Food for Thought
One of the biggest and truest differences betwixt us and our Gallic neighbours is our attitude to food, cooking and eating.
I realise that that statement may appear to be a bulletin from the Department of the Absolutely and Completely Bleedin’ Obvious, but I chose it carefully (for me).
There are lots and lots of misconceptions, prejudices and old chestnuts favoured by residents on both sides of the Channel. In general and despite what some Brits believe, French people do wash regularly (and even use deodorant), and rarely in my experience mistreat or eat horses and dogs. Conversely to what some French people think, Britons do not generally mistreat or eat children.
But there are some long-held credos ( like all French adults being genetically incapable of driving safely) which do stand up to the closest scrutiny. The one about male French lovers being so good at it is obvious rubbish, but all the stuff about the French attitude to food is absolutely true. Whether it is nature or nurture is not the point. Without argument it exists. By this I do not mean how rabidly our self-hating middle classes buy into the fallacy that everything cooked and put on a plate by a French chef must be better than any Brit cook could manage. What I am talking about is the basic French relationship with food, and how it reaches into their very souls and is much part of their lives as the air they breathe. The old axiom about an Englishman eating to live and a Frenchman living to eat is no longer as accurate as it was, but there is still a huge, huge gulf between us as to what we put in our mouths and why…and how much we are willing to pay for it.
I set to thinking about this when talking to a French friend yesterday and she casually mentioned she had just bought a nice roasting joint for eighty euros . Yes, that’s right, this ordinary working-class mum had laid out more than £60 at today’s prices for a piece of meat… to go in the oven.
When I came to, I learned that there would be six people at dinner, and it was a piece of beef from a renowned Aquitaine beef farm near her home. The real point is that she was not showing off in the way that a British man or woman would drop the price of their car or underwear into the conversation. She was merely mentioning the price and provenance en passant as evidence that it would be a corking bit of meat. Mind you she was also seeking my approval of this evidence of her passion for buying the very best for the table, but more of that later. Speaking as a man who would not dream of spending eighty euros on a whole meal for six at the snottiest restaurant in Brittany, I was –even after all these years - still shocked. But I was not actually that surprised.
The other day I was shopping in our local branch of Super U and saw they were doing a special offer on saucisson sec. This, as you will know , is a spicy dried sausage along the lines of a midget Italian salami, and can be a bit of an acquired taste for a lot of Brits. I like it very much, but not at the usual price.
When I saw that the offre special was a staggering one euro a piece, I grabbed a big handful. ( It keeps, of course, as that is what it was made to do). As I was about to chuck the delicious sticks in the basket, I saw that they were not all the same. Two of the sausages were wrapped in very classy wrappers and had the over-the-top names signaling that the product is going to be expensive. Looking at the shelf, I saw that the own-brand sausages were indeed a euro a piece, while the la-di-da ones next door were, wait for it, a snip at 23 euros. Each, that is.
That there could be such a range in price for the same products of the same size and containing the same materials is very French. It is also very French that the posh sausages and its poor relations were displayed alongside each other. Most of the older women in our area obviously come from a country peasant background, and are very prudent with their spending. Except when it comes to fine food.
Like a typical Brit let loose in a duty-free wine and beer store, I had grabbed a handful of the cheapo-cheapo special offer dried bangers because I like the taste and it was a very, very special offer. But most French women- and men- I know genuinely believe that the more an item of food costs, the better it will be. In some case, of course, they are right. But my bank manager actually makes a once-yearly 900 kilometer trip to and from Rochefort to pick up his shipping order of cheese of that name, for God’s sake. He pays through the nose in the town where it is made because he truly believes it tastes better than the same, much cheaper stuff in the supermarket. And of course, he will lose no status points when friends and customers find out about his devotion to buying the best.
Again like a typical Brit boasting about how little he had paid for his bottle of mediocre Cotes du Rhone in the duty-free, I did not care what the other shoppers at the checkout would think about me stocking up on the special offer saucisson But the ladies behind me with their chariots full of posh nosh would definitely not wished to be associated with cheap grub.
That is why so many French people are more than happy to visit cheap relais routiers –style restaurants at lunchtime, but opt for fifty-quid-a-head joints when eating out in the evening. It is also why my wife and I, being of Scottish and Welsh descent, would never ever darken the doorway of any restaurant with a pretentious name, damask tablecloths.. .and napkins pretending to be swans or scallop shells.