Slices of quince

One of the expressions I get great use out of in French is avoir un bon plan, which signifies having a good idea, project or scheme. There is also its opposite, avoir un mauvais plan, which in turn signifies having a loser idea, project or scheme. I have a lot of mauvais plans. Here is my latest:

Why hello, strange yellow fruit!

That, my friends, is a coing, or in English, a quince. I was indulging in my favorite pastime the other day—cruising the produce aisle to be specific—when as luck would have it, I noticed some exotic-looking (and therefore fun) fruit giving me the eye. Ignoring all past crash-and-burns in the exotic-looking fruit department (e.g. desiccated pomelos, bitter starfruit, buckshot-filled cactus pears, and hideously sweet cherimoya), I bought not one, but TWO of these things. I arrived home, artfully arranged them in my fruit bowl alongside more classic seasonal favorites, and left them to ripen. Four days later I figured they looked edible, so I took one and bit into it.

I’m lucky to have managed to disengage my teeth without leaving any of them implanted in the fruit’s ROCK HARD, bitter flesh. Whaaa??? OK, not ripe yet. I’ll give them another week, I figured. But a week later, no change. Bizarre. So I decided to leave them an even longer while longer.

Today it has officially been two months since I bought these fruit. Two months. And the damn things haven’t changed at all in appearance or texture. This is totally unnatural (two-month-old kiwis, for instance, would have long become pure liquefied nastiness). While I have been waiting on my quinces, whole families—nay, generations!—of tangerines, apples, grapes and bananas have come and gone from the fruit bowl, but does that incite my quinces to hurry the hell up and ripen already? Certainly not! Maybe they’ve been genetically modified. Or maybe some prankster threw a few wax models into the fruit bin.

Looks real to me.

Then again, maybe they are ripe. Maybe that’s just the nature of quinces. Maybe that’s why NO ONE EATS THEM. I mean really, who eats quince? Yeah, they make great jam; that is precisely why I bought them. Tasty jam = tasty fruit, n’est-ce pas? Plus—and this goes back to my wine marketing past—the quince is often cited in the tasting notes of several white wines that I seriously enjoy. You know, inspiring stuff like this: “clean and crisp, with soft, fruity aromas of white peach and quince.” Then again, no one knows better than I how made up imaginative tasting notes can be for having written legions of them myself. Sigh. I was hoping for so much more from the quince.

Why? Because I grew up with “The Owl and the Pussycat”:

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
     Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
 And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
     They danced by the light of the moon,
           The moon,
           The moon,
 They danced by the light of the moon.

Is it not perfectly scandalous that the real quince should not live up to the delectable image instilled in my subconscious by such beloved childhood readings? And I’d specifically gone out and purchased a runcible spoon and everything! This is some false advertising, that’s what. Who knows a good lawyer?

Never lost, never will.

In the meantime, I have a friend and colleague who swears that the quince is just scrumptious sliced up and sautéed with apples. That may be. But again, who (else) has ever heard of sautéed quince? Plus, let us not forget that my quinces are two months old! So do I have to go out and track down some gnarled old apples to accompany them? Because “ancient fruit sauté” sounds pretty off-putting. Maybe I could just distill it all into some sort of vile liqueur.

See? This is precisely what characterizes le mauvais plan. Can you not feel the loserness of its aura? From now on, my exotic fruit purchases shall be limited to pineapples. Maybe some coconut. And a few litchis. But that’s it. I’ll leave the quince to the owls and the pussycats. They obviously have some kind of weirdo fruit consumption insight that I lack.

Les Misérables

Last weekend, I skipped the country and discovered Luxembourg City: close enough to Paris for a weekend, yet far enough away to feel exotic. Most of my entourage raised an eyebrow when I announced my weekend plans, as apparently the going rap on Luxembourg is that it’s a) small b) boring and c) unsexy. Whatever. For those of you contemplating a visit to Luxembourg, it is none of those things. In addition to being gorgeous, G. and I found it to be plenty big (it’s the damn capital, people! 50 square kilometers—get with it!), plenty interesting, and ... well, it may not be sexy per se, but what do you want? It’s wedged between Germany, eastern France and Belgium; it can’t have everything. What it DOES have is money. Lots of money. And an entire army of invisible street sweepers who keep the place impeccably groomed. That, my friends, is one clean city. Even the fallen leaves look somehow artfully fallen. There is no “5-second rule” in Luxembourg; if you should let any food fall to the ground, you could probably pick it up whenever you felt like it and keep eating. No worries.

They also have really big cheese.

Oh sure, there is poverty in Luxembourg. We learned all about it at the city museum, currently featuring a temporary exhibit cleverly entitled “Poor Luxembourg.” Over the course of a really quite elaborate series of displays and installations, including full-scale models of a homeless camp and a “social” grocery store, we learned that “poverty” in the Grand Duchy is not so much a question of true financial insecurity, but rather of coping with limited access to social pleasures (fewer extracurricular activities for one’s children, for example). We also learned that the gross minimum wage is roughly €1,800 per month—by far the most generous of the EU. In other words, indigence is such an oddity in Luxembourg that it’s worthy of an entire museum exhibit.

France is not Luxembourg. France has plenty of poverty—as well as a fairly conspicuous homeless population. I would know; I was sat upon this week by one particularly conspicuous specimen. Sat. Upon. I was taking the métro home from work with a friend, when an extremely alcoolisé gentleman sporting rags and a half-consumed bottle of whiskey staggered onto our train, screaming what can only be translated as, “You bunch of #@*$!! I #$$& this &$*@ piece of #$$& world of @$#!! Go @#$% yourselves!” Everyone in the wagon stopped talking and stared at him, at which point the doors closed and the train took off. The sudden movement was obviously too much; in slow motion, he toppled backward ... right onto my friend and me, strategically seated as though we had intended to serve as a human safety net. It was nice.

Enter at your own risk.

Like the subway of your average metropolis, the Paris métro has quite a population of “residents.” Some drink themselves into oblivion; some peddle illicit merchandise; still others beg. Of the beggars, I count three categories: the passive, the proactive and the performing. The passive find a spot somewhere in the labyrinth of tunnels and stations and just camp there, with or without a puppy/child by their side, silently admonishing you to spare a dime. There is one such woman who hangs out at the station Opéra, at the foot of the stairway leading to the line 3 platform, just glaring at each and every person who walks by, her eyes boring right into you as you attempt to breeze past nonchalantly. I once fearfully offered her a few lunch vouchers—the fabulous tickets restaurant—and she actually turned out to be way nicer than I had imagined. I almost wanted to give her some marketing advice about the whole catching more flies with honey than with vinegar thing, but thought better of it. If I were homeless, would I take advice off some random commuter? Probably not.

The proactive métro dwellers go ahead and climb aboard the trains themselves, passing from wagon to wagon, shouting over the din about who they are and why they need your contribution. Some are polite; others are frighteningly belligerent. Consider this: back at home, my parents are harassed day and night by phone calls from perfect strangers soliciting money, but here in Paris, you can get the same treatment face à face! Who says urban living is impersonal?

Finally, there are the performers. Some dance; some sing; some play musical instruments. Some are quite good; others are so ear-splittingly bad I would pay them to just STOP ALREADY. And while I’m at it, I would also happily, happily pay them to cease and desist massacring such cherished oldies as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Hotel California,” anything by the Beatles, and the perennial favorite, “El Cóndor Pasa” (yes, I realize the tune predates Paul Simon. That’s no excuse to screw it up). There are also plenty of métro gypsies, but they enter more into the “nasty pickpocket” category than the “unfortunate homeless” one.

For the record, I do not have a heart of stone (plus I’m a Democrat; I’m like obligated to at least feign sympathy). Although, with the price of Paris’s monthly métro pass likely to increase to a whopping €78 over the next year, there comes a point when those of us who do use the public transportation system for ... transportation ... are perfectly justified in demanding, I don’t know, the right to not be sat upon by drunken homeless guys for example. I’m just saying.

Who let the dogs out?

I had another dog dream last night. Or to specify, I dreamed in a perfectly surreal fashion of obtaining a puppy, which has been a goal of mine for quite some time now. Searching for meaning, I typed “dog” into an online dream analyzer and discovered that dogs in the dream world symbolize “intuition, loyalty, generosity, protection and fidelity.” Further, dreaming of them “suggests that your strong values and good intentions will enable you to go forward in the world and bring you success.” Right on. But between us, I think it means that I just really want a dog.

Paris today counts some 200,000 chiens for some 2.2 million Parisians, which is actually only 11%. Why, then, does the pitter-patter of little paws feel so omnipresent in this city? Perhaps due to the canine calling cards for which Parisian streets are so well known, which, in addition to the sight of people strolling the perpetrators, accounts for the resolutely “top of mind” position enjoyed by the French pooch. In any case, I want one: preferably small and fluffy, with a gentle disposition and minimal amount of shedding. I have several models in mind: Shih Tzu, Tibetan Spaniel, Chihuahua....

But realistically speaking, it probably isn’t going to happen; my innocent desire to own an adorable, adoring little ball of fluff is counterbalanced by my overactive conscience, which knows better. One, both G. and I work full-time. Two, having grown up in the country, I am keenly aware that there are places far better suited for dogs, children and other small, innocent beings than la jungle urbaine. Were we to actually go out and buy a dog, the poor dear would be left all alone in our Paris-size (read: teeny) apartment from dawn till dusk, pining away for its masters while more fortunate dogs romp and frolic in the great outdoors as nature intended. There is of course a park nearby, but dogs generally don’t walk themselves, and we naturally have no back yard—only a typical Parisian balcony with lacy iron railings that may be a delightful place for humans, but would by no means provide our would-be dog with an acceptable, safe alternative to the great outdoors. Hélas!

Never having been one to accept seeing my desires rebuffed, I remain hopeful that there is a solution out there. But unfortunately, no matter what privileges Parisian dogs enjoy, accompanying their masters to work on a daily basis is not one of them. So for the moment, I see no answer … although I do have an idea: the arrival a few years ago of the now well-known, DIY bike rental service known as Vélib’ (a fusion of the words vélo or “bike,” and libre or “free”) got me thinking that this approach could possibly be applied to other public-use domains. With Vélib’ one can rent a bike for a paltry €1 from any of the hundreds of open air bike stations scattered across the city and enjoy it for up to 30 minutes, at which point the bike must simply be returned to the closest station in exchange for a fresh one, and so on and so forth.

Now, call me crazy (everyone else does), but why not develop a system of short-term dog rentals based on the same concept as Vélib’? Imagine a series of small pet stores offering 1-hour, half-day or full-day dog rentals. You’d show up, select the dog and leash of your choice, and off the two of you would go! When your time was up, you would simply return the dog to the closest pet store and take out another one. This would allow busy Parisians to enjoy such dog-owning pleasures as weekend romps, evening strolls and games of catch in the park, while effectively eliminating the less pleasant aspects, such as trips to the vet, workday dog-abandonment guilt and the dubious pleasure of removing fur from the couch with rolled-up Scotch tape.

Problem solved! I will pen a letter to Sarkozy tomorrow; I imagine that putting Chienlib’ into effect will provide him with a nice change from juggling retirement reform, campaign contribution scandals and that whole soccer thing.

The fruit of the vine

We have now covered two thirds of the holy gastronomical trinity. With bread and cheese accounted for, let us now turn our attention to the oh-so-pleasant final installment: wine.

Where to begin? French wine, how do I love thee! Nor am I alone in my fondness; these two have been working their charms on mankind for millennia (which is not to say that I’m unoriginal). Both have played pivotal roles in my life thus far: France by drawing me abroad, wine by taking over once I got here. I spent over three years working in the French wine industry and even found inspiration for my Master’s thesis therein. And while I am today a recovering former wine marketer, wine itself continues to be a personal interest. Heck, I’m a Californian living in Paris—loving wine comes with the territory.

Prior to finding gainful employment in the sector, French wine revealed itself to me purely by chance. As in, I would be invited to a dinner party, garden party, house party, birthday party, anniversary party, wedding party or any party in between and lo and behold! Opportunities to get up close and personal with French wine would abound. But as random sampling can only get one so far, I began a more intellectual pursuit of the charms of the vine and took to reading books on wine, touring vineyards, lingering in the wine aisle of my local supermarket, and even frequenting specialty wine shops just for the thrill of it. As such, I managed to acquire a fair degree of knowledge about French wine. And while I certainly cannot qualify myself as a true expert, I can on occasion manage to make myself sound enough like one to fool most people, which is kind of neat.

But enough about me; let’s talk vin.

France may have recently conceded its place as the world’s leading wine producer to Italy, but its vineyards still yield some 45 million hectoliters of wine per annum. This sea of crushed grapes represents over 400 appellations d’origine contrôlée (certification granted to wines produced in strict observance of predefined geographical and qualitative regulations), 150 vins de pays (one step down from the AOC crowd in terms of quality, theoretically in any case) and innumerable vins de table (unassuming table wine). And yet, despite this plethoric range of wines, with surely something to please taste buds from all walks of life, many are those who have fallen out of love with French wine or, worse, have never fallen in love with it to begin with. Perceived as overly complicated, over-priced or just plain snooty, French wine today suffers from a serious image problem. As someone who loves both France and its wine, I feel a sort of moral, vaguely self-righteous obligation to refute these misconceptions. Except, um, they’re not entirely false.

Overly complicated

With its thousands of wines, hundreds of appellations, countless domaines and largely archaic labels, it’s fairly accurate to say that French wine tends toward the complicated. Most French wine labels feature information that the uninitiated are highly unlikely to understand. Where are the varietals indicated? How exactly is one expected to pronounce the wine’s name? What’s a fût de chêne? The approach isn’t terribly friendly, the labels aren’t terribly attractive and the marketing effort is virtually nonexistent. That said, information in this day and age is easier and faster to come by than ever before. All it takes is a bit of curiosity combined with a bit of research and voilà, French labels become much less intimidating. Can’t tell the difference between a Bourgogne and a Côtes-du-Rhône? Pick up a book on French wine, or at least a quick guide, or at the very, very minimum, Google it! Be proactive in your wine purchasing. No need to blame the French and their “unfriendly” labels/classifications/difficult-to-articulate names. Italian producers don’t make the job any easier, by the way. Nor do the Spanish, but for some reason no one ever complains about them.

Over-priced

This one is all a matter of where you live and where you shop. I live and shop in Paris, which means that I can buy all manner of seriously inexpensive French wine with incredible ease. My parents, on the other hand, live in California, which means that they can only get moderately to officially expensive French wine, and with much greater difficulty than I. However, in all fairness, they can also procure themselves all the delicious Napa wines they want, when they want, whereas I have to make a pilgrimage to a specialty wine store and hunt around for the one lonely Californian reference they have—which to add insult to injury is often a Gallo. Sigh. Have I mentioned that less than 3% of France’s wine imports are American?

But let’s get back to pricing. Within French borders I’ve seen everything from wine sold in plastic jugs at €1.66 per liter to a 1961 Côtes-du-Rhône Hermitage magnum sold at a mind-blowing €40,000. Between us, I’d say that unless said magnum grants everlasting life, that cash could definitely be better spent elsewhere. In any case, there may be no French wine available in the States for the same price as, say, a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck, but let us not compare the incomparable.

Snooty in general

Actually I think the problem here is really just residual snootiness from centuries of justifiable French superiority in this domain. France once used to be the be all and end all of fine wine, a position it smugly enjoyed (as would you). Wine aficionados embraced France’s thousands of wines and fantastically complicated system of distinguishing them, while those who didn’t hold a Ph.D in oenology were intimidated by the perplexing variety and societal pressure to understand the predominantly French selection filling every restaurant’s fine wine list.

Then, along came New World wines, whose taste, variety and friendly labels changed everything. Delicious wines from such diverse lands as Chile, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, and the United States literally poured into the market and met with roaring success, while France, Italy, Spain and other Old World countries suddenly found themselves reeling from the one-two punch of New World competition AND steadily decreasing consumption on the home front. To make matters worse, most European producers had been resting on their proverbial laurels for decades—nay, centuries—without ever having made the effort to render their wines attractive to modern consumers. Thus, the savvy sales approach of New World wines was able to out-maneuver European wines with surprising ease, leaving France and its fellow producer countries laden with excess bottles that no one seemed to want to buy anymore.

This, in essence, is the origin of the “French wine crisis,” a problem that I spent years working on while employed by a Paris-based wine company whose goal was to apply New World marketing techniques to French wine in order to sell more of it. It sounded like a good idea at the time. I would happily relate in minute detail the twists and turns of that little adventure into the surreal, but I don’t want to be sued for libel. Not immediately, anyway; I figure it will be much more fun to be sued later on, once I’ve written an entire book about it (I’ll keep you posted).

So are French wines still snooty? In large part, yes. But to their credit, this is much less the case today than it was even five years ago. Many French vintners have adopted sales and marketing techniques (oh misery! Oh damnation!) that have done a great deal for consumer comprehension among mid-range wines. As for la crème de la crème (not a real French expression, by the way), France’s finest will never need an ounce of marketing because its audience was born knowing the significance of Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru. And if we’re being honest, how consumer friendly should French wine really become? Would it still be French if it didn’t have at least a soupçon of snootiness to it? Moreover, isn’t that part of the fun? Doesn’t the wine drinking world have enough happy-go-lucky labels jockeying for attention on supermarket shelves the world over without the French having to jump aboard the bandwagon of flashy colors and animal emblems? Maybe those monochromatic Gallic labels and complicated names are exactly what they should be; maybe it’s up to the informed consumer to take enough interest in what he or she is drinking to go to the minimal effort of learning a few French wine basics. N’est-ce pas?

In closing, French wine is indeed surrounded by a great many preconceived notions. My advice is to set them aside and to go forth and taste, for only by tasting its unfathomable diversity can one get any idea of the myriad delights that France’s vineyards truly have to offer.

And now that I’m done singing the praises of French wine, I’ll let you in on a little secret: in matters of pure taste, my Californian palate remains steadfast and loyal to its homeland. In other words, I think the Judgment of Paris was pretty right on the money. There, I said it (duck, cringe). Now, taste by definition is totally and completely subjective, but this is my blog and I’m allowed to be as subjective as I like! I may deeply love France and its wines, and will continue to advocate their appreciation and enlightened consumption, but my wine drinker’s heart still belongs to Napa Valley. What can I say? The heart has its raisins, and the raisins know nothing about it.