The Year In Books: September with French Lessons by Peter Mayle

He also notes that the French set their dinner tables with forks facing downwards in order to display the family crest engraved on the back.

On his adventures, Mayle discovers little-known dishes such as aligot, a velvety blend of mashed potatoes, garlic, and Cantal cheese. He also visits food-specific events and fairs that celebrate frogs’ legs, snails, and those famous Bresse chickens.

One of the food festivals Mayle visits is the annual messe des truffes (truffle mass) in the town of Richerenches. During the mass, attendees donate truffles which are then auctioned off, and the proceeds of which go to the church. To wrap it all up, everyone then has a truffle lunch.

During the mass, they pray:

“Bon Saint Antoine, donne-nous

Des truffes en abondance

Que leur odeur et leur bon goût

Fassent aimer la Provence.”

Which basically means God give us truffles, lots of truffles.

Mayle also gives some descriptions of how the regional specialties are prepared. In Vittel, the frogs’ legs are sautéed in white wine, flecked with parsley and flavoured with garlic before being served on the bone to be eaten with the fingers. Meanwhile, the chicken from Bresse, which has its own appellation d’origine contrôlée and is required to have blue feet, entirely white plumage, and a bright red crest (the colours of French flag) is prepared as poulet de Bresse a la creme:

“Into the pan goes a generous knob of butter, followed by the chicken breasts and legs, a large onion cut into quarters, a dozen or so sliced champignons de Paris – those small, tightly capped white mushrooms- a couple cloves of  garlic en chemise, crushed but not peeled, and a bouquet garni of herbs; when the color of the chicken has turned to deep gold, a large glass of white wine is poured into the pan and allowed to reduce before half a liter of creme fraiche is added. The bird is cooked for thirty minutes, the sauce is strained through a fine sieve, the dish is seasoned to taste, and there you have it.”

I definitely want to try cooking this with regular chicken and see if it’s as unctuous as it’s described in the book!

Peter Mayle also writes about the Marathon du Medoc, where the runners wear fancy dress and are refreshed with wine at 20 different points de degustation along the course. The runners dressed as Mickey Mouse, devils, Scotsmen, policeman and his prisoner, doctors, a giant bottle of wine with legs, Cleopatra, Yassir Arafat, Marie Antoinette, and as babies dressed in diapers run through the great vineyards of Bordeaux. Now that would be an interesting marathon to watch (and participate in!).

Another chapter discusses wine tastings, a common occurrence throughout the many famous wine regions in France. Mayle expresses his amusement at the wine-tasting descriptions used in the vineyards, starting with rather truthful notes like ‘le gout de la planche’ (tastes like a plank) to something a little more abstract like ‘having the impatience of youth.’ True aficionados do not describe wines with flavours of caramel, red fruits, or tobacco; instead, tasting notes include descriptions of wet leather, wet dogs, weasels, a even hare’s belly. I think these are supposed to describe the feeling that the wine imbues rather than the actual flavour. I think.

One of the last of Mayle’s French Lessons is how the famous Michelin star rating is given to restaurants across the world. Inspectors for the Michelin guides receive two years of training after a career working in the hotel and/or restaurant business. After that, they head out to the road, weekends included, eating two meals a day but never at the same type of restaurant. During a typical week, inspectors will sample 10-14 different kinds of cuisines before heading back to Paris to write their reports. According to the institute, inspectors constantly switch regions so they don’t become too familiar to the restaurants. Mayle reports that every starred restaurant will be visited and reviewed six times per year by various inspectors. I never knew the about stringent process to award the notorious stars and how any slip of restaurant standards will be picked up immediately. There are no Michelin stars in Canada but maybe one day we will get to dine in one of those hallowed institutions.