The Day of the Hunted

Still Life at Foire Gastronomique du Dijon

      Today was the Day of the Hunt and Venison at the Gastronomic Fair. The Table of Lucullus, a revolving display which changes daily, resembled 16th or 17th Century Dutch paintings. Those paintings were at once a celebration and rebuke of earthly pleasures. The Chasseurs de France, the national organization which promotes hunting, provided no-less-than-four brochures about hunting and the consumption of game meats.
     The materials drew on a range of philosophical sources: the Spaniard José Ortega y Gasset once said "One doesn't hunt to kill, one kills, sometimes, because one has hunted." Bruno de Cessole goes on to posit a relation between the hunter and the savage animal based on the hunter's respect for the free and savage animal, and for the ruses the animal uses to avoid death. No less than Jim Harrison (Legends of the Fall) and Mark Zuckerberg are cited in support of eating meat you've killed yourself. Besides, game meat is healthier for you than factory raised. No rebuke there.
     The Table is named for the Roman general who ate and entertained lavishly. It is placed near the center of the hall, opposite what used to be the main entrance. At a table next to it, the five highest ranked "terrines de gibier," looking much like those below, except encrusted in pastry, were ready for judges to taste.

Terrines at Table of Lucullus.

     A half-dozen chefs were the judges. I notice Monique Salera, noted Dijon chef and cooking teacher, and watched her at work.

Taste.

Savor.

Analyze.

     When the judges were finished compiling their numerical scores, the audience could sample. Definitely an earthy, earthly pleasure.

     

Dear Molly O'Neill

The Owl (Chouette) of Dijon's Notre Dame Cathedral

     Yesterday, I spent a cold, rainy day walking the streets of Dijon, looking for the houses where food writer MFK Fisher, whom you eulogized for the NYT, lived. In the course of conversations with passersby, I heard of the local tradition to make a wish while placing your left hand on the owl which is carved into the wall of the Cathedral. I found it, and made my one wish.

     I wished for more time for you, and with you. It's a selfish wish. I have only known you for a few years, and in those years I have learned so much from you. About writing, yes, but more than that, about living generously. I want more.

     The owl sees at night, during our darkest hours. My prayer is that your vision carries you through to the dawn of your new day.

100% Cote d'Or Or How the French Become Good Eaters

   

Weekly Trip to Carrefour for my neighbors in Dijon.

     As I left my BnB for the Gastronomic Fair, I spotted my downstairs neighbor unloading his groceries. Ah, I asked if he had just come from the Fair. "Mais non, seulement Carrefour!" Just a trip to the large grocery store. Tins of duck infused cassoulet, terrines of pork with mushroom, toasts, cookies, four different aperatifs...such is life in France. The pleasures of the table, shared with family and friends. He insisted a take a jar of the terrine, and come and visit them some evening while I'm here.

     At the Fair, I gained some idea of how this value is instilled. I seated myself at the cooking demonstration counter of the Cote D'Or. This department radiates from Dijon, includes Beaune and is home to great wines and cheeses and grain cultivators, some quite large.

The size and terrain of Cote d'Or farms warrants large machinery.

     Very quickly, I was welcomed by Stéphane Bescond, who with his wife, has a restaurant, Chez Cocotte, in a village just south of Dijon, surrounded by fields.

Stéphane is an articulate advocate for the products of the Cote d'Or. I watched as he entranced classes of children, showcasing one of the chefs preparing - no - but yes, hamburgers, from 100% local products. Stéphane's method is to break down cooking for children into Lego block pieces. First came the beef: Charolais. The children, like me, had seen them in the tent of animals nearby.

Cote d'Or's favored beef cattle.

    Block #1: Beef should always be cooked "bleu" or "saignant," on the rare side. 

    Block #2: Ketchup de Cassis! The local berries, with vinager and mustard, cooked down to a jam. (MMMMmmmm, can't wait to try making this!)

    Block #3: The cheese. Local: Brillat-Savarin, applied liberally over mustard to a "hamburger roll" from your local boulangerie.

    The rolls with their accompaniment warmed while the beef burgers grilled.

All attention to chef and Brillat-Savarin toasts on hamburger buns.

    

Chef Serves Finished Product as Stéphane (on left) adds commentary.

Antipation!

Satisfaction!

     And that is how Stéphane spreads the message to cook and eat locally: "Fast Food Interdit!"

   

Bon Jour Vietnam

L'Hebdo Dijon's headline for Gastronomic Fair, Vietnam Guest of Honor

     In 1923, André Marie Tao Kim Hai, 18 years old, came to France from Vietnam, to study law, history and poetry. In 1929, he became a French citizen, and in 1939 joined the French Army to defend Poland. But first, he and his family and friends drove to an auberge in the Dordogne town of Brantome, and had a “bombe,” a blow-out multi-course meal, with wine. 

     When the French capitulated to the Germans a year later, and André was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp, the German officers failed to understand how he could be in charge of unit of white men. They did not understand just how much of a Frenchman he was.  After a prisoner exchange in 1941, he worked for the Free French, having at least one frightening encounter with the Gestapo in Marseille. 

     Sent by the French to work at the fledgling United Nations, André came to the United States. In 1946, the year I was born, he and his Cincinnati-born-wife,  Ruth, began contributing to Gourmet Magazine and The New Yorker. André had a great love and knowledge of both Vietnamese and French cuisine.

     Noting that Vietnam was to be the guest of honor at this year's Gastronomic Fair in Dijon, I attend with curiosity. In our year of Ken Burn's Vietnam, what is the status of Vietnamese people and cuisine in France? 

     Some context: France's defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 was the end of a colonial annexation begun by the French 100 years earlier. (Our military involvement began in 1955 and lasted twenty years.)

     André was part of a generation of artists and intellectuals who sometimes chose to remain in France, and who formed the nucleus of a community which currently, at about 100,000, is the largest outside of Vietnam.

     It is the representatives of this community who as guests of honor arranged their section of the convention hall. Selling a range of silk dresses, dried fruits, lacquerware and dolls, booths surrounded a stage and restaurant area of two dozen tables.
     Arriving early for the French dinner I found a seat at a table with a view of the stage.

Vietnamese National Theatre of Song, Music and Dance

     I watched and recalled my favorite performance while traveling in Vietnam a decade ago: water puppets! Since so much of life in Vietnam centers around water---for rice paddy, for transportation, for floating markets, some consider water puppets to be the true national theatre. They are performed by people standing waist deep in water tanks, behind curtains, and manipulating puppets from below the water's surface.

Nam and Bun Bo

     My food arrived, and the performance ended. The crowd began to queue, and the musicians began playing Christmas carols on their instruments to entice sales of bamboo xylophone and clay flute. I relinquished my seat.

     I walked past a calligrapher. He wasn't writing chu nom, the Chinese characters used to write Vietnamese beginning 1000 years ago. In the coastal town of Hoi An, there were still practicioners of chu nom, who wrote poems for special occaisons.

Vietnamese Calligraphy For A French Audience

     I prepared to re-enter the French Gastronomic section of the fair, wondering if this was the best the French and Vietnamese-French could do to honor the culture of Vietnam? Or am I completely out of touch with reality?

     I stopped to talk with a young man tending a booth full of dolls in folk costume. We began our conversation in French, but he switched to English, which he began learning at age 6 in Vietnam. His father, a theatre director, and his mother, a music teacher brought him to France. They could not afford to raise their family in Hanoi. He's now in high school. I mentioned the water puppets, and he pulled out his cell phone to show me some of his favorite performances. I, too, love the water buffalo plowing and the dragons, splashing, fighting and spraying water.

     Then I asked if he was familiar with the Tale of Kieu. This story of a disgraced and heroic woman was considered Vietnam's national epic poem, but I have trouble pronouncing Vietnamese, and people seem not to know of it. His face brightened. Of course he knew it, he'd had to memorize sections in school. 

     I love the closing lines: 

If yours a drifting fate, be resigned to it,

Bắt phong trần, phải phong trần,

If yours a noble fate, be complied with it.

Cho thanh cao mới được phần thanh cao. 

     I gave him my card, and said good night.

     When I woke up the next morning, my new friend, TANG Than Long had emailed me samples of water puppet performances and the new English translation of The Tale of Kieu. All of which I tell you to show that this Gastronomic Fair of Dijon is as much about people and their stories as it is about food. And I hope to capture many more of them.

   

In Which We Miss the Fair, Spend an Afternoon with the Gendarmerie and Receive a Gargantuan Gougere

The Enormous Gougere courtesy of Boulangerie-Viennoiserie Éric Febvre.

     Yesterday was meant to be spent observing Monique Salera make dishes inspired by Vietnam. She's a Dijon chef and teacher of cooking.

     Alas, the fates determined otherwise. Arriving in Dijon, my spouse was pick-pocketed. According to him, it was a clean kill. He had purchased a tram ticket using his Swiss bank card and its six-digit code. Apparently, this was skimmed from the ticket machine. As he descended from the tram, with a suitcase in one hand and brief case in the other, the person in front of him moved slowly and he felt someone behind him. When he got to the BnB, he looked for his wallet. Disappeared! There followed an hour of trying to contact the usual card companies and banks, along with a call to the police.

     Meanwhile, a check of our Swiss bank on-line showed that the thieves had quickly purchased a set of headphones and drained the bank account at the nearest ATM.

     The police instructed us to go to the Dijon headquarters of the Gendarmerie National to make a formal complaint. After a half hour forced march without lunch, we were allowed to enter and complete preliminary paperwork. And wait, and wait, and wait. Each of those waits was accompanied by a surprisingly good, cheap cappuccino from the police office vending machine. I asked if we would be seeing an identity theft expert. He is, "of habit," was the reply. "Habit of theft identity?" I wondered.

     Finally a bespectacled gentleman appeared and ushered us into a borrowed office. Would this be Inspector Clouseau or Chief Inspector Dreyfus? It mattered not, because the main actor would be the ordinateur and a Microsoft program for recording the facts. As Clouseau once said, "Facts, Hercule, facts. Nothing matters but the facts. Without them the Science of Criminal Investigation is nothing more than a guessing game." Our Inspector was on loan from the municipal court. He began typing the facts from the preliminary paperwork. He repeated everything aloud as he two-finger typed. Listening to his repetitions was a sort of French lesson. Our job was to answer "D'accord."

   After an hour and a half he produced a first person account of the crime for the victim to sign. This in turn was printed, signed, sealed and handed to us. 

     What doesn't kill you makes a good story. In this one, we were kept busy well beyond the French hours for luncheon. We were hungry, but the café-brasserie kitchens were closed. We sought a boulangerie for sandwiches, and found the shop of Eric Febvre, well-respected baker of Dijon. When we explained we'd had no lunch because we'd spent it with the police, the kind young man gave us an enormous gougere, the specialty of the shop. He offered that the Place de la Republique tram stop was frequented by gypsies. The good news and happy ending was that since the cafés were only serving drinks, we found one, ordered two kir and devoured our sandwiches and gougere.

How Lucky Can You Be?

Ancient Site of Dijon Foire Gastronomique 

Poster from 1939 Foire.

     As you can see, my imaginary of Dijon's Gastronomic Fair is fixed in the time before I born. Would I find that plus ça change, plus ç'est la meme chose?

     Certainly, the building for the event looked different. I walked through blocks of stately old and ugly new housing, light industry and then around the stadium-like edifice. Once inside, I passed through the International component, which is furniture and rugs, to the Gastronomic section. 

     Immediately I was overwhelmed by the memory of high-tech trade shows where I demonstrated software 30 years ago. The Gastronomic section was divided into hundreds of booths or stalls. I heard a cacophony of chattering vendors and a symphony of cutlery and glassware. 

    At one end of the hall, collections of tables and small kitchens offered visitors meals of regional specialties. I'm intrigued to discover how these are represented---thank heavens, there's 10 more days of fair.

     Next came booths of individual foods and wines. Here's where I got lucky. 

Volaille de Bresse is featured!

     Fate made my new love---no, not Olivier Laboute, although he is charming---Volaille de Bresse, the product of the day. Olivier's salad of chicken, wine, mustard and cucumber was a light take on our American mayonaisse heavy version.

     And then I met a producer! In the heart of Bresse, Jean Claude Marquis raises his chickens from eggs. I learned that there are several different kinds: chapon, poularde, poulet. Chapon is a chicken castrated and grown large. Poularde are fed a rich diet, delaying egg production. Poulet are the youngest. (Or as French wikipedia tells us:

poulets (quatre mois et d'un poids minimum de 1,2 kg),

poulardes (cinq mois et 1,8 kg),

chapons (huit mois et 3 kg).)

Wait, wait, there's more luck involved! Around four o'clock, I spotted this sign:

Do you know what a bréchet de poulet is?

     Intrigued, I spoke with the vendors, who were just cleaning up for the afternoon. Trust me, these could replace wings as the next craze. For my protein dinner, I bought some and took them home. Bréchet de poulet are wishbones, cooked in butter, wine and parsley, and they are quite wonderful. The chickens they come from Bresse grown, but they don't qualify with AOP regulations.

Dozens of wishes!

     Fortified, I will be back at the Fair today. I have not even begun to fathom the role of Vietnam as the guest of honor! Plus ça change, plus ç'est la meme chose?

   

Culinary Reconciliation?

From my new favorite cafe, The Morning Glory, Dijon

     Here I am in Dijon, where MFK Fisher's desicatted heart resides, in the midst of Burgundian wine, mustard and jambon persillé, ham in aspic with parsley. 

     And I am freezing, literally hovering a few degrees above. Last night, my taxi driver told me the farmers welcome this, for the sake of killing off bad microbes, so we shouldn't complain. 

     Sleepless from a mixed up travel day and a new bed, I was up at 4:30. As soon as it was light I ventured from my BNB apartment for coffee and breakfast. It's a dry cold, and there is a hint of woodsmoke in the air. I have no mittens. After a brisk walk into the center of town, I warmed my hands over an Americano and croissant, all the time wishing for an egg or some yogurt. 

     I'm here to observe the 87th Gastronomic Fair of Dijon, but as I stumbled into Dijon's central market, that was secondary to shopping for breakfast. That market wasn't open when we were here last summer. Several vendors have the famous poulet de Bresse, at a much more reasonable price than Lausanne. I'm tempted to cook that on Sunday when my husband joins me, but then again I got instructions from the vendor of larded beef on how to cook that. Who needs a gastronomic fair when they have a grand indoor marché?

     Shopping done, I still needed some solid breakfast immediately. I found the Morning Glory café, which does a coddled egg with toast points and scones/biscuits with house made jam of apricot slices as big as your thumb.

     Now I'm ready to study the Foire Internationale at Gastronomique de Dijon.

The Foire began in 1921, because November was a slow period for business in Dijon. November is also the month after the harvests are over. The Foire continued until World War II. 

     Local merchants started it up again in 1949. In 1961, Canon Kir, heroic resistance fighter, Catholic priest and politician opened the event, and gave his name to the cassis tinged drink, made strictly with Burgundian aligoté. 

     When I arrived last night, the father of my host told me that the Foire is much changed from the old days. Once gastronomy and agriculture were the sole focus. Nowadays, all manner of things related to the kitchen and home furnishings are displayed. I doubt if MFK Fisher, in the 1930s, could have imagined that Vietnam would be the invited guest of this year's Foire. 

     I can't wait to see how much of that old grandeur of French cuisine is presented, and of course to taste it.