French Lessons Read online

  “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 étangs—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 cure—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?”

  When I told him I was anxious to learn about frogs, he let out a rumble of laughter and nudged his friend. An Englishman who was interested in frogs. What could be more bizarre?

  As I’ve often said, there is nothing a Frenchman likes more than a self-confessed ignoramus, preferably foreign, who can be instructed in the many marvels and curiosities of France. I think it must be part of the national psyche, a compulsion to educate and thus to civilize those who have suffered the misfortune of being born in a less privileged part of the world. It happens all the time in Provence, where I have received free tuition in subjects as varied as the skinning of red peppers, the extinction of rats, the treatment of ailing plane trees, the training of truffle hounds, and the correct way to administer a suppository (doucement, doucement). Now it was about to happen again.

  After a moment or two of muttering to his friend and another grunt of laughter, my neighbor turned back to me. The first thing to know, he said, is never to leave frogs in your hotel bedroom. Jamais.

  I nodded. It was undoubtedly a very bad habit to get into. And then he told me why.

  Some friends of his had been away from home on a job near Lyon, draining a large reservoir before starting work on the restoration of an old château. It was spring, and the reservoir was teeming with frogs—succulent young creatures, an opportunity too tasty to pass up. One of the men, wise in the ways of the frog, knew exactly what to do. A length of red cloth was purchased, then torn into small pieces. These were tied to the ends of bamboo rods and issued to each man, together with instructions on technique.

  It was not unlike fly-fishing, a gentle cast that left the scraps of cloth bobbing on the surface of the reservoir. And the frogs bit. Whether they were attracted by the color or by the cloth or by the method of dragging it slowly across the water wasn’t made clear to me, but, one after another, the frogs rose to the bait. By the time evening fell, several large plastic bags had been filled.

  The idea was to take them home the following day, to be cooked and eaten over the weekend. But that night, the workmen were staying in a small hotel close to the building site. It was a Friday, and the men went out to celebrate the end of a hard week, leaving the frogs to amuse themselves in one of the hotel rooms.

  And amuse themselves they did. Leaping from the restrictive confines of the plastic bags, they enjoyed the freedom of the room. Signs of their passage were discovered later—on pillows and bedspreads and night tables, over the top of the television set, across the phone, everywhere. And then, no doubt made peckish by their explorations, they had looked for something to eat. Passing up the sheets and pillowcases, and not tempted by the carpet, they chose instead to gorge on the wallpaper—a faded print made tender by the passage of years, enlivened, no doubt, by a soupçon of mature, crispy glue.

  Returning after dinner, the workman whose room it was found the lower parts of the walls stripped clean. Replete and sleepy frogs covered the floor, blinking at the light and far from pleased at being disturbed. Collecting them to put back in their bags took up a good part of the night. The workmen left early the following morning, leaving the hotel management to puzzle over the adjustments that had been made to the decor.

  It wasn’t the best story to hear just before starting a dinner of frogs’ legs, and I looked with a certain amount of suspicion at the plate that had been put in front of me. The legs, which had been sautéed in white wine, were cream-colored and flecked with parsley. They looked appetizing and smelled delicious, but I couldn’t help wondering what kind of diet had made them so firm and well rounded. Was wallpaper the secret ingredient? Old phone bills? Or had they been fattened up on sheet after sheet of virginal top-quality Kleenex?

  “Allez,” said my neighbor. “With the fingers.”

  In fact, as the tiny legs had been served on the bone, using a knife and fork would have required the skills of a microsurgeon. So I did as I was told, picking up a leg and taking my first tentative bite.

  Chicken? Not exactly. It seemed to have a finer texture than chicken, and tasted smoother. It was moist, it was tender, and it was flavored with a well-judged tingle of garlic—altogether different from those explosively seasoned thighs I remembered eating years before.

  I finished the first leg and put it down, conscious that my neighbor was watching closely.

  “No, no,” he said. “Suck the bone.” He lifted one hand to his lips and bunched his fingertips into a bouquet. “It’s good.”

  Walking back through the streets of Vittel after dinner, there was no escaping the frog. There he was, crouching in the windows of patisseries, fashioned from marzipan or chocolate; starring in all the menus that were displayed outside restaurants; bright green and inappropriately furry as a prize in the shooting galleries. I stopped by the grenouillade monstre in the Salle du Moulin, and there he was again, three feet high, w
earing a top hat and clutching a bottle, beaming across the room above a low-lying fog bank of cigarette smoke. I wouldn’t have been surprised to encounter him, jaunty and relieved, in the toilettes publiques. But the tiled walls were bare of any humorous posters, possibly because evacuation, being part of the cure, is not a joking matter in Vittel.

  There was a uniformed presence in town that night—not, as one might have expected, patrolling gendarmes to make sure the revelry didn’t get out of hand, but a squad of Pastis 51 salesmen. Distinguished by their red jackets and their cheerful diligence with the bottle, they were offering dégustations: a free nip to anyone feeling the need of a change from beer or Riesling. One overrefreshed gentleman, the beneficiary of several nips, stood in the doorway of a bar, calling loudly for an accordion so that he could entertain passersby. The owner of the bar countered by turning up the volume of his jukebox. Affronted, the would-be accordionist glared at the source of the noise, lighted the wrong end of a filter-tipped cigarette, and lurched off in search of artistic fulfillment elsewhere.

  Sometime after midnight, the crowds had thinned, and I went back to the hotel. Leaning out of my window, I heard the distant fairground music give a wheeze and an electronic grunt before coming to a stop. The night sky was encouraging, clear enough to give some hope for good weather the following day, with the light from a solitary star coming and going through wisps of cloud like blinks of celestial neon.