French Windows

What the French call ‘Viennoiseries’, we call Danish pastries. The French attribute their origin to Vienna and we think they come from Denmark. Who is right? I have learnt that these sweet treats arrived in Denmark in 1840 when Danish bakers supposedly went on strike and Viennese pastry chefs were brought in to fill the gap. The new recipes they introduced gave other Europeans, apricot custard turnovers, pains au chocolat, cinnamon snails and pain aux raisins, etc. Two Austrian men opened a shop in Paris to sell their ‘Viennoiseries’, so actually both names give clues to their origin.

I could write a whole book on the battles I have fought and the victories I have won against poor customer service in France. In one supermarket, the price at the till was nearly always different to the price on the shelf. I wrote to the head office and received a money- off voucher. At my next visit to the shop, I gave the cashier my token. She looked at it and asked me where I had got it from. ‘From your head office,’ I replied. ‘I have worked here for 10 years and have never seen one of these before,’ was her response! It seems I am the only one who takes the time to complain! It takes determination, as contact forms are sometimes not even on websites. My trick is to scroll down to the bottom of the page where ‘Mentions légales’ begin. In there, companies are legally obliged to publish their address even if they make it fiendishly difficult to contact them by the usual means. My  French students could not believe their ears when I recounted that I had taken a half-eaten box of chocolates back to Thornton’s in Bedford and it had been replaced it with another of the same size. However, the replacement I chose had been reduced in price, so the staff insisted that I took some more products to make up the value. Customer Service like that is rarely found in France.

There are still mysteries to be solved about French life. One of them concerns crème fraîche. It is a product that can now be found on British supermarket shelves along with fresh cream. Sainsbury’s crème fraîche is cream thickened with tapioca starch and pectin. But, if I ask a French person what crème fraîche is, they will say it is simply ‘fresh cream’! However, theirs is fermented with lactic ferments, but so are French yoghurts. So, what is the difference between the two products?  Fresh cream in the UK can be whipped and will hold its shape. French cream, when whipped returns to a liquid if left! I might have found part of the answer to my questions in an American book called, ‘The Loaves and Fishes Cookbook’. The author Anna Pump gives a recipe for crème fraîche. It involves adding 2 tablespoons of buttermilk into heated double cream. If left for 24 hours, it will thicken and keep for 3 weeks. I must try it! But I still don’t know why French whipped cream collapses.

It might seem amazing in the country renowned for gastronomy, that no one learns to cook in school. It is not on the curriculum. People used to learn to kitchen skills from their mother or grandmother, but now with many mothers having full-time work, very little cooking is done in the home. Mid-day meals are eaten in subsidized work’s canteens or in restaurants where luncheon vouchers, that are given as part of    wages, can be used. The evening meal is often soup or a snack. In the same way that Jamie Oliver launched a campaign to teach people how to cook, Cyril Lignac, his French equivalent, was appalled to find people living off pasta and take-away pizzas, because they didn’t have any culinary skills. He too had programmes on TV teaching ordinary people how to cook. The one cake that most French people can make, is a yogurt cake where the empty pot is used as a measure for the other ingredients. For one pot of yogurt, use one pot of oil, two pots of sugar, three pots of self-raising flour and three eggs. Mix well and bake.

Decimal points are commas – ‘virgule’ in France. Your child’s school work will be marked out of 20, so hopefully they will get 19,5/20.

 When I tell my grown-up children that we regularly go for coffee in McDonald’s, their reaction is as if I was recounting a visit to a Wimpy Bar! Their image of McDonald’s is of a ‘60’s fast-food place with sticky fake gingham wipe-clean tablecloths, chewing gum on the floor and dirty cups on adjacent tables. Anyone who has been to a French ‘McDo’ is always pleasantly surprised. There is free internet access, screens where you can tap in your order and pay, so that the dishes are ready and awaiting collection. Each branch has been completely renovated to include a barista and a coffee machine that serves, lattes and cappuccinos from freshly ground beans. Do not forget that there are no Starbuck’s, no Costa’s, no Nero’s in our town and only 100 Starbuck’s in all of France! Whereas there are 800 in the UK.  (1,030 in Jan 2018 and growing!) We are reliant on finding a good cup of coffee in one of the hundreds of local bars. Our demand for ‘un grand café crème’ could result in anything from a small cup of black coffee with a small jug of cold milk to a medium sized cup of milky coffee. We used to visit a different bar every week and give them marks out of 10 for the size and quality of the drink. At one restaurant my ‘grand café crème’ was so small that I ordered a second. As a result, I had paid a total of 7€ for what was the equivalent of a small coffee in Nero’s or Starbuck’s. Since a McDonald’s is only 3 minutes-walk away, at the bottom of our road, we can have a decent sized good quality coffee for a very reasonable price. If I say that once I asked for a ‘deca(decaffeinated) grand café crème’ in a bar and was given a drink prepared from teaspoon of instant coffee and cold milk, you will realise how much we appreciate McDonald’s! If you see a Memphis Coffee restaurant it is not very well named. The one thing you cannot do is to walk in and ask for a coffee! When I offered someone a pre-lunch coffee, I was told that French people drink coffee after a meal.

Have you ever dreamt of running away to join the circus? Well, you can if you live in France.  Joining the circus is a legitimate career choice. Circus skills are taught in schools as part of the physical education programme. Our daughter learnt to balance on a low wire, juggle and throw a diabolo.  Our neighbour’s son became such an enthusiast of the subject that he used to ride his uni-cycle up and down the road. There are two circus schools in France, where students can get a degree qualification. While researching this book I found, to my surprise, that there is a school in Bristol that also teaches circus skills. ‘Stop clowning around’, is probably never said by teachers there! Circuses regularly appear in town, usually setting up in supermarket carparks. French circuses still have performing animals and often a part of their attraction is the mini zoo they bring along with them.  We were looking at the animals one day, when we heard anxious shouts from the big top. A tiger that should have been returning to its cage by means of a tunnel had found a gap. Fortunately, there were enough fair-ground workers on hand to prevent it from escaping into the town. We beat a hasty retreat!

In many European countries these lovely golden flowers, (that’s the origin of their name – chrusos is gold in Greek) are the symbol of death. So don’t buy a bunch as a thank-you gift. Your host might take a step back in horror! They are on sale everywhere in October, as it is the custom to put flowers on the tombs of departed relatives for Toussaint –  All Saints’ Day on 1^stNovember. One advantage of having a house that overlooks a cemetery is that the view from our dining room window becomes more and more colourful each day, as people arrive with armfuls of potted plants. Chrysanthemums can now be bought in all colours, so for a month we can see a mosaic of orange, yellow, red and purple. (See CEMETERIES)

French people will tell you that the custom of having a tree, originated in Alsace near the German border, in the early years of the 16^thcentury, but why and how, they cannot say. British people should know from their ‘Ladybird book of Christmas Customs’ that the inspiration came from St. Boniface, missionary to pagan Germany. One day, he was travelling through a dark forest when he came across a group of druids preparing to sacrifice a child under a sacred oak. Boniface interrupted the ceremony just in time, and told them the gospel – that it is faith in Jesus Christ that saves us. The pagans believed the message, so he called for an axe with which to cut down the tree. As it fell, it revealed a small pine tree that had been growing amongst the roots. He told the gathering to take the pine tree as their new symbol. Its evergreen leaves would remind them of the eternal life they had gained. The branches pointed upwards to the true God in heaven. The custom of having Christmas trees started in Germany and spread though France via the protestants in the Alsace region. Prince Albert, being German, introduced the Christmas tree to his wife, Queen Victoria, and soon every British family had a conifer in their homes in late December. I would say that the tradition of Christmas trees was not French  but crossed the border from Germany.

Not many people send Christmas cards, perhaps the reason is to avoid seeming to hold a religious belief? However, New Year’s greetings cards are very common and can be sent anytime during the month of January. Some families come up with novel ideas. Our friends sent us a card with two nearly identical pictures of them and their three girls. The idea was to spot the differences!