An Onion in My Pocket by Deborah Madison

Author:Deborah Madison [Madison, Deborah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2020-09-14T00:00:00+00:00

A TRIP TO FRANCE

After a year at Chez Panisse had passed it was summer again and Alice and others from the restaurant were planning a trip to France in October. Alice invited me to meet her there, and it was finally time for me to see France for myself. I sold my tea ceremony equipment so I could buy a ticket and one day, quite terrified, I boarded a Freddie Laker flight to London. There I met up with Peter Overton and his wife, Susan. Peter was the large, affable head baker of the Tassajara Bread Bakery and we had coordinated our trips partially with the purpose of sampling pastry and maybe getting ideas for the bakery. We took the boat to Calais, then the train to Paris. Of course it was unbelievably thrilling to be in Paris. I was there, it was Paris, and it was simply the most beautiful city I had ever seen.

We checked into our hotel, changed, then left to find dinner. A little café not too far away looked friendly and attractive, and we went in. The menu didn’t read quite like I had expected a French menu to read, but then, it was our first meal. When our dinner arrived I was surprised to find that it actually resembled the food I had cooked at Zen Center. There was some sort of vegetable quiche with a thick crust, a trustworthy vegetable soup, a ponderous dessert, but a very good salad. I was simultaneously relieved, disappointed, and confused. Shouldn’t it have been a lot better than this, in spite of the fact this food tasted wholesome? All made sense when we discovered that we had wandered into a macrobiotic restaurant, “the only one in Paris,” the waiter proudly told us. Counterculture food in France, it turned out, was pretty much like it was at home: healthy but clumsy. Except for our learning this, that meal seemed like a wasted opportunity.

Peter and I were interested in bakeries, while Susan was interested in textiles, so we went our separate ways during the day. Essentially Peter and I crisscrossed the streets of Paris to sample a tart in this bakery, an éclair in another. This was research and it was a dessert eater’s dream. Crêpe stands offered the relief of savory tastes when the sweet ones got overwhelming. Then it was back to the bakeries.

Among the many pastries we sampled, there was one that stood out above all others, and that was the apple tart at Poilâne on Rue Cherche-Midi. We had been told about it beforehand so we were looking forward to trying it, but when we saw the tart, it looked very unpromising and every bit as unglamorous as our first dinner had been. It didn’t seem to be much more than a piece of brown pastry with some shriveled-looking apples on it. No cream, no caramel, not even powdered sugar. It was extremely plain.

Not feeling too optimistic, we bought a medium-size one and took it to a nearby park, set it on a bench, untied the string, and unfolded the paper.

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