Immoveable Feast: A Paris Christmas

By John Baxter
Author of A Pound of Paper and We'll Always Have Paris

CONTACT: Audrey Harris, 212-207-7185
audrey.harris@harpercollins.com

As any true foodie knows, the next best thing to eating a delicious meal is reading about it. From critically acclaimed writer John Baxter comes a delicious memoir set in the greenmarkets and farmhouse tables of France at its most delightful. Baxter's writings about Parisian life have earned him praise from Newsday, "a man with a great appeciation of what makes Paris tick" and the London Sunday Times "towers above most recent [chroniclers] of life abroad." His latest book is his best yet: IMMOVEABLE FEAST (Harper Perennial; Trade Paperback Original; On-Sale: September 23, 2008; $13.95) is the charming, funny, and improbable story of how a man who was raised on white bread-and didn't speak a word of French-unexpectedly ended up with the sacred duty of preparing the annual Christmas dinner for a Parisien family.

Already, IMMOVEABLE FEAST has captivated critics: Publishers Weekly compared Baxter to David Sedaris, noting the "wry perspective of an outsider permitted into a secret world and eager to share the rules with other visitors," while Kirkus Reviews called Baxter "an amiable, jocular companion," predicting that "readers will greedily consume the succulent narrative."

Ernest Hemingway called Paris "a moveable feast" - a city ready to embrace you at any time in your life when you feel able to return its embrace. For Los Angeles-based film critic John Baxter, that moment came when he fell in love with a French woman and impulsively moved to Paris to marry her. As a test of his love, his in-laws charged him with cooking the next Christmas banquet-for eighteen people in their ancestral family home. "In evocative prose, [Baxter] deconstructs the dinner's elements and travels from market to vineyard and from butcher to cheese monger to assemble a dinner his judgmental relatives will appreciate . . . Gathering together the freshest oysters, impeccable apples, perfectly ripe cheese, a prime Bordeaux vintage, and a show-stopping roast suckling pig laid out on antique linens finally earns him the family's acceptance." (Booklist) The result is a delightfully contemporary celebration of local produce, slow food, and the way that the heart of a culture can be found in its produce stands. Beautifully illustrated with illustrations from old French magazines, IMMOVEABLE FEAST perfectly evokes the pleasures of the holiday season.

Please let me know if you would like a review copy of this delightful memoir. I look forward to discussing review and feature opportunities with you soon.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
John Baxter is an acclaimed film critic and biographer. His subjects have included Woody Allen, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, and Robert De Niro. He is the author of We'll Always Have Paris (a B & N Discover selection) and A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict. Baxter also is the co-director of the Paris Writers Workshop and gives walking tours through Paris Through Expatriate Eyes. He lives with his wife and daughter in Paris, in the onetime apartment of Sylvia Beach-original owner of the legendary Shakespeare & Company bookshop.

IMMOVEABLE FEAST: A Paris Christmas
John Baxter

Harper Perennial; Trade Paperback Original
ISBN: 0061562335
Price: $13.95/ 288 pages
On Sale: September 23, 2008

JOHN'S GUIDE TO THE BEST PARIS MARKETS
Place de Aligre, 12th arrondissement.
Tuesday to Saturday 8am to 1pm and 4pm-7:30pm, Sundays 8am-1pm.

The best of the inner Paris markets, Aligre sprawls along the streets that surround the 18th century covered Marche Beauvau (opened 1777). The main customers are provident Muslim housewives with large families, so "Pile it high and sell it cheap" is the rule. Hence the heaps of aubergines, courgettes, red, yellow, green and even black peppers, half a dozen types of onions, and sheaves of fresh-cut coriander and flat-leaf parsley. Everything goes by fives, tens or dozens, including meat. Lean lamb and beef is priced in 5-kilo batches, making this a favorite of restaurateurs and home cooks with large freezers. As a bonus, Aliugre hosts an interesting junk market at weekends.

Marché Buci. 6th arrondissement. Tuesday to Sunday, 8am to 1pm.

The market I know best, since it's just around the corner from our apartment, and I've shopped here ever since I came to Paris. Most locals patronize the soul-less Champion supermarket, where they seem always to be filling the shelves, but I like the big open-air fruit and vegetable vendor at the corner, the cheese merchant Fromagier # 31, and the butcher with his large selection of hams, sausages, pates and, in season, boar, hare and pheasant.

But Marche Buci is deceptive. For a start, it's not on Rue Buci at all, but occupies the block of Rue de Seine running from Boulevard St Germain to Rue Buci. And though the fruit-and-veg market may look independent, it's owned by Champion. However it still encourages customers to pick and choose, and their produce is some of the best in the arrondissement, though hardly the cheapest.

More important for the visitor, vendors are used to clients with limited French. (For a while, the produce store even displayed a large sign in English saying "Help Yourself" until it was explained this wasn't the same as "Make Your Own Selection") . Three open-air restaurants serve light lunches, and Fromagier # 31 offers a plate with your choice of five cheeses and a glass of wine which gives one a chance to taste those knobbly, pungent and mouldy products of obscure dairies which one wouldn't otherwise risk buying.

Marché Raspail. Boulevard Raspail. 6th arrondissement, Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays, 8am to 1pm.

Ask anyone to visualize a Paris market, and they will describe something like Marche Raspail, which occupies the centre island of busy Boulevard Raspail, one of the main streets running up from the Seine to the cafes and artistic traditions of Montparnasse.

To see and be seen, Marche Raspail on Saturday morning is definitely the place to be.

This is "Bio" day, supposedly devoted to biologic fruit and vegetables, but aside from a few vendors with authentically crooked and dirt-encrusted carrots and potatoes, the fruits, vegetables, cheeses and charcuterie are classically and decidedly French in their political incorrectness. A great place to stroll and take pictures, but you might like to keep walking up the hill to Rodin's commanding statue of Balzac at the intersection with Boulevard Montparnasse, and eat at Brasserie Fernande or the huge, noisy but never boring La Coupole.

Marché Mouffetard. Rue Mouffetard. 5th arrondissement. Every day, but best on Sunday mornings 8am to 1pm.

One needs to be wary to the word "authentic" when talking about Paris, but for the visitor interested in experiencing in concentrated form both a sense of what it was like to live in the Paris of the 1930s and what remains of that spirit today, the market on Rue Mouffetard is a good place to begin.

For a start, this was the stamping ground of Ernest Hemingway (who lived at 74 rue du Cardinal-Lemoine, next to Place de la Contrescape, where the market begins), as well as George Orwell, who wrote part of his lugubrious Down and Out in Paris and London in Rue Pot-de-Fer - not to mention Verlaine, Balzac and Rabelais. It also figures in more recent books ,eg, the opening of John Le Carre's Smiley's People.

The market itself is a plunge into old Paris, with vendors' stalls, queues of customers and cafe tables all jostling for space. The shouts of the fruit and vegetable vendors compete with the street singers and musicians, though all are inundated by the endless roar of conversation, since, for the French, it's as unimaginable to shop without discussion as it is to make love.

John's Tips for Preparing Unusual Greenmarket Finds

Not long ago, the lady next in line at the fruit and vegetable vendor in our local market noted me buying some fresh courgette flowers and asked "What do you do with those, actually?"

I explained that I stuffed them with a farce of crab or minced pork, dipped them in a light batter, and fried them crisp. But it reminded me that one of the drawbacks of a seasonal cuisine, where one cooks whatever's fresh in the market that day, is a tendency to skip the unfamiliar and select something for which you already have a recipe, and you know your family or guests will like.
Here are some of my favourite oddities, and the way I like to cook (or at least eat) them.

Oursins. Sea urchins. Surrealist painter Salvador Dali claimed he prepared these according to an old Catalan recipe, with chocolate. It supposedly gave him wonderful dreams. I prefer to slice off the top, scrape out the little buds of violet roe that cling to the interior, and simply spread them on bread. The flavor also goes well with eggs, and the chef at La Petite Cour on Rue Mabillon serves them with creamy scrambled egg, and the roe arranged on top.

Escargots. A commonplace of French menus, snails are almost invariably served in their shells, oozing melted butter flavoured with garlic and parsley. Rather than risk grease strains down my shirt, I prefer the recipe used at the Bon St Pourcain on Rue Servandoni. The chef serves them out of their shells, in a special dish with a dozen wells, each just big enough for one snail. His sauce uses butter and roughly-chopped garlic, but with a hint of anise-flavoured pastis.

Riz-de-Veau. Sweetbreads. American food markets tiptoe round what the British call "offal", using euphemisms like "variety meats". Though I shy away from testicles, I enjoy most organs, with a preference for kidneys, calves' liver and the thymus gland of the milk-fed calf, aka riz-de-veau or sweetbreads. Their texture is less chewy than kidney but meatier than liver, and the flavor lends itself to delicate, sweeter accompaniments than its more robust relatives. I toss them in seasoned flour and sauté them in unsalted butter with a few shelled walnuts, and make a sauce of the pan juices deglazed with white wine or Charentaise pineau, a sweet mixture of fermented grape juice and cognac.

Trompettes de Mort. Black chanterelles, or wood mushrooms. Literally "Trumpets of Death", these small fluted horn-shaped relatives of the more familiar girolle turn up in the early autumn. They often remain unbought, so growers combine them with undersized girolles, cepes and other wood mushrooms, dry or freeze them, and market the mix as Melange Forestier. I like them lightly sautéed and mixed with pasta as an accompaniment to a ragout of some rich gamey meat, like sanglier - wild boar.

Oreille de porc. Pig's Ear. The Chicago stockyards used to boast "We use every part of the pig except the squeal". French charcutiers - pork butchers - follow this rule, with particular attention to the head. After being steamed tender, the cheek meat is chopped fine, and embedded in aspic to make tete de porc, while the snout or museau is sliced thinly and served chilled in vinaigrette as an appetizer. The ears are boiled until the meat is limp, gelatinous and almost transparent. Them they're split, stuffed with a spicy pork mixture, quickly deep fried in an egg-white batter, and served with Sauce Ravigote, a light meaty veloute flavored with vinegar, chopped onions, gherkins and fresh herbs.