Eric Rohmer and The French Nouvelle Vague

Eric Rohmer (1920-2010)

The "dean" of the French New Wave died last month.

His work, over a period of 50 years, is arguably one of the most important in the post WWII history of French films. But personally, I do not think that 50 years from now his legacy as a film maker will leave a mark in film history as indelible as Godard’s, Rivette’s, Truffaut’s or Resnais. I’m talking about the determinant role that they played within the French New Wave movement in changing the way films are written, produced, and made. But nevertheless Rohmer had a major avant-garde part, as a writer and critic, in establishing some of the principles that lead to the launching of ‘’ La Nouvelle Vague’’ in the late Fifties.

It is strange but when I learned a month ago in the French press about the passing of Eric Rohmer, an image jumped immediately out of my memory: the very expressive face of an American actor, Jess Hahn, who was the star of his first full-length feature film: ‘’Le Signe du Lion’’ (Sign of Leo).

Hahn, who never had a significant career outside of France, played beautifully, in a fine blend of humor and sensibility, the role of a Dutch musician expatriate in Paris who wrongly believes he is about to inherit a lot of money from a distant aunt. But he gets completely broke and homeless when, after spending all the money he has celebrating with his friends, they leave him alone and destitute in the middle of August after he learns that he will get nothing.

That marvelous and very atmospheric picture, shot in black and white in the street of Paris in 1958-1959, did not get a commercial, and very limited, distribution until 1962. It was panned by most of the mainstream critics at the time, and I had to wait until I moved to Paris in the summer of 1963 to be able to see it at the Cinémathèque. I know that a couple of DVD versions of this film exist in both France and the UK but I never found one in the U.S. It makes me sad because I would like very much to see it again. But this film has been haunting me since 1963 and it is one of the most significant movies of the “Nouvelle Vague” of the French Cinema. I’ll explain later what that “new wave” was all about.

But before that film he had made several shorts, that I did not see, from 1950 (Journal d’un Scélérat) to 1956 (La Sonate à Kreutzer), including Charlotte ET son Steak in 1951, and Bérénice in 1954.

So, from a strictly historical point of view, Rohmer can be considered as the ‘’dean’’ of the Nouvelle Vague du Cinéma Français if we consider that this movement started, as many film historians think, in 1956. 

I’ve seen 24 of the 31 films that he made as a director between the early 50’’ and 2007, when he directed his last picture, ‘’Les Amours d’Astrée et de Céladon’’ (The Romance of Astrea and Celadon). That last film is very strange elegiac fantasy shot in beautiful natural settings in vivid colors. But it looks and sounds too much like a pure exercise in style and is marred by its two young unknown actors, in 17^th century costumes, who recite their lines in such a contrived and artificial tone of voice that I had to fight to keep my interest alive and sometimes to stay awake.

To be honest, from these 24 films I’ve seen, only 7 or 8 will really stay alive in my memory, besides Le Signe du Lion:

Le Rayon Vert (The Green Ray, or ‘’Summer’’ 1986), which is perhaps my favorite Rohmer film. A quite intriguing story of unplanned strange vacation, love and the slightly supernatural, taking place in the beautiful Biarritz area. Marie Rivière, one of Rohmer favorite actresses, is lovely. The film was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice film fest.

L’Anglaise et le Duc (The Lady and the Duke, 2001). A very impressive period film set during the Terror, a sad episode of the 1789 French Revolution, where Rohmer digitally reconstitutes the Paris of that time. Very solid script, good story, great acting and spectacular computer-generated imagery.

Conte d’Automne (Autumn Tale 1998) a very attractive and touching story of adult love and friendships, and games of seduction set up in the beautiful natural settings of Languedoc wine country. The main actor, Alain Libolt, that I knew in the late 60’s, when I worked briefly in the fascinating field of cinema, is quite captivating. 

Le Genou de Claire (Claire’s Knee, 1970) is another elegant illustration of some of Rohmer’s obsessions with very young ladies disturbing the mental equilibrium of older men. Jean-Claude Brialy is very good and the cinematography, by the great Nestor Almendros, of the shores of Lac du Bourget is superb.

Les Nuits de la Pleine Lune (Full Moon in Paris, 1983) once again involves a very young and independent woman (the lively and gifted actress Pascale Ogier who sadly died of a heart attack after the film). It describes her jumpy relationship with her boyfriend and other men, among them a writer played by the great Fabrice Lucchini whose career was launched by this film. 

Le Beau Mariage ( 1982) that introduces another of Rohmer’s favorite young actresses, Béatrice Romand who also plays in Le Genou de Claire and Conte d’Automne, as a young university student who decides suddenly to get married. But she needs a husband.

She tries to convince a lawyer (played by one of Alain Resnais’s favorite actors, André Dussolier) to be that man. Arielle Dombasle and Pascal Greggory, two other well-known actors nowadays whose careers were greatly enhanced by this film, complete the cast. 

Ma Nuit Chez Maud ( My night at Maud’s 1969) a typical post-Nouvelle Vague film where a man is very attracted to a young woman but is very reluctant to seduce her and find himself spending the night at another woman’s apartment. There are a lot of intellectual conversations going on between the main characters but little action. Nevertheless the long nightly dialog that never switches to a real love duo between the very good Jean-Louis Trintignant and the very impressive Françoise Fabian is now a classic period piece. Once again very beautiful cinematography by Nestor Almendros.

Some others were quite successful in Europe and in “art houses” all over the world, but frankly, they did not excite me that much. They were too “talkative” in the same typical boring “bourgeois” settings that were too often the typical environments of French post-new wave films in the late sixties, seventies, and way until the early eighties. Or perhaps the way actors said their sometimes very conventional lines got on my nerve. Or, because I often found Rohmer’s style of mise-en scene (directing) lacking both dynamism and precision.

Even though I will never dispute the idea that Eric Rohmer occupied an important place in the history of the French cinema during the last 4 decades of the 20^th century, he did not have the same impact in my book than Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Alain Resnais, Maurice Pialat, Francois Truffaut, Agnès Varda, Jacques Demy, or even Jean-Pierre Melville.

I just rented two of his early “moyen-métrages’’ (medium-length films) that he shot just after the Signe du Lion in 62 and 63, La Boulangère de Monceau and La Carrière de Suzanne. They are focusing as it is too often the case in Rohmer’s films on some young men in Paris talking about what might be the best strategy to seduce young women or wondering if they are really interested in them and reciprocally. I have to admit that I found these two movies quite dated, boring, poorly acted, not even really interesting as far as directing and editing are concerned. But they are very revealing of the way young people from the ‘’bourgeoisie parisienne’’ behaved in those days. And the shooting techniques used reminded me sometimes of those of the earlier ‘’moyen-métrages’’ of Truffaut, Godard, and Rivette such as Les Mistons, Le Coup du Berger, Histoire d’Eau, or Tous les Garçons s’appellent Patrick. But they surely do not have the same punch, sense of humor and natural gift for innovative directing. 

La Boulangère and La Carrière were the first 2 components of a cycle of 6 films shot between 1962 and 1972, called Six Contes Moraux ( Six Moral Tales). The other films of that series were La Collectionneuse, My Night at Maud, Claire’s Knee, Chloe in the Afternoon)

He then launched a new cycle called Comédies et Proverbes ( from 1981 to 1987), a group where you find films such as The Aviator’s Wife, Pauline at the Beach, A Good Marriage, Full Moon in Paris, or My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend)

The next cycle was called Contes des Quatre Saisons (Tales of the Four Seasons) and its 4 movies, one for each season, were produced between 1989 and 1998. 

Among these other Rohmer’s films that were relatively successful, but that I personally found not really interesting are: 

La Colectionneuse (1966) a film awarded the Silver Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival that really launched Rohmer`s career both in France and abroad

Chloe in the Afternoon (1972

 Pauline at the Beach (1983)

Four adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1986)

Rendez- Vous in Paris (1994)

A tale of springtime (1990)

A bit more interesting from a purely visual and dramatic standpoint and very atypical in Rohmer’s body of work are:

La Marquise d’O (1976) a really beautifully shot period piece adapted from Kleist, and Perceval le Gallois (1978) that confirmed the talent of actor Fabrice Luchini and: Triple Agent (2004) a relatively captivating and nicely directed spy mystery.

In spite of a very imprecise script, I sort of liked that movie.

A few things that you should know about the life and work of Eric Rohmer and his connection to the Nouvelle Vague movement:

He was perhaps the most private, even secretive, person the French movie industry has ever known. We do not know much about his parents.

And for the first 3 days after his passing many people were scrambling to find out if he was born Maurice Henri Joseph Scherer, born in Tulle (in the department of Corrèze) on March 20 1920, or Jean-Marie Maurice Scherer, born in Nancy, in Lorraine, on April 4^th 1920.

Journalists knew that he had a famous brother who is a philosopher, a wife and two sons, but their names are not known.

What we know for sure is that he was not planning in his youth to become a film maker, but wanted to be a novelist. In fact he published a novel in the late 40’s ‘’Elizabeth’’, under another name, Gilbert Cordier.

He then taught French literature in a high-school.

He started to write a few articles about films in the late 40’s, after attending screenings in the numerous film-clubs that flourished during and after WWII all over France,

But it is after he attended the Biarritz Film Festival in 1949 and when he moved to Paris for good in 1950, that he became an even more avid moviegoer and decided to write full-time about cinema.

At that time he had completed his film education by attending numerous screenings at the famous CINE CLUB DU QUARTIER LATIN (Film Club of the Latin Quarter) where he established solid bonds with 4 cinephiles Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, and later on François Truffaut, who were all dreaming of shooting a picture. Godard and Chabrol (born in 1930) were 10 years younger than Rohmer. Rivette was 8 years younger. And Truffaut was 12 years younger but from the mid to the late fifties had acquired quite a reputations with his vitriolic articles criticizing the very traditional French cinema of the post WWII era in magazines such as ARTS and La REVUE du CINEMA.

Rohmer became editor of the newsletter of that Ciné-club. 

In May of 1950, along with Jean-Luc Godard, and Jacques Rivette, Rohmer, transformed it in a magazine called La Gazette Du Cinema. Besides those 3 critics it also attracted prestigious contributors such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Alexandre Astruc, and later Claude Chabrol. But the magazine published only 5 issues and disappeared in November of that same year.

However, prior to that experience with la Gazette, Rivette and Rohmer had been writing a few articles for a serious magazine about films, La Revue Du Cinéma that had been founded in 1928 by Jean-Georges Auriol. The publication of that very important magazine was stopped in 1931, then started again in 1946 with the help of Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Pierre Kast who in the late 50’s and very early 60’s made, as directors, some very entertaining films such as L’Eau à La Bouche and Le Bel Age.

Bazin wrote his first important articles about the notion of ‘’auteur de films’’ in that magazine. And in June 1948 Rohmer signed his first important article on the theme of ‘’Cinéma, the art of space’’.

La Revue du Cinéma went dead again in 1949.

Ciné-clubs, Objectif 49, and La Cinémathèque, the 3 melting pots of serious young film buffs in search of a new approach to cinéma.

Ciné-clubs, that appeared in the 30's in Paris and several l French towns, became increasingly popular during the tough times of the German occupation, and their expansion literally tripled between 1945 and 1955.

At that time, a very important film club, OBJECTIF 49, was created by André Bazin, Alexandre Astruc, Piere Kast, Jacques-Doniol Valcroze.

It had the blessing of important directors such as Bresson, Grémillon, Cocteau and Roger Leenhardt, whose marvelous ‘’Les dernières Vacances’’ was perhaps the early precursor of La Nouvelle Vague, along with ‘’ Le Silence de la Mer’’ by Jean-Piere Melville. Both films were made in 1947.

The purpose of Objective 49 was to change the critical perception of marginal or little-known films and directors. Its most publicized event was the organization of the Festival Du Film Maudit ( Festival of Cursed Films) in Biarritz,a very lovely town on the Atlantic Ocean near the Spanish border, in June of 1949.

That event brought together for the first time the young critics and future directors of the Nouvelle Vague, like Godard, Chabrol, Rivette, and the even younger François Truffaut, and the older guys like Bazin, Doniol-Valcroze, Leenhardt, Kast, and Eric Rohmer.

It was a celebration and an orgy of new cinema from all over the world where lots of new ideas about film making and criticism were furiously debated,

Back to Paris, all these people started to meet each other regularly over the next few years and discuss film projects at the CINEMATHEQUE, Rue de Messine, and later Rue d’Ulm, under the magical guidance of Henri Langlois.

The Nouvelle Vague was about to emerge in the late 50’s from all these screenings, meetings, and articles.

LES CAHIERS DU CINEMA, the catalyst of the French New Wave

In 1951, a group of serious film writers and critics coming from various newspapers, as well as La Revue du Cinema, were regrouped in a new magazine by André Bazin, Lo Duca, and Jacques Doniol-Valcroze. It was called LES CAHIERS DU CINEMA.

The cover of the first issue published in April of 1951 was entirely devoted to a photo of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard of Billy Wilder. It was in itself a very clear clue of what the editorial policy of that new French magazine was going to be.

In 2010, it is still published under this title even though all the original editors and contributors have been gone for years, or do not write anymore.

It had several owners since 1951, the last one being the daily newspaper Le Monde, which sold it recently to a British publisher. But the editorial staff is still located in Paris.

The magazine editorial policy has been fluctuating many times and the successive editorial teams, over the years, reflected very different political and editorial trends. It gave Les Cahiers all kinds of flavors, from Maoist, to almost conservative.

Nowadays the magazine is still a monthly and looks and tastes a bit like a mix of its mid-sixties and mid-eighties formats. It offers an on-line edition.

In the early 50’s ROHMER joined other critics like Rivette, Godard and Chabrol at Les Cahiers du Cinéma, a very interesting monthly magazine that glorified some American directors like Hitchcock, Hawks, Walsh, Minnelli, as well as Fritz Lang, Satayit Ray, Bresson, Cocteau, Max Ophuls, or Rossellini.

He was highly respected for his very serious intellectual integrity by the other writers and contributors and even though he was the older brother of this group of what was called the ‘’young Turks’’ of French film criticism, did not object when Bazin and Doniol brought François Truffaut on board. Truffaut was a well-known iconoclast who hated the traditional ‘’Cinema Français de Qualité’’.

In 1954 Truffaut wrote a famous and very tough article called ‘’ A certain Tendency of French Cinéma’’ that was very polemical and attacked directly many famous French traditional directors who since before WW II were considered the flag bearers of French ‘’studio’’ cinema. It attacked very directly ‘’la tradition de qualité’’ of the post WW II French studio production. 

In fact that article prefigured the New Wave by denouncing the French Studios traditions, approach to screen writing, and methods of directing, filming, and editing.

It also was the starting point of a series of reviews and articles by Godard, Rivette, Rohmer, and Chabrol, Truffaut himself, Alexandre Astruc, as well a Jean Douchet, Louis Marcorelles, Luc Moullet, and others, explaining very clearly their critical point of view and why they had a highest idea of the concept of ‘’auteur’’ in films by famous American, and other foreign directors.

But major feature articles by André Bazin, who remains perhaps the most important theoretician of the new French cinéma we ever had in France, really had the most impact on the future leaders of the New Wave movement.

I went trough my archives yesterday and read, with a certain emotion, the very determinant piece he wrote in April 1957 in the No. 70 of Les Cahiers titled: DE LA POLITIQUE DES AUTEURS (The Concept of Author). This famous piece was in some way summarizing and amplifying many articles written in the early fifties in La Revue du Cinéma and later in Les Cahiers by critics like Jean Douchet, Francois Truffaut, and Chabrol, about Alfred Hitchcock who explained very clearly that for him the story and its script were less important that the precise vision he has of what his film should look like. The No. 39 of Les Cahiers in 1953, a special issue on Hitchcock, is perhaps the most decisive critical piece of work ever written about the genius of that master.

In the issue dated February 1955, Bazin signed an important piece titled ‘’ What does it mean to be Hitchcocko-Hawksien?’’ reflecting the interest for the film styles and approaches to movie making of these 2 directors

But it was perhaps another French critic and film maker, Alexandre Astruc, who became the first to write in a very energetic way about the concept of the film director as a complete artist in charge of an integral mean of expression, an ‘’auteur’’, This very seminal article was published in 1948 in the trade magazine ‘’ L’Ecran Français’’ and was titled ‘’ Naissance d’une Nouvelle Avant-Garde. La caméra stylo’’ (Birth of a new Avant-Garde: The caméra as a Pen).

The famous concept of ‘’camera stylo’’ was born.

It is too bad that Astruc, (born in 1923, 3 years younger than Rohmer) who before the ‘’young Turks’’ directed some very interesting films such as Le Rideau Cramoisi (1953) Les Mauvaises Rencontres (1955) or the very exciting ‘’ La Proie Pour l’Ombre’’ is quite forgotten nowadays. 

Jean-Luc Godard signed his first article in Les Cahiers in the January issue of 1952 under the pseudo of Hans Lucas (meaning Jean-Luc in German)

François Truffaut's first article is published in March 1953

Jacques Rivette has his first review in May of 1953

and ClaudeChabrol in November of the same year

Rohmer became the Editor in Chief of Les Cahiers in 1956 and stayed in that position until 1963, when he was more or less forced out by a group of editors who were closer to the critical theories of Jacques Rivette.

How the ‘’ Nouvelle Vague’’ changed the French Cinema?

The expression ‘’ Nouvelle Vague’’ was created by Françoise Giroud, a well-known journalist at the weekly L’Express in an article titled ‘’ La Nouvelle Vague arrive’’ in its October 3, 1957 issue. But that term was not specifically applying to the French cinema. It was later on that the French critic Pierre Billard used the same definition to describe the new generation of French film makers.

To summarize: Let’s say that the New Wave was a movement that resulted from a very strong reaction by a group of former young (and less young) critics, many of them former contributors to either La Revue du Cinema or Les Cahiers du Cinema, to the kind of very traditional pre-WW II methods of film writing, producing, shooting, and editing, that still prevailed in French studios until the mid-50’s. Most of them turned directors between 1956 and 1963

• These new directors, helped by adventurous producers, also protested the ‘’star-system’’, that, even in its French form, fossilized the playing style of major French actors.
• They adamantly opposed the monopoly of the large distribution companies.
• They tried to liberate themselves from the constraints and regulation imposed by government, trade agencies, and unions, regarding the use of non professional technicians, actors, assistant directors, salaries and wages, numbers of hours, etc. . . .
• They used improvisation on the set more often, taking a lot of liberties with the pre-written scripts.
• They adopted new shooting techniques using natural light and new high-speed film.
• They preferred to shoot in real locations and in the street or in a natural environment rather than in studio.
• They recorded sound, both from the actors lines and from background noises, on small portable equipment (Nagra), and did not re-recorded or mixed them systematically in the studio unless necessary.
• They used less complicated and over-orchestrated musical scores and sometimes gave the priority to recorded music, often classical.
• They used more flexible hand held smaller cameras (like Arriflex or Cameflex), as well as variable focal lenses (zoom), sometimes a little too liberally, decreasing the use of traditional dolly tracking shots and heavy equipment.
• Make-up became lighter and more realistic.
• And generally-speaking, they tried, as much as can be, to shoot scenes that looked and sounded as close and truthful as possible to real situations in real environment, and to eliminate ‘’theatrical’’ directions to the actors, who became more free to interact with the director and the other actors and to improvise.

All these changes saved time and money, decreasing both the production and casting costs. It is also at this time that the French government started to provide pre-shooting financing assistance to accepted film projects, which would be reimbursed eventually from the money the film would generate in the theaters. 

• These new-wave film-makers revered directors like Dreyer, Eisenstein, Griffith, Renoir, Tati, Vigo, Becker, Bresson, Grémillon, Rosselini, Lang, Hitchcock, Mankiewicz, Von Sternberg, Lubitsch, Bunuel,Welles, Walsh, Wilder, Stroheim, Ophuls, Hawks, Tourneur, or Nicholas Ray, Bergman and Mizoguchi. And later Samuel Fuller, Minelli, and Cassavetes, Antonioni, and Kubrick.
• But they frankly did not have much respect for French directors such as Carné, Delannoy, Autant-Lara, René Clair, Paul Le Chanois, Gilles Grangier, Henri Verneuil, Denys de la Patellière, Henri Decoin, Georges Lacombe, André Cayatte, or Christian Jacques, Pierre Chenal, and the Allegret brothers. Perhaps a little more for Georges Clouzot and Jacques Feyder. 
•  

Some films that I have seen which I consider as icons of the French Nouvelle Vague most authentic period (1956-1962)

(This is a partial list)

Precursors:

Zero de Conduite ( Zero for Conduct) by Jean Vigo, 1946

Les Dernières Vacances by Roger Leenhardt, 1947-48

Le Silence de la Mer, by Jean-Pierre Melville, 1948

La Pointe Courte by Agnès Varda, 1954

Les Mauvaises Rencontres, by Alexandre Astruc, 1955

Nouvelle Vague per se :

Le coup du Berger (short) by Jacques Rivette, 1956

Tous les garçons s’appellent Patrick (short) by Jean-Luc Godard (screenplay by Rohmer), 1957

Ascenseur pour l’échafaud, (Elevator to the Gallows) by Louis Malle, 1957

Charlotte et son Jules, by Jean-Luc Godard, 1958

Une histoire d’eau (short) by Jean-Luc Godard (with François Truffaut) 1958

Les Mistons, by François Truffaut, 1958

Blue Jeans (short) Jacques Rozier, 1958

Lettre de Sibérie (short) by Chris Marker, 1958

Opéra Mouffe (short) by Agnes Varda, 1958

Pourvu qu’on ait l’ivresse (short) by Jean-Daniel Pollet, 1958

Le Beau Serge and Les Cousins, by Claude Chabrol, 1959

Les 400 Coups by François Truffaut, 1959

Hiroshima Mon amour by Alain Resnais, 1959

A bout de Souffle (Breathless) by Jean-Luc Godard, 1960

Le Bel Age, by Pierre Kast, 1960

L’eau à la Bouche, by Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, 1960

Tirez sur le Pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player) by François Truffaut, 1960

A Double Tour and Les Bonnes Femmes, by Claude Chabrol, 1960

La Proie pour l’ombre, by Alexandre Astruc, 1961

Lola, by Jacques Demy, 1961

Le petit Soldat, by Jean-Luc Godard, 1961

Last Year in Marienbad, by Alain Resnais, 1961

Paris Nous Appartient, by Jacques Rivette, 1958-1961

Une femme est une femme (A Woman is a Woman) By Jean Luc Godard, 1961

Léon Morin Prêtre, by Jean-Pierre Melville, 1961

Jules et Jim, by François Truffaut, 1962

Le Signe du lion, by Eric Rohmer, 1962

Vivre Sa Vie (A life to live) by Jean-Luc Godard, 1962

L’œil du Malin by Claude Chabrol, 1962

I recently saw Rivette's last film, "36 vues du Pic Saint- Loup", and I was totally amazed by the perfect blend of audacity, modernity, and romanticism displayed by this still young 82 year-old director. To me, he represents perhaps the most original facet of what the Nouvelle Vague had to offer, and Paris Nous Appartient is really one of my favorite films of that period. 

To learn more about the Nouvelle Vague read Jean Douchet's book

I highly recommend the reading of the extremely well-documented and illustrated, and very entertaining book Nouvelle Vague, by ex '' Cahiers'' critic and professor Jean Douchet, published in 1998 and translated in English under the title French New Wave. It is really the ‘’bible’’ of everything you should know about the French New Wave and its influence on world-wide cinema.

Eric Rohmer

Hi Dad, I just read in the paper this morning about the death of Eric Rohmer. a famous French film director, whom they say was a pioneer of the French New Wave of cinema. I do not think I ever seen one of his films. Could you recommend some of your favorites that you think I could rent. Also tell me a few things about the so-called New Wave of the French cinema. Thanks, Stephane

Galette des Rois

GALETTE DES ROIS (Gâteau Des Rois or Twelfth Night Cake), a marvelous tradition still alive in France.

I found a pretty good one at FRITZ PASTRY in Chicago

When I was a kid in Reims, the capital of the Champagne district, one of my favorite celebrations of the year was La Fête des Rois that was a joyous family affair taking place on January 6, the 12^th day after Christmas, better known as Epiphanie. Epiphany is a commemoration of the day the three Rois Mages (the Magi Kings Balthazar, Melchior and Gaspard) visited the infant Jesus in his crib and brought him very rich presents. On that day my father used to buy a GALETTE DES ROIS in one of the best pastry shops of the town. After lunch we would watch without saying a word my mother cut that round golden-colored relatively thin cake in slices, wondering if the cutting knife would, by pure chance, hit the ‘’Fève’’ (the fava bean) hidden somewhere in the flaky buttery crust.

My father would serve Champagne, and I sometimes would be allowed to drink a few small sips when I became an adolescent.

Everybody watched everybody to guess who had found the ‘’fève’’ that earlier in the century was actually a real bean, but after WWI it was progressively replaced by a tiny ceramic figurine representing either the baby Jesus or another animal or symbol of luck.

The person who found the fève was proclaimed king or queen. He or she would put one of the 2 paper crowns which came with the galette, silver and golden, on their head and everybody lifted their glasses and cheered ''Vive le Roi'' or '' Vive la Reine''.

But I remember that just after the end of WWII when I lived in the South of France the fève of the ‘’Gâteau des Rois’’, which was made of a brioche topped with candied fruit, was actually a real bean.

In Northern France the crust of the cake itself is made of a flaky puff pastry coated with egg yolk, and the inside filling is a delicious ‘’frangipane’’, a very rich and creamy almond paste that is sometimes mixed with a sort of ‘’crème patissière’’. 

The way the galette or gâteau des Rois is prepared by the pastry chefs varies from one province to the other but the shape is always round.

The ritual when I was very young consisted for either one of my younger brothers or my sister to go under the table or in a corner of the room so that he or she could not see the table and then tell my mother to which member of the family’s plate the slice she was cutting should go. Sometimes after a first round of slicing the fève could not be found and we had to eat a second portion, much smaller alas, to be able to name a king or a queen.

Of course, we always tried to cheat and pretend that either we had the fève or that we had swallowed it by mistake in order to be declared king.

It has been said that many years back the person who found the feve was supposed to buy the cake and the champagne for everybody the next year, and that soem in order to escape that obligation would swallow it.

But the celebration of the Fête des Rois in France is an occasion for having a joyous and often quite boozy party in many offices and other work places, where men found this way to express an interest for a female co-worker by naming her their queen.

In fact, for the last 20 years most pastry shops in Paris started to sell galettes des rois as early as January 2 and continued to sell them after January 6 to satisfy the demand of all these office parties.

To the best of my knowledge, you find similar traditions in several Latin countries, such as Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece, and Mexico, as well as in Belgium and the French-speaking part of Switzerland.

I found a good Galette des Rois in Chicago

Last night we found a very charming pastry shop called FRITZ PASTRY (at 1408 W. Diversey Pkwy in Chicago, tel: 773-857- 2989 mail: pastry@fritzpastry.com ) that makes a very good Galette des Rois called Epiphany Cake. It sells for 3 dollars a slice.

Actually that shop is also a cozy and comfortable coffee-shop with a few tables where besides their cakes, brioches, macarons, very buttery croissants, tortes and fruit pies, you can also order quiches and savory pies, soups like bisques, and a few other daily specials, and good quality coffee and tea. The place is charming, relaxing, decorated with 2 beautiful old sepia photographs, one of them of the famous stairs of Montmartre.

The young lady who was there to help us was most gracious. All the pastries we saw in the shop looked very tempting, and the air was filled with a very pleasant smell of mocha.

Their rendition of the Galette des Rois was a very flaky, buttery, and rich piece of puff pastry that was not too sweet and had the right amount of good quality frangipane (almond paste- based filling). We loved it and will certainly return for more. The croissant we tasted was one of the best French croissants I have been able to find in Chicago over the last 40 years. My only concern was that it was almost too rich in butter to the point of being borderline “ too much”. I think that by making them a bit lighter and flakier would turn these very tasty croissants even better. In any case they are really good.

The chef-owner is Nathaniel Meads whose resume includes prestigious Chicago restaurants such as TRU and EVEREST.

If you prefer to bake one yourself here is an easy to make recipe I found on the site of the French Embassy in Washington D.C.:

Recipe: Galette des Rois

(Serves 8)

Ingredients: 1 1/4 lb frozen puff pastry 2 eggs 7 oz almond paste

Preparation: Leave the puff pastry at room temperature for about 2 hours until defrosted but still cold.

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Line a baking sheet or pizza pan with baking parchment or grease the pan and lightly sift flour on it. Shake off any excess flour. Roll each sheet of pastry into a circle about 12 inches across.

Place one circle on the prepared pan.

Mix the egg with the almond paste until smooth and spread the mixture evenly on the prepared circle of pastry, leaving a border 1 1/2 inches wide all around. If you have a small porcelain figurine insert it into the almond mixture (you may also use a bean as the fève.

Place the second circle of pastry on top and press it down tightly around the rim.

Beat lightly the remaining egg and brush it on the top of the cake. With a long-bladed knife, press lightly but firmly through the egg glaze marking a crisscross pattern.

Bake for 20–25 minutes until golden and puffed. Do not check for doneness for at least 15 minutes, as the pastry may collapse. Serve slightly warm or cold.

I KNOW HOW TO COOK

I KNOW HOW TO COOK, a French cookbook by Ginette Mathiot  

This ‘’bible’’ of French home cooking since the early thirties is finally translated and nicely adapted to suit the needs of the English-speaking average cook Stéphane, My grandmother, my aunts, my mother were all very good cooks and I learned a lot from watching them in their respective kitchens in both Geneva, Switzerland and in the various French cities where we lived in the fifties. But I have never seen them looking at a cookbook. Their knowledge of the ‘’cuisine’’ was transmitted from generation to generation. As far as I am concerned, I knew how to cook a few essential dishes when I was a student like a steak, an omelet, sautéed potatoes, or pasta. But it was not until we got married in Paris in the sixties, that your mother and I started to cook. In fact we had so little time in Paris and such a small kitchen, that our cooking and entertaining was relatively limited. It was not until January 1970, when we moved to Chicago and got a large kitchen that we started to entertain friends and colleagues during long and elaborate dinner parties, which implied cooking more complex and varied dishes. Your mom, who turned out to become a very good French cook, had an old copy of Julia Child’s first masterpiece and also had brought her small book of Provençal recipes written by her Provençal cooking class teacher in Aix-en-Provence where she was studying when she came from the U.S. in 1961. Me, I had only brought from Paris a very modest pocketbook version of Ginette Mathiot’s LA CUISINE POUR TOUS published in1955. I still consult it from time to time even though it is falling apart and is covered with handwritten notes, and seriously stained. It contains all the basic recipes and cooking tricks that any French home cook should know.

I had bought that book because it was a best-seller and it was cheap. At that time I could not afford Ginette Mathiot’s most famous big book, JE SAIS CUISINER that was offered to practically every new French bride between 1932 when it was published for the first time and the late seventies. Since that time it was re-edited and amplified many times and more than 6 million copies have been sold. During my last trip to Paris in September, I have seen many copies on my favorite bookstore shelves. It still sells like cupcakes.

Ginette Mathiot, who was born in 1907 and passed away in 1998, was essentially a teacher even though she published more than 30 books. She taught not only cooking, but also what I would call ‘’home management’’ in public schools for many years. She ended her career as the General Inspector for House Cooking and Management for the French Ministry of National Education. She was rewarded with the medal of Officer of the Legion of Honor. The reason for her immense popularity is very obvious: She managed to calm down the anxieties of generations of French women who were very apprehensive about cooking home meals and feared the disapproval of their husbands, mothers in law, and guests, by explaining in very simple terms what they should know about making basic dishes, sauces, condiments, pastries, etc, as well as how to use cooking utensils and choose the right product at the market, as well as how to set the table.
 
Her motto was: Let’s simplify everything and suppress any info that is not essential to the preparation of a dish. The application of this principle is very obvious in the way she wrote her recipes that never contain anything more that what is important to know in order to be able to complete the task. In some ways she was sort of an anti-Julia Child who wanted every American home cook to be as well-versed in every food specialty as a French scholar would be, and therefore discouraged many readers who felt totally submerged by the over-abundance of information that she supplied for every bit of food to prepare.

Anyway, I had completely forgotten the existence of Ginette Mathiot when an American friend of mine, Shirley Baugher, presented me last week with a wonderful and unexpected birthday present: a copy of the recently published English version of Ginette Mathiot’s Je Sais Cuisiner, I Know How To Cook
I was taken by surprised because I was completely ignorant of the fact that this book, published by Phaidon, (from England) had been released. But knowing Shirley, who is a very good cook herself and knows a few extra things about French cooking since she studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, one of the most famous cooking schools in the world, I should not have been surprised. The shelves in her beautiful kitchen in Old Town in Chicago are literally filled with hundreds of cookbooks. It is almost an addiction. She has herself published a very nicely illustrated recipe book that is a compilation of her famous and sometimes less famous neighbors and friends in Old Town: ``A Taste of Our Old Town``.

I spent some time last week-end to go through the 975 pages of I KNOW HOW TO COOK and I have to admit that the English adaptation of that beautiful book is very well-done, and should encourage many American home cooks to try and prepare French dishes. I should mention at this stage that this enormous task of not only translating, but also adapting and modernizing its content to suit the abilities of any American housewife (or man), and modernizing it, has been accomplished by CLOTILDE DUSOULIER,with the assistance of a team of translators and editors. This French woman has delighted millions of English-speaking Internet visitors worldwide since 2003 with her famous blog ‘’Chocolate and Zucchini’. She started it when she was a computer software engineer based in MountainView, CA in Silicon Valley. She lived there 3 years and then went back to Paris where she published 2 best-sellers in English : Chocolate and Zucchini in 2007, and the marvelous ‘’Clotilde’s Edible Adventure in Paris’’. Clotilde Dusoulier therefore knows from her own "on site" experience what the American cook likes and can or cannot (and will not) do. And she is a very creative cook who loves to innovate with recipes that are bold and healthy at the same time. I have to admit that I have been a fan of her blog from the beginning.  

My first impressions:
On the plus side: This book is very easy to read because its print is very sharp and very black , on a good quality very white paper. Its typesetting is practically perfect and leaves lots of space between recipes. It keeps the essence of Mathiot’s original French recipes, but adapts them for Today’s busy contemporary cook and uses Anglo-Saxon measurements and descriptions of food components and utensils The 1400 recipes are very clearly organized in 15 distinct groups: Sauces and Basic recipes, Hors d’oeuvres, Milk, eggs, and cheese, soup, fish, meat, poultry, game , vegetables and salads, legumes rice and pasta, fruit, milk and egg desserts, ice creams, cakes and pastries, candies, preserves and drinks. The cuts of meat are described the British and (sometimes) American way, not the French way. But some Americans may not recognize some of the terms she uses that are very British. After all publishing house is English and it is quite obvious in some of the language used. But I understand that this book was published and edited for an English-speaking readership at large, meaning the U.K, Australia, New Zealand, etc, not solely American. The recipes cover a very wide spectrum of products and dishes from very old-fashioned like Garbure soup, ‘’Croquettes of calves’s sweetbreads’’, Rice puddding, or Eel ‘’matelote’’, to more traditional like Coq au vin, Fish quenelles, Bouillabaisse, and Norwegian omelet (a kind of baked Alaska). These chapters are preceded by a very useful glossary, description of herbs and flavoring agents, explanation of various cooking methods, utensils, wines, and a very interesting month by month chart of seasonal food products that you can use all year long. The last section offers recipes of well-known French and Foreign chefs both in France, the UK and the US. There are also some good practical pieces of advice about Table Setting, and Dining Etiquette Last but not least there is a very useful index at the end. Once again everything is very simply explained in plain English. The book contains several beautiful photos of various types of dishes.

On the Minus side: The recipes, in my opinion, are sometimes a bit too simplistic and cryptic for somebody who has absolutely no notion of what French cuisine and cooking is all about. Often it becomes obvious that the original version of this book has been written by a French woman assuming that all her readers (French women) have already a basic traditional French cuisine knowledge in their genes. The new American cook will sometimes have to do a lot of guessing work before figuring out how to move forward to the next step when trying to execute a preparation. Some American home cooks will certainly regret that there are no more precise step- by- step explanations on how to proceed with some recipes. The lack of technical ‘’how to’’ illustrations might be of concern to many users, especially for more unusual or complex preparations. The photos are too often blocked in one section instead being shown directly after the dish that has been described in the corresponding recipe.

As I said earlier some translations are perhaps too ‘’British’’ or still too ‘’French’’for the average American reader. Nobody on this side of the Atlantic knows what an "entrecôte'' (rib steak) is and would never call Veal chops in papillotes ''Veal chops in parcels'' (parchment paper) . The book cover is, at least for my own taste, rather ugly. I suppose it has been designed for the purpose of attracting younger readers. But the majority of drawings and illustrations are charming. I would have preferred more photos shot in various areas and restaurants in France. But altogether it is a very informative and useful book that fills a void that Julia Child had left open.

Crus du Beaujolais

Crus du Beaujolais: These very flavorful and quite distinguished red wines are unjustly unknown and underrated in the U.S. 

On November 19, forget about the overblown celebration of Beaujolais Nouveau, an often not very exciting unfinished wine, and open instead a good bottle of Morgon, Chiroubles, Julienas, or Moulin à Vent.

In June I had the good fortune to attend a very professionally organized wine tasting of “BEAUJOLAIS CRUS”, at the very pleasant wine shop and wine seminar center of JUST GRAPES located on West Washington Blvd. in Chicago. That event that was repeated in 2 other U.S. cities in 2009, Washington DC and New York City, is put together under the sponsorship of EXPRESSIONS D’ORIGINE, Domaines et Châteaux en Beaujolais, a trade and promotion association comprised of 14 privately-owned wine-growing estates located in the 10 Crus du Beaujolais AOC production areas.

I was very happy to participate in that event since it allowed me to get reacquainted in a very positive perspective with the wines of some of these ‘’crus’’ that I did not have many opportunities to taste over the last 10 years in Chicago. Most of them unfortunately are not very commonly found in local wine stores and shops.

A very different and much more complex and interesting wine that the ‘’ Beaujolais Nouveau’’ that Americans enjoy so much for no valid reason, which will be pour on Thursday November 19.

It is very unfortunate that the “Crus du Beaujolais” are relatively unknown by the American public at large since they are very flavorful, well made, and in any case gazillion times more interesting that the over-hyped and over-marketed ‘’Beaujolais Nouveau’’ that you find in every store and bistro in town every year, when it is released on the third Thursday of November after midnight.

Beaujolais Nouveau is a fresh,fruity, sometimes aromatic, wine but, for my own taste, it is deprived of any real personality and structure. It first appeared in French cafés and bistros after its production was approved by the French government in 1951. In the fifties and early sixties, it was quite amusing and charming to drink that ‘’new wine’’ pressed a few days after harvest time, from a small barrel or a glass jug located at the end of the bar. You would drink a glass while eating some ‘’charcuterie’’ or a piece of cheese, and it would be an occasion to chat and laugh with other regulars of the café in a merry and relaxed atmosphere.

That tradition started in the bistros and cafés of Lyon, Villefranche sur Saône, and of course in the nearby producing villages of the Beaujolais region. But pretty soon it became popular first in Paris and then in other large cities where the ‘’négociants’’ (wholesalers and brokers) of Beaujolais wines where commercially active.

In the early 50s you did not find Beaujolais Nouveau in its present bottled form in wine stores. And its consumption was limited to a few cities in France, in Geneva, Switzerland, that is close to Lyon, and whose citizens have loved Beaujolais for several generations, and a few cafes in Brussels, Belgium, and that was it.

In 1966 the famous NICOLAS company, that has hundreds of wine stores all over France, organized for the first time special ‘’Beaujolais Nouveau’’ events in its 250 Paris stores.

Pretty soon, the famous advertising slogan ‘’ Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé’’ was posted on the windows and counters of every café and wine shop of France.

That type of wine is made by wine-growers producing the regular appellation ‘’Beaujolais’’ in 72 villages of the Southern and Eastern portion of the Beaujolais region, and in lesser proportion by wine-growers of the appelation ‘’Beaujolais- Villages’’ located in 38 townships . These wines are sold with a ‘’Beaujolais-Villages Nouveau’’ label. 

It is in fact, like all the red Beaujolais wines, made exclusively from GAMAY NOIR à JUS BLANC grapes. The Nouveau is hand-harvested. The not-destemmed whole bunches of grapes are then macerated for a very short time, 4 or 5 days at the most. (‘’Beaujolaise’’ vinification is almost always done through carbonic maceration).

After a first fermentation, the juices drawn from the vats and those resulting from pressing are assembled, an put in vats for a second cycle of fementation. The vinification last about one month from harvest time.

The well-known “négociant’’ Georges Duboeuf built a large part of his reputation in the U.S. on that Beaujolais Nouveau, when in fact several of his ‘’crus du Beaujolais’’ wines are much better and more interesting to drink all year long

In fact I am sad to say that the craziness about Beaujolais Nouveau, which started in the U.S. in the mid-seventies and lasted until the mid-nineties, probably killed the reputation of Beaujolais in general and of Crus du Beaujolais in particular.

Many trade people started to wonder where all this “Nouveau” consumed from Melbourne to Tokyo and from Vancouver to Rio was coming from, since simple math could allow you to calculate that more of that mediocre stuff was drunk than the legally allowed production would permit.

Several scandals regarding dubious production,blending, and distribution methods, (the most infamous one touching Georges Duboeuf, the largest négociant of that area), that were revealed in the 80’s and 90’s, had a negative impact of the marketability of good Beaujolais and Crus made by serious small producers.

Even in France the consumption of Crus du Beaujolais has been on the downside for more the last 15 years and has suffered from that unjust drop in reputation and favor on the part of wine lovers.

To be honest the fact that some of them have become increasingly expensive at the retail level did not help them either.

And that’s a shame since Crus du Beaujolais are excellent wines that deserve the same respect as wines from the Bordeaux, Bourgogne, Loire, Alsace, Languedoc, Southwest, or Provence areas.

When I was much younger my father would often open a bottle of Moulin à Vent, or of Saint Amour to accompany a good roasted chicken or some “vols au vent”, for birthdays or special occasions. I think he got that taste and tradition from my Grand Papa Laplanche, his father in law, in Geneva, where as I said earlier, this kind of wines have always been loved by the locals.

When I was a student in Paris in the eraly sixtes and did not have much money I would sometimes treat myself to a good camembert with a bottle of Morgon, almost a luxury for me at the time.

I remember that when I was an adolescent in Reims a well-known couple of ‘’’clochards’’ (hoboes) in our neigborhood, when they had collected a few coins, would go to the nearest café and order a glass of ‘’Beaujolpif’’, the somewhat vulgar knickname that was often used by blue-collar people to call Beaujolais after the war.

But later on, during trips to Lyon, I would enjoy drinking that wine in the traditional ‘’pot’’ de Beaujolais (a small bottle of around on pint) when eating charcuterie and other Lyonnaise specialties in the famous ‘’bouchons’’ (small bistrots in Lyon), like the Café des Fédérations.

A few facts about Beaujolais:

The vineyards of this AOC (Appelation d’Origine Contrôlée) officially recognized in 1936, have been producing wine since the days when the Roman legions occupied Gaule and planted vineyards.

The AOC Beaujolais-Villages was registered in 1950. It was the firtst time in the old history of French wines that the word ‘’village’’ was coupled with the name of an appelation. 39 villages were registered in that particular segment of the Beaujolais production.

The Beaujolais was named after the city of Beaujeu in the Western part of this area that was created by some local dukes in the 10^th century. Beaujeu was for several centuries the capital of Beaujolais.

Nowadays it is accepted that the city or Villefranche, located more or less at the center of the appelation, is the main hub of that region.

It is located on a relatively narrow strip of land, South of Burgundy per se, 34 miles long and only 8 miles wide. The Southern part of the zone of production is located in an area just Northwest of Lyon, and the Northern part touches the region of Macon.

The vineyards are found in the Northern part of the Rhône Department and the Southern part of the Saône et Loire department.

The climate not as cool as in Burgundy, offers a good mix of sun and humidity.

The soils of the Northern hilly part of the region consist maily of schist, granite, and a little bit of limestone. The Southern part has more sand and clay.

The whole ‘’vignoble’’ covers about 55,000 acres. A little more than 20,000 acres poduce the basic Beaujolais.

There are approximately 3,000 producers

98 to 99% of the wines are red and made from the Gamay Noir à jus blanc.

The relatively rare Beaujolais-Villages Blanc is made of Chardonnay and sometimes Aligoté, and comes from vineyards way North not too far from the Maconnais. The even more rare rosé are made from Gamay.

There are 12 appellations of Beaujolais in 3 groups: Beaujolais, Beaujolais Villages, and the 10 Crus du Beaujolais appellations.

Most regular (basic) Beaujolais (half of the total production) are produced in the Southern area (Bas-Beaujolais).

Some of the best Beaujolais-Villages and the 10 Crus are produced in the hilly areas of the North (Haut-Beaujolais).

In years when the alcoholic level might be too low winegrowers are authorized to add sugar, a process called ‘’chaptalisation’’.

All together these wines represent an average yearly production of 130 millions of bottles

Les Crus du Beaujolais

From South (north of Villefranche) to North (at the border with the Maconnais) there are only 10 of them:

Brouilly, and Côte de Brouilly,

Régnié,

Morgon,

Chiroubles,

Fleurie,

Moulin à Vent,

Chénas,

Juliénas,

Saint-Amour

Each of them have a different type of aroma and flavor. Some like Chiroubles , Fleurie and Saint-Amour are softer, fruity, and are considered as ‘’tender’’, elegant charmers easy to drink, and some would say ‘’feminine’’.

All of them are very fragrant

Chiroubles, the highest in altitude, is very ‘’gouleyant’’, meaning that it goes down your throat in a very easy and soft manner. It is calles a very tender wine.

Fleurie is very elegant and has a velvety body. It often develops a lovely aroma of violet.

The Saint-Amour, with its very seductive blend of cherry, peach, red berries, aromas, and a definite floral nose, is called the ‘’lovers wine’’

Some like the Morgon, Chénas and Moulin à Vent are more assertive, have a stronger structure and body, and could be called ‘’masculine’’.

Morgon is perhaps the most often found Cru in bistros and wine bars both in the U.S and in France. It has a very dark purple color and its aromas can be a powerful mix of prune, and dark cherry. Very robust, it can in good years be cellared for 5 to 10 years. It has such typical ‘’terroir’’ characteristics that people say sometimes ‘’that wine morgonne’’.

Some of the best are harvested around the Mont du Py.

Chénas It was Louis the XIII ‘s favorite wine. I love its sometimes explosive mix of aromas and spicy tones that change from year to year. It can be very floral, slightly woody, often spicy, and alays very fragrant. With a good body structure, it can age gracefully for 5 to 7 years. But it always remain pretty elegant and suave.

Moulin à Vent It always had the most prestigious image. It is in some ways the closest to a Burgundy. It can be quite tannic and spicy. Always quite strongly structured and complex in its finish. But it never loses its typically floral and fruity ‘’Beaujolais’’ qualities. Can aged for up to 10 years.

The new kid in town: Regnié: This appelation was created in 1988. This very aromatic and mineral wine is produced by only 80 winemakers from soils composed essentially of pink granite. Very long finish. Nice tannins. I love its subtle but very sexy aromas of small red berries. A well balanced wine practically ignored by most wine merchants in the U.S.

Brouilly and Côte de Brouilly

The first one is a very pleasant wine that is as aromatic, soft, and subtle without being too floral or jammy. It got its name from an officer in the Roman legions, Brulius,who was posted there. It is the largest (in terms of hectares) of all the crus du Beaujolais. Redolent of small red fruits and prunes, it reflects perfectly the fresh qualities of the Gamay. Its tannins are quite soft.

The second one has a much smaller acrage. It is a rather elegant wine with fresh aromas and a delicate finish. To be honest it is not one of my favorites.

Julienas One of my 2 favorites. It has lots of muscle and an ever changing personality, due in part to the large diversity of its soils. It offers a very good balance of structure, spice, aromas, and has a great finish. It is much better after 3 or 4 years.

Good vintage years: The 2007 is very pleasant

I would recommend the 2005 and the 2003.

What kind of food to eat with crus du Beaujolais

Pot-au-Feu, Poule-au-pot, Coq-au-vin, Roasted chicken and turkey, Rabbit stew, Charcuterie, Partridge, Quail, and small birds, stuffed baked vegetables, Hachis Parmentier, Camembert cheese 

.

Service temperature:

Beaujolais and Beaujolais-Villages should be served slightly cool, around 55-56 degrees, and Crus du Beaujolais, especially the more robust and full-bodied ones, at 60-62 degrees.

Beaujolais wines do not need to be decanted.

An 8 year-old Moulin à Vent will benefit from being opened 30 to 40 minutes before pouring.

Some producers of crus du Beaujolais I can suggest:

Morgon:

Domaine Marcel Lapierre

Domaine Dominique Piron

Domaine Louis-Claude Desvignes (Côte de Py)

Domaine Jean Foillard

Georges Descombes

Thevenet

Brouilly :

Château de la Chaize

Côte de Brouilly :

Château Thivin

Fleurie :

Domaine du Vissoux

Domaine Michel Chignard

Domaine de la Madonne ( perhaps not yet distributed here)

Domaine du Clos de la Roilette

Moulin à Vent:

Domaine du Vissoux

Chateau des Jacques

Paul Janin

Julienas:

Michel Tête

Clos de Haute Combe

Regnié:

Domaine de Colette

Chenas:

Domaine Piron (Chenas Quartz)

Saint-Amour

Clos de la Brosse- Paul Baudet

Chiroubles :

Georges Duboeuf

 

Availability and prices

As far as prices are concerned, you can, in the Chicago area at least, find Crus du Beaujolais for prices varying from $ 14.00 for a Morgon to $30.00 for a Moulin à Vent.

But as usual Trader Joe's offers a decent Morgon ( producer unknown) for $ 5.99. Quite a deal.

Unfortunately, once again in the Chicago area, it is getting more and more difficult to find Chiroubles, Côte de Brouilly, Regnié, Chenas, and Julienas from independant producers.

Several wine stores managers told me that there is practically no more regular demand for these wines.

If all you can find are wines bottled by some of the ''négociants'' try and limit your choice to good houses such as Tête, Jadot, Drouhin, Fessy, Mommessin, Latour, and Duboeuf.

Cru de Beaujolais

Hi Dad, Last month while in Chicago you poured us a very flavorful Morgon that I quite enjoyed.You mentioned it was a "cru du Beaujolais".I'm familair with regular Beaujolais especially Beaujolais nouveau, but not with Cru du Beaujolais. On our vacation in Cape Cod last week I found a couple bottles of Cru du Beaujolais and it went over well with our friends. What does this appelation cover? What are you favorites? Which one can you find in an American wine store?What food pairing you recommend? We had it with a nice light pasta and it seemed to pair well. Thanks for the intoduction to this delightful appelation! Stephane

JULIE and JULIA

JULIE and JULIA: A nice but very frustrating little film Where is the (French) meat?

Stéphane, 2 days ago you asked me over the phone if I had seen Julie and Julia. I have to admit that I did not want to see this film, for several reasons: I was afraid that it would be focusing too much on another of those Streep vocal circus numbers. I was not that excited about the idea of watching another Hollywood fantasy about an American in Paris. From what I read there would be too much time devoted to Julie’s agenda, solo gig, her own and her husband’s frustrations, and not enough to the ascent of Mrs. Child as a culinary expert and to her extraordinary free-thinking and “modern” personality. After all, in the repressive times of the fifties in the U.S, she was a breath of fresh air and a real free spirit. No wonder she loved Paris so much. And last but not least, I have never been that impressed by the talents of Nora Ephron as a film director.

But Yesterday, when we had a very a muggy 93 degrees day in Chicago, It was too hot in our small kitchen to cook the ratatouille that I had planned to do with the vegetables I had bought the day before at the farmer’s market in Evanston. So the alternative was to go see a movie. But our personal choices were limited to 2 bleak films, an Austrian ‘noir”, Revanche, that both previews and reviews encouraged us to see, and a tense war drama from the very talented Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker. So, since we felt like seeing something lighter, we thought: Why not Julia after all. At least it will be interesting to see how they reconstituted the Paris of the late forties early fifties, and there surely will be some fine food buying and cooking scenes to watch. And as you know your mother has been a Julia’s faithful follower since the early seventies. How many times when we ask ourselves a technical question about something we are in the mood of preparing she still announces "let see what Julia says about it" and goes to the pantry to retrieve our very tired and stained “Mastering the Art of French Cooking" And, as a blogger, food and wine consultant, and person who loves to cook, I was personally intrigued by the treatment of this story.  

The result: The film was better than we expected and we sort of enjoyed it as it is: a very traditional piece of Hollywood entertainment. But unfortunately it also had a lot of holes, superficialities, and, above all, unbalances in the script, the editing, and the actors directing, that it sometimes made some sequences almost boring or just too loose-ended to be fully enjoyed.
 
On the plus side: The concept of creating a parallel montage between the personal lives and the cooking experiences of Julia Child and the young blogger Julie Powell works after all in a bit more successful way than I thought it would be. We managed to progressively get used to, and from time to time interested in, the very deep differences between these two couples, the personal motivations and objectives of the two women, the support or exasperations of their respective husbands and friends, and their very different integration in their social or professional environments. The cinematography is very pleasant and astute, particularly in managing to “expand” the physical aspect of Streep. The casting of the four main actors is also quite acceptable: Stanley Tucci provides a very complex and subtle personalization of Paul Child. To me his performance is the most impressive of the whole cast. And the image that he helps projecting of their couple is quite realistic. We believe in them. The light musical score by French Oscar-winner Alexandre Desplat is a perfect fit for re-creating the mood of Hollywood films taking place in Paris in the post WWII and early fifties period. The sets and costumes are, once again, good replicas of those seen and worn in the movies of that time frame. Meryl Streep performance is one of her best in recent years: pretty restrained, expressive and often touching, especially in the scene when she learns about her sister’s having a baby. Sometimes it is on the verge, but not falling into, of becoming a bit too cartoonesque. But we manage to often forget about the fact that she plays and almost accept her as Julia. And Julia’s enthusiastic persona is very nicely projected.

On the minus side: Many of the scenes between Julie and her husband are overstretched and too conventional. The sequences where she writes her blog on her computer are way too long. We wait impatiently for Julia and Paul to return, only to be often disappointed by the shortness of substance in their dialogs. There is really an unbalance in the cutting and editing of their scenes. An other factor contributing to this impression of unbalance: Even though Amy Adams is a quite charming and competent actress, and Chris Messina does a more than an adequate job as her frustrated husband, they cannot stand the comparison in terms of “on screen quality level of presence”, with a couple of old pros like Streep and Tucci. Besides the “mise en scene” (cinematic directing, camera movements, etc.) is much more elaborate in the case of the two stars. The scenes in Julie’s apartment and at her office are shot in quite a pedestrian lazy way. I was very frustrated by the minimal approach to food scenes. There are practically no sequences were you can actually feel that any actual cooking, tasting, or eating is taking place. It is quite obvious that the two actresses are not cooking themselves. And their respective ways of shopping are quite unrealistic. By the way, I wondered all the time where Julie secured the funds necessary to buy all those, sometimes very costly, food ingredients, and cooking ustensils, considering the obviously modest financial status of her household. The scenes taking place in Parisian restaurants (very probably shot entirely in studio in the U.S., since I did not notice any mention of a Parisian eatery in the credits) look and sound phony. Even the waiters do not act or speak in an authentic fashion. The French fish mongers, bakers, and butchers even less. I was particularly horrified by the depressing look of that poor "sole meuniere", (that Julia Child tasted for the first time after her arival in France, in a restaurant in Rouen, and which would become her epiphany) presented to her, whole in the pan, by a waiter. Instead of the delicate "beurre noisette" and a few specks of fresh parsley and a slice of lemon that should have been covering that delicate Dover sole, I was under the impression that the butter that surrounded that fish had been burned to a point of no return.
The food consultants must have been taking a nap at the time this scene was shot. I would have loved to have a complete sequence devoted to Julia preparing a whole dinner for her husband and to watch them at the table enjoy and discuss the whole thing. At one point when the 3 gourmandes (Child, Beck and Bertholle) have lunch on the terrace of a Parisian bistro, I thought for a split second that the front of that bistro looked like Astier’s in the 11th arrondissement, but I’m not sure. Anyway, Astier does not have any terrace. Only the boeuf bourguignon looked authentically French. But Amy Adams keeps calling it “bouff bourguignonn’’. Also I cannot believe that there were so few scenes shot in real Paris locations.

But I had a nostalgic smile on my face (in the dark) when I saw the entrance of the house where the Childs move in when they arrive in Paris: 10 rue de Seine, in the 6th arrondissement, is just a few numbers down from were we lived in that street until we moved to Chicago, and where you spent the first months of your existence Stéphane. And later on, there is a long shot of the windows of the apartment, Quai aux Fleurs in the Ile de La Cite, where I rented a room when I was a student at la Sorbonne in 1963. I found it totally ridiculous to have not cast any French actors or actresses in some of the supporting roles. This is particularly crucial for the part of Simone Beck, aka Simca. Linda Emond is a fine stage actress, but I had a very hard time accepting her, and her phony accent, as being Simone Beck. But my biggest objection is to the over-simplification in describing Julia’s personality and relation with others. This portrait lacks psychological and socio-cultural complexity. But is the film supposed to include the portrait of a hyper-dimensioned star and human being or just a sort of gimmicky montage of the separate and not even parallel itineraries of two women, who just find “something to do with their lives”, and in so doing attained celebrity status. That is the question I often asked myself. To capsulate my impressions of this movie: I think that it is an entertaining little film that would have required a tighter script, the “savoir-faire” and always very efficient directing talent of a Stanley Donen, or a Blake Edwards, and a larger budget to film more scenes on location in Paris, to have a chance to reach greatness.

Brandade de Morue de Nîmes

The real Brandade de Morue à la Nîmoise : A very special treat.

When I was in my teens, in Reims the capital of the Champagne producing district, my father often said at the end of a good meal when everybody was thanking my mother for another of her culinary accomplishments:

“ La morue à la brandade, le gigot et la salade, tout était bien chez l’ami du cousin Barthélémy’’. This sentence, that he would pronounce slowly, was a quote of a phrase that one of his older parishioners when he was the Protestant (Calvinist) minister of our little town of Saint-Hippolyte-du- Fort, near Nîmes, had used several times to describe to my father a very good meal he had at a friend of his cousin’s house. Its translation is: ‘’the cod prepared in the style of a brandade, the roasted leg of lamb, and the salad, everything was fine at the house of the friend of my cousin Barthelemy’’

I do not know why this sentence was stuck in my father’s memory, but I would invariably ask my mother why we never had ‘’brandade de morue’’ at home.

I do not remember the answer, but I would be ready to guess that my mother, a Swiss from Geneva, was not a big fan of salted dried cod fish, and that this dish never entered her vast cooking repertory, even after 10 years spent before and during WWII in Saint- Hippolyte.

When we left Saint-Hippolyte in 1947 to move to Reims, I was barely 7 at the time. And in those days, when we had been deprived of most regular food necessities since 1942, I do not think that this fish specialty was easily found in our town.

So, I cannot remember having ever tasted that dish in Saint-Hippolyte, a town located only 35 miles from Nîmes where it is still the only really local culinary specialty of that old Languedocian city. And believe me, you would never find an ounce of brandade in a Northeastern city like Reims. As a matter of fact, until the late 70s, it would have been very improbable to find any brandade in a restaurant outside the areas of Nîmes and Marseille.

It took me 19 years before I could taste my first brandade in Nîmes

So I had totally forgotten the brandade when I moved back, alone without my family for the first time, to my native town of Nîmes in 1959, to get my baccalaureate degree there.

To secure room and board and make some money while studying there I was hired by a small private boarding pension to take care of young middle-school and high-school age boys from villages outside Nîmes who would live, eat lunch and dinner, and do their home work at night there during the week.

And what was served for lunch the first day I was there? You guessed it: Brandade de morue. I do not remember if it was home-made by the pension’s cook, or if it was one of the two locally-made commercial brands, whose names were Mouton and Raymond Geoffroy,

but I remember that I found that dish totally revolting, both in terms of structure, gooey and fibrous, and of taste, very fishy and oily.

I promised myself never to touch that stuff again.

I changed my mind several years later in the 70s when I was now living in Chicago and traveled to France often on business. With my best friend, who is also from Nîmes, we would regularly drive there from Paris to attend bullfights, and spend the week-end in his country house in a village near Saint-Hippolyte, called Lasalle. But once I flew to Nîmes on business, and was invited for lunch at a restaurant called Le Magister. The chef-owner, Martial Hocquart, whom I believe still cooks there, was not from that area, but he managed to produce an authentic Brandade de Nîmes, that was a pure delight: Light, very aromatic, unctuous but perfectly balanced. I became a fan of the real brandade and I still love it today when it is well prepared with good ingredients. 

Nowadays, you find brandade in many good Parisian restaurants, as well as in several good eateries in Chicago. It is offered in several variations, but never according to the original and authentic recipe from Nîmes.

In Paris: I used to like the brandade at:

La Bastide Odeon, Rue Corneille in the 6^th,

Le Bistrot de l’Olivier Rue Quentin Beauchart in the 8^th.

But I have to admit that I did not visit any of these restaurants for quite a long time

In Chicago I would suggest:

Le Bouchon at 1958 N. Damen (very close to what it should be)

Bistro Campagne 4518 N. Lincoln (they serve it in the form of “croquettes”)

Mado at 1647 N. Milwaukee

Avec at 615 W. Randolph

Now, let’s talk a bit about the origins of La Brandade de Morue à la Nîmoise.

Just for the fun of it, I would say that this old and beautiful city, located 706 kilometers South of Paris, 123 Km North of Marseille, and only 42 km North of the medieval city of Aigues-Mortes on the Mediterranean sea, is known for two other things, besides brandade: Its famous Roman arena in the shape of a round amphitheatre, where some of the best bullfighting festivals in Southern Europe take place between May and late September, and the famous Denim fabric, that was invented there under the name of "serge de Nîmes" in the 18^th century. It was eventually colored in that well-known blue indigo color. But Denim means ‘’De Nimes’’ (from Nîmes).

The big question is: How did cod, a fish that has been for centuries caught in the cold waters of the North Sea and around Newfoundland, close to the Eastern coast of Canada, mostly from boats anchored in Normandy and Brittany’s ports, found its way to the Southern city of Nîmes, that is not even a port on the Mediterranean Sea?.

The reason is purely commercial and logical. In the 18^th century, there was no refrigeration or freezing equipment on fishing boats. The French fishermen who left on fishing expeditions for several days in the North sea, or sometimes weeks when they were sailing as far as to the North Atlantic fishing grounds of Iceland or Terre Neuve (Newfoundland) needed a way to preserve the ‘’morue’’ (cod) they caught. Fresh cod is also called ‘’cabillaud’’ and it has never been found in the Mediterranean Sea.

The only way they knew was to completely cover the fish with salt.

In those days the best source of salt was the ‘’salines’’ (salt works) from the Provençal coast of the Mediterranean Sea, and more particularly the Camargue area and Aigues-Mortes, a port city totally surrounded by tall walls and ramparts, from were the crusades departed in the 13^th century.

The fishermen would bring salted cod as payment, in a bartering system, for the tons of salt that they brought back in large bags to their Northern ports like Saint-Malo or Boulogne.

That is how that salted fish became, once desalted and cooked, a very common food on the tables of the department du Gard where Nîmes and Aigues-Mortes are located, as well as cities like Uzes and Alès. Over the years it became a very convenient, cheap and easy way to keep, source of protein for poor people in rural areas not only of Languedoc, but also Auvergne, and the Southwest all the way to the Spanish border, who could not afford to buy meat or pork belly.

It is precisely the cook for the archbishop of Alès, Charles Durand, born in that city in the Cévennes in 1766, who was the first to have the idea of blending desalted cooked cod with other major ingredients of Mediterranean cuisine like olive oil, thyme, laurel, and garlic, to make a paste that was continuously stirred with a wooden spoon during the whole process. The verb ‘’brandar’’ in the old Occitan or Provençal language means to stir or to vigorously shake or agitate. The result is a ‘’brandado’’ a product that has been stirred or shake.

The ‘’brandade’’ was born. 

As I said earlier, there are many versions of that dish, especially since it has been adapted by chefs with various backgrounds all over the world.

Nowadays, most traditional brandades are a mix of cod, milk or fresh heavy cream, olive oil, boiled mashed potatoes, garlic, salt, white pepper, nutmeg, and sometimes a bit of lemon juice.

Most often it is served with slices of baguette bread pan-fried in olive oil, sometimes rubbed with garlic. It is in fact the Marseillaise version of the dish that is found all over Provence.

Brandade started to be a very popular in Paris after 1830. Even more when the well-known writer Alphonse Daudet (Les Lettres de Mon Moulin) started a very popular “Diner des amis de la brandade” (brandade lovers dinner) at the Café Voltaire in 1894. Daudet suggested that cooks rubbed some garlic in the cooking pot rather than incorporating it in the preparation itself as it was done in Provence.

Soon la brandade nîmoise became a very common dish all over the Languedoc on Fridays. But even at the time of the French revolution in 1789, it is said that Parisian foodies would go to a restaurant called ‘’ Les 3 frères Provençaux’’ to eat the real brandade de Nîmes. So maybe it was already a regional specialty even before Durand.

Anyway, it seems that it is the Chef Durand who launched the commercial success of the brandade nîmoise that was made according to his own recipe and sold in jars or closed pots. 

Brandade de morue is now very popular in many bistros and home kitchens all over France.

• It can be covered with breadcrumbs and some cheese and finished to look like a “gratin” in the oven for a few minutes.
• It can be stuffed in red or yellow peppers, or mushrooms.
• It is delicious in mini-tartlets as an amuse-bouche.
• Some people add a touch of sophistication by serving it warm with thin slices of truffles.
• Others mix the cod with halibut, sole, or even lobster and add an egg yolk for a richer texture and taste
• In Languedoc it is often garnished with black olives and ‘’croutons à l’ail’’and accompanied by a salad of ‘’frisée’’ dressed with a good olive oil and sometimes pinch of crushed garlic.

You also now find frozen brandade in ‘’magasins de surgelés`’ (stores specializing in all kindsof frozen foods). One of them, brandade parmentier, is a very popular item at Picard Surgelés. But personally I would not touch it with a 10 foot pole.

And of course you can buy Brandade de Nîmes RAYMOND, from RAYMOND GEOFFROY, a company started in Nîmes in 1879, in containers from 100 grams to 1 and 5 Kilos. It will be closer to the authentic original product that any frozen stuff.

All of this can be delicious and creative but it is not at all the authentic Brandade de Nîmes, that does not contain any garlic or potatoes. And remember that Nîmes is not in located in Provence but in Languedoc.

Here is the way an authentic Brandade de Nîmes should be prepared:

First you have to find good quality dried salt cod, what we sometimes call stockfish in Europe. The best is sold in wooden boxes. The ideal is to buy about 2 pounds if you want to prepare brandade for 4 persons.

The best piece would be close to the head of the fish since it is meatier. Cut it in 2 or three parts.

1. Desalt the fish for at least 24 hours by getting rid of as much salt as you can from the surface and then putting it in a pot, skin up, containing cold water and change that water at least 4 times. When its over, rinse the cod in cold water and drain it.
2. Poach the fish in cold water where you add 1 bay leaf and 2 sprigs of thyme. But this addition of aromatic herbs is optional.

Put the heat on and poach the cod very gently until the water starts to simmer. 8 to 10 minutes. 

The cod should NEVER boil.

3. Drain and put the fish on a board. Delicately remove the bones and the skin rapidly before the fish gets cold so that it does not get gelatinous or look like glue. In Nimes originally some cooks kept the skin on because it would increase the taste and the texture. Then coarsely flake the whole thing and keep it at lukewarm temperature in a pot in a corner of the stove.
4. In the meantime you will have warmed in two separate little sauce pans some very good extra-virgin olive oil (just about 1 and 1/4 cup) and about I cup of whole milk. Make sure the oil is lukewarm, not hot, and to remove the "skin: of the milk that should be warm but not hot either.
5. Put the pot containing the cod on very low heat and add a spoonful of olive oil to the pot and, using a wooden spoon, stir it into the cod and crush the pieces of cod again the walls of the pot, then add a spoonful of milk and stir. Continue the process for 12 to 15 minutes by alternating spoonfuls of olive oil and milk until none is left in the saucepans. Never stop stirring. When the mixture is reaching a creamy consistency, add some salt and freshly ground white pepper. Add a pinch of freshly ground nutmeg, and a few squeezes of lemon juice. Make sure there are no lumps in the brandade.
6. Stir again and serve the lukewarm brandade in the shape of truncated flat cone on a plate. Place a couple of black olives on top to decorate. Surround the mound with slices of French bread cut in triangles, lightly fried in olive oil and rubbed with garlic.

That’s it. No potatoes, no garlic in the brandade proper. Just the sweet taste of mild cod puree emulsified in good extra-virgin French olive oil.

• If you want to make a modern version, follow the same instructions up to stage 4.

Then in the bowl of a food processor put 2 or 3 cloves of garlic and puree them, then add 4 warm large boiled potatoes and the cod and puree them, while slowly incorporating alternatively your warm olive oil and your warm milk through the funnel of the food processor until both are totally absorbed. Season with the same ingredients as above and make sure that the brandade that you obtained is smooth, not liquid, and not too thick, and without any lumps.

Serve with a slightly cool wine like Costières de Nimes rosé, Tavel, or a white Bandol.

Bon appétit.

Alain