crevettes and cèpes

The last few days have been met with some new adventures in my culinary world. Honestly I’ve been quite proud of my gustatory accomplishments, I was never an adventurous eater and was labeled “very picky” as a child. That was putting it mildly. But I made the resolution that I would try anything that was put in front of me during this lovely sejour in France. For the most part my resolution has yielded some pleasant surprises. Though not my favorites, I can now eat oysters on the half shell with no curling of the lip. It’s much better to just swallow them, rather than chewing, and a good dousing with lemon juice helps them to slide down nice and easy. The mussels cooked, au natural, with just some onion, parsley and a bit of water were quite good. Plus its rather fun to take the empty shell of an eaten mussel and use it, pinched between the index and thumb, to extract the other mussels from their shells. Everyone thinks that the French are terribly elegant and sophisticated, and thus that must translate to how they eat. In fact, though they are quite adept with the fork and the knife, the French are just as likely to abandon all silverware and go at things with their hands. Hence my lesson in the correct manner of eating mussels. In addition, meals are typically accompanied by bread, stereotypical, but stereotypes and clichés tend to have origins in reality. A slice is kept, not neatly on a separate plate or perched on the edge of the main plate, but plopped on the table, crumbs and all. But the best part about the bread is that it is perfectly acceptable and normal to use it to sop up all the juices and seasonings left on the plate after the meal has been finished. Or it can be used to push food onto a fork. I love to use my bread to pick up all the little bits that get left behind that I can never get with a fork but always seem to taste the best.

My host mother went to the market this weekend, not really anything out of the ordinary for the French but it resulted in two things: crevettes and cèpes. We began lunch with the crevettes, just simple shrimp, really there was nothing done to them at all. Perhaps this may seem rather unremarkable, but let me emphasize the fact that nothing was done to them. Ok, yes, they were cooked, but that’s it. The lovely little shrimp we were to enjoy at lunch got to keep their heads, shells and legs right to the table. Once again, my beautifully elegant French family set the table with all the accouterments: plates, cups, forks, knives, spoons and napkins, only to ignore the silverware and grab for the shrimp with their bare fingers. Soon there was a building pile of shrimp heads, legs and exoskeletons on my host father’s plate. He eagerly pulled off a head, briefly sucked on it to extract any morsel that might have been left inside, then efficiently removed the shell, legs and tail all at once to expose the tasty flesh. This was then dipped in the excellent mayonnaise which was made, much to my amazement, half and hour before with a few brief turns in the food processor of an egg, mustard and some oil. I glanced over at my host mom and saw that she was repeating the procedure, though without the head slurping and with far more decorum. (Not a surprise, she tends to tell him that he eats like a “cochon:” a pig.) After a few hesitations and after eating a few of the other offerings on the table, I decided that I couldn’t be a baby about things and should go ahead and try the shrimp. I grasped one, the long antennas trailing from the bowl and clumsily pulled off the head, putting it aside. Then, I tried to pull off the exoskeleton but discovered that for me, it only came off in little bits and that it took me quite awhile before I had a naked shrimp in my grasp. I politely asked for a bit of mayonnaise, which was given to me with the encouragement to take as much as I wanted, dipped my shrimp and bit into the newly exposed flesh. I’m not sure when I’d last had shrimp (there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for eating shrimp as a veggie, you remember, and before that I was firmly a hater of all seafood), but I was quite happy with what I discovered. Shrimp, especially covered in fresh mayonnaise, is much, much better than I remember. My guess is probably that it’s because they are actually fresh rather than the poor specimen usually found at the supermarket, headless, legless, and frozen of any fresh flavor that they might have ever contained.

After the dejeuner, my host mom started to prepare the cèpes, some enormous mushrooms that had to have been bigger than my head, which she had gotten that day at the market as well. I was under the impression that they were some sort of regional specialty which was in season, but an internet search revealed them to be a very mature variety of porcini. Unfortunately, once porcini, or cèpes, reach such maturity, they begin to have “petits vers” that start living in the gills. That would be worms for those of you non Francophiles. Teeny, tiny white worms that come out when you either put salt on the mushroom or cook it in the oven. The oven method works much better, but my host mom did not find that out until after she had cut up the mushrooms and thrown them in a saucepan with some oil and garlic and all the little vers started running for the exits with no place to go. Really I had pretty much accepted that there were going to be worms in my dinner of omelette aux cèpes, I couldn’t see them and passed it off as best as I could as a bit of added protein. I’d accepted it until my lovely host sister started picking through her cèpes asking, “is this a worm?” “is this one?” continually reminding me of the fact that I was eating wormy overly mature mushrooms. They are supposed to be a delicacy but even ignoring the worminess, they didn’t taste as good as the smelled, and really they smelled quite good with all the garlic and parsley. I finished my portion, slightly greenish in coloration from the wormy gills which were an interesting shade of “vert” and declined a second portion despite a deep love for both omelettes and mushrooms. (Interestingly, my host family made a big deal of saying how beautiful the mushrooms were, with green gills and slightly slimy caps: beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.) Dommage, too bad, but maybe next time there won’t be worms … or maybe we’ll buy different mushrooms. At least I tried it and finished it, right? I’ll give myself a pat on the back, even if no one else will.
But as it usually is in life, our little battles are often rewarded. The Sunday dessert this weekend was a lovely tarte aux framboises, seen at the top in all its glory. It was incredibly easy to make, just some pre-done "pates sable" (pie/tarte dough) baked up in the oven then filled with first a layer of crushed frozen raspberries, then a layer of nuttella and finally, decorated with beautiful circles of the same frozen framboises, uncrushed this time. Its as simple and as tasty as it looks and sounds. Bon Appetit!