France - At the Table: Food and Family around the World - Ken Albala

At the Table: Food and Family around the World - Ken Albala (2016)

France

Jonell Galloway

Stereotypes of how the French eat are abundant: cream, butter, charcuterie, meat, foie gras, snails, duck confit, cheese, rich pastries, and baguettes all the time, legend would have it. In November 2010, UNESCO even listed the French gastronomic meal on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Although these meals are richer and more copious than everyday meals, the gap is not that wide. There may be fewer courses, but the French still eat three square meals a day and take the time to sit down and talk over meals (Mathé, 2009). Meals generally consist of four courses—starter, main dish, cheese, and fruit—but portions are small. Women working outside the home have simplified some of the more traditional cooking habits, but 66 percent of French families still spend an average of 2 hours 22 minutes a day eating, 13 minutes longer than in 1986. One-third of this time is spent over lunch (De St Pol, 2013). It is not unusual for men to take part in shopping, cooking, and washing up, as do children. Tradition prevails but with modern twists. Young people in urban environments are the main exception to this, for example, with 16 percent eating only two meals a day out or in front of the television or while playing a video, but say that they would change their eating habits if they had more money (Riou, 2015).

Albala

In France, everyone in the family takes part in grocery shopping, preparing meals, and setting and clearing the table. A typical meal consists of a starter, main course, cheese, green salad and dessert, even in today’s busy world. (Courtesy of Blake Benton de Roucy)

French home cooking has traditionally been passed down through the generations. Men have always taken a more active part than in other countries, going to weekend markets and to the bakery and even preparing certain special dishes, such as mayonnaise or cassoulet. Fresh baguettes or bread with every meal are still the norm when feasible, although specialty breads have developed extensively since the 1980s. The price of standard baguettes remains affordable to everyone. The type of fat used in cooking varies from region to region, with butter in the north, duck and goose fat in the southwest, and olive oil in the southeast, but olive oil has become fairly standard fare in households all over the country. Everyone, even children, knows how to whip up vinaigrette, and green salad is a standard accompaniment to both lunch and dinner.

SCHOOLS

Healthy food was not always a topic discussed in school. In the past, it was assumed that if you ate in the traditional manner, you would get a healthy diet. In the 1990s, the French school system decided to take a closer look at meals, recommending that they be balanced, varied, and distributed over the day, with 20 percent of calories at breakfast, 40 percent at lunch, 10 percent at the 4:00 p.m. snack, and 30 percent at dinner. The school system stresses that meals are a period of relaxation and should be considered a special moment in the day set aside for discovery and pleasure as well as for discussion. Lunch break is 1½ hours, with a minimum of 30 minutes eating. A four-course meal is served: vegetable salad, warm main course with grains and/or vegetables, cheese, and dessert, usually consisting of fresh fruit. It is intentionally referred to as a “school restaurant” so as not to be confused with the traditional terms “canteen” and “cafeteria.” But food is not only a question of nutrition: starting in 1991, schools began holding regular tasting awareness workshops where children are exposed to a wide variety of dishes and ingredients and learn about how they are made. Schools even hold tasting competitions. Vending machines are forbidden in schools (“L’école élémentaire en pratique,” 2013).

PROCESSED FOODS

The French have always bought certain prepared foods. There is a long tradition of picking up salads from the local pork butcher, which often serves as a deli, along with ham, pâté, sausage, and other prepared foods. Bakers make quiches, sausage rolls, and other savory pastries. Pastry shops sell cakes, cookies, croissants, etc. Butchers often sell salads with bits of meat. Most people go to the bakery to buy bread once a day. There is also a long tradition of preserved foods such as cassoulet, duck and goose confits, and pâtés, often bought in markets or on farms and kept on hand for use when unexpected guests come. Mayonnaise and béarnaise sauce came on the market in the late 1980s and the 1990s. Many resisted, but it is common to buy them at the store today.

WEEKEND VERSUS WEEKDAYS

Weekday meals are less leisurely than weekend meals, when families and friends often linger over the table for two or three hours. Special dishes that require a long time to cook are usually made on the weekends or on holidays. Croissants and pains au chocolat are usually reserved for weekend breakfasts and special occasions, as are cakes.

DAY-TO-DAY MEALS

Béatrice and Pierre met in accounting school in Dijon. She is from a rural Périgord family, and he is from an old Lyon family. When they graduated, they got jobs as certified public accountants in Paris, where they lived together and eventually got married. They are now 40 and have three children, twin girls Mathilde and Emmy, age 10, and Geneviève, age 7. A few years ago, they moved from Paris to the suburbs to have more room for the children. Béatrice doesn’t work on Wednesdays when the children are off from school.

Before Béatrice and Pierre were married they ate out a lot, trying many of the exotic restaurants available in Paris and traveling to foreign countries. This has somewhat influenced their approach to eating, but both come from regions with strong food and wine traditions, so these traditions remain important in their day-to-day family life. Shopping, planning meals, and cooking are important parts of their weekly routine. There is an open-air market in their village on Wednesday and Saturday mornings where Béatrice buys most of the fresh fruit and vegetables. The bakery is a 5-minute walk from their house, so it is easy to buy fresh bread every day and sometimes even twice a day. The butcher is a 10-minute walk, so they drop in every couple of days. They go to the supermarket on Saturday afternoons, loading up on staples for the week.

Dinner

The word “dinner” in English has a bizarre history. Originally the larger meal eaten early in the day, in medieval Latin the word was disjejeunare, meaning to break one’s fast. This became dejeuner in medieval French and eventually disner in early English. Thus, the word “dinner” actually means breakfast. The meal gradually moved later and later in the day, with dinner eventually becoming little different than supper (the original evening meal). In the 14th century the word, and eventually the meal, “breakfast” was introduced, since dinner no longer broke the evening fast.

During the many school and public holidays and vacations, they visit their families in Lyon and the Périgord. Béatrice’s parents live on a farm, so they put up cassoulet, duck confit, conserved fruit and vegetables, and jam, which Béatrice and Pierre bring back to Paris with them, adding good-quality homemade meals to their regular local purchases. They also stock up on Beaujolais and Côte du Rhône in Lyon and on Bergerac and Cahors in the Périgord, which they put in their newly equipped wine cellar.

Fitting out their kitchen was important when they renovated their house, so they invested money in it. The Miele dishwasher has a timer so as to run at times when the electricity is cheaper; it is also a water-saving version. The stove is gas with an electric convection oven. Like most French homes, they have a small basic refrigerator, preferring to keep fresh fruit and vegetables in bowls and baskets in the window. The old copper pans are from Pierre’s grandmother, as are a set of de Buyer steel frying pans and a crêpe pan. They have a cast-iron Staub stew pot, and a clay Romertopf for roasting chickens, which the children love to have at least once a week. The couple received a set of Cristel saucepans as a wedding gift. They’ve recently invested in a Swiss Kuhn-Rikon double-wall pan, which they use to steam most vegetables as well as fish. They also have a Kenwood food processor. The yellow and blue kitchen is Provençal in style. It is gay and warm, a real meeting place for the family. The Provençal-style white square kitchen table is used for breakfast and lunch, but they prefer eating dinner in the dining room, where they have an antique table and chairs they bought when they got married.

Pierre jogs every morning before work and on his way home picks up fresh baguettes from the bakery for breakfast before they all set off to school and work. Their kitchen is small, like most French kitchens, but big enough for a breakfast table, so they all eat breakfast together. Breakfast regularly consists of a tartine (bread and butter), jam, yogurt, and a piece of fruit except on weekends, when Pierre buys croissants and pains au chocolat. The children drink hot chocolate, while Béatrice and Pierre drink café au lait, which is basically half coffee and half hot milk served in a large rounded bowl. They make the coffee with a Bodum French-press coffeemaker and heat the milk in the Nespresso electric milk frother Pierre bought for Béatrice for her birthday.

They drop the children off at school on their way to work. They both work in the city, so unlike many French children who go home for lunch, the children eat lunch at the school restaurant. The children get healthy, balanced meals at school, so that is one less worry about squeezing all their nutritional benefits into the evening meal.

It’s Monday. Béatrice picks up the children from school and gives them their 4:30 snack of fruit and yogurt. On her way home, she stops and buys lettuce. Since they eat green salad with every meal, they’ve already eaten all that she bought at the Saturday market. On Monday, they usually use leftovers of some kind from the weekend. On Sunday Béatrice made a pot au feu, using duck, carrots, potatoes, celery, leeks, turnips, and onions. She uses the leftover broth the second day, leaving bits of meat in it, making it like a chunky soup. The children love eating it with mique, dumplings made from leftover bread, eggs, corn and wheat flour, and bits of duck and duck fat, a specialty of Périgord. She uses her mother’s recipe.

Béatrice gets the children started on their homework and then peels celeriac and grates it in the food processor. She washes the green salad and makes vinaigrette. She checks on the children, helps them with any problems they have, and then starts making mayonnaise to make a celery remoulade, which can last two days. All French children love this salad, so it’s always worth the time it takes, plus it’s full of fiber. By the time Pierre arrives at 6:00 p.m., Béatrice has already started mixing the dumplings and is warming the broth. The whole family reunites in the living room while the children finish their homework. At 6:45, the children finish and go outside to play while Pierre and Béatrice finish preparing dinner.

Pierre sets the table in the dining room with the Christofle white and blue plates and glasses from IKEA onto a matching blue print tablecloth and takes out the blue cloth napkins with initialed napkin rings. He puts a carafe of water on the table along with a bottle of red Bergerac wine. They think that the children are a bit young to be carrying their good dishes from the kitchen; this will come later, in a few years. The dining room has a view of the garden, and they can often see the sun set during dinner, depending on the time of year.

Béatrice drops the dumplings into the broth, and they are ready to eat. They call the children in to wash their hands at 7:30, Pierre serves the celery remoulade in a large white porcelain bowl from IKEA, and the whole family sits down to eat together. He serves water to everyone and wine to the adults. Emmy talks about the farm expedition her class will be making next week. She’s excited. She loves her grandparents’ farm in the southwest and wants to be a farmer when she grows up. Mathilde complains about math and says her teacher gives her too much homework. This puts her in a bad mood, so she eats slowly at first but perks up when the dumplings are served. When the starter is finished, Béatrice removes the dishes and serves the pot au feu with dumplings in a soup bowl. They talk about Easter, when they are going to Lyon to visit Pierre’s family. Emmy wants a fancy dark chocolate bunny from Pierre Hermé like she saw on television, Mathilde prefers the white chocolate ones she saw at the local baker’s, and Geneviève wants the kind her Mamie makes in Lyon. They all look forward to seeing their grandparents and cousins and to the feast they always serve for Easter. They can’t wait for Mamie’s bugnes, the hot sugar-coated fritters she serves for their goûtée (afternoon snack). Pierre can’t wait for her Lyonnais sausage dishes and the local cardoons, while Béatrice is looking forward to the fromage blanc with shallots, garlic, and herbs, only found in Lyon and called cervelle de canut.

The children beg for seconds of dumplings, and Pierre serves them. Geneviève is getting tired and not sitting up straight. She lays her head on the table, and Béatrice corrects her, telling her to sit up straight and keep her arms on the edge of the table at all times during the meal. Pierre removes these plates and brings more plates and knives and the cheese platter along with the green salad and some leftover chives. He pours on the vinaigrette, mixes the salad and chives, and serves the children, Béatrice, and finally himself. The adults like to eat their salad before the cheese, but the children prefer eating the cheese and salad together. Both ways are acceptable. He passes the platter and lets the children choose. They choose Cabécou de Rocamadour, the one granny always serves, and Gruyère. Béatrice and Pierre eat the ripe Camembert with a bit of Roquefort, which comes from the region she grew up in. Béatrice explains that the Cabecou comes from Rocamadour in the Périgord and shows them the painting on the wall of the goats on her parents’ farm.

Emmy asks how many carbohydrates there were in their meal, because her tasting awareness class this morning said it wasn’t good to eat too many, and she still wasn’t clear as to what carbohydrates were. Mathilde says that carbs are pasta and rice, so they didn’t eat any. Béatrice explained that the potato, carrots, celery, and bread all had some carbohydrates but not as much as in pasta or rice and that we need a few carbohydrates in our diet. Emmy feels reassured. Béatrice also thinks of her figure. Like many French women, she avoids carbohydrates as much as possible in an attempt to stay thin. Béatrice removes these plates and brings the fruit bowl. The children choose kiwis, while the parents eat ripe Comice pears. When everyone has finished they excuse the children, and Pierre clears the table and puts the dishes in the dishwasher. Béatrice goes upstairs to give the children their baths and puts them to bed around 8:45.

This French family represents a middle-class family typical of the statistics published by major French research institutes such as the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies and the Research Center for the Study and Observation of Living Conditions. Those with roots in the country and from farms are more likely to stick to the traditional way of eating. For 40 percent of French people, a regular everyday meal is simply a smaller version of the gastronomic meal protected by UNESCO. In urban environments and with young people, these trends differ in that they involve more food prepared outside the home, but even those who buy prepared food in the supermarket or at the deli tend to buy a starter, a main course, cheese, salad, and fruit. Shopping for food is still a family affair, one in which everybody usually takes part. Families cook together and deem the time spent at the table an important part of their social and family life. The traditional French meal is in no danger of disappearing. It has simply adapted to the modern world. Gathering around the table for Sunday lunch is alive and well, and as King Henri IV wished, almost every French family can afford to put a chicken on the table once a week, even if it was roasted by the local supermarket.

Southwest Duck Pot au Feu

Prep time: 20 minutes

Cooking time: 3 hours

Serves 4

4-5 duck legs

Touch of duck fat

Salt and pepper

2 stems of thyme

3 leaves of laurel

2 large onions, skin removed

3 whole cloves

1 clove garlic (with peel)

Parsley

2 juniper berries

2 cups white wine

Cut all into large chunks:

1 pound turnips, peeled

3 leeks

1 pound carrots or parsnips, peeled

4 stalks celery

8 potatoes, peeled

Note: Save the 3 tablespoons butter or duck fat from frying for tomorrow’s dumplings.

Coarse sea salt

Mustard or horseradish

Heavy frying pan

Soup pot

1.Use the end of a butcher knife to make crisscross indentations in the skin of the duck legs.

2.Heat duck fat in heavy frying pan over medium heat. Add duck legs, fat side down. Salt and pepper. Brown on skin side only, saving oil and any bits of skin or meat that fall away.

3.Remove duck legs and put them into soup pot. Add thyme and laurel. Insert cloves into peeled onions. Add garlic clove, parsley, and juniper berries. Pour wine over the mixture, then pour in enough cold water just to cover it all.

4.Slowly bring to a boil. Boil gently for 1 hour and 20 minutes.

5.Add remaining vegetables. Simmer for about 1 hour and 40 minutes or until vegetables are tender.

6.Remove duck legs from broth and drain on paper towels.

7.Bring broth to boil and reduce.

8.Serve duck with coarse sea salt, mustard or horseradish, and vegetable broth.

Mique Dumplings for Leftover Pot au Feu

Broth from leftover pot au feu

3 tablespoons of duck fat from yesterday’s frying

1 crushed garlic clove

2-3 tablespoons of pieces of leftover duck, chopped into tiny chunks, OR bacon bits

1¼ cup leftover bread

3 large eggs

1 clove garlic, minced

3 teaspoons baking powder

¼ cup flour

⅛ cup cornmeal

2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped

Salt

Pepper

1.Bring 3 quarts of pot au feu broth to a gentle boil.

2.Heat leftover duck fat. Add chopped garlic. Fry chopped duck in hot duck fat until crisp.

3.Cut or tear dried bread into ½-inch cubes and place in a mixing bowl.

4.In another mixing bowl, mix duck fat and crisped duck bits, three or four ladles of hot broth (1 or 1½ cups) from pot au feu, eggs, minced garlic, baking powder, parsley, salt, and pepper.

5.Add bread. Mix well, mashing the bread into the liquid until it forms a smooth dough. This will take a while. If the dough is too heavy, mix it with your hands.

6.Add flour and cornmeal. Add salt and pepper to taste. Mix well until it forms a fairly smooth compact ball. The dough should be wet enough to allow you to form dumplings by hand. If not, correct liquid/bread ratio.

7.Form 2½-inch dumplings.

8.Drop dumplings into boiling pot au feu broth.

9.Cook for 10 to 15 minutes but before they start falling apart.

10.Serve in a soup dish along with the pot au feu.

FURTHER READING

Abramson, Julia L. Food Culture in France. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2006.

De St Pol, Thibaut, and Layla Ricroch. “Le temps de l’alimentation en France,” October 2012, http://www.insee.fr/fr/themes/document.asp?ref_id=ip1417.

“L’école élémentaire en pratique: La restauration à l’école,” Ministère de l’Éducation nationale, de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche, October 2013, http://www.education.gouv.fr/cid45/la-restauration-a-l-ecole.html.

Mathé, T., G. Tavoularis, and T. Pilorin. “La gastronomie s’inscrit dans la continuité du modèle alimentaire français,” December 2009, http://www.credoc.fr/publications/abstract.php?ref=C267.

Riou, J., T. Lefèvre, I. Parizot, Anne Lhuissier, and Pierre Chauvin. “Is There Still a French Eating Model? A Taxonomy of Eating Behaviors in Adults Living in the Paris Metropolitan Area in 2010.” Plos One 3(10) 2015. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0119161/modele-alimentaire-francais-3-repas-par-jour-existe-t-il-toujours.html.

Rozin, P., K. Kabnick, E. Pete, C. Fischler, and C. Shields. “The Ecology of Eating: Smaller Portion Sizes in France Than in the United States Help Explain the French Paradox.” Psychological Science 14 (2003): 450-454.