French Lessons (8 page)

Sulfites, according to my
dictionary, are salts or esters of sulfurous acid, and can lead to severe
allergic reactions in susceptible individuals. Their use as preservatives of
fruit and vegetables was banned by the United States Food and Drug
Administration in 1986. And yet there they are, those sulfites, brazen as can
be, bobbing around in your Chardonnay. A sobering thought indeed, and one that
caused me to make a few apprehensive inquiries. It seems that I needn’t
have worried; all is well for the vast majority of wine drinkers. The
exceptions are usually asthma sufferers—but only very few of
them—who might find themselves allergic to sulfites. For the rest of us,
a glass or two a day will do more good than harm.

Very little is
allowed to escape the current passion for disclosure, and we cannot be far from
the day when restaurants will follow the trend to come clean and provide us
with more complete information about their specials of the day. Menu writers,
of course, will be obliged to extend and amplify their seductive vocabularies:
prime aged steak, enhanced with free-range hormones; French beans and garden
peas, genetically modified in God’s clean fresh air; roast leg of lamb,
cloned with loving care; veal chops, with a tasty hint of steroids. And all of
it will be prepared by the most sanitary of chefs, wearing rubber gloves and a
surgical face mask. No wonder we’re growing taller and living
longer.

Interest in food and concern about its life before reaching the
table are also beginning to have increasing influence over our social behavior.
I read some time ago that a celebratory evening of foie gras at the Smithsonian
Institution had to be canceled because of protests about the way in which the
livers of ducks and geese are fattened. This led me to think about another
bird, eaten by millions every day, but reared for the most part in conditions
of carefully maintained obscurity: the chicken.

In many countries,
chicken is no more than a commodity with an enviable reputation—bland,
versatile, easy to prepare, inoffensive to even the most delicate of palates;
invalids’ food, as harmless as a vegetable, a healthy alternative to
heavy red meat. I wonder how long that enviable reputation would survive if
more of us were familiar with the methods used to raise some of these
unfortunate creatures. Here is a brief extract from an article written by
André Giovanni, editorial director of
Santé,
a French
magazine devoted to questions of health. While it is true that the French pay
closer attention to the origins of what they eat than many other nationalities,
it’s easy to understand Giovanni’s distaste and alarm when he
describes the typical life cycle of mass-produced chickens:

Squeezed
into batteries, fed on products containing polluted animal matter, stuffed with
antibiotics, their beaks cut off, living their entire lives without seeing
daylight.

And then they’re slaughtered and passed along to us.
Under these barbaric but cost-effective conditions, one man can oversee the
rearing of 280,000 chickens a year (compared with a mere 25,000 a year if more
humane methods are used).

No doubt this horrific regime exists in
France, as in the rest of the civilized world. But at least in France and, I
hope, elsewhere, there is a choice—or rather, a range of
choices—that provides a better life for the chicken, and a better chicken
for the consumer. You might call it a pecking order.

At the bottom is
the plain old farmyard chicken, raised—
en liberté,
as the
French say—in the open air in the traditional way, allowed to feed on
whatever nature provides. Then we have the biological or organic chicken, with
a controlled diet that is guaranteed free of any chemical seasonings. And
finally, there is the ultimate chicken, the only chicken to have its own
appellation contrôlée,
the chicken from Bresse.

I
had endured several lectures about the glories of the Bresse chicken from my
friend Régis, who for some years now has been instructing me as to what
I should and shouldn’t eat and drink. But his eulogies, or what I could
make sense of when he wasn’t busy kissing his fingertips and moaning with
remembered pleasure while describing some past feast, were confined to taste
and recipes. He was vague on detail, as to why the flavor was so elegant, so
delicate, so exquisite, so typically
French
(his words, not mine). And
so when I heard that the most important event of the chicken year was taking
place just before Christmas, I persuaded him to go with me to the town of
Bourg-en-Bresse for the annual celebration known as Les Glorieuses.

The
elite chicken zone of Bresse, about eighty kilometers north of Lyon, forms a
rectangle roughly one hundred kilometers long and forty wide (sixty miles by
twenty-five miles). To the west, just the other side of the autoroute, are the
illustrious names and vineyards of Burgundy, and as we started seeing road
signs to Fleurie and Juliénas and Mâcon, Régis began to
fidget.

“It so happens,” he said, “that I know a
couple of wonderful addresses we could try, not far from here.” He tapped
his fingers on the car’s dashboard and began to hum in his rather
pleasant light baritone as he waited for me to reply.

I had heard that
hum before from Régis. I don’t think he even knows he’s
doing it, but it comes out every time he looks at a menu or a wine list. There
is clearly a direct line between his vocal cords and his stomach, and the hum
is like a radar beep, a signal that something delicious cannot be too far
away.

My watch showed 10:30. “A bit early for lunch, isn’t
it?”

He turned an innocent face toward me. “Wine,
mon
vieux,
wine. We could slip over to Chiroubles and fill up the car with
Beaujolais. A detour, nothing more.” He thought for a moment.
“Although there is the Auberge at Fleurie if we should find ourselves
nearby at lunchtime.” He glanced at the map lying open on his lap, and
pretended to be surprised. “Which we would. What a piece of
luck.”

“Well, perhaps we could stop on the way back. I
don’t want to miss the chickens.”

Régis emitted a
gusty sigh (and I’d heard plenty of those before, too). “The
trouble with you English,” he said, “is your reluctance to enjoy
yourselves, your distrust of pleasure. What could be more agreeable than a
dégustation
followed by a little light lunch?” The
humming resumed.

I ignored criticism of my fun-loving countrymen.
“Régis, you forget. I know you.”

“So?”

“You haven’t had ‘a little
light lunch’ in years. We’d stagger out of the restaurant at
three-thirty, looking for somewhere to lie down. This is supposed to be a
working trip. We’re here to see chickens.”

“
Pouf,”
said Régis, and sulked in
silence all the way to Bourg.

The greatest chicken show on earth was
taking place at the Parc des Expositions on the outskirts of Bourg. Here, in a
modern complex of enormous exhibition halls surrounded by acres of parking
space, you would normally expect to find business conventions of one sort or
another, or trade shows promoting the latest in combine-harvester technology.
It was a long way from the rolling meadows of the countryside, and it seemed an
incongruous setting for farmers and poultry.

As we made our way to the
information office, Régis was still wearing the doleful air of a man
cheated out of his divine right to a long lunch. A brisk, helpful woman brought
us up-to-date on the details of the event. This afternoon, she told us, would
be mainly devoted to the opening formalities, with a panel discussion among
various movers and shakers from local industries. And in the evening,
bien
sûr,
there was the official dinner.

Régis looked
sideways at me and then, in a tone of icy politeness, turned to the woman.
“And chickens, madame? When might one expect to see chickens?”

Madame passed him a folder. “It’s all in there,” she
said. “The chickens being exhibited will be arranged in the halls between
four-thirty and seven tomorrow morning. The jury convenes at six-thirty and
will start judging at seven. Doors will be open to the public at ten. Then,
monsieur, you will see your chickens.”

“
Ah,
bon,”
said Régis, looking at me again. “Ten
o’clock tomorrow morning before we can see any chickens.
Merci,
madame.”

I have spent more convivial afternoons than the one
that followed. My companion was a model of reproach, fortunately mostly silent.
But he didn’t need to speak; the missed lunch—the
needlessly
missed lunch—loomed between us like an unwanted third
person. In an effort to distract Régis from thoughts of the flesh, I
took him to see a local landmark on the outskirts of town, the
sixteenth-century church at Brou, a marvel of Gothic architecture, only to find
it closed for renovation. It wasn’t until we crossed the road to look at
the menu posted outside a restaurant, the Auberge Bressane, that a very faint
hum hinted at a return to good humor. I thought it was time to make
amends.

“I’m sorry about this morning,” I said.
“Bad planning. The least I can do is buy you dinner this
evening.”

Régis pretended not to have heard. “I see
they recommend frogs’ legs to start with.” The hum returned, a
little louder than before. Things were looking up. “It would be
interesting to compare their taste to that of the chicken—one must have
chicken when in Bresse, don’t you think?” It seemed that all had
been forgiven.

We spent what was left of the afternoon exploring Bourg.
I was all for buying a chicken to take back with me, but Régis advised
waiting until the next day, when, as we’d been told, there would be no
shortage of prime fowl to choose from.

So we went shopping for
postcards instead, finding that Bourg-en-Bresse takes its role as chicken
capital of the world very seriously. Almost everywhere the tourist sets foot
nowadays, from Miami to Monte Carlo, the postcard of choice seems to be a
panoramic view of six perfectly formed, perfectly bronzed buttocks belonging to
three young ladies clad in G-strings and wishing we were there. I suppose it
makes a change from more traditional scenery, but it does little to convey the
true spirit of a place (with the possible exception of Miami). In Bourg,
however, there is no doubt what the visitor is expected to send home: a poultry
card. The favorite is a graphic illustration of three fine and brightly colored
birds—one blue, one white, one red—with a prominent reminder that
Bresse chickens are the recipients of an AOC, or
appellation
d’origine contrôlée,
a distinction that not even those
three well-rounded young ladies could claim.

The honor was officially
confirmed in 1957, nearly four hundred years after an entry in the archives of
Bresse noted that the local chicken enjoyed a
“belle
notoriété.”
This has developed over the centuries into
a
renommée mondiale,
or worldwide reputation, and it is a
reputation that is jealously protected.

Qualifications are extremely
strict. First of all, every chicken worthy of its
appellation
must
possess a patriotic external appearance, in colors that happen to repeat the
tricolor of the French flag:

• Blue feet. But not any old blue;
the feet must have the pale gleam of blue steel. And around the left ankle,
there must be an aluminum ring marked with the name and address of the farmer
responsible for raising that particular chicken.
• Entirely white
plumage, with no hint of the common chicken’s dowdy brown
tinge.
• A bright red crest. In the case of the cockerel, the
indentations on the crest must be sufficiently well developed to achieve that
desirable look of jagged virility.

In addition to the
blue-white-and-red ensemble, every bird must possess a fine skin, delicate bone
structure, and, in the official phrase, unctuous flesh. (I am sure that Bresse
is teeming with men who specialize in judging unctuous flesh.) There are even
rules about minimum weight: 1.5 kilos (3.3 pounds) for the standard chicken,
2.1 kilos (4.6 pounds) for the
poularde,
or more matronly chicken, and
3.8 kilos (8.4 pounds) for the capon.

These statistics and many others
were in the folder that we had picked up at the exhibition hall, and which we
were going through over a drink before dinner. I could tell that the
information was having an uplifting effect on my friend’s disposition.
“You see?” Régis kept on saying as he discovered more and
more evidence that his beloved France led the world in chicken
de
luxe.
“The care, the attention to detail, the refinement. Is there
anything like this in Britain? In America?” He didn’t give me a
chance to answer. “Of course not.”

I can imagine that many
people might find Régis and his relentless chauvinism a little hard to
take, but I like his enthusiasm, biased though it is. I’ve never met
anyone else who combines passion and knowledge—not to mention shameless
greed—when it comes to the correct degree of rot in a cheese or the ideal
temperature at which to serve tripe. At the same time, his dismissal of what he
considers to be inferior food and cooking (that is, almost everything not
French) is inventive and often very funny, even if it is highly prejudiced. To
hear him denouncing the cheeseburger, or the English way with brussels sprouts,
is to hear a talented gastronomic assassin in full cry. I’ve often
thought he would make a wonderfully savage restaurant critic. That night,
however, criticism was far from his mind. His mood had improved to such an
extent after two glasses of champagne that it was a distinctly benign
Régis who took his place opposite me in the restaurant, humming as he
looked around.

The Auberge Bressane sits at the upper end of the scale
between the simple bistro and those more elaborate establishments festooned
with stars by the Michelin guide. The lighting is soft, the table linen thick,
the atmosphere relaxed and comfortable; a man can take off his jacket and tuck
his napkin in his shirt collar without fear of provoking a sniff and a raised
eyebrow from a sartorially sensitive headwaiter.