Ann Mah - Mastering the Art of French Eating: Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris

Introduction

B efore we moved to Paris, in the summer of 2008, my husband, Calvin, and I used to pore over the atlas of France. I would stand in the kitchen cooking dinner, and he would lean on the counter, keep my wineglass filled, and turn the books wide pages. Hed read the names of regions out loudAlsace, Bretagne, Champagne, Provence, Normandieand we would dream about renting a car and circling the country, a road trip to the regions with the food we wanted to eat. Of course, this being France, that narrowed down the list to almost everywhere.

We talked about the road trip a lot as we crunched toast on Sunday mornings. We listened to the Charles Trenet song Route Nationale 7 and dreamed about the route des vacances, about the highway that makes a recipe. We read books set in hilltop Provenal villages and bourgeois Left Bank apartments. And yet I dont think either one of us ever really thought we would take the trip. At the time we were living in New York, then Beijing, then Washington, D.C., moving every three years or so, blown hither and yon by Calvins job as a diplomat. Maybe when were retired, we said. Well rent a car and drive everywhere in France.... And so the fantasy began anew. But retirement was decades away.

In the fall of 2007, Paris couldnt have been further from our minds. We had just moved to Washington, D.C., after four years in China. Calvin was traveling to Asia for work almost two weeks out of every month. And at thirty-two years old, I was struggling to ignite a career as a freelance food writer in a town whose favorite dish was power. But the wonderful, terrible thing about foreign-service life is that you move all the time. Our stint in Washington was for only a year, and by October, Calvin was already bidding on his next assignment. He put France on the list with lots of hope but very little expectation. Yet somehow, against all odds, we found out we were going to Paris.

In the months before the move, I could barely talk about it. I was petrified that any discussion, any expression of joy, any speculation about supermarchs or mtro stops, would jinx everything. It just seemed too good to be truea three-year sojourn in Paris with my favorite person, a chance to try the 246 varieties of cheese that de Gaulle had joked about, an opportunity to discover the cuisine of la belle France, to taste things that I had both read and dreamed about for half my life. Andthe crowning flourish of shaved truffleswe would finally get to take the road trip. So I held my breath as we packed boxes, bought towels and sheets, and ticked off the days one by one. I held it throughout seven weeks of French immersion at a language school in rural Vermont. I held it as I stepped onto the plane in Washington and off it at Roissy, on the RER commuter rail, all the way to the Left Bank. And there, inside our new apartment, my mind dizzy with jet lag and happiness, I lay down on the bare parquet floor, stared up at the ornate crown molding, and sighed.

Perhaps I exhaled too soon. For we had scarcely unpacked our boxes and picked a favorite local