"...I rather would entreat thy company
To see the wonders of the world abroad
Than, living dully sluggardized at home,
Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness."
 – Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona








July 30


We did not then that our scouting out of Salamanca would be such a small part of the journey of en pot, there could be no way to know – but that there are certain portions of one's life, I am still convinced to the day, move in different paces, different rhythms. Far too often it is only the content of our years that seem to stack up to make any difference, as though we live for what might be enscrolled onto the gravestone: he was raised in the Midwest, he went to college, he trained at Company Y, and then he hunkered down into that trade like a mole in the dirt tunnels. This was a certain pace, a certain rhythm, and it should work fine, thank you, for so many; yet as we had arrived in Salamanca, what was it that I was feeling at the moment? As we looked across the street from Hotel Rector, each building and each rampart was far more new than I believe some people experience in life times. It is a cafe and restaurant town you begin to see so very quickly as you rise up the cobblestone walkways into the city center, that very labyrinth that must be understood, to very quickly, by all Americans that cannot be fully understood. American cities are blocks and they are square; the Salamanca streets are curved delights, small trails through golden blocks, like cakes, standing in the sunshine, bold, robust, and unmistakably creative. "I think it would be very possible to sit here at the cathedra and look at its red doors for hours," my daughter said. A guitarist was sitting quite causally at a step. He was dark haired, wise, and strong with his guitar, a virtual weapon of serenity. We walked through the street leading to the city center. It opens gradually, like a stage, and opens, for us, Americans, again, used to a sort of set-stage, into something that is tragic-comic, old and new, but very unpredictable, full of seats and waiters moving in and out of clean tables. Of the smells that rise from each small cut out, it is very difficult to describe, to comprehend, Salamanca, a cafe town, restaurants, at ever edge of every block.

My French Kitchen Daily

“The carnival is gone. Once a year the village flares into transient brightness, but even now the warmth has faded, the crowd dispersed." – Harris, from Chocolat










July 28


Some mornings he woke not far from the sliding glass door just inside of the balcony overlooking Lake Monona. On these mornings he knew it would have been much better to have headed home after the clean-up in the restaurant, after the last of the dishwashers had headed home themselves, but that he might drift up into his office without thinking much about it at that late hour, as the city near the capitol, where the buildings met the lake, there was such luminous sort of haze over it all that it seemed quite unlike any city that one might find in the midwest. Last night he had looked over the lake, a steel bluish gray, and there was nothing there save the party barge barely bobbing at the dock. A few street dwellers sat like tree limbs on benches, and he felt for a minute that this might his coast at Brittany and he held out this feeling and he thought for a moment that en pot, his mark on the city, was a transportation of the real thing and it gave him a very sound feeling and he did not want to sleep. "Head home," Andreah, the hostess, had told him; he had already been in the kitchen since that morning, placing cold product into all of the proper places in the cold room and closer yet into the refrigerators. "This is our first night of bouillabaisse," he said and of course knew that everybody else knew this also, for it had been of great discussion for several days ahead of time. Andreah had been a cook herself and knew the trade well. She had grown up inside a restaurant, her grandfathers, in a small town not far out side of Madison, had skipped around several restaurants around town until she had children, and then decided to take her skills to hostessing. She was an easy pick for him the day that he hired her; in fact, she was the first and only person that he interviewed; some people understand the restaurant business, others are the business. He had tied his waist band and had already begun to pull out the sole, when she walked up to him.

My French Kitchen Daily

"This very old recipe was originally cooked in a pot balanced on three stones, and was dish of the poor, designed to make the most of cheap, common ingredients." – Harris, 'Rich Bouillabaisse' from My French Kitchen











July 27


He had looked back at those very early days along the docksides, learning that the food we ate was not something that came in a box, but real and live, and from the sea in this case, so that when the cooking began it was understood that we were all – he thought then that to learn from the ground up, the sea up – was something of a brotherhood, was to touch something quite real, to care for, even love; if the cook could take into consideration where this sole came from and where it lived and perhaps even loved, he came to see that that love was then transferred over onto the menu, and from there to the plate, and from there the experience that the diners would enjoy. Casulet, the greatest of chefs in Brittany, and told him many times that the most important of the chef's day was the bright early morning at the docks or at the markets. "It is not just price, you see, although price makes a difference over the long haul, of course. It is that you have suffered just a bit yourself awaking early and getting dressed and walking down to the dock men. See how it is that they live. When they see you, they will fish a little harder, they will use proper techniques because that is what you, the caregiver of the of recently passed, demand. The great chef is a part of the chain you see." At Casulet's he learned, above all else, humility of the origins of things. Casulet's was 4-stars by design. It could have been 5 with only a slight bit more time by Casulet himself, but he did not want that. He wanted to remain in a small hamlet and humble and connected to the water itself not the routine of colorful images that would splash across the magazines, although there was that too. When he had moved back to the states, he already knew what would be the name someday of his own place here in five lakes city of Madison on lake Monona, en pots, for it came from Casulet's desire to use the ground morsels of leftovers from various butchering. Here he had docks but not fishing necessarily; that was what he missed most, the sole for the cotriade, for the bouillabaisse, but he had access to the pigs, and so en pot was what it would be. He sat on a second level balcony off of Machinery Row and looked out over the lake considering his first menu.

My French Kitchen Daily

"We came on the wind of the carnival. A warm wind for February, laden with the hot greasy scents of frying pancakes and sausages and powdery-sweet waffles cooked on the hot plate right there by the roadside, with the confetti sleeting down collars and cuffs and rolling in the gutters like an idiot antidote to winter." – Joanne Harris, from Chocolat









July 26


He had not been here long, along the coast at Perros-Gueric, such a small and stone-filled village overlooking the sharp and snapping foil of the coast of Brittany, but he found his fishmongers down at the docks as quickly as he could. "I have been told to make Cotriade," he had then told the larger of the two men who were clearly unloading something other than fish, likely Langoustine, and the man did nothing more than look up quickly enough to assess the seriousness of the eyes, and shrugged his shoulders down the dock to an old man who working the nets of his trawler through his hands. "Good enough," he said, and brought his basket along with him, as he did then in the beginning. Here at this part of the coast there was a sort of painting quality to it all; who could make such scenes up? He had been land locked back in the states for many years; here the world was not about land, but its more dominant counterpart, the sea, it was as dominant as any chain of farm fields from the midwest might have ever been. The men who working these docks weren't really men of this age, he thought, but maybe with a little different style of hair or more advanced sea coats and rubber boots, were really of the past weren't they? He had been trained to consider food as story and take the time to get to know

each character, each player, the scene, the context, of course, but here it all was in an instant, the novel itself, and he was merely walking through it a minor player himself. There were moments, he thought then, when history takes its proper place and overwhelms you; it presents you with a scene that assures you of your insignificance. He felt mildly sheepish approaching the old man at his boat. "The two men there," he pointed, "said you might have sole for my cotriade?" He could not expect himself to speak the language at this point and hoped for English in return. "English, ah?" His eyes were of the sea, oysters themselves, a nose of tan leather. He did nothing more than reach down below decks and picked out two fish, one per hand. "These two are for you" he said in chipped English, "if you promise to do well by them. These two I catch by single line. Good little fighters." He had taken them back that day to his small kitchen where every essential imaginable was available to him but much was hidden and loaded in drawers that he would not have guessed. His partner, Dash as they called him for his sometimes frantic pace in cooking, had guaranteed him all of the necessary tools if he came here; he was correct, all could be found, but only after some searching. He spun around to his first enter, Grilled Sole with Hollandaise. The first step, he knew, was complete. He had retrieved his fresh fish. All else would come much more easily. He would save parts for the cotriade later.

Odes to Monona

"I was walking
down
a sizzling road:
the sun popped like
a field of blazing maize..."
   – Neruda, from "Ode to Bicycles"





A long string
of beautiful bright days
I see like beads
on a necklace as they continue on
one after another
and how we can wear
this with love
and solitude as we plan
our hours by hands
on our pastel flowers by the garden,
our hands as watering cans –
what joy
to bring a fresh sparkle
to the rounded heads
of the purple coneflower,
reflections
of the very pristine beads,
drought resistant...
thick as thumb, tough as honeycomb,
ever growing.

The river passes
by as a chest of velvet
does it not?
Is it not a fabric of motion,
green by cover
of the spread oaks
overhead,
the couple who walk across
riverside drive
with a red kayak
over their shoulder
their eyes on the cool waves ahead
and I wonder if love
is green –
is it red –
is it the blue of bicycle
of that I riding down the street?

Others pass by
holding loosely their happy dogs,
retrievers by the same sunlight
blond, glistening
walking through the jewels
through the thin fabrics
and necklaces of the streets,
on my way
to a draft brewery
I sing
and cannot continue peddling,
as I see the sky
is the cloth of a blue dome,
soft, savoring, lovely
and caring
for you and me.

My French Kitchen Daily

"Margrets de Canard a l'Orange is a variation on the classic dish of duck with organ. Duck works well with sweet tastes, and this is a quick and stress-free version to prepare." – Harris, My French Kitchen












July 22

Duck may be a little like Lamb: once you have sampled the perfectly executed lamb chop, it is difficult to figure out why you would desire beef; if duck breast is done well, and if the selection is a fresh nice cut, then you wonder why chicken or turkey. In Harris's introduction, she makes it abundantly clear the mission of her book and the style that comes along with it – keep the selections simple, and remember that for the average great French foodie, it is all about the fresh selection of product that you choose. By the case of the duck then we can only sense that anything store bought is clearly not going to exhibit the raw flight of the recently harvested bird. Like so many other food forms, many of us will never truly understand the difference. For Harris, she always points us in the direction of the seller of the fresh; for those of us over here, we would have to rely on the marsh hunters, which many of us did as kids but don't have that access any longer. Once the fresh selection is found, she asks that we cross hatch the skin of each duck breast before cooking. This will allow for a more even rising of heat through the dense meat. Much fat is rendered in duck breast cooking; keep that after cooking for ten minutes. An orange gets segmented and laid over the duck breast, adding orange juice to the skillet with rendered fat juices, then add a corn starch paste, a pinch of grand mariner, and this will be the drizzle over the birds, plus salt and pepper. The photograph to the side of the recipe of a wonderful little French concrete back stoop with Ivy climbing from the ground up along the upper shudders of a narrow glass door. We can smell de Canard, a slight orange accent, wafting alongside those ivy limbs and tantalizing the bedroom inhabitant above.

My French Kitchen Daily

"If I were to plan my last meal, Fruits de Mer would be the main course. To me it evokes everything that is good about food: the joy of excellent ingredients, simply presented; the time it takes to eat; and the pleasure of eating in an informal environment, surrounded by friends and family."
    – Harris, My French Kitchen










July 21

When we take a longing look at the picture of the seafood platter, as it sits an enormous deep white plate brimming over with the excitingly archaic structures of clam and crab shells, we can't help but wish that this pride of the ocean, this favorite meal of the ocean goers, was an abundance that did not carry an concern for sustainable numbers of each of these species. In a modern context of post-abundance, however, no matter how utterly beautiful the notion of the seafood platter – periwinkles, for goodness sakes!...seaweed! – it feels a little more a plate that represents a once in a lifetime, like something to savor like a grand splurge, to order such a thing. It's beauty, as Harris says, is that "it requires time and leisure. It encourages conversation, cooperation, intimacy, and friendship. It is the ideal thing for a large and cheery get together." Agreed. I, along with every other long time cooker of seafood, have come to the conclusion that there are virtually no other food sources that convey a place, an element of our earth, mores than fresh seafood. Cattle for beef, plants as our vegetables, fruits off of our trees; yes, of course all of these remind of us air, water, and earth, but how to

compare to the raw briny swishing nature of how sea creatures carry their surroundings; and so this preciousness is a wonderful cook's learning moment by which we at once respect and adore these creatures and our abilities, for so many generations, to pluck them from the sea, and can see how they have transformed our sociability; and by the same token, a perfect reminder of how to preserve the oysters, the mussels, the Dungenes with a strong and calculating will of resistance to over harvesting and over eating. It is at this moment that we might sense that all the fun is being taken out of the Seafood Platter – why must we limit? – but I'm to sure the logic holds if what we are doing is savoring this same miracle of a platter for future generations. It is true that we might not be able to eat the same bounty as often, but far better than eliminating the option for all later down the road. As we might look over the beautiful ceramic style art of the shells as we finish this meal, we might even say a prayer of the sea, and acknowledge, without any false sentiment, how lucky we have been. Down the channel of this imagination we see our ancestors eating the very same meal; we see two generations forward with the same gift of a treat.