French Lessons (5 page)

Major differences of opinion, marked by knife
waving, glass banging, and head shaking, started when the lesson moved on to
the actual cooking process. Someone insisted that no omelette was complete
without a drop of good Madeira wine, stirred in with the eggs before they went
into the pan.
Pas du tout,
said a purist—Madeira wasn’t
necessary; just salt, pepper, and a walnut-sized knob of butter. Ah, but
don’t forget: The butter should be almost melted before it is allowed to
meet with the eggs. Then there is the other knob of butter, which is already in
the pan, turning brown.
Mais attention!
It must never smoke, or become
too brown; otherwise, the omelette will have a burned flavor. And one must
always use a wooden spoon to stir the eggs.

“Nonsense!”
said a woman at the table. “A fork is much better when it comes to
folding the omelette.”

“
Excusez-moi, madame!
I
myself have used a wooden spoon for twenty-five years.”

“
Ah bon?
I’ve used a fork for thirty
years.”

Game, set, and match to madame, or so I thought. But no.
The fusillade of contradictory opinions continued over three courses—a
daube,
cheese, and dessert. It left me thoroughly confused, despite
the thoughtful gift of a set of indecipherable instructions scrawled on the
torn-off corner of a paper napkin. When I emerged from the smoky fug of the
village hall into the chilly air of late afternoon, the only clear thought in
my head was that I’d been using the wrong kind of pan. Space-age
technology was no match for a copper bottom.

On the way home, I thought
about some of my other religious experiences, starting with daily doses of
chapel at school (twice on Sunday, with a thundering sermon thrown in, warning
us boys of unspecified but intriguing sins). This had been followed over the
years by the usual sporadic mixture of weddings, christenings, and funerals.
Most of these had been moving in one way or another, happy or sad, according to
the occasion. But I had never before been to a church where there was standing
room only, and where there was such a feeling of obvious enjoyment. I
couldn’t help thinking that the French church attendance record of 10
percent might well be improved by the promise of a good lunch after the
service.

The final word on my visit to Richerenches came from Monsieur
Farigoule, when I saw him a few days later. He was obviously curious about my
religious habits, and he was determined to know exactly which church I’d
been to, and why it had been chosen for what he described as my
“miraculous conversion.”

“Well,” I said,
“it wasn’t entirely my choice. It was just the right time to go to
this particular church.”

“Aha! So you felt yourself called!
By a supernatural force!
Remarkable
.”

“It
certainly was.”

Farigoule looked at me with a slightly puzzled
expression. I had the feeling he was thinking that he might, just possibly,
have misjudged me.

“
Remarkable,”
he said
again.

I suppose I could have left it at that, and thereby added a
much-needed halo to my reputation. But I couldn’t keep it up;
Farigoule’s questions became more and more insistent, and so eventually,
reluctantly, I gave in and revealed all.

Perhaps it was a defeat, but
Farigoule’s gratification made it well worthwhile. He was thrilled. He
inflated visibly, as politicians do in front of television cameras, and, like
them, he preened. He had been right all along. Nodding, in the smug and
infuriating way of a man who is delighted to have his worst suspicions
confirmed, he delivered his closing remarks. “Of course,” he said.
“Food. I might have known.”

The Thigh-Tasters
of Vittel

Consider the frog—neither fish nor fowl, but
something in between, a symbol to many people of gastronomic eccentricity, and
a creature that is still used by the British to identify an entire nation.
“The Frogs,” we call the French, often with a quiver of horror at
their curious appetites. They’ll eat anything.

Living in the
southern part of France, where there is more sun than water, it is rare to meet
a frog on a menu. He thrives in the damp, mates in his pond, spends his moist
life in a temperate climate. The chances of finding him in a Provençal
kitchen are remote. So when I decided to test the truth of the old
chestnut—“Actually, it tastes like chicken”—I had to go
north, a long way north.

The plumpest and most desirable frogs in
France, so I was told, live in the Vosges. Here in the northeast of the country
is a curvaceous green region that nature has supplied with mountains, rivers,
and thousands of
étang
s—
mere patches of water to
us, but extremely well suited to the residential requirements of the frog.
This, in turn, has made the area a magnet, once a year, for frog-fanciers. They
come to the Vosges from all over Europe on the last Sunday in April, gathering
in the town of Vittel to celebrate their passion.

Vittel is best known
for its therapeutic calcium-rich water. It is normally associated with
la
cur
e—
two weeks or so of undemanding walks or bicycle rides
in the park, with perhaps an excursion to the casino for a little light
gambling. These activities are accompanied, needless to say, by the steady
consumption of bottle after bottle of the local tonic, bathing the liver,
flushing the pipes, bringing a healthy bloom to the complexion. Not
surprisingly, the personality of the town is usually calm. Visitors are
recovering from their digestive sins, and they move slowly, even on their
yellow rented bicycles. The two public toilets on the main street do a brisk
business as the water does its work, but there is no other evidence of anyone
in a hurry. Peace reigns.

This was about to change on the day I arrived
in Vittel. It was gray and cool and overcast—fine weather for frogs,
according to an amateur meteorologist nursing a beer in one of the
cafés. In the side streets, workmen were setting up the mobile
paraphernalia that every self-respecting fête requires: the shooting
galleries and merry-go-rounds, the stands selling souvenirs and snacks, the
long tents with trestle tables for more elaborate eating—which in this
case would be frogs. Many frogs. If previous years were anything to go by,
nearly thirty thousand people would get through five tons of frogs by the end
of the fair.

An entire double-page spread in the local newspaper was
dominated by frogs in their various manifestations. One, dressed in a demure
striped swimsuit of Victorian cut, promised dream clothes at the Mod’In
boutique. An advertisement for the Vittel gym featured a muscular frog lifting
weights, and it promised
belles cuisses
to anyone following his
example. Beautiful thighs, as I was to discover, were highly prized and would
often be referred to, with many a wink and a waggle of the eyebrows, over the
next couple of days. Another advertisement listed eight different ways in which
these delicacies could be enjoyed—poached in Riesling, in quiches, under
a crisp gratin with asparagus, with noodles and snails, even
à la
provençale,
a thigh for every imaginable taste. On the same page,
superimposed over the figure of a smiling and nubile frog in the classic
position of the reclining nude, was the announcement that Miss Grenouille (or,
as some admirers would call her, Miss Cuisse) would be elected shortly after
the official Sunday lunch. And there was to be a
grenouillade monstre
that very evening in the Salle du Moulin, under the auspices of the brotherhood
of thigh-tasters. In every sense of the word, it looked like it would be a full
weekend.

I had made an appointment with the president and thigh-taster
in chief, Monsieur Loisant, and found him supervising preparations in the Salle
du Moulin. A slim, lively man, he seemed pleased to have another nationality to
add to his list of foreign visitors. There were Belgians, Dutch, Germans, even
Portuguese, but I was his first and only Englishman. And the word had spread.
As I was on my way to meet him, I passed two workmen setting up tables in one
of the tents. “They say there’s an Englishman here this
year,” one of them said.
“Ah, bon,”
said the other,
in a tone of utter disinterest. “I’ll tell the frogs.”

In between trips to the kitchen at the back of the hall, where thighs by
the trayful were being stacked alongside the ovens, Loisant told me how Vittel
had become a Mecca for frog-lovers.

“It started twenty-seven
years ago,” he said. “René Clément, who ran the
restaurant just down the road, had a little
étang
on his land.
One spring day back in 1972, he found his
étang
invaded.
Hundreds of frogs! More than he had ever seen! What was he to do?”

“Well,” I said, “as he was a chef—”

“Exactly! He set up a table on the terrace outside his restaurant. He
cooked—
mon Dieu,
how he cooked—nothing but frogs’
legs, and maybe some
pommes frites.
He fed
le tout
Vittel.
Next year, the same. So it went on. Now, as you know, we have our own
confrérie
with two hundred and fifty members.” He looked
at his watch, then turned to go back to the kitchen. “Meet me tomorrow
morning, nine o’clock at the Palais des Congrès. There will be
breakfast with a little white wine, and then the parade. You will be our first
English
confrère.
”

I wasn’t at all sure
that this distinction was deserved. I could hardly claim to be a connoisseur,
or even a regular consumer, and to be elevated at a single hop into the
aristocracy of frog-eaters was an unexpected honor. It was also something of a
change in status. Normally, my role in these affairs is simply that of an
observer, unknown and, ideally, unnoticed, a bystander scribbling furtive
notes. But this time, I was to be in the thick of things, nibbling thighs in
front of an audience. And what else would I be required to do? Loisant had
given me no particular instructions apart from telling me to turn up for
breakfast the following morning. But I had been a spectator at one or two
ceremonies in which friends had been elected as
confrères,
and
I knew that initiation rituals were often rich in potentially humiliating
moments: draining a monstrous goblet of red wine without dribbling or pausing
for breath, reciting from memory an oath of allegiance in Provençal,
singing the anthem of the
confrérie—
all these I had seen
from the comfortable anonymity of the watching crowd. And now the crowd would
be watching me.

While it was impossible to imagine exactly what form
the initiation ceremony would take, one part of it was entirely predictable.
Without a doubt, I would be called upon to eat—not only to eat but to eat
with conspicuous relish—at least a couple of thighs, maybe more. I could
remember coming up against frogs’ legs only once before, and an
overpowering experience it had been, too, rather like sucking garlic-flavored
lollipops. But that was the work of an amateur cook, unused to the finer points
of
cuisine grenouille.
Here in frog heartland, the local chefs would
doubtless have a more delicate touch. Encouraged by the thought, I decided to
have a trial run, to get in some private practice before my public debut.

Although the restaurants of Vittel that evening were united in their homage
to the frog, I found myself drawn instead to one of the stands in a side
street. Canvas had been stretched over a scaffolding framework, with long plank
tables arranged in front of a makeshift counter. Most of the seats were already
taken, and I noticed that the style of the evening was to wear one’s
paper napkin tucked into the shirt collar, which in France is usually the sign
of a man who takes his food seriously. There was just the right mixture of
music and laughter. Bonhomie was in the air, bottles of Riesling on the tables,
frogs’ legs on the menu. I took an empty seat next to a group of large
and boisterous men—members of a rugby club, according to their
T-shirts—and gave my order to the waitress.

My accent caused my
neighbor to turn toward me, his head cocked. He had the slightly ravaged ears
of a front-row forward who had been in the middle of too many rugby scrums, and
a broad, good-natured face.

“Where are you from?” he
asked.

“I’m English.” This was said with a certain
amount of apprehension, as rugby matches between France and England tend to be
replays of the battle of Agincourt, and passions of both players and supporters
run high. Fortunately, my neighbor didn’t seem to bear any grudges.

“
Ah, les Anglais,”
he said. “
Ils
sont durs.
They play like tanks.” I think it was meant as a
compliment, because he filled my glass from the bottle in front of him.
“And what are you doing here?”