Sunday Salon: A Bit of Paris, a Bit of Italy

Immoveable Feast: A Paris Christmas
Author: John Baxter
Published: September, 2008
Number of pages: 270
Rating: 5 out of 5

From the moment she got off the plane, we both sensed a fundamental change in our relationship. Like a bottle of wine that only comes into its best after it's had time to breathe, our love was ready to drink.

For the next ten days, we barely spent a minute apart. And in the quiet times, almost without discussing it, we became aware that this part of our lives was coming to a close. We would return to Paris, set up a home, marry, have children.

Within three weeks, to the astonishment of my friends, I'd emptied my apartment, disposed of my possessions, and booked a flight to Paris, a city where I'd never lived, in a country where I knew nobody, and whose language I couldn't speak. I was fifty, Marie-Dominique ten years younger, and nobody believed it would last a fortnight, if indeed it survived as far as the airport. (p. 111)

I found this book while scouring the shelves at Barnes and Noble for the perfect present to give in the Book Blogger's Holiday Swap. It is a marvelous book which either introduces you to the pleasures of France, or reminds you of how much you've missed them.

John Baxter, an Australian by birth, writes of his marriage to Marie-Dominique and their subsequent move to Paris. This book chronicles the Christmas dinner he plans and prepares for Marie-Do's family, along with insights into the French lifestyle and "ideologie". I loved it.

How does an Australian cook for the very particular French? Can you imagine two cuisines more diverse?

In hell, it's been said, the drivers are Italian and the police French, while the lovers, and worse the cooks are English. The Australia of my childhood still thought of itself as an outpost of the British Empire, and ate accordingly. Scandalously for a country abounding in succulent fish and seafood, fresh greens and salads, in mangos, papayas,, and pineapples, Australian cuisine comprised hot dogs and meat pies, fried fish and chips, overcooked roasts, soggy vegetables, and canned fruit with canned cream." (p. 7)

Not so the French. The chapters in this book discuss the careful selection of just the right wine, the perfect cheese, the proper meat for the main course, the freshest oysters for the beginning, and of course, the bread:

It's customary to praise French bread. Even more than cheese and wine, bread represents something central to the French personality. One of the greatest compliments is to say of someone, "He is like good bread." To deny the people bread or undermine its worth is to strike at the very heart of the nation. (. 162)

Of course, Christmas is not composed only of the food which one consumes. Christmas is filled with the location of where we spend it, and with whom. I'm unable to celebrate Christmas in some of my favorite places: the childhood home in which I grew up has been sold, the apartment in Germany where I prepared my first turkey was leased to someone else twenty years ago. Home is what we make of where we are now, and one is all the more fortunate if it is familiar:

Proust was right. Any house or garden or town existed only as the sum of the feelings experienced there. It was remembering history and maintaining tradition that kept the material world alive. (p. 219)

The meal comes together beautifully at the conclusion of the book: the roast pig with its cracklings and Cajun spices, which horrified one of the cousins until she learned that Cajun people have their roots in French ancestors, were consumed with the perfect wine and the accompaniment of roasted potatoes, carrot pudding, stuffing, apple compote, and fruits brulee. It is enough to make me anticipate the upcoming holiday feasts with greater longing than I already feel.

Baxter reminds us of feasts mentioned throughout the course of literature and history: Isak Dinesen's Babette's Feast is one. But, there is the other, more sacred in my mind:

A ritual? That most of all. There was enough religion in me to see all meals as sacramental, and this one especially. Religion was full of food: bread and wine, fish and fowl, flesh and blood. When Christ felt his time on earth was coming to an end, he summoned his disciples not to a sermon but to a supper. (p. 258)

This book offers a fresh look at food, at love, at Christmas and family, but most of all at Paris. C'est merveilleux.

Or couse, I couldn't write a post about another country without including "my" Italy. If there's one new Christmas album you buy this year, buy this. I can't even describe how fantastic it is. In every way.