It’s a cool, cloudy Wednesday here in the City of Love. Wednesdays are normally all or part off for me, depending on whether or not I work the weekend.
I took advantage of the free afternoon today to head over to Belleville, a neighborhood full of foreigners on a hill on the eastern edge of Paris. It was high time for a visit with my new friend Jono, who with his wife and volunteers, runs a café called Kiwizine.
I dare you to look at the photos of the food they serve at this tiny café! Who makes food this beautiful? I love even more the heart behind the food, which is essentially a desire to connect with the French through the way they experience food.
How did I never before grasp that France is a good place for me for this very reason? Of course, the whole world looks to France as a pinnacle fine dining. I think I’ve often kind of poo-pooed French cuisine, finding it too buttery, too dog-foody, too simple even.
What I’ve missed is that behind the façade of haute cuisine, there’s this beautiful value, of the goodness of the food and the place it comes from. Traditional dishes contain cream, butter, and eggs because the farmers in the region raise cows and chickens, for example. Wine experts can tell you what region a bottle comes from and whether the crop was good the year it was produced. Do we ever really stop to taste the goodness of our ingredients? Is a vegetable, prepared simply, good enough?
Two particular food experiences have marked this train of thought for me. One has been cooking with the family here. Amélie’s mom and dad send us lots of garden vegetables from their potager in Normandy, and we cook them in the simplest ways. Every day the cocotte-minute, or pressure-cooker, is in use. I initially balked a bit, generally preferring to sauté, but have come to embrace the practicality of this contraption, with produces boiled beets or potatoes in less than half the time. After using the cocotte, I only have to purée the food or not, add salt and butter, and pass it off to the children. No fancy techniques or complicated flavors. And hot damn, if puréed beets with a dab of butter aren’t delicious!
The other experience that has marked me was a trip down to the Canal Saint Martin last week. I discovered a fine, lovely, 1900-era boulangerie called du Pain et des Idées (of Bread and Ideas). Like few bread-and-pastry shops left in France today, they make their goods by hand with simple, quality ingredients, in the traditional manner. I walked in to find piles of croissants and other flaky treats in large ceramic bowls, and unusually friendly service. Even better, I walked out with a toasty paper sack containing a special, simple fall treat. On a bench by the canal, I unwrapped the fresh-from-the-oven chausson aux pommes, what Anglophones will call an apple turnover. The caramelized juices from the apples inside stuck to the wrapping paper, the filling was steamy in the cool air, and the pastry crust flaky and buttery. It was a piece of autumnal heaven.
In both of these cases, the ingredients speak for themselves. The flavors of three, four, five things, put together in a certain manner, sing a beautiful song. They connect us back to their Maker, their cultivator, and their preparer. We delight, we find goodness, and this takes us nearly to a place of worship.
