DON’T MESS UP THE CROQUE MADAME. SHE’S PERFECT.

Wed, 3 Apr 2013 20:25:16 -0400

I recently had a bad Croque Madame. A very bad one. Miserable, in fact. How I missed a true Croque Madame with its just browned Gruyere cheese sitting on top of the bread, cascading over the crust. The béchamel sauce underneath calling out to the glistening, slightly fried egg on top to come on down. The cheerful yolk anticipating the fork’s puncture, almost trembling. And then, when pierced, that warm yolk sliding into the waiting ham, bread, milk, butter, flour and more Gruyere, making for one big happy juicy family. All hitting my taste buds with the meaty scent of the Black Forest ham, mingling with the smooth melted sweet cheese and zingy hint of the egg. This mixture -- the ham, the cheese, the all-important egg –- this is the reason for the Croque Madame’s existence. Just that.

Instead here, I nibbled on a flattened Panini-like sandwich with its cardinal sin of an overcooked fried egg on top rendering the entire thing dry as plain white bread toast. Was there even béchamel on here? Melted butter, at least? I was disappointed as soon the plate was put in front of me. The danger signs were there: the egg was matte, it’s edges blackened, a sure sign of overcooking and when I cut into it of course, there was only a small trickle of yolk from the top where it had tried to save itself, but sadly underneath it was too late, the yolk was of a hard boiled consistency. And cold. There was nowhere for me to go with this parched earth of a sandwich. I dismantled the thing and scraped the cheese, it didn’t taste like Gruyere or Emmenthaler. Now I almost had tears in my eyes. How could this be? How was I to eat lunch now?

I had been duped into thinking I was going to have an authentic French meal. And what else was I to think? The restaurant had a French name, a French name that represented order, ritual, perfection, to the highest degree. There were Croque Monsieurs on the menu, along with moules, escargots, steak frites, poire belle Hélène’s. It called itself a bistro, after all. But it had all been foreplay with no further action. Gastronomus interruptus. It had been a façade, a French theme park restaurant. The sandwich sat in my plate, no longer worthy of even being called a Croque Madame. I disheartenedly picked at the accompanying salad, declined dessert and thought about how I missed a proper Croquet Madame, how I missed her perfection, her simplicity, her easiness.

Ironically, this restaurant closed two days ago, brown paper has been put up on the windows with a For Lease sign, their website has been dismantled and no one answers the phone. Now I’m not saying that their demise is because they serve a faulty Croque Madame, but……

HOW I ALMOST RUINED MY COLONOSCOPY WITH FRENCH FOOD

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Why is it that the day before my colonoscopy -- the prep day where I’m on the prescribed clear liquid diet, when I’m Jello-ed up -- that French food is all around me. Why?

First, there’s that morning’s New York Times review of a new restaurant called, Le Philosophe, in the Bowery serving up all the French classics. The headline alone leaves me yearning, “Tasting the Past, with Plenty of Butter: Old French cooking so rich that it could leave you hobbling,” it reads. The article contains my childhood friends: duck à l’orange, frog legs, filet mignon, foie gras, tarte Tatin and describes them as glistening, heavy, melting, fluffy gold. I’m suddenly feeling que ça creuse, a French expression meaning you have an appetite that’s digging deep down. Picture a steel drill, turning, churning into the earth. That kind of appetite.

Later that day, I see Jacques Pepin on his Facebook page sharing that his newly revised book, La Technique, that classic of French food preparation has just come out. I have the original from 1980, which my mother gave me for my nineteenth birthday. My favorite passage is on page 449, where Pepin writes about how to melt butter into the batter when making crêpes Suzettes. “ ‘The first few may stick until the pan ‘gets in the mood,’” he writes. Now how can I not love that? By now I want my own crêpes Suzette and I just so happen to have a package of French crêpes in my cupboard. I feel a quick urge to get out my Président butter and smear some on a laid out crêpe, roll it and pop the thing my mouth. Why can’t I? Would it really affect the colonoscopy, which is now twelve hours away?

That evening when retrieving my fourth Jell-O from the fridge, I see my five French mustards all lined up, grainy to smooth, waiting to be slathered on a piece of boeuf in béarnaise sauce. Next to them is the gorgeous garnet red Christine Ferber Cassis d’Alsace jam. Ms. Ferber only makes few batches of her jams a day in her shop in Alsace and only one store in New York City sells this fruit of her labor. This preciousness sits on the top shelf and the fridge light shines through the glass jar and highlighting its red hues, this beautiful jam is waiting to be spread on the leftover croissant sitting on top of my toaster oven. Is it possible that Ferber’s jam is even more gorgeous than yesterday or is it just that my grinding hunger is seeing things that aren’t there? What if I ate it? But I can’t, nothing in red or purple color is to be ingested, only clear liquids, the colonoscopy requirement sheet screams at me in its bold and capital letters.

Behind the jam, is the palm-sized piece of filet mignon left over from dinner last night. My Jell-O lined stomach twists at the sight of it. I begin to think I could eat just a small piece slathered with my Pommery grainy, vinegary mustard. I could heat up this little slice of wonderment in a little shallot butter, where’s the harm in that?….Look at the crevices in the meat, still a bit red, how it would welcome the mustard. How delightful it would to eat this, this invention, this combination. Just a piece….I hold it through the plastic bag….I mean c’mon, where’s the harm in that….would it really show up on the scan, scheduled seven hours from now? Would the scope get snagged on it? Just a piece….c’mon…. Watery saliva rises up in my mouth, out of my control.

But I put this Ziplocked delight back on the shelf. I’m already too nervous as I am before any medical test, thinking I probably already have a row of horrible polyps lined up like a row of mushrooms. So I can’t take that chance. I couldn’t take my doctor’s slightly worried voice, “Well….there were some small brownish fragments, I removed them and they’ll all have to be biopsied.” Imagine. No. I force myself to eat another orange Jell-O and wonder if I could down it with a nice French white wine, a Muscat Blanc. It’s clear, right? But no, I go back to my common senses, I carry on knowing that tomorrow night at this time I’ll be free to go back to my true love.

THE SOUP OF THAT DAY

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0400

The final conversation I had with my mother the day before she died was about food. At first, we discussed an upcoming visit from my cousin and my aunt. “They want to buy you an electric blanket,” I told her.

“Forget that, I won’t know how to use it, the dials and everything, too complicated, my mother said, “tell them I want to have my potato leek soup for lunch when they come. Ma soupe poireaux, pomme de terre. Tell your cousin to make it for me. The recipe’s in the Our Lady of Mount Carmel cookbook. Now that I would really love….. Please tell them no electric blanket.”

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll let them know.”

“It’s the first of my recipes in that cookbook….easy to find” she continued. “Don’t forget.”

“I won’t.” I said, “Talk to you tomorrow.”

I hung up.

She died the next morning.

I was shocked she had passed away even though I shouldn’t have been. She was in the last stages of Lou Gehrig’s disease, which had paralyzed her body months ago. She had been breathing at only ten percent that past week and had to use a breathing machine.

I was stunned because she had wanted food just the day before and that to me meant maybe the doctors had been wrong. Perhaps, she would get better. Her wanting food was a good sign, right? A sign of health. So what had I missed? At first I thought I had been duped, tricked by food but no, I had misread it all. Perhaps it wasn’t the food so much she wanted but its memory of all the times we ate that soup in our Queens, New York galley kitchen, in that blue and white floral wallpapered rectangular room, all of us: my dad, my brother and me sitting around that matching blue and white floral Formica table. And the star of the evening: that velvety mossy soup with its occasional small potato bobbing up and down -- an escapee from the food mill, which my father had just moments ago pressed the cooked leeks and potatoes through, creating this creamy delicacy.

My mother requesting that soup meant she wanted to go back there, of course. Back to that kitchen with all of us, alive, talking, laughing, slurping up that soup with buttered crusty bread. One more time. Just one taste. Just that soup touching her taste buds once again. She didn’t get that chance and it breaks my heart over and over when I think of it, her not having that soup is like a lost love, a love that is never reconciled, but at the same time and perhaps I am naïve, perhaps it is childish of me but I find comfort in knowing that the potato leek soup was one of my mother’s last living thoughts.

TODAY I LOVE MON PEUPLE. REALLY. I DO.

Fri, 9 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0500

I have to say I absolutely love my people sometimes. I recently bought a French datebook just because it included an 8th day and that day was named after a food. So at every weeks’ end there is: meringueday, salamiday, broccoliday, sardineday, kiwiday and just to show the world that the French are funny, they’ve even put in their national icon, their national singer, Johnnyhallyday. He represents the week of April 29th.
Oh and wait, the datebook is hand typeset on a vintage printing press using only four colors; it’s the only datebook made this way in the world and is created in a studio/workshop, which once housed Napoleon’s silversmith in Paris. (Check out the video, scroll down: http://the189.com/design/astier-de-villatte-collections-by-studio-homme/)
I don’t expect anything less from my countrymen. Of course they would have a date book with a food day. Pourquoi pas? And I was going to buy this treasure. I had to. A datebook with a food day? Yes. I felt so comforted just by the thought of it. The only store that sold this datebook in the entire city of New York was the John Derian Company on East 2nd street and the Bowery. And there this gem sat on a shelf and on sale no less, being that it was already February! A mere $25 reduced from $58! It had a beautiful Escher-like cover of interlocking green and oranges squares, gold edging and yes, you could see the handset type in the months, some words darker than others. In flipping through the book, I almost squealed upon seeing Vermicelleday ending the week of August 5. How many times did my French grandmother make me vermicelle soup when I’d visit her all those summers on her farm in Brittany? The bonus was the saint days which were listed in the front...so French… right after the first page where it was inscribed “Ma Vie 2012.” Of course. It was perfect.
I expect nothing less than perfection from my countrymen. Of course, they would create such a book. After all this is the country whose “gastronomic meal of the French” was considered a cultural art form and tradition by UNESCO last year and was put on the World Heritage List, right next to Peking opera and Corsican chants. This is not about having a superior attitude but rather a want, a need for the preservation of ritual, of preparation of food, for what is called “arts de la table.” I understand that perfectly. My French chef father drilled this in me all during my childhood. “Tu verra,” he’d said, “one day you’ll understand.” I do, papa, now I do.
So to go back to the datebook. There is no explanation as to why there is that 8th day, no one has said, an 8th day named after a food, that’s ridiculous. It is a given, accepted, no questions asked, do with it as you wish. But take note, the book seems to say, I will make you wonder and you’ll want to tell me what that food means to you. Of course, there’s a food day, intermingled with the other days of your life, this clever book tells me. I am no different than any other day.

MY FATHER, MY SELF

Sat, 5 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0400

My French chef father, Marcel, ruined hot dogs for me. The damage was done when I was eight years old and he began making the classic Oscar Mayer hot dog for lunch. My father cooked them his way for me, which meant he was going to take an American food and twist it into The French Way as was his habit. He was an immigrant still holding on to his homeland. Food was all he had left. He boiled the two hot dogs and then began to sauté them in butter. He rolled them in the pan, their skins bubbling up in sections with the action of the searing, cooking butter, sealing in the beef’s now buttery juices. Just at that precise moment before the butter began to turn brown, he rushed the hot dogs into their buns and poured the melted golden sauce on to them. This butter seeped into the nooks of the bun, blanketing the hot dog. So cozy! And to top it all off, as though it could not get any better, my father spread on the hot dog, a thin layer of French grainy moutarde, which came in a glass jar and its fumes alone cleared my nasal passages. Wonderful.

My father handed me my plate of hot dogs. “Voila, your saucisse.” He used the French word for hot dog because he couldn’t pronounce it in English. In those days he was still taking basic English classes and he couldn’t understand the concept of a dog that was hot and why it was eaten.

I bit into the hot dog and my tongue, my taste buds were merrily greeted by the still warm butter, the meat, the bread -- all sweet partners, crunching, softly crushing between my teeth. A symphony of flavors that repeated themselves in the ten minutes it took for me to devour this meal.

So I was surprised when I bit into a hot dog for the first time at Shea Stadium two years later. I had been excited to be participating in an American activity: watching a baseball game and eating a hot dog. But my hot dog here was beige and sat plainly in the bun with bright yellow mustard. I bit into it and thought a mistake had been made. Where was the butter with its cracking bubbles? Where was the cozy bun, home to the hot dog? What kind of sunshiney mustard was that? Was this only boiled with no continuation? I quickly understood that my father’s hot dogs were different because they weren’t American at all. I had so much wanted to like the glorious American hot dog. I loved everything else about America: The Brady Bunch, roller skates, marshmallows, David Cassidy. But I couldn’t love its hot dog.

The French, my people, my father had gotten to me first. My papa had snatched my taste buds before the Americans and with his French version of an Oscar Mayer product, he had planted his flag there on my tongue. I had no choice but to concede the point to the French this time.