Ingredients & Fine Foods

On this rainy August day (this is not the weather I signed up for! I want a refund!) I just had to share with you the perfectness of these here tomatoes, bought at our produce store on rue des Abbesses. They are everything you could possibly hope for in a tomato — stark red, heavy in your hand, thin-skinned and fleshy, fragrant, sweet and juicy.

This particular variety, with its plump ribs just begging to be sliced, is called Coeur de Boeuf — literally “beef heart”. And seeing that we also have tiny olive-shaped tomatoes that go by the name of Coeur de Pigeon (“pigeon heart”, but you figured that out), it sort of makes you wonder why produce marketers have to resort to carnivorous metaphores to sell their tomatoes, no?

I was at the charcuterie yesterday to buy a few slices of jambon de Bayonne, an air-dried cured ham from the French Basque country.

Une charcuterie, for those who have yet to be introduced to this delightful concept, is a store that makes and sells all manner of goods derived from our friend the pork (ham, sausages, pâtés, rillettes…) and a wide variety of other prepared dishes (from salads and quiches to choucroute garnie and boeuf bourguignon, from salmon terrine and rabbit in mustard sauce to stuffed tomatoes and leeks vinaigrette), in addition to a smaller selection of cheese and desserts. Sort of a delicatessen if you will. These stores usually feel like Gargantua’s lair, filled with rich and creamy wonders and quirky aspic specialties, and they are a good representation of classic French cuisine — much like the one Julia Child depicted — with a unique blend of old-fashioned charm.

I drop by the charcuterie every week or so for ham (sliced to order of course: I ask for them to be assez fines — rather thin — so the lady will slice one and show it to me for approval before she slices the others), the occasional saucisson, a slice of game terrine, or the eggs in aspic for which Maxence and I have an insatiable fondness. I am not their best customer for the rest of what they have to offer as I find most of the prepared dishes too rich, but half the time the customer in front of me will be a tiny old lady or a middle-aged man who buys a single serving of pot-au-feu or blanquette de veau with a few steamed potatoes or fresh noodles and oh, why don’t you throw in a portion of céleri rémoulade, too.

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One often hears complaints about how things aren’t the way they used to be, how everything is going downhill fast, how nothing works the way it should and nobody cares anyway, but back in the days, boy, <insert whatever was so great back then>.

I am wary of this kind of statement, not only because hindsight is subjective — ten years from now those same people will surely miss what they have today — but also because it’s a negative attitude, and I prefer to focus on the good things we have now. The past should not be used as an excuse to sit and whine and feel depressed, but as a source of lessons to learn, to preserve what still can be and even recreate the splendor of things past where applicable.

Oh, I have my share of nostalgia, but it is the sweet kind of nostalgia that derives from a happy and protected childhood, and as one moves on and grows up, it is easy to let go. But I have now reached the ripe old age of 26 and something strange has just happened: I have witnessed, with my own tastebuds, the downfall of a food item that simply isn’t the way it used to be.

Let me introduce you to… le chique. Le chique (up until a few hours ago I was sure it was spelled le chic and I liked that better) is a specialty from Les Vosges, a mountain range in the North-East of France where my parents have a vacation house. It is similar to what is called faisselle elsewhere in France, an unsalted soft curd cheese that comes in a double container. The inner container holds the cheese and has holes in it, so the whey can drain out into the outer container. When you eat the cheese, you can choose to make it as dry or moist as you’d like by draining it a little longer, or pouring a little of the whey back onto it.

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Fraises des bois du jardin

High up on my life list is to one day have a garden, a vegetable patch and an orchard.

In the meantime, I have to settle for windowsills and tiny balconies on which Maxence, who is The Official Gardener around here, plants and pampers a lush jungle, making the absolute most of every square inch of space and railing. I have little patience for that sort of thing, but I am certainly grateful for his efforts and happy to enjoy the benefits — green, green, green through every window, flowers and herbs and, most recently, fruit.

I insisted, because when you buy a plant or a little bag of seeds, what you really buy is the dream, the possibility of it growing and blossoming and making you proud.

Last spring on the Quai de la Mégisserie where gardening and pet stores abound, I was the one who insisted we buy a small pot of fraises des bois, those teeny strawberries that grow mostly in the wild and which the observant little girl (if properly trained by her mother) can spot and feast on in the mountain underbrush.

To be truthful, I didn’t think ours would ever bear fruit. Not because I doubted Maxence’s skills, but simply because I couldn’t imagine it actually happening. Still I insisted, because when you buy a plant or a little bag of seeds, what you really buy is the dream, the possibility of it growing and blossoming and making you proud.

Despite my doubts, the plant we bought developed into a healthy-looking little shrub on our bathroom windowsill; delicate flowers soon started to bloom.

And do you know how this works? When the petals fall from strawberry flowers, their heart keeps swelling and then droop under the weight of their elongated shape. It takes them just a few more days to blush and blush until bright red, at which point Maxence harvests them and comes to share the minuscule bounty with me — usually one or two strawberries at a time, each of them softly sweet, uniquely acidulated and astonishingly flavorful for a thing so tiny.

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