Foodbuzz 24×24: A Proustian Picnic

Et tout d’un coup le souvenir m’est apparu. Ce goût, c’était celui du petit morceau de madeleine que le dimanche matin à Combray (parce que ce jour-là je ne sortais pas avant l’heure de la messe), quand j’allais lui dire bonjour dans sa chambre, ma tante Léonie m’offrait après l’avoir trempé dans son infusion de thé ou de tilleul. La vue de la petite madeleine ne m’avait rien rappelé avant que je n’y eusse goûté; peut-être parce que, en ayant souvent aperçu depuis, sans en manger, sur les tablettes des pâtissiers, leur image avait quitté ces jours de Combray pour se lier à d’autres plus récents; peut-être parce que, de ces souvenirs abandonnés depuis si longtemps hors de la mémoire, rien ne survivait, tout s’était désagrégé; les formes – et celle aussi du petit coquillage de pâtisserie, si grassement sensuel sous son plissage sévère et dévot – s’étaient abolies, ou, ensommeillées, avaient perdu la force d’expansion qui leur eût permis de rejoindre la conscience. Mais, quand d’un passé ancien rien ne subsiste, après la mort des autres, après la destruction des choses, seules, plus frêles mais plus vivaces, plus immatérielles, plus persistantes, plus fidèles, l’odeur et la saveur restent encore longtemps, comme des âmes, à se rappeler, à attendre, à espérer, sur la ruine de tout le reste, à porter sans fléchir, sur leur gouttelette presque impalpable, l’édifice immense du souvenir.*

The American Proust fan’s life goal is to get fifty people to read Proust; she converted at least two of us yesterday, as she, the Australian and I boarded the train from Paris to Chartres and Chartres to Illiers, the town that inspired Marcel Proust’s Du Côté de chez Swann or Swann’s Way, the first of seven volumes of A la Recherche du temps perdu.

Every month, when Foodbuzz’s 24/24 rolls around, I get an itch to submit an idea. But most of the time, the deadline rolls right past me: I’m uninspired, I just don’t have the time. This month, though, the concept popped right into my head, as though it had been waiting for the little message in my inbox. This Tuesday marks the end of my year-long pre-Masters literature course at the Sorbonne, a class that long-time readers have lived through with me, and that followers may have noticed captured my soul and my time in the last few weeks: I’ve been conspicuously absent for quite a while, my efforts and brain power devoted to writing what was meant to be a 60-page thesis and slowly grew to be 120 pages long and not nearly as exhaustive as one would think, and my kitchen skills rusting in disuse as I assemble dinner from bits and pieces in the fridge, seeing as the Country Boy has returned to the country for the next month or so.

It was with this in mind, then, that I decided that we literary geeks needed a break from Paris: I sent out the invitations to a Proustian picnic, and after a few cancellations, we found ourselves — three — boarding the train from Montparnasse, a bag of food and chilled wine under my arm, a bottle of cider under the Australian’s, and a copy of Du côté de chez Swann thanks to the APF.

Two hours later, we had arrived in Illiers, now known as Illiers-Combray, a name-change devoted to the novelist, who wrote about Easters spent at his Aunt Léonie’s in Combray, a very thinly veiled version of Illiers. The APF put on her tour-guide-hat and led us through the quiet town down to the river.

For whatever reason, probably because we were still all high off the end of school, our last exams behind us and only our thesis defenses to come, or perhaps because of the sun and light breeze of the late spring day, we meandered and soaked up the surroundings, pausing to snap pictures of everything, especially the baby ducks we saw at the shores of the small stream.

(Yes, I know the word is duckling. I just like baby duck better.)

Finally, we arrived at the Pré Catalan, the garden that Proust’s uncle constructed, with influences from Asian architecture.

Proust described the walks he would take with his mother and grandmother in the area, though we decided we’d had enough walking and scoped out the perfect place to have our picnic.

Because of timing, our picnic was destined to be a dinnertime-ish affair, so we began, as all French dinners should (and often do) with apéro and a reading of some passages from Du côté de chez Swann. We took turns reading as I popped opened the sparkling rosé (kept cool during the nearly 3-hour voyage thanks to the insular powers of the Country Boy’s fleece man-blanket) and laid out spring radishes, butter and salt.

The APF had come fully prepared with several famous passages marked to read, including one that describes the sonata that reminds Swann of his first love. She played a few of the songs that Proustian scholars still debate may or may not have been the actual one described, including her favorite, and we listened and sipped rosé as we dug into the rest of the feast.

A la recherche du temps perdu is all about memory, about the driving forces that allow us to remember or forget, that open the floodgates to the past with a simple taste, smell or sound. Proust’s memories came to dinner with us that night, thanks to recipes from Anne Borrel’s book La Cuisine selon Proust, cuisine according to Proust.

A green bean salad (I cooked them a bit longer than I usually do as a concession to the French penchant for gray vegetables — mine were still delightfully firm, though not crunchy) was inspired by this passage from La Prisonnière: “Comme c’est bien dit : Tendres haricots ! Vous savez que je les veux tout fins, tout fins, ruisselants de vinaigrette ; on de dirait pas qu’on les mange, c’est frais comme une rosée.”

It was accompanied by spring lettuce, cherry tomatoes, goat cheese, baguette, and this potato salad, which I only remembered to photograph as we were scooping up the last of the new potatoes, covered in vinaigrette, inspired by this passage from Le Temps retrouvé: “Et je ne sais pas beaucoup d’endroits où la simple salade de pommes de terre est faite ainsi de pommes de terre ayant la fermeté de boutons d’ivoire japonais, le patiné de ces petites cuillers d’ivoire avec lesquelles les Chinoises versent l’eau sur le poisson qu’elles viennent de pêcher.”

Of course, we couldn’t forget the madeleines: that is, after all where Proust’s journey through time and memory begins. We shared the reading of that particular passage as we ate madeleines that I had made from my newly purchased silicone madeleine pan.

Alas, all good things end, and so we collected our glasses and paper plates and started the walk back to the train station… which, oddly enough, was where the real adventure began.

Upon arriving at the train station, we realized that we had misread the train schedule, and that unless we stumbled upon a nice trucker driving back to Paris, we would be stuck in Illiers-Combray which, though a nice town, didn’t seem to be the kind of place where three students could find a cheap bed: this was the only hotel we could find. While the APF and the Australian commiserated with a French woman who seemed rather more upset than we were about our misfortune, I did what any normal and rational person would do in such a situation: called the Country Boy for help.

He checked the train and bus schedules, and upon finding nothing and realizing that we were planning on spending the night on a bench outside the train station in Illiers-Combray, jumped in his car and drove two hours to get us, in true white-knight-on-a-white-horse Country Boy fashion. I’m not sure why I was surprised.

In the meantime, we decided to make the most of our extra time in Illiers-Combray to visit the church, where a concert was going on. Though the interior was gorgeous, we made the unanimous decision that we would much rather be huddled around a table than in a pew, and so we ventured into the only open bar in town, where affable French gentlemen commiserated with us, poured us a drink, and even gave us ten cigarettes to be used as a reward for the Country Boy when he arrived around 11:00 PM.

As we sat around the table, I realized that if not the picnic, this evening would be the stuff of memories: the men who laughed at us, the woman who hit her head on the grate as she tried to exit the bar in a hunched position, the bench we finally parked ourselves on with the Australian’s bottle of cider and an impromptu dance show before us, performed in front of one of two kebab shops by the local teenagers, the doubled-over laughing as we shared stories from our pasts.

When the Country Boy finally arrived, we jumped into his car, and he laughed agreeably as we told him our stories, never mind that he was probably planning on spending his Saturday night in front of the computer at his parents’ house and not driving from the Loire to Illiers to Paris. He’s good like that.

I made another batch of madeleines this morning, before he had to go back home. We had a quiet Sunday together, and I sent him home with a plastic bag of them, that’s he supposed to share.

When I eat madeleines, I don’t know what I’ll remember: it’s too soon to tell. Maybe I will remember stretching out on the grass with the APF and the Australian, reading from Proust and eating cold salads. Maybe it will be the evening we spent exploring the tiny village, a village that reminds me of Paziols in its diminutiveness and in the friendliness that seems to seep from its very being.

Maybe I’ll remember the feeling of seeing the Country Boy exit his car, familiarity invading the newness of the tiny place. Maybe I’ll remember the comfort of riding back to Paris, knowing that soon we’d be going into our apartment together for the first time in two weeks to sleep, but knowing still that for the next hour or so on the French autoroute, I was safely encased in the familiar car.

I certainly hope so.

Note: While I was inspired by La Cuisine selon Proust, I can never leave well-enough alone. Here are my recipes, which, with the exception of the madeleine recipes, are completely my own. For Anne Burrel’s recipes, feel free to check out her book: La Cuisine selon Proust.

Vinaigrette
1 tsp. Dijon mustard
1/3 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup good olive oil
1/2 tsp. salt
a few grinds of fresh black pepper
1 pinch sugar

Put all the ingredients into a jar with a lid. Close firmly and shake until combined.

Green Bean Salad
1/3 vinaigrette recipe

1 pound green beans
1 shallot, finely sliced

Cook the green beans in boiling water until tender but still firm, about 7 minutes. Drain and place in a tupperware container with a lid. Coat with dressing and sprinkle in the shallot. Close the tupperware and shake to coat. Refrigerate at least 1 hour before serving.

Potato Salad
1/3 vinaigrette recipe

1 pound baby new potatoes
1 tsp. olive oil
4 slices prosicutto

Place the potatoes in a saucepan of cold water and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook until tender, about 20 minutes. Drain.

Place the potatoes and vinaigrette in a tupperware with a lit. Shake to coat. Refrigerate at least 1 hour before serving.

Meanwhile, fry the prosciutto in olive oil over high heat. Crumble the slices into bits. Set aside.

Before serving, toss the prosciutto bits with the potatoes.

Madeleines (adapted from La Cuisine selon Proust)
90 g. butter
2 eggs
70 g. sugar
10 g. brown sugar
10 g. honey
1 tsp. vanilla extract
90 g. flour

Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool.

Meanwhile, beat the eggs and sugars together with a fork for about 5 minutes, until the sugars have dissolved. Add the honey and vanilla and mix well. Sift in the flour and combine with a wooden spoon. Add the butter and mix until just combined. Refrigetate 1 hour.

Heat the oven to 220 C (430 F). Divide the batter amongst the madeleine molds, and bake about 5-7 minutes, until the tops are rounded and golden. Serve with tea, for a Proustian effect, or with strawberries and rosé, if you’re Emiglia.

*And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before church-time), when I went to say good day to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or of lime-flower tea. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the interval, without tasting them, on the trays in pastry-cooks’ windows, that their image had dissociated itself from those Combray days to take its place among others more recent; perhaps because of those memories, so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing now survived, everything was scattered; the forms of things, including that of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lost the power of expansion which would have allowed them to resume their place in my consciousness. But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.