Good food, good friends, the French way

Published: April 29, 2012

This month, I should be writing about politics, about the 10 candidates who ran for the first round of the French presidential elections on April 22 and about who came out on top. I should be writing about my very first voting experience in France. Instead, I'd like to concentrate on friendship and food, two topics that far outshine politics in my life at this time.

A month ago, my mother, Mary Honicker, a long-time teacher in the Pottsville schools, passed away. Returning to France was not easy. I felt like I was leaving everything behind: our family home, Pottsville, Schuylkill County.

My mother, besides being my mother and irreplaceable in that role, was my anchor to "home." Without her, I felt afloat, deprived of a safe haven, truly on my own in this great big world of ours. Although I am Franco-American, upon opening the door of my Parisian apartment the day I returned, I wasn't feeling very French.

But all that was before my French friends stepped in and began taking care of me. There were phone calls, flowers, notes expressing sympathy. Most of all, there was food, food shared with friends, a pastime the French have raised to the level of art, exactly what my weary soul needed to settle back in here.

My friend Nathalie was the first to invite me to her home and we sat at her dining table, looking out over the zinc rooftops of Paris. In the distance, we could see the tip of the Eiffel Tower and, closer to her top-floor apartment (no elevator, like mine), the two rectangular towers of Notre Dame de Paris.

On the table in front of us, as admirable as the view, lying on a bed of crisp escarole, were some slices of foie gras d'oie - goose liver pate - direct from the Bearn region of southwest France, where Nathalie's father is from. He knows where to get the very best and makes sure his daughter always has a supply in her Paris home. Nathalie toasted some bread and then opened a bottle of Graves, a red wine from Bordeaux. All I had to do was savor the "made-in-heaven" marriage of wine with foie gras spread on a slice of toasted French baguette.

And that was only the first course. Nathalie, with the ease of a French woman raised in a home where the finest culinary traditions are passed down from generation to generation, next got out a frying pan, melted a big pat of butter, and, in a matter of minutes, produced two perfectly pan-fried sole. "Succulent," as the French say. Golden on the outside, with firm white flesh on the inside. And there was no sticking to the frying pan!

I have been to Nathalie's parents' home in Pau, the capital of the Bearn region, and each time I have marvelled at the meals her parents produce. I have been particularly impressed by the desserts, always homemade, be it ice cream or sherbert, the French version of macaroons, made not with coconut, but with sugar and egg whites, or a charlotte with strawberries or raspberries, a very sophisticated form of shortcake.

When I go to Nathalie's Parisian apartment, I prefer to supply the dessert, scouting my neighborhood for the very best bakeries. If Nathalie approves my choice, I know the bakery is good. This time I brought a slice of Black Forest cake and a simple cream puff, topped with candied sugar. She gave both her highest marks, with special praise for the cream puff, a simple pastry very hard to make well.

However, one meal, no matter how delicious, is not enough to soothe a grieving soul. Luckily for me, a week later, my friend Sophie whisked me off to Brittany, where her family has a vacation home by the sea.

Brittany, or "Bretagne" as it is called in French, is the westernmost part of France, jutting far out into the Atlantic. The region is best known for rain, wind, storms at sea, Celtic folklore and mystery. In no way is it a culinary capital, but it is a region where simple, good food abounds. Almost as soon as we arrived, we got busy and dug in.

We began with buckwheat "galettes," the local version of crepes, the thin pancakes the French prefer to the fluffier American kind. In Brittany, entire meals are designed around crepes and it is traditional to begin with one or two buckwheat galettes, filled with meat, cheese or vegetables, before moving on to dessert crepes, made with white flour. Buckwheat, which is not wheat at all and thus gluten-free, produces a dark crepe, with a strong, slightly bitter flavor.

In Brittany, the locals have some favorite fillings for their galettes that take some getting used to. Seated at a table at L'hermine, or "the white weasel," Sophie's family's favorite creperie in the town of Morlaix, I decided to take the plunge into local culture, ordering a galette filled with stewed onions and andouillette. This Breton specialty is a kind of sausage made from rolled pork intestines, smoked, dried and finally simmered in a bouillon flavored with hay.

According to Edouard Herriot, a French politician of the first half of the 20th century, like politics, andouillette should smell a bit like shit. And it does and that's why it is hard to get used to, but, believe me, once you get past the smell, andouillette tastes really good, so good that I tried another galette filled with andouillette sauteed with apple slices and "pommeau," a local alcohol made from fermented apples. It was even better than the first.

I have such a taste for buckwheat that I didn't even try a dessert crepe, but finished up my meal with a galette filled with soft goat's cheese and topped with chestnut honey. I'll take that combination over chocolate or ice cream any day.

In Brittany, there were lots of other good things to eat, crabs and oysters right out of the sea, the local fish soup and sand tarts made with buckwheat, but, most important of all, be it in Paris or Brittany, these past weeks, there have been good friends sharing good food, which has meant the world to me.

As for the elections, President Nicholas Sarkozy and the socialist candidate Francois Hollande won the first round. Second round elections will take place May 6 and next month, I'll be telling readers about the new president of France.

(Honicker can be reached at honicker.republican herald@gmail.com)