crayfish, slithering eels and blocks of butter.
One of the menu items was roast chicken. We would roast enough chicken to satisfy the service. Since a chicken takes about an hour to roast, it’s smart to cook them a little ahead. Sometimes, however, we had a few chickens or chicken halves left over. Instead of refrigerating them, we would set them on the table that I stepped on to get the trout. We would line them up by age: Day 1 (good for customers); Day 2 (good for some customers); Day 3 (good for us but not for customers).
This system worked well until we went through a hot spell and the highs were in the 80s (hot for that part of France.) When it was hot, we wouldn’t bother to reheat the chocolate but we would eat it cold with some lettuce and a nice vinaigrette.
At some point during the summer, I was eating some Day 3 chicken. Funny thing is, the pieces of meat started moving around in the mouth. I spit it out, took a look at the chicken, and threw it out.
The chef, amused, gave me a second pastis. That helped.
One of the menu items was roast chicken. We would roast enough chicken to satisfy the service. Since a chicken takes about an hour to roast, it’s smart to cook them a little ahead. Sometimes, however, we had a few chickens or chicken halves left over. Instead of refrigerating them, we would set them on the table that I stepped on to get the trout. We would line them up by age: Day 1 (good for customers); Day 2 (good for some customers); Day 3 (good for us but not for customers).
This system worked well until we went through a hot spell and the highs were in the 80s (hot for that part of France.) When it was hot, we wouldn’t bother to reheat the chocolate but we would eat it cold with some lettuce and a nice vinaigrette.
At some point during the summer, I was eating some Day 3 chicken. Funny thing is, the pieces of meat started moving around in the mouth. I spit it out, took a look at the chicken, and threw it out.
The chef, amused, gave me a second pastis. That helped.
27. HOSTELLERIE BOURGUIGNONNE—Slave Work
Toward the end of the season, the chef needed to start thinking about battening down the hatches. This included cleaning the greywater sewers. The potwasher and I spent our time cleaning out the grease traps of which there were more than 10. Large concrete chambers full of very stinky water with inches of congealed, dark fat floating on top.
Another day, I trimmed the plane trees that shaded the front yard. The French love to cut their plane trees to the quick, making them look knobby. I think this comes from years of using the small branches in their fireplaces—before coal (B.C.)
Another day, I trimmed the plane trees that shaded the front yard. The French love to cut their plane trees to the quick, making them look knobby. I think this comes from years of using the small branches in their fireplaces—before coal (B.C.)
26. HOSTELLERIE BOURGUIGNONNE—Tom, Gopher
The roast quail came to us in boxes. I had to ride my motorbike to the bus stop, the bus having come from Chalon sur Sâone, the nearest city of any size. The driver would pull the boxes of quail off and hand them to me. Once, they arrived a little putrified, thanks to the warm summer temperatures. We cooked them anyway. What’s a little gangrene on the palate?
I also had to fetch the milk every morning. This involved jumping on my motorbike and tootling down the road to the old lady’s farm. She had one or two cows. I would stand next to the cow while she squirted the milk into the bucket. Then back I went with maybe two liters of fresh, warm milk. This was used for café au lait for us and for the guests, who occupied the five rooms over the restaurant.
This milk was of course inoculated with the lactic acid bacteria coating the cow’s udder. So, when you left it out overnight, it formed a very nice yogurt. Today’s milk is refrigerated immediately, and the result is a lifeless fluid—lacking the lactic acid bacteria, which are thermophilic, meaning they like warm places and don’t do well when winter comes. Today’s milk spoils by turning bitter because the lactic acid bacteria, which are so important for proper gut functioning, have been destroyed.
Besides fetching milk, I regularly drove down to the creamery to get butter. They had a large, wooden churn, perhaps 6 feet in diameter. I also went to the charcuterie for sausages. They had a small stone house that projected over the river with a hole in the floor. They would slaughter the pigs there. Of course, the butchers would save every drop of blood, which was prized for thickening civets, stews with rich, dark sauces. And the blood was also useful for sausages such as boudin noir. The hole in the floor was to drop chyme to the fish. The pig’s intestines would be full of partially digested food, a real fishy treat.
The butchers made dried pork sausages, saucissons secs, as well as fresh sausages that you had to cook, saucissons à l’ail. They showed me how they would mix bacteria with the raw pork allow it to ferment overnight in a basin at 55 °F, then stuff the pig guts and hang them to dry and mold.
Once the chef was out of lettuce. Being an enterprising sort, I drove through town, knocking on doors, explaining that Chef Lauriot was out of lettuce. Several people gave me heads of lettuce, and back I went.
I also had to fetch the milk every morning. This involved jumping on my motorbike and tootling down the road to the old lady’s farm. She had one or two cows. I would stand next to the cow while she squirted the milk into the bucket. Then back I went with maybe two liters of fresh, warm milk. This was used for café au lait for us and for the guests, who occupied the five rooms over the restaurant.
This milk was of course inoculated with the lactic acid bacteria coating the cow’s udder. So, when you left it out overnight, it formed a very nice yogurt. Today’s milk is refrigerated immediately, and the result is a lifeless fluid—lacking the lactic acid bacteria, which are thermophilic, meaning they like warm places and don’t do well when winter comes. Today’s milk spoils by turning bitter because the lactic acid bacteria, which are so important for proper gut functioning, have been destroyed.
Besides fetching milk, I regularly drove down to the creamery to get butter. They had a large, wooden churn, perhaps 6 feet in diameter. I also went to the charcuterie for sausages. They had a small stone house that projected over the river with a hole in the floor. They would slaughter the pigs there. Of course, the butchers would save every drop of blood, which was prized for thickening civets, stews with rich, dark sauces. And the blood was also useful for sausages such as boudin noir. The hole in the floor was to drop chyme to the fish. The pig’s intestines would be full of partially digested food, a real fishy treat.
The butchers made dried pork sausages, saucissons secs, as well as fresh sausages that you had to cook, saucissons à l’ail. They showed me how they would mix bacteria with the raw pork allow it to ferment overnight in a basin at 55 °F, then stuff the pig guts and hang them to dry and mold.
Once the chef was out of lettuce. Being an enterprising sort, I drove through town, knocking on doors, explaining that Chef Lauriot was out of lettuce. Several people gave me heads of lettuce, and back I went.
25. HOSTELLERIE BOURGUIGNONNE—The Menu
The restaurant’s menu had three prix fixe items on it:
Prince du Doubs et sa Cour (Prince of the Doubs and his court)
Pôchouse Verdunoise
Caille Rotîe
The Prince du Doubs was a small pike boned and stuffed with a mousseline of pike and crayfish. We always had crayfish on hand, which we kept in a large metal container perforated with numerous holes. We stored them in the refrigerator, where they remained, hail and hearty. Periodically, they needed to be refreshed in water. We did this by submerging the can in a sink full of cold water. The crayfish perked up and became especially agitated if you stuck your hand in among them. They never pinched. Once you pulled them out of the water, however, their pincers came alive. The fun thing to do was to grab hold of one and pull. It would latch onto its neighbor and you could pull out a chain of crayfish.
To cook crayfish, Chef Lauriot would put a little oil in a sauteoir, heat it, add the crayfish, and fry them alive, stirring regularly to distribute the heat. Frying them in oil brought out a special flavor which will probably never be identified by science. Like so many culinary phenomena, there is no money in discovering unimportant phenomena.
He would then flambé them with Cognac, add a mirepoix, some fish stock, reduce, thicken with a little roux, and then add heavy cream. The result was marvelous. Those particular crayfish had really excellent flavor.
Pôchouse was made with three fish, tench, pike, and eel, native to the Doubs river, which flowed out of the nearby Jura mountains. The tench was a relative of the carp, except that it (the tench) had only half its scales; it hardly would pass muster with the God of Leviticus. The pike was the terror of the local waters; large mouthed, sleek, and fully indentured. And the eel came up from the Atlantic, being catadromous: spawning in the distant Sargasso sea and travelling thousands of miles to Alpine waters.
To make pochouse, you had to clean the fish and cut them up. Tench and pike both needed scraping. The eel was a special case. It arrived quite alive, which meant that I had to kill it. To do this, I grabbed hold of its tail and swung the head against the walls of the fish shack. A few good whacks, and it was dead. Then I slit behind the gills, pulled the skin back and then, taking a piece of newspaper, peeled the skin right off the eel. This was easy with small eels, harder with large eels.
Once the fish were cleaned and cut into sections, you cut several heads of garlic in half crosswise, then added branches of thyme, then the fish, and then filled to cover with Bourgogne aligoté, the local white wine. This was brought to a boil, the alcohol flambéed off, and once the fish were cooked, we thickened it with a blond roux.
We served pôchouse in crockery fish dishes complete with fish covers. The waiter or waitress served à la française tableside. With each portion came a buttery crouton that had been rubbed with fresh garlic.
I’ve always thought of this dish as an example of flavor complementarity: contrasting fresh garlic and cooked garlic. The principle is this: the cooked garlic has lost many of its volatiles; in addition, many new flavors have formed. So, after cooking the garlic and driving off many volatiles and also causing chemical reactions that mute the raw garlic flavor, you serve the dish with a crouton rubbed with raw garlic. It contains just enough of the original flavors to remind and recall.
Another example of playing with the raw and the cooked is wine. Again, many volatiles are lost while cooking. What is left is the acidity of wine along with some of the less volatile flavors. To recapture the original wine essence, one splashes in a little at the time of serving. This is referred to as relever, or to “pick up.”
Like all French birds, the quail came deplumed with not gutless. I had to cut off their feet, their necks and heads, and gut them. I then made a pomade of Dijon mustard, egg, and puréed green peppercorns and slathered this on the birds. I then rolled them in breadcrumbs and baked them in butter. I served them with Gratin Dauphinoise.
Although I haven’t made a Prince du Doubs, a roast quail, or a Pôchouse in years, I have made Gratin Dauphinoise many times. This is the ultimate scalloped potatoes. In fact, there is no point in making scalloped potatoes any other way. To make it, peel potatoes, slice them 1/16 inch thick on the mandoline, place in a mixing bowl, and add salt, white pepper, and minced garlic. Mix well and transfer to a baking dish or glass brownie pan. Cover, literally, in heavy cream. Bake in a moderate oven (350 °F) until the potatoes are tender. At this point, the top should be a rich brown. Avoid overbaking this dish, as the cream de-emulsifies and butters out.
During lunch and dinner, my job was to make the Truite au Bleu. This involved jumping up on the table facing the dining room and, using a net, pull a live trout out of the fish tank, which was about 10 feet long, 4 feet high, and 18 inches wide. There were a few rocks in the tank, but otherwise nothing but water and fish. I had to grab the trout out of the net, hold it by the tale, and bop it on the head to knock it unconscious. Then, I removed the gills and innards and dropped it in vinegar. This caused one of the proteins in the mucus covering the scales to turn blue. I would then poach the trout in salted water and serve it with beurre blanc and pommes vapeur (boiled potatoes.)
Fish farmers would deliver the trout regularly. The trout were quite amusing when it rained. We would have to cover the tank, as the sound of falling rain—even though the outdoors was at least 10 feet away and separated from the fish by a stone wall and some windows—would stimulate jumping behaviors, and we’d have trout carcasses all over the floor of the kitchen.
One Sunday, during a particularly busy part of the service, I jumped onto the table and, instead of netting a fish, I netted a large rock. In desperation, I tried to set it down but instead tapped the side of the aquarium.
The next morning, when I came down to prepare breakfast, there was a split in the glass that ran the entire length of the aquarium. Water was seeping through. The chef said, “Well, you did that. So now you pay. That’ll cost you a week’s wages.” I said, “No, I didn’t. No, I won’t. No, it won’t.”
Years later, I was reading about glass in preparation for a lecture. That particular reading stated that when glass is under pressure, it is not unusual for it to crystallize and crack if tapped with a sharp object.
Another of my culinary responsibilities was making the galantine. This involved boning a duck. In those days, duck did not come in plastic. They came with the heads and feet on. I would eviscerate the duck and remove its appendages, then bone it out. The bones went into a duck stock that was kept at room temperature for 8 months! This was possible because the stock was a deep brown due to the countless bones that had simmered in it.
I would marinate the duck meat, veal, and pork, with Madeira and cognac, quatre épices, then grind some of it and mix it with an egg. This forcemeat was then spread over the duck skin and strips of duck breast and pork fat would be arranged on the meat. Down the center went goose liver pate and truffles. The whole was rolled up, covered with cheesecloth, tied, and set adrift in the stock to poach for 3-4 hours. When the inside was just done, it was pressed and chilled, then sliced. We served it with aspic, cold, as an appetizer.
I also made paté en croûte. I mixed a pâte à foncer, lined a paté en croûte mold with the dough, then filled to ¾ full with a forcemeat, hard-boiled eggs, and strips of marinated pork and pork fat. When cooked and cooled, I filled all the gaps with aspic, chilled, and sliced in ¾ inch slices.
I made the vanilla ice cream and champagne sorbet for the dessert menu. Vanilla ice cream was made with the usual Crème Anglaise, turned in a large ice cream maker. This was served on Peach Melba, a dessert that was popular throughout France and that had been named after an opera singer of that name. It was easy enough to make: balls of house ice cream on canned peach halves coated in raspberry purée.
The champagne sorbet required turning a lemon-flavored sugar syrup, then opening a bottle of champagne halfway through and adding it to the almost frozen syrup. To make the sorbet really light and white, I made an Italian meringue (egg whites and sugar) and added this at the end.
This was served on the Peches Blanches Carolines, named after the chef’s grand-daughter. This involved two balls of champagne sorbet next to a poached white peach.
All of our desserts were served with cheveux d’ange, the culinary equivalent of cotton candy. I made caramel in a copper pan, then reheated as needed and flipped caramel off a spoon onto a dowel. I gathered this and spun it around my hand and set a crown of sugar on top of the dessert.
Prince du Doubs et sa Cour (Prince of the Doubs and his court)
Pôchouse Verdunoise
Caille Rotîe
The Prince du Doubs was a small pike boned and stuffed with a mousseline of pike and crayfish. We always had crayfish on hand, which we kept in a large metal container perforated with numerous holes. We stored them in the refrigerator, where they remained, hail and hearty. Periodically, they needed to be refreshed in water. We did this by submerging the can in a sink full of cold water. The crayfish perked up and became especially agitated if you stuck your hand in among them. They never pinched. Once you pulled them out of the water, however, their pincers came alive. The fun thing to do was to grab hold of one and pull. It would latch onto its neighbor and you could pull out a chain of crayfish.
To cook crayfish, Chef Lauriot would put a little oil in a sauteoir, heat it, add the crayfish, and fry them alive, stirring regularly to distribute the heat. Frying them in oil brought out a special flavor which will probably never be identified by science. Like so many culinary phenomena, there is no money in discovering unimportant phenomena.
He would then flambé them with Cognac, add a mirepoix, some fish stock, reduce, thicken with a little roux, and then add heavy cream. The result was marvelous. Those particular crayfish had really excellent flavor.
Pôchouse was made with three fish, tench, pike, and eel, native to the Doubs river, which flowed out of the nearby Jura mountains. The tench was a relative of the carp, except that it (the tench) had only half its scales; it hardly would pass muster with the God of Leviticus. The pike was the terror of the local waters; large mouthed, sleek, and fully indentured. And the eel came up from the Atlantic, being catadromous: spawning in the distant Sargasso sea and travelling thousands of miles to Alpine waters.
To make pochouse, you had to clean the fish and cut them up. Tench and pike both needed scraping. The eel was a special case. It arrived quite alive, which meant that I had to kill it. To do this, I grabbed hold of its tail and swung the head against the walls of the fish shack. A few good whacks, and it was dead. Then I slit behind the gills, pulled the skin back and then, taking a piece of newspaper, peeled the skin right off the eel. This was easy with small eels, harder with large eels.
Once the fish were cleaned and cut into sections, you cut several heads of garlic in half crosswise, then added branches of thyme, then the fish, and then filled to cover with Bourgogne aligoté, the local white wine. This was brought to a boil, the alcohol flambéed off, and once the fish were cooked, we thickened it with a blond roux.
We served pôchouse in crockery fish dishes complete with fish covers. The waiter or waitress served à la française tableside. With each portion came a buttery crouton that had been rubbed with fresh garlic.
I’ve always thought of this dish as an example of flavor complementarity: contrasting fresh garlic and cooked garlic. The principle is this: the cooked garlic has lost many of its volatiles; in addition, many new flavors have formed. So, after cooking the garlic and driving off many volatiles and also causing chemical reactions that mute the raw garlic flavor, you serve the dish with a crouton rubbed with raw garlic. It contains just enough of the original flavors to remind and recall.
Another example of playing with the raw and the cooked is wine. Again, many volatiles are lost while cooking. What is left is the acidity of wine along with some of the less volatile flavors. To recapture the original wine essence, one splashes in a little at the time of serving. This is referred to as relever, or to “pick up.”
Like all French birds, the quail came deplumed with not gutless. I had to cut off their feet, their necks and heads, and gut them. I then made a pomade of Dijon mustard, egg, and puréed green peppercorns and slathered this on the birds. I then rolled them in breadcrumbs and baked them in butter. I served them with Gratin Dauphinoise.
Although I haven’t made a Prince du Doubs, a roast quail, or a Pôchouse in years, I have made Gratin Dauphinoise many times. This is the ultimate scalloped potatoes. In fact, there is no point in making scalloped potatoes any other way. To make it, peel potatoes, slice them 1/16 inch thick on the mandoline, place in a mixing bowl, and add salt, white pepper, and minced garlic. Mix well and transfer to a baking dish or glass brownie pan. Cover, literally, in heavy cream. Bake in a moderate oven (350 °F) until the potatoes are tender. At this point, the top should be a rich brown. Avoid overbaking this dish, as the cream de-emulsifies and butters out.
During lunch and dinner, my job was to make the Truite au Bleu. This involved jumping up on the table facing the dining room and, using a net, pull a live trout out of the fish tank, which was about 10 feet long, 4 feet high, and 18 inches wide. There were a few rocks in the tank, but otherwise nothing but water and fish. I had to grab the trout out of the net, hold it by the tale, and bop it on the head to knock it unconscious. Then, I removed the gills and innards and dropped it in vinegar. This caused one of the proteins in the mucus covering the scales to turn blue. I would then poach the trout in salted water and serve it with beurre blanc and pommes vapeur (boiled potatoes.)
Fish farmers would deliver the trout regularly. The trout were quite amusing when it rained. We would have to cover the tank, as the sound of falling rain—even though the outdoors was at least 10 feet away and separated from the fish by a stone wall and some windows—would stimulate jumping behaviors, and we’d have trout carcasses all over the floor of the kitchen.
One Sunday, during a particularly busy part of the service, I jumped onto the table and, instead of netting a fish, I netted a large rock. In desperation, I tried to set it down but instead tapped the side of the aquarium.
The next morning, when I came down to prepare breakfast, there was a split in the glass that ran the entire length of the aquarium. Water was seeping through. The chef said, “Well, you did that. So now you pay. That’ll cost you a week’s wages.” I said, “No, I didn’t. No, I won’t. No, it won’t.”
Years later, I was reading about glass in preparation for a lecture. That particular reading stated that when glass is under pressure, it is not unusual for it to crystallize and crack if tapped with a sharp object.
Another of my culinary responsibilities was making the galantine. This involved boning a duck. In those days, duck did not come in plastic. They came with the heads and feet on. I would eviscerate the duck and remove its appendages, then bone it out. The bones went into a duck stock that was kept at room temperature for 8 months! This was possible because the stock was a deep brown due to the countless bones that had simmered in it.
I would marinate the duck meat, veal, and pork, with Madeira and cognac, quatre épices, then grind some of it and mix it with an egg. This forcemeat was then spread over the duck skin and strips of duck breast and pork fat would be arranged on the meat. Down the center went goose liver pate and truffles. The whole was rolled up, covered with cheesecloth, tied, and set adrift in the stock to poach for 3-4 hours. When the inside was just done, it was pressed and chilled, then sliced. We served it with aspic, cold, as an appetizer.
I also made paté en croûte. I mixed a pâte à foncer, lined a paté en croûte mold with the dough, then filled to ¾ full with a forcemeat, hard-boiled eggs, and strips of marinated pork and pork fat. When cooked and cooled, I filled all the gaps with aspic, chilled, and sliced in ¾ inch slices.
I made the vanilla ice cream and champagne sorbet for the dessert menu. Vanilla ice cream was made with the usual Crème Anglaise, turned in a large ice cream maker. This was served on Peach Melba, a dessert that was popular throughout France and that had been named after an opera singer of that name. It was easy enough to make: balls of house ice cream on canned peach halves coated in raspberry purée.
The champagne sorbet required turning a lemon-flavored sugar syrup, then opening a bottle of champagne halfway through and adding it to the almost frozen syrup. To make the sorbet really light and white, I made an Italian meringue (egg whites and sugar) and added this at the end.
This was served on the Peches Blanches Carolines, named after the chef’s grand-daughter. This involved two balls of champagne sorbet next to a poached white peach.
All of our desserts were served with cheveux d’ange, the culinary equivalent of cotton candy. I made caramel in a copper pan, then reheated as needed and flipped caramel off a spoon onto a dowel. I gathered this and spun it around my hand and set a crown of sugar on top of the dessert.
24. HOSTELLERIE BOURGUIGNONNE—The Inn
We drove his Citröen truck for probably 5 hours, leaving the French Alps, following the Rhone River, and arriving at night. We walked into the restaurant’s kitchen. It was dark and there were dirty dishes everywhere. The whole place stank of old grease. Chef Lauriot showed me my room.
This was in the house next door—separated from the restaurant by a pasture with a horse in it. The chef gave me a plastic jug and told me, “That’s for your hot water.” He was a man of few words. We walked through the pasture to the other house, in which the chef’s father lived. My room was on the second floor overlooking the street.
Turned out that the old man didn’t want me staying there, but his son (Chef Lauriot) insisted on it. So there I was. But the old man didn’t want to hear a peep out of me. From Day One, I was not allowed to use the bathroom. This meant that for the next 8 months, I was to take sponge baths on my poncho and toss the dirty water off the balcony into the front yard. And pee off the balcony, too.
I was also to avoid making any noise. If I made the lightest sound, the old man would turn off the electricity to the house. Fortunately, I had a very fancy radio, so I had lots of stations to listen to. My favorite was Voice of America. It made me feel warm and loved, as the family I was working for was far from that. I listened to the radio with ear buds so the electricity wouldn’t be turned off. My favorite program, on Sunday night, featured Broadway musicals.
The building across the street was an insemination center, so night after night, my sleep was troubled by bulls in heat. Makes for some strange dreams.
Chef Lauriot was a bit of a cold fish, as was his wife. But he knew his stuff. He had won Meilleur Ouvrier de France and his restaurant had been awarded one star by Michelin. This, of course, meant that he was much admired in the community.
This was in the house next door—separated from the restaurant by a pasture with a horse in it. The chef gave me a plastic jug and told me, “That’s for your hot water.” He was a man of few words. We walked through the pasture to the other house, in which the chef’s father lived. My room was on the second floor overlooking the street.
Turned out that the old man didn’t want me staying there, but his son (Chef Lauriot) insisted on it. So there I was. But the old man didn’t want to hear a peep out of me. From Day One, I was not allowed to use the bathroom. This meant that for the next 8 months, I was to take sponge baths on my poncho and toss the dirty water off the balcony into the front yard. And pee off the balcony, too.
I was also to avoid making any noise. If I made the lightest sound, the old man would turn off the electricity to the house. Fortunately, I had a very fancy radio, so I had lots of stations to listen to. My favorite was Voice of America. It made me feel warm and loved, as the family I was working for was far from that. I listened to the radio with ear buds so the electricity wouldn’t be turned off. My favorite program, on Sunday night, featured Broadway musicals.
The building across the street was an insemination center, so night after night, my sleep was troubled by bulls in heat. Makes for some strange dreams.
Chef Lauriot was a bit of a cold fish, as was his wife. But he knew his stuff. He had won Meilleur Ouvrier de France and his restaurant had been awarded one star by Michelin. This, of course, meant that he was much admired in the community.
23. CHALET MALAKOFF: WORKING FOR THE FRENCH COMMUNIST PARTY
The Chalet Malakoff is located on edge of Megève, on the road to Sallanches. It is a large structure, capable of housing about 50. The director and his wife were warm and friendly. They were members of the French Communist Party. The Chalet was owned by the town of Malakoff, many of whose inhabitants worked at the nearby Renault factory.
This was an école de vacances, a vacation school. I presume it was paid for by the city of Malakoff. An entire elementary school class plus teacher got to spend 30 days at the chalet. Every morning, they studied. Every afternoon, they skied or did other physical activity.
I worked as the sole assistant to the chef, M. Boisvert. He was short, round, with closely cropped hair. He had recently retired from teaching at a hotel school and he and his wife had bought a house near the chalet. He was a bit of a stingy guy. He sold egg shells and vegetable peels to a local farmer who paid in heavy cream, which went home with the chef. André, the plongeur, and I were instructed to never use the potato peeling machine but to peel the potatoes by hand and to save the peels. From an environmental standpoint, this was admirable, as the machine ground the skin off and mixed the grindings with water, which of course ended up in some stream, untreated. However, we weren’t hand-peeling for the benefit of the environment. We were doing it so the chef could have cream for his coffee.
Every morning, I descended from my attic nest to start up the kitchen fires and to make breakfast. This involved toasting slices of stale baguette on the plaque or steel hot-top. I also had to start brewing the coffee and boiling the milk for café au lait. I made the coffee with chicory root and coffee. This was 1972, only 27 years after the war, and people were still drinking their coffee adulterated with chicory.
I also had to set up the coal stove. This was quite the contraption. The fireboxes were flanked by two ovens, and the heat from the burning coal was diverted to the ovens, then to the plaque or hot top, then finally to a large tank of water over the stove. Thus, lighting the stove also heated water.
Setting up the coal stove involved adding crumpled paper followed by kindling and then by. Once the coal was going, that stove was cooking!
I learned a few basics from the chef. We made brioches, for example. He made them the traditional way, which was first to mix a paton consisting of flour, water, yeast. We kneaded this by hand, then rolled it into a ball, cut the sign of the cross onto it, and lowered it gently into warm water. When it had resurrected—risen to the top—we kneaded eggs and salt into it, and then soft butter. I never made brioche this way again, as it’s completely unnecessary, given that we have mixers to make light the work. And with today’s genetically superior yeast, the paton method is quite unnecessary.
I also learned how to make genoise. We made a lot of it, so I got a lot of practice. Because of that knowledge, I have never since looked up a cake recipe. Instead, I modify Chef Boisvert’s recipe. If I need to make a hazelnut torte, I use his recipe.
It boils down to this ratio: 1 egg, 1 oz sugar, 1 oz flour. That’s it. A single cake pan takes 4-6 eggs worth of batter.
Put the eggs and sugar in a mixing bowl. Beat over hot water (I prefer open flame for convenience) vigorously, using a piano wire whisk until you get a stiff foam. Do not exceed 120 °F. Transfer to a mixer and whisk until the foam is stiff and falls off the whip in a thick, gloppy ribbon. The foam must be cool.
Fold in the sifted flour, one-third at a time. Do not over-fold.
I use this same recipe to make sponge (Biscuit in German), but the method is different. With the sponge method, one separates the eggs and the sugar and beats the yolks with half the sugar and the whites with the other half to stiff peaks, then combines them and sifts in one-third the flour, etc. For nut tortes (e.g., hazelnußtorte), I replace half the flour with nut’s flour.
I never add butter—to either Genoise or to sponge. The yolk has plenty of fat and butter just weakens the foam. I think adding butter comes from the days when people ate Genoise by itself—for example as biscuits à la cuillère or ladyfingers.
André, the plongeur, made cooking at Chalet Malakoff quite fun. Although he drank like a fish and often couldn’t put two words together, his favorite activity was to pick up a ladle, hold the bowl portion to his ear and yell, “Alloooo! J’ecoute!” But I will remember him best for teaching me chansons paillards, or straw songs, meaning just about the dirtiest ditties you can sing—all in argot or slang.
Here’s a clean poem he taught me, based on Jean de la Fontaine’s Un Riche Laboureur…
Un pécor, sentant ses calleches rallecher
Fit venir ses lardoons et leur jacta en lusde
“Dujonc est planqué dans la fouille”
A rich laborer, feeling his end imminent
Told his children to come to him and spoke to them privately
“Money is hidden in the land”
Hardly a single word isn’t slang.
He also liked to say, “Vive la guerre qu’on se tue!” or “Long live war so we can kill each other!”
He told me that certain French were collaborators. He whispered that M. Boisvert was pro-Vichy. He also informed me that at the end of the war, when the Americans were leaving, they would pile boots and rations into enormous hills and light them with gasoline. This instead of distributing them to the local populace, who were starving. No use having people like you. This was one of the first times that I realized that Americans are no worse/no better than anyone else and that sometimes innocence is as much a sin as intentional malfeasance.
My best memories of the Chalet Malakoff are of things done in the off hours. For example, I had Mondays to myself. So, I lashed skies to my motorbike and tootled up the road to the foot of the slopes.
The first time I went skiing, I took a crossbar up. Of course, you usually share it with someone, so I shared it with this cute British bank teller. However, being a total novice, my skis caught in the icy tracks and I fell over, causing her precipitate decline as well. Instead of swearing at me like a sailor, though, she suggested I take skiing lessons.
Well, in those days, banks—and their tellers—were highly respected. So I took her advice. I paid for one set of lessons, and after that decided that I was good enough for the slopes. The rest of the season, from January through March, I skied every Monday. And, I got good at it, although I never attempted the Olympic slope. I had my share of accidents: flying forward when my ski tip caught on some ice and then watching the ski sail off by itself, eventually entering the woods. Eventually, I had to switch skis because the metal strips that were screwed into the wood had torn away, as the wood had rotted and the screwheads had worn off.
A second memory of Chalet Malakoff is of reading in the library. They had quite a collection of Jack London books, most of which I read. The third memory is of reconditioning a reed organ that I found in the attic. Its bellows had cracked and were non-functional, so I enclosed a vacuum cleaner in a lemon crate to mute the roar, and played a concert of JSB Two-Part Inventions, which are quite suitable for short keyboards.
In March, with the season soon ending, Chef Boisvert got me a job with the local culinary celebrity, Chef Lauriot. He was going to open up his summer establishment in Verdun sur le Doubs, a charming, medieval town at the confluence of the Doubs and the Saone rivers.
This was an école de vacances, a vacation school. I presume it was paid for by the city of Malakoff. An entire elementary school class plus teacher got to spend 30 days at the chalet. Every morning, they studied. Every afternoon, they skied or did other physical activity.
I worked as the sole assistant to the chef, M. Boisvert. He was short, round, with closely cropped hair. He had recently retired from teaching at a hotel school and he and his wife had bought a house near the chalet. He was a bit of a stingy guy. He sold egg shells and vegetable peels to a local farmer who paid in heavy cream, which went home with the chef. André, the plongeur, and I were instructed to never use the potato peeling machine but to peel the potatoes by hand and to save the peels. From an environmental standpoint, this was admirable, as the machine ground the skin off and mixed the grindings with water, which of course ended up in some stream, untreated. However, we weren’t hand-peeling for the benefit of the environment. We were doing it so the chef could have cream for his coffee.
Every morning, I descended from my attic nest to start up the kitchen fires and to make breakfast. This involved toasting slices of stale baguette on the plaque or steel hot-top. I also had to start brewing the coffee and boiling the milk for café au lait. I made the coffee with chicory root and coffee. This was 1972, only 27 years after the war, and people were still drinking their coffee adulterated with chicory.
I also had to set up the coal stove. This was quite the contraption. The fireboxes were flanked by two ovens, and the heat from the burning coal was diverted to the ovens, then to the plaque or hot top, then finally to a large tank of water over the stove. Thus, lighting the stove also heated water.
Setting up the coal stove involved adding crumpled paper followed by kindling and then by. Once the coal was going, that stove was cooking!
I learned a few basics from the chef. We made brioches, for example. He made them the traditional way, which was first to mix a paton consisting of flour, water, yeast. We kneaded this by hand, then rolled it into a ball, cut the sign of the cross onto it, and lowered it gently into warm water. When it had resurrected—risen to the top—we kneaded eggs and salt into it, and then soft butter. I never made brioche this way again, as it’s completely unnecessary, given that we have mixers to make light the work. And with today’s genetically superior yeast, the paton method is quite unnecessary.
I also learned how to make genoise. We made a lot of it, so I got a lot of practice. Because of that knowledge, I have never since looked up a cake recipe. Instead, I modify Chef Boisvert’s recipe. If I need to make a hazelnut torte, I use his recipe.
It boils down to this ratio: 1 egg, 1 oz sugar, 1 oz flour. That’s it. A single cake pan takes 4-6 eggs worth of batter.
Put the eggs and sugar in a mixing bowl. Beat over hot water (I prefer open flame for convenience) vigorously, using a piano wire whisk until you get a stiff foam. Do not exceed 120 °F. Transfer to a mixer and whisk until the foam is stiff and falls off the whip in a thick, gloppy ribbon. The foam must be cool.
Fold in the sifted flour, one-third at a time. Do not over-fold.
I use this same recipe to make sponge (Biscuit in German), but the method is different. With the sponge method, one separates the eggs and the sugar and beats the yolks with half the sugar and the whites with the other half to stiff peaks, then combines them and sifts in one-third the flour, etc. For nut tortes (e.g., hazelnußtorte), I replace half the flour with nut’s flour.
I never add butter—to either Genoise or to sponge. The yolk has plenty of fat and butter just weakens the foam. I think adding butter comes from the days when people ate Genoise by itself—for example as biscuits à la cuillère or ladyfingers.
André, the plongeur, made cooking at Chalet Malakoff quite fun. Although he drank like a fish and often couldn’t put two words together, his favorite activity was to pick up a ladle, hold the bowl portion to his ear and yell, “Alloooo! J’ecoute!” But I will remember him best for teaching me chansons paillards, or straw songs, meaning just about the dirtiest ditties you can sing—all in argot or slang.
Here’s a clean poem he taught me, based on Jean de la Fontaine’s Un Riche Laboureur…
Un pécor, sentant ses calleches rallecher
Fit venir ses lardoons et leur jacta en lusde
“Dujonc est planqué dans la fouille”
A rich laborer, feeling his end imminent
Told his children to come to him and spoke to them privately
“Money is hidden in the land”
Hardly a single word isn’t slang.
He also liked to say, “Vive la guerre qu’on se tue!” or “Long live war so we can kill each other!”
He told me that certain French were collaborators. He whispered that M. Boisvert was pro-Vichy. He also informed me that at the end of the war, when the Americans were leaving, they would pile boots and rations into enormous hills and light them with gasoline. This instead of distributing them to the local populace, who were starving. No use having people like you. This was one of the first times that I realized that Americans are no worse/no better than anyone else and that sometimes innocence is as much a sin as intentional malfeasance.
My best memories of the Chalet Malakoff are of things done in the off hours. For example, I had Mondays to myself. So, I lashed skies to my motorbike and tootled up the road to the foot of the slopes.
The first time I went skiing, I took a crossbar up. Of course, you usually share it with someone, so I shared it with this cute British bank teller. However, being a total novice, my skis caught in the icy tracks and I fell over, causing her precipitate decline as well. Instead of swearing at me like a sailor, though, she suggested I take skiing lessons.
Well, in those days, banks—and their tellers—were highly respected. So I took her advice. I paid for one set of lessons, and after that decided that I was good enough for the slopes. The rest of the season, from January through March, I skied every Monday. And, I got good at it, although I never attempted the Olympic slope. I had my share of accidents: flying forward when my ski tip caught on some ice and then watching the ski sail off by itself, eventually entering the woods. Eventually, I had to switch skis because the metal strips that were screwed into the wood had torn away, as the wood had rotted and the screwheads had worn off.
A second memory of Chalet Malakoff is of reading in the library. They had quite a collection of Jack London books, most of which I read. The third memory is of reconditioning a reed organ that I found in the attic. Its bellows had cracked and were non-functional, so I enclosed a vacuum cleaner in a lemon crate to mute the roar, and played a concert of JSB Two-Part Inventions, which are quite suitable for short keyboards.
In March, with the season soon ending, Chef Boisvert got me a job with the local culinary celebrity, Chef Lauriot. He was going to open up his summer establishment in Verdun sur le Doubs, a charming, medieval town at the confluence of the Doubs and the Saone rivers.
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