Harriet Welty Rochefort

A fun read if you are a bit of a Francophile. This is a lighthearted easy read with insightful information on what’s it like to be an American married to a Parisian, living in Paris.

The author, Harriet Welty Rochefort, had an adventurous spirit since she was a child. An early influence was her step grandmother who was a professor of French at Grinell College in Iowa. Growing up in a farming community in SW Iowa was about as far from France or anything exotic that she could think of. After college she traveled extensively taking in the sights and different cultures of South America, Acapulco, the Canary Islands and finally landed in France.

One of the things I liked was her descriptive scenes and views on child-rearing, education, food, manners, shopping expeditions and the instances when her “Americanness” butted proverbial heads with the Parisian attitudes.

Several of the beginning chapters are devoted to food and wine…of course!

From the book:
“Catching on to French food was both easy and complicated….I have a hard time trying to think of what to serve for two full-scale four-to-five course meals a day, seven days a week. My French sister-in-law doesn’t seem to have this problem. In the family country house, where there are always at least ten people at the table, I watch with wonder as she casually composes each meal.

An example might be pate to start with, then magret de Canard (breast of duck) cut into little fillets. This is accompanied by fresh peas, new potatoes and followed by a green salad with delicious homemade vinaigrette and finally a big plate of wonderful cheese. Brie, Camenbert, a chevre, a blue and d’Auvergue. This is followed by ice cream, cake or fruit, depending on what went before.”

This is a Saturday noon meal. On Saturday night she makes another five course meal. Amazing.

Other food mentions though out include:

Asparagus with a sauce mousseline, a potato omelet, a beautiful lettuce salad, cheese, a tarte aux fraises (strawberry pie)

Rochefort potato omelet, marinated green, red and yellow peppers, salmon with dill, an aspic with foie gras and artichokes.

Gigot d’agneau (leg of lamb) with pommes sarladaies and tomatoes provencales, a cheese plate with eight different varieties, and finally a mousse au chocolat, a tarte aux myrtilles (blueberry pie) and Cream Caramel.

As for relationships she makes a good point about American couples living in France vs. a Franco-American couple (such as Harriet and her husband Phillippe).

“As far as I can see, American couples living in France have a very different perception …France is an interlude in their lives, but they retain their Americanness as a couple. They are a united front. The adjustments they make to the culture are ones they wish to make, not have to make. With a Franco-American couple there is a push and pull over language, schools and religion.”

I love the chapter about the tax man, also known as “the Big Bad Wolf” and the French attitude about money. Quite interesting.

For an inspired dish I would love to roast some lamb but my goodness, it’s so very hot here I can’t abide having the oven cranked up so long. I grabbed one of my favorite cookbooks, a Williams Sonoma Essentials of French Cooking, and decded upon zucchini fritters. Or as I would order them in France, Beignets de Courgette. Recipe may be found at Squirrel Head Manor. These were very good and will make again.

I also tried the tarte aux fraises and will you ever howl when you see the photos. Not ready to upload those yet but….they are interesting :-)… (mer)

This wonderful book, delightfully read by Anna Fields, is the humorous memoir of an American woman who marries a Frenchman. Peter Mayle’s observations of the French are amusing, but he always observes from the outside, whereas Harriet Rochefort married a Frenchman (providing countless anecdotes of French in-laws); has taught in the French schools (offering trenchant and useful observations of the rigorous French public school system, where children go to school for an education, not to play sports, explaining perhaps why the French foreign minister speaks English embarrassingly better than our president); and speaks fluent French (providing an understanding of the subtleties of the language Mayle cannot duplicate). The book is laugh-out-loud funny.

She marvels at the superhuman qualities of French women; her sister-in-law, for example, prepares a ten-course meal in a silk blouse and heels but no apron — with nary a spot. Harriet’s contribution to French cooking is an attempt to introduce the sandwich as a meal concept. “When I first came to France over twenty years ago, I decided to introduce the concept of The Sandwich As A Meal to my in-laws. This was pre- McDonald's, when people like my father-in-law still returned home for lunch, a four-course affair. My mother-in-law, used to the preparation of two ample daily repasts, embraced my idea eagerly. We hence proceeded to prepare sandwiches for lunch and serve one to my father-inlaw, normally the soul of tolerance. He gazed at our creation as if it were a strange living creature and upon being informed that you ate The Sandwich with your hands, commented ironically, "Well, why don't we just get down on the floor and throw bones over our shoulders while we're at it?" That, needless to say, was the last time we ever even entertained the idea of fast food in that family. My father-in-law has since died, but tradition holds. In my belle-famille, a sandwich is not a meal.”

Did you know that the French think nothing of banging into the cars in front of and behind them as they move in and out of a parking place? And horror of horrors, one must never cut pieces of lettuce, but rather fold them with fork and knife then placing it in the mouth. And of course, Gruyere is never eaten the same way as Camembert.

A peek at Harriet’s website is worth the time. She reports there: "Intercultural differences are the subject of my book, French Toast, which tells the tale of what happens when an American from Iowa, yes, IOWA (not Ohio or Idaho, if you see what I mean), goes to France on her own steam, marries a Frenchman, and ends up spending the rest of her life far away from home. In spite of the glamour, it's not always easier to adapt to a foreign culture - especially when you're the one doing all the adapting. I love France, I love French cooking, French history, French museums and monuments. My children were born in French hospitals and attended French schools from la maternelle (pre-school) on to and through university. If it weren't for my American accent, I might almost have gone native. In spite of all this, cultural differences continued to loom and I was fascinated to see that the differences became greater, not smaller, as the years rolled by. In French Toast I tell about these cultural differences which range from French attitudes towards sex, money, and even and especially, politeness. It's admittedly a very American viewpoint but the book has its resident Frenchman, my husband Philippe, right on hand to comment and counter my remarks in an interview at the end of each chapter. I call this the only book about the French in which a French person gets the ‘droit de réponse’ (right to answer) in real time.”

… (mer)