A little while ago now, Nick and I bought some new appliances. The refrigerator is nice. I mean, it’s not hard to be nicer than our old one; the new one wins just by virtue of having some parts that are not currently broken, and adds to its healthy lead with cute little touches like the super-fast freezing drawer (summer cocktails, here we come!).
But the range.
I hadn’t thought a great deal about ranges…well, ever. As long as they heated things up (and I like gas burners better, please), I figure they’re doing their job. I have always accepted whatever came with the apartment I was currently renting, and I did my best with it. I was even philosophical when, on arriving in Paris, I discovered that a self-lighting range is by no means standard here. I went through box after box of matches with relatively good humor, occasionally singeing fingers and once nearly taking my eyebrows clean off, and started cursing only months into the adventure, after the oven began requiring four or five matches and the broiler took to spontaneously and silently shutting itself off.
The new one, though, does so much more than light itself.
We saw it months ago, and fell in love at first sight. Wouldn’t you? So when we decided that we had had enough of the madness that accompanied even simple tasks like heating a frozen pizza, we knew exactly what we would buy.
“It has a rotisserie spit,” Nick crowed. “It’s self-cleaning,” I whispered. But even so, I didn’t really understand the change that was coming.
Like I said, I’m usually just looking to make cold things hot, but now I suddenly find myself on the other side of the “If your oven has a ______ attachment….” divide. I’ve been improvising and making do for so many years that this is actually a rather tricky adjustment. “I know it can do convection,” I muttered while baking about a hundred scones for these nice people, “but I can just watch them.” I kept using our little hen timer instead of the built-in one, I pretended that the electric burner didn’t exist, and I insisted on using “intuition” rather than the digital indicator to tell me when the oven was preheated.
It’s kind of a culinary Stockholm syndrome.
Nick’s enthusiasm for rotisserieing, though (I’m adding that to my browser’s dictionary, and you should, too!), has started to snap me out of it. It has also led me to do the thing that he (and anyone else who read that Times article) believes is a “must” of living in Paris: I have forged a relationship with a butcher.
It’s okay; it’s strictly a professional one.
“Go ask him what that is,” Nick hissed as we passed by the compelling and repulsive display window. “And if it’s no good, just tell him we want something to roast!” He gallantly offered to stay outside with the dog. Wuss.
The first hitch was when the butcher announced that the pretty package in the window that had called out to Nick was, in fact, a lamb brain. I mean, he said a lot of things about it: apparently some were marinating in a green herb sauce while others were in a Provençal sort of mix, and they’re a delicacy, and something about how they’re wrapped–I missed most of it.
“Right,” I said. “I’m not brave enough for that, actually. My husband wants something that would be good to roast, is all.”
“Well…those would, for starters,” he said with some confusion, gesturing toward the sinister little bundles.
“Um….” I looked again; something was wrong here. “Just to make sure I understood: you said those are brains?”
“I said they’re lamb,” he said. I could actually see him preparing to treat me like a two-year-old.
“I know–I heard ‘lamb brains,’” I explained lamely.
This seemed to be about the funniest thing he ever heard, and he went running behind his counter to grab a giant…lamb leg. And waved it in the air. “It’s this part right here,” he chortled, pointing out a section. “They take this part, and then [blah, blah, blah].” (The “blahing” turned out to be “cover it in the marinade, wrap the whole thing in a webbing of fat, and hope you survive the meal,” but I didn’t know that until later.) Anyway, although he told us (in great detail) how to cook it, roasting ≠ rotisserieing (already a useful word!!), so the lamb, while amazingly delicious, was a bit undercooked in the middle.
Definitely worth another try, then, right?
So I went back in about a week later for a chicken. “The cheapest one,” I specified; butchers are pricey! He made a beeline for one, and I called out after him, “And…could I please have it without the head…or organs…or anything?”
“Absolutely!” he cheered. “This is the one you want–” and he swung it toward me. It still had a feathered, beaked head. And curved gray feet.
He stared at me when I jumped back. “I’m an American,” I stammered. “We don’t have chickens like that.”
(Incidentally, that was the second time in a week that I had used my nationality to explain away my bizarre behavior; it was also handy when I was caught peering out from behind the curtain of my fitting room at the shared mirror rather than just parading out into the middle of the store in clothes that may or may not have remotely fit, the way that a French woman certainly would have.)
Our butcher turned the chicken, inspecting it. I could swear that he looked it in the eye. “What kind do you have?”
“Ours come in plastic.”
I tried explaining to him how Americans tend to prefer not to think about eating an animal when they eat meat, and how uniformity and convenience are more valuable commodities than taste (witness chain restaurants). He still believes that he could make a fortune if he ever moved to the U.S., as if people only buy boneless, skinless chicken breasts from part-time employees who would rather be anywhere else because…well, they just don’t know any better. He may not be wrong, you know. He grilled me about cooking the bird as he beheaded it and burned off its remaining feathers with a blowtorch. I was relieved to have stuck the word for “rotisserie” (“turn-spit,” kind of) firmly in my brain before he attacked me with poultry, because it seemed like I earned some respect just for having one.
The chicken was mind-blowing. It kind of made me want to go hug our butcher. I really, really hope that he doesn’t go off to the New World to try his luck just yet, but if he does? I’ll tell you how to look him up.