Alphonse Daudet

At our French class a few weeks ago, I talked about going to see the windmill of French nineteenth century author Alphonse Daudet in Fontvieille. We had gone there with Daniel and Irène after our wonderful Christmas dinner.

Our French instructor then suggested that we ought to read more of Daudet’s stories as they are not long and are well-written. Ellen and I had already read “Les trois messes basses” (The three low masses) which I described in this blog in December. Our French instructor asked us to read other stories from his book Lettres de Mon Moulin (Letters from my Windmill). Last week, we read La Chèvre de Monsieur Seguin (Mr. Seguin’s goat). The story – told to his friend – indirectly poses the question:  freedom at what cost? 

The Billy-goat weather vane

Alphonse Daudet is a well-known French author. Daniel told us that most of the school children in France read his stories. I guess we would call his stories ‘fables’ or at least ‘moral stories’. The tales are humorous and always about the people of Provence. Daudet’s descriptions of the people of Provence and the land itself make his stories worth reading.

Daudet was from Provence. He was born and grew up in Nîmes, taught in Alès and then worked at Le Figaro as a journalist in Paris. He was close friends with Emile Zola and Guy de Maupassant. He apparently never lived at the windmill – writing most of the stories on the train (according to Frederick Davies who translated Lettres de Mon Moulin for Penguin books).  Alphonse Daudet has been called “the French Dickens”.

The film director Marcel Pagnol, also from Provence (Marseille), made short movies of Daudet’s tales in the 1950s. (You can watch several of these movies on “YouTube”.)

Christmas dinner in St. Remy de Provence

On Christmas day, the four of us went to a restaurant called “Le Mas de l’Amarine”. “Mas” means ‘Provencal farmhouse’ but Le Mas de l’Amarine had been converted into a gorgeous restaurant and gîte. I don’t know how Daniel chooses the restaurants where we eat but he is 2/2 on the ‘excellent restaurant rating scale’. Last year, we ate at “Le Vivier” in L’Isle sur la Sorgue and I thought that it couldn’t get much better than that. ‘Au contraire, Mark!’

The sun was bright making the day warm enough that we had our “Amuse bouche” (hors d’oeuvres) outside on the veranda. The service was perfect: the staff was engaging and informative and always appropriate. They clearly enjoyed their work and enjoyed making us feel welcome.

As we made our decisions about Entrées (first course) and Plats (main course), Daniel decided that a Burgundy-style wine would work for the four of us, two of whom had ordered fish; two had ordered meat. The woman with whom Daniel consulted on the wine was a knowledgeable sommelier. Daniel chose a pinot noir from Domaine St. Nicolas. Daniel knew of the winery and their wines and recommended them highly as did the sommelier. I thought that Christmas was the perfect day to drink a wine that came from St. Nicolas.

The Amuse-bouche included oysters, shrimp in phyllo and bread sticks wrapped with prosciutto.

The server came and announced that she could begin serving the entrées as soon as we were ready to follow her to our table. We were seated at our table and next to a family celebrating their Christmas with the family matriarch – who was 104 years old. (We later learned that the matriarch had been a French teacher in England. A relative told us that she loved to speak English and she clearly enjoyed our in-English Christmas wishes.)

Among the four of us, we had chosen three different entrées. I wished that Ellen’s habit of sharing bites of each plate had ruled because the presentations were so beautiful and inviting, I wanted to try everything. The dishes were prepared so that every bite was filled with the flavors that the chef had melded so well. The wine worked well as a complement to the dishes we had chosen.

Ellen and Irène had ordered the langoustine roasted with ginger. Daniel had the scallops with beet salad and I ordered the duck broth with truffles and foie gras. Wow!

Langoustines

Scallops with beet salad

Duck broth with truffles and foie gras

As one might guess, the plats were just as beautiful and inviting as the entrées. For the main course, Ellen chose “loup sauvage” (sea-bass), Irène chose turbot, Daniel had chicken that was roasted on the spit in the main fireplace and I chose the T-Bone – which was a substitution for the boeuf on the menu. I know I am repeating myself but the melding of flavors was accomplished so perfectly.

Sea Bass

Turbot

Spit-roasted chicken

T-Bone

The main course was followed by cheese and then dessert and café/tea. When they served the tea/café, they also brought a tray of sweets – chocolate truffles and a variety of sweet pastries.

After the meal, Daniel told me that he had called the restaurant to ask for the menu for Christmas several weeks ago. They transferred the call to the chef who said the menu was not ready but he gave Daniel an idea of what he was planning/thinking he might do. Daniel said that when he heard the chef’s ideas, he knew that we were in for a real treat. – He was SO right.

In France, we rarely encounter a bad meal. The cafés offer nice bistro foods and the restaurants compete for your return visit. Eating at Le Mas de l'Amarine was a wonderful and different from normal experience. I can still taste (or wish I could still taste) the wonderful flavors that we enjoyed.

Christmas Eve in St. Remy de Provence

We joined our French friends again this year for Christmas. They had chosen St. Remy de Provence as our destination, so we were happy to go to the village famous because Van Gogh had admitted himself to an asylum in the village and stayed there for a year near the end of the 19^th century.

We stayed at a lovely “gîte” (vacation apartment) in a renovated old home at the edge of the town where one could see Mt. Ventoux as well as “les Alpilles” – a part of the Luberon mountain range.

On Christmas Eve, we went to the cathedral in St. Remy for the midnight mass service. The service began before 11:00 PM when women and men wearing traditional costumes handed out candles to all who had assembled at the church. 

Once the candles were lit, there was a procession through the old part of the town ending inside the cathedral where the mass was held.

(There is a humorous story about Christmas midnight mass written by Alphonse Daudet called “Les Trois Messes Basses” (the three low masses) about a priest who was so much more interested in the meal at the end of the service that he raced through the liturgy so that he could enjoy the wonderful meal planned for the end of the service. In doing so, he committed the sin of gluttony – le péché de gourmandise.)

The mass we attended was no parallel. The service was reverent and included singing and a procession around the interior of the cathedral with live sheep (The sheep were provided by the son of the owner of the “gîte” where we stayed.) At the end of the mass, a child dressed in traditional garb took the baby Jesus figurine from its stand in front of the altar and placed it in the stable (crèche).

Lost in translation (Victor Hugo Poem)

If you were "lost in translation" from my posting yesterday, my apologies. I offer a translation below.

Demain dès l'aube

Demain, dès l'aube, à l'heure où blanchit la campagne,

Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m'attends.

J'irai par la forêt, j'irai par la montagne.

Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.

Tomorrow at dawn

Tomorrow at dawn, at the hour when the countryside brightens,

I will leave. You see, I know that you are waiting for me.

I will go by the forest, I will go by the mountain.

I cannot live far from you any longer.

Victor Hugo Poem

Demain dès l'aube

Demain, dès l'aube, à l'heure où blanchit la campagne,

Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m'attends.

J'irai par la forêt, j'irai par la montagne.

Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.

I have taken the first stanza of Victor Hugo's 1865 poem because the sentiment matches my feeling as we prepare to leave on our trip to Vaison la Romaine. 

As the poem continues, one learns that it was written to his deceased daughter - his promise to journey to her grave site. It remains a love poem and I find it beautiful.

Cheese, please

It was possibly the first time we went to stay at our apartment in Vaison la Romaine. I went to the local cheese shop. The proprietor of the cheese shop, a meilleur ouvrier de France recognized by President Chirac for her skill and knowledge, gets to wear a chef jacket with a red, white and blue ribbon collar that indicates her status. When I asked her for 200 grams of Roulé, she looked over the top of her fashionable glasses and said: “Ca c’est un fromage industriel. Je ne le vend pas ici.” (That is factory-made (processed) cheese. I do not sell it here.) Her response was so abrupt and (to me) so aggressive, I decided to buy my cheese from the market vendors.

Over the years, I have gotten to know our famous cheese shop owner and have overcome my reticence of visiting her shop. Josianne Déal provided the cheeses for the Valentine’s Day dinner at La Lyriste, our friend's restaurant. For that matter, if you eat in just about any of the restaurants in town, the cheese they offer is probably from her store called Lou Canesteou fromagerie.

I now visit the shop regularly because there are so many varieties of cheese from which to choose and I appreciate the guidance from her and her staff. The first problem to overcome is to decide among the options for one style of cheese. Did I want the Comté that was aged 12 months, 18 months or 24 months? Did I want the Roquefort that was creamy or the Roquefort that was spicier to the taste? And then, of course, several of the cheeses are sold with the AOC (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée) which means that the product is certified as coming from the region named on the label.

Last winter, I stopped in the cheese shop and Josianne waited on me. I told her that there was a difference between her shop and the cheese store where I shopped in Lansing. I explained that in Lansing, the shop runs on a binary system: “Do you have Roquefort? Yes/No. Do you have Morbier? Yes/No. Press 1 for yes, 0 for no… Josianne smiled at me and said: “We have a few more options for you.”

On Saturday, I stopped at our cheese shop and asked for a half of a pound of Comté. (Hills Cheese is the most popular of all of the shops at the City Market. Hills has been a vendor at the City Market for more than 50 years. Their success is offering quality cheeses from across the world, not just France. When you go there on the weekend, expect to be third in line.) The young man that served me brought me the piece of Comté that he had cut and told me the price. I asked him if he knew how long it had been aged (12, 18, 24 mos). He replied that he did not know but he was sure that the Comté had come in a green wrapper which meant that it was high-quality Comté; better than the Comté that comes in the blue wrapper…

It seems strange that a city of the size of Lansing does not have the equivalent of the cheese shop in Vaison which is 5% of the size of Lansing. But one must consider the importance of cheese in France (DeGaulle once posed the question: ‘Who can rule a country that has more than 278 different kinds of cheese?’) It is a question of priorities. France has over 200 cheeses. We have more flavors of Cheetos here than are available in France. Which do you prefer?

French Reminders

There are a lot of things that remind me of France while we are in the States. I read several French or French-theme blogs and I see notes on FaceBook or in my e-mail from French friends. Ellen and I go to the meetings (réunions) of the Lansing area Alliance Française. Even the mundane activities of the day make me think of France:

·         I was buying beets to make a beet and pistachio salad and seeing the raw beets with greens attached made me long for the vacuum packed peeled beets that I can buy at grocery stores in France.

·         When I buy gasoline here, the price is per gallon but it makes me think of the price of fuel in France where the signs advertise the price per liter or roughly per quart. Prices vary, but a liter of gasoline is about €1.40 or about $7.00 per gallon. (Given the disparities in the price of fuel, it is no surprise that the French and other Europeans buy smaller, fuel-efficient cars.)

·         I have read all of the novels about “Bruno, Chief of Police” by Martin Walker about a village chief of police in Southwest France.

·         Shopping for spices and missing the spice and herb vendors at the market with their bags of spices and herbs (and the aromas!)

·         The summer film The Hundred Food Journey.

·         Buying eggs makes me wonder: why do we keep eggs in the refrigerator in the States? (In France, eggs and milk are not stored in coolers in the grocery stores. They are found on regular, un-refrigerated shelves.)

It has been a good summer and despite some “powdery mildew” on my zucchinis and my squash, we had a bountiful harvest from my garden and enjoyed fresh vegetables during August and September and our French friends know how much I like gardening and often ask about my potager (vegetable garden).

Now, we are sort of in preparing-to-return-to-France mode as Ellen has purchased our tickets for the trip. We leave Lansing on the 9^th of December and will arrive at our apartment on the 10^th.  Having tickets makes every day a reason to think of France and to wonder if there are items available here that we want to take because we have not found them in France. (In May, we do the reverse and think about the items available in France that we want to bring back to the states.)

Quel chanceux (I am a lucky/fortunate  person.)