Ptipois

They are, in a normal (i.e. not spoiled by tourism) situation. It isn't, Schneier.

Thank you Mangosteen and Onigiri for saying such nice things about me. Well I speak good French because I am French and I speak English because, uh, I'm not sure However, translating the whole blog post would be a bit more than I can afford to do with my current schedule, so for now I'll stick to the recipe and I hope I'm giving enough explanation. First of all, a summary of the preparation is visible (with English comments) at post #31 of this thread. Basically I've been using Pim's recipe for panaeng curry paste, which is on her blog. Shortly before I got into the competition, she e-mailed me that I could save time and elbow grease by dry-roasting the dried red chillies, seeding them and then grinding them in a coffee-grinder. Which I did. I also dry-roasted and ground the dry spices: white peppercorns, cumin seeds, black cardamom seeds, cloves, cassia, and star anise. Then I started pounding the same ingredients as in Pim's recipe, but I added some extra ingredients, in order to harmonize with Austin's recipe. Namely the cha ko (black cardamom) and fresh turmeric. The fresh turmeric makes the use of dried turmeric unnecessary. First turmeric and galangal with salt, Then I add red chilli powder, makrut zest, lemongrass and coriander roots. Then garlic and shallots, Then powdered spices and shrimp paste. To make the stew: I melted some chunks of dried coconut cream with a little oil in a Dutch oven, then I fried some of the curry paste in it, adding coconut milk three times as it boiled down. Add chicken, stir, add remanining coconut milk (1 litre = total quantity) and simmer for about 45 minutes. Deep-fry some noodles in wok. Drain on kitchen paper. Cut up limes, chop reserved shallots, and coriander leaves. Rinse, dry and chop pickled Chinese mustard. Deep-fry a few dried red chillies for a few seconds for garnish. Boil remaining noodles, rinse and drain. Put some noodles in bowls. Add stew + 1 chicken leg. Then the garnishes and a bit more sauce. Serve. Make sure no one chokes on anything.

Yes David, but nevertheless you had a point about French cuisine, in its present state, not being very good with fusion. It's not so much a cultural problem as a historical one. The facts I brought back to mind are all too often overlooked by the French themselves and it is true, in these days, that there is a reluctance to opening up to other influences, or if they do it always seems to be a bit more complicated than elsewhere. In France a chef will be likely to brag "look, I'm using coriander and long pepper now, ain't I cool?" while a British or American chef will just use them and not make a fuss about it. In those early years of the 21st century, we francos seem to be somewhat imprisoned in our beautiful culture, not quite finding either a way out (for renewal) or a way back (for going back to sources). It hasn't always been that way. And certainly not in the 17th and 18th century, when this culture was at its peak. A good example: go to Le Divellec for properly chosen, cooked and sauced fish, French style, and you won't find better anywhere. But let the same chef decide to make a tajine and, well — that's quite another metter. Younger chefs will be better at it, especially chefs who have travelled a lot. Which brings me to Le Pré Verre. I adore this restaurant and I count Philippe Delacourcelle as one of the most interesting, balanced and humble chefs in Paris now. I love his knowledge of spices and flavorings, a unique quality that he earned during his many long trips to Asia. But I also notice that the kitchen is tiny, and the kitchen crew quite stressed and hurried. I too have noticed an excessive sprinkling of spices just before sending out. That happens when the kitchen is overwhelmed. Last week I nearly choked and had a fit of cough on a layer of piment d'Espelette (and I suggested he should go easy on it: espelette is not something you want to stuff your mouth with). But I consider that sort of thing an accident, or a sign that they should push the kitchen walls — or give up turning the tables.

Corsica, owing to its geography, still retains much of its traditional lifestyle. Therefore it doesn't really have a restaurant culture, but small village auberges are often very nice, and young people are opening more and more of them. One of my Corsican friends still owns the family house in her village, in the heart of Castagniccia, and she's considering converting part of it into a guesthouse, for two small restaurants have opened recently and it's easier to acommodate visitors. It is also a culture of home and family cooking, and traditional products are very much alive: outstanding charcuterie, cheeses — from sweet white brocciu to real stinkers that walk by themselves —, anything based on chestnuts (even beer), orange concoctions, candied citron, wild mushrooms and wild herb-based preparations. It is by no means fancy but very high quality. I'd say do go to Corsica by all means, it is astoundingly beautiful. Try to avoid restaurants at seaside resorts but make sure you see and explore places like Bastia and L'Ile-Rousse, which has plenty of charm. Big café terraces shaded by plane trees are an absolute must. Never do order a pastis, or worse, a Pernod or a Ricard: ask for a Casa and everything will go fine. You can generally trust the small cafés and restaurants you'll find in mountain villages. But I should stress that the products you can buy at local food shops are more interesting than the restaurant scene, and bread can be good, and fruit are just like Italy, so Corsica is the perfect place for picnics (as long as you keep the maquis clean and never even think of lighting a match). When in Bastia, go to the large plane-shaded square in the old town where they have the flea market (a great flea market, btw). The Mattei factory (where they made and bottled local apéritifs like Cap-Corse) is still there, with beautiful art-deco mouldings and murals. Not far from that square, there is (or used to be) a wonderful pâtissier who is famous for his sour cherry millefeuille. Old-fashioned pâtisserie, i.e. the best kind (this was a hint to the Japanese-French pastry thread). Millefeuille is made in the morning and is all gone by 11 AM. I suppose you can ask anyone on the square: "Millefeuille?", and someone is sure to know. As for the wines, I second Roger's opinion on domaine-gentile muscats and Antoine Arena's whites. Arena also makes a wonderful muscat and his red patrimonios are among my favorite wines ever. I have a great memory of the tip end of the cap Corse. If you like the Mediterranean sea and peace and quiet, I suggest you go there. I remember a nice little taverna in Barcaggio where I was served a wonderful baked chapon fish (rascasse) with a lovely banana taboulé. It was a very peaceful place; that was a long time ago but I doubt it has changed much.

Thanks, Hiro. Your question inspired me a lot because it was pointing at matters I've been thinking about too. I'm glad I could be of some help to you.

If you had good rhubarb tarts in Paris, they were most probably the result of Alsatian skill. Honestly, rhubarb is not a familiar ingredient in Paris and pâtissiers have no particular talent for it, and no special recipes. The rhubarb tarts you're likely to come across in Parisian pâtisseries are Alsatian-style. And Alsatian pastry is not declining. In order to judge the decline of pastry shops in Paris and other parts of France, it is necessary to have seen the process at work for the last 30 years, be it in the decline of quality or the gradual disappearing of crucial pastry shops. And the process I'm describing is unfortunately quite real, however many good rhubarb tarts you've had. Where did you read such a thing? Unless you mistook my mention of Frédéric Robert, a French pâtissier now working in Vegas, for an opinion on American pastries. However, now that you mention it, and all things considered, I tend to have a high opinion of home-style American baking and pastry-making. It is, truly, a wonderfully rich and tasty tradition, and if I don't consider it superior to French home-style pastry-making, I certainly now rate it higher than most store-bought French pâtisserie in France.

This is not in contradiction with what I wrote. I made it clear that "good pâtisseries, in France, are not in Paris". That means provincial towns, which still have good pastry shops. And your mention of the Grand Véfour allows me to point out that what is particularly wrong in French pâtisserie centers around Paris. In the provinces, all is not lost quite yet. However, I am less optimistic than you are, because indeed, even in the regions, good pâtisseries are disappearing gradually. Rouen used to be one of the greatest French cities for pastry, with outstanding viennoiserie and butter pastries, and now most of its nice pâtisseries have closed. I am not mentioning the boulangeries-pâtisseries because they are not representative. The truth is that you can't really trust a boulangerie-pâtisserie, and that is for economic reasons: in most of them, a pâtisserie section is needed to insure a financial balance that couldn't be established with the bread sales only, because the price of the baguette is controlled and supposedly lower than the production costs. But this pâtisserie section is generally not very interesting. I'm referring to true pâtissiers-chocolatiers, the ones that don't sell any bread. And they're in trouble too, even if they still go on in the provinces. The decline of the French pâtisserie is mostly a Parisian phenomenon; the provinces follow at a slow pace but eventually they do follow, and that's exactly why I was blaming Parisianism, not provincialism, earlier on. Oh, about rhubarb. The French are indeed not very good at dealing with rhubarb, or rather are not very good anymore, but Alsatians still are. And many French pâtissiers are from Alsace. I'm ready to bet that the nice experiences that you had with rhubarb in France were caused either by an Alsatian pâtissier, or by someone dealing with rhubarb in really old-fashioned ways.

David, ours is a fusion culture, just like any other. You're right in the fact that many French have forgotten this in the latter part of the 20th century. But the French way of operating fusion is not by adding together, juxtaposing and sometimes mixing: it is done by absorbing, by making a heterogeneous element "completely French". Which makes the fusion not apparent, but it still is fusion. French cuisine absorbed every single spice brought in from the Colonies and Comptoirs in the 17th and 18th century. It absorbed ingredients from the New World (potatoes, beans, tomatoes, etc.) just like other European countries. It absorbed Italian court cuisine in the 16th century and that was the origin of modern French cuisine. It absorbed the many foreign influences from across borders through their "frontalier" regions, i.e. Savoie, Comté de Nice, Pays Basque, Flanders. A little-remembered fact, it absorbed much Russian cuisine and table service in the 19th century, an influence that remained visible until the 1970's and Nouvelle cuisine, and the curiosity for non-french cuisines was quite strong in the first part of the 20th century, as period domestic cookbooks will tell. Cassoulet (see the ingredients), the quintessential French dish, is typically a fusion dish. French culture was built from many fusions and influences, but it is true that it doesn't look that way, and most of the time it won't admit it. One of the most important modern French cultural illusions is this belief of being homogenous and sui generis, which is our particular brand of chauvinism. But one doesn't have to believe it...

I, too, think 7 euros for a Pierre Hermé individual pastry is way too expensive. Of course most of what you pay for is the added glamour, and the price includes the fees for the army of designers, packaging advisers and communication agents involved in the final look of the thing, but the ingredients and savoir-faire are those of classical pastry. Even the "supplément de talent", if there is one, IMO, is not enough to justify the high price. Before Nouvelle Pâtisserie appeared, and we hadn't been collectively gypped by the adoption of the euro, a good individual pâtisserie could be purchased for 7 to 11 francs. The French, in relation to their cuisine, seem to have an innate sense of what they call "rapport qualité-prix", price-quality ratio, and there is a level of price above which the ratio is just not interesting anymore, whatever the quality. Of course it is much easier for the French than for anyone else, it has to do with our cultural marks. Our collective memory is fed with examples of eating wonderfully at home or elsewhere for reasonable prices, though this knowledge seems to be waning. Of course they will splurge and, rarely, spend a lot of money on extraordinary food, "en connaissance de cause", because they will feel that the ratio is good. But they just don't seem to think that Nouvelle Pâtisserie is up to those standards. I don't, at any rate.

We do agree, but I don't incriminate provincialism in this case, and much less the inability to innovate. French pâtisserie used to be good once, it could be good again, so maybe the solution is not in "innovation". I incriminate not provincialism, but parisianism, whose characteristics sometimes include clever ways of courting the international clientèle. The best pâtisseries left in France are not in Paris. A bit more of our good old provincialism blown back into the current pâtisserie trends would probably improve things and maybe bring on some kind of rebirth, with new pâtisseries opening again, etc. French pastry is doing very well outside of France, that's the problem. Store-bought pâtisserie in France has become increasingly mediocre. There are not that many locals coming to Pierre Hermé's (most of the French people I know go there only once and never come back) because it doesn't correspond to their standards of good French pastry. It is definitely a different taste, it doesn't taste "French". Personally I'm not interested. The current macaron fad is, to me, a clear sign of the emphasis currently placed on sugariness and prettiness, not on taste (most macaron crusts are not flavored but colored, even at Pierre Hermé's: the taste is in the filling. But you do need a lot of sugar to hold them together). I think the art of French pastry has been partly lost, or at least that it has emigrated. I like the idea of good French pastry illuminating the world, but I'm sad at the idea that it's getting difficult, in Paris for instance, to get decent, tasty, fruity, buttery, crispy store-bought pastry that is not laden with too much sugar, greasy buttercream, sickeningly unctuous fillings, tons of wobbly bavarois, or headache-inducing ganache. This is only my opinion but I personally solve the problem by avoiding trendy and expensive pâtisseries, and sticking to the remaining modest neighborhood artisans. Also, I've noticed that some traiteurs still do things right.

To make it short, I'd say that Japanese students follow pastry courses in France in order to learn the basics, and then once they're back in Japan they apply what they have learned adding up their own talent and lightness of touch, and they very probably (according to what I've tasted) manage to improve on the original. The French-style pastry I've had in Japan was generally high-quality, and often much better than anything I could eat in fancy French pâtisseries. As for French pastry not being in progress, I'm not sure, but your remark does ring a bell. Good pastry chefs are increasingly hard to come by in France, restaurant chefs seek them wide and far and dread losing the ones they have. During my travels I found out that many of them were actually working abroad... Could the French pastry chef be an export article? As for pâtisserie in pastry shops, on the other hand, it is becoming increasingly less good than it used to be, and good pâtisseries have become rare. The fame of trendy chic and sophisticated pâtissiers like Pierre Hermé, to me, obscures the fact that the French high-quality pastry shop as an institution is slowly disappearing. In Paris and provincial towns, many top-notch pâtisseries have been closing during the last few years and were replaced by travel agencies or clothes shops. And the new trends, which I have described in my other post, are much hyped and loved by the media but, qualitywise, I find them extremely disappointing, overcomplicated and fussy, and not up to the quality of the disappearing French art of pastry. So, yes, I think there's some truth in what you write, but I don't believe you should be confused, for it all makes sense.

Too bad you didn't take a picture of him.

Just my own taste and opinions, and by no means a general judgement (I know many people will disagree with me, especially about the second paragraph). I have been pleasantly surprised with pastry in Japan, whether French-style or Japanese-style, and I adored the "fusion" pastry some Japanese pastry chefs make out of Japanese ingredients using French techniques. I thought they were using, whatever style they were working in, a lighter and more balanced touch than French pastry chefs, and their sense of the harmony of tastes was much more refined. I am not a pastry fan, but in Japan I was delighted. I have a problem with French pâtisserie as it is made now, especially recent-style, hyped "jewelry" pastry like Pierre Hermé or Sadaharu Aoki. Simple recipes (cookies, pâtes de fruits) are delicious but once it gets more complicated it all collapses, IMO. The proportions of sugar, fatty creams and animal gelatin are far too important, and the pastries feel too sweet and too fatty. The flavors, especially of fruit, are drowned in a sea of sweetness and soft greasiness. Macarons, one of the most hyped pastries, are most of the time cloying. I like it when pastry doesn't stick to your palate, when the taste of crusts, batters and fruit come out clean, pure, concentrated. As for the daring taste associations these chefs are famous for, except for the most obvious like raspberry-lychee, I've found out that many of them don't work for me. But I always thought that Japanese pastry chefs (in Japan) had a much more sensible touch and did get things right. Also, as Suzy rightly pointed out, in Japan they use less sugar and less fat. So there is more taste. There are roughly two schools in French modern pastry, the "oversweetened" and the "undersweetened". It seems that most of the pastry chefs of the second school work away from France, or in restaurant kitchens (and they never open shops). Homestyle and traditional pastry (cakes, pies, tartes), which is more the insipration of the latter school, are generally not very sweet and focused on texture (crunchy, soft, crispy, flaky, etc.) and taste (the taste of fruit, and the right use of acidity). But the high-gelatin, high-fat, high-sugar, too-bitter-chocolate style is very much in right now. Maybe it is just the French taste, because even a Japanese pastry chef like Aoki (whose pastries are the most beautiful I've ever seen), who is established in Paris, tends to produce oversweetened pastries too. The very best French-style pastry I've ever eaten was that of Frédéric Robert, who used to be a pastry chef for Ducasse for years and now works in the US. He understood the need for crisp tastes and pure flavors, his fruit-pastry ratio was extremely generous to the former, and his work on textures was amazing. Probably still is. I always regretted that he couldn't become more famous in France and make his style more appreciated. Now he's one of the many wonderful French pastry chefs who work everywhere but in France. My description of French pastry concerns only shop-bought pastry. Indeed the desserts and pastries served in good restaurants are quite different and closer to my liking. There seems to be a difference of styles there too, shop pastry and restaurant pastry, and they don't communicate much. There are wonderful pastry chefs in France but they mostly seem to be found in restaurant kitchens. There also is Christophe Felder, who is still here with us, but he's less exposed to the media and doesn't have a shop in Paris.

Good writing is crucial anywhere.

I work as a journalist sometimes, and I also have done research in food history and geography. My work is completely different in either case. I would never have dreamed of using the techniques I use in journalistic writing in my research reports, while I can also say that at times my research methods do feed my journalistic writings to give them a sturdier base. I remember when, long ago, when I was studying archaeology and geography, our teachers would describe the nicely-written, but not very rigorous students' essays as "perfect journalistic work".

Hey, this is supposed to be an anthropology book. Not a Peter Mayle book. If humor is the main reason for purchasing an anthropology book, then there must be something wrong with the anthropology.

Well, you do have a point there. If I chose my boyfriends the way I choose my turnips, I'd be a very happy woman by now.

" . . . that they didn't even notice something was wrong. Actually, they liked it the wrong way." This could well be a cover quote for The University of Chicago Press edition of the book. For de la Pradelle's book (for anyone who has read it) is much less about deception (or shopping, fresh produce, cobbled markets, and bemused stallholders for that matter), as it is about that delightful and universal human condition that permits and even encourages a mutually duplicitous relationship to the frequent benefit of both parties. For those of you who haven't had the chance to read the book yet, I think that you'll enjoy the fact that its observations (which are tempered with a good deal of humour) never decay into cynicism. But make no mistake, it isn't a Ladies Home Journal guide book either. It's really about the suspension of disbelief whenever we make a transaction, whether it's for a basketful of fruit or an affair of the heart. But above all else, it's for the right - very humanly - to "like it the wrong way." Or, in fact, love it. ← Congratulations for the clever hijacking of my propos, but I wasn't referring about that at all in relation to the current topic. And certainly not about market transactions (not everybody is prone to romantically suspending disbelief while buying produce, in fact many people, and indeed many French people, use extra vigilance in that case). I was pointing to Mme de La Pradelle and to the fact that everybody seemed too happy to buy her opus without questioning her research methods. Without implying that her research was necessarily flawed (in the way very accurately described by Pan's example, which absolutely hits the nail), it might well be useful to question that matter before drawing any conclusions on French markets in general on the sole ground of her research. An interesting study may well be obtained with bad methods, making it non-pertinent, but great reading all the same. Maybe you "suspend disbelief" when you buy produce at a market, but believe me, this is not the general case. And I don't know many French people who are familiar of markets and who "suspend disbelief". Indeed, and to the contrary, extreme suspicion is at the core of French market shopping, aside of the context of touristy romanticism. French markets are not a place of deception, they are one of the last places of relative safety and reliability regarding produce. Suspicion and defiance are the very reason why the French still love their markets and demand their presence even in newly-built towns. Suspicion and attention to detail are the very reason why markets are still so big in France. Is this observation part of Mme de La Pradelle's book?

Thank you, Pan, for this very beautiful post.

Oh yes, the question on her shopping skills is quite relevant in this case. In sciences humaines, the individual doing the research cannot be separated from the research itself. How well the researcher can identify the nature of produce available and understand the implications of their origins, whether "home grown" or grown by other producers that may well be offering high-quality produce, is directly correlated to the conclusions he or she will draw from the study. Because the market stall owners may well be controlled and checked by the State, but who controls the researcher? Who checks her methods and validates her conclusions? Knowing a bit about markets (and remaining suspicious of the Carpentras market in the Summer), I believe that whether some practices are really "a fraud" or not is largely a matter of interpretation. Now, on top of the bargain, even if Mme de La Pradelle was rather fair and mild in her conclusions (indeed she isn't remembered for having upturned the apple cart, as a matter of fact her book is hardly remembered at all in France except for a few sociologists), some readers are all too ready to add new layers on the "fraud" topic just because it suits them to believe so. The situation is actually much more simple than it is made to look: in French markets (most of them municipally managed, or département, or region-run), if fraud happens, whether on the quality, origin, freshness, category, etc., of produce, it is severely punished. The regulations are drastic. And whatever is not a fraud is legal. And everything that is not legal is a fraud. There is no middle ground, either you have a fraud or you don't. So it is pretty infuriating to read the words "unindictable fraud" (on top of the poorly inspired "The myth of the French 'country' market" which is already quite hard to stomach), because if it is a fraud, it should and can be indicted. If it can't be indicted, it can't be a fraud in the first place. What is described as an "indictable fraud" deserves to be judged in order to find out if it is really a fraud or not, not just hasty interpretations or the result of irrational expectations. And indeed that's where knowing your produce and the true conditions of local food production and distribution is crucial. So this is why I seriously question the poor choice of words that led to the title and subtitle of this thread. It doesn't require reading the de La Pradelle book to realize right from the start that something is wrong. The problem, as far as I know, is not necessarily in the book. It is in the words, and in the slant that was adopted right from the start in this thread.

I disagree with you and I very warmly recommend Le Bistrot Paul-Bert. It's one of my favorite bistrots in Paris. It's nearly perfect, sticking to what used to make Paris bistrots great (and that you don't much see anymore). Few bistrots in Paris are as decent, interesting, friendly and reasonable as this one. Unpretentious so perhaps a bit overlooked, not much buzz about it, but again this is Paris, not New York The food is also quite good at La Muse Vin. Cru, I also recommend Le Pré Verre for modern bistrot food.

I don't think I have been unfair at all. And I haven't accused this fine lady of all the terrible things I described, I did so as an hypothesis, as a possible element that could invalidate her credibility, though nobody seems to have wondered about it. I wrote that her personal ability to shop and know her produce was an essential, but untold, condition of the validity of her study, and that nobody had pointed that out before, taking her report at face value. Why study the market of Carpentras in the first place? What was the object of the research before the research even started? Why not try, for instance, the Marché des Lices in Rennes, one of the most famous produce markets in France, instead of heavily touristy (and therefore untypical) Provence? When a piece of writing gets inflated to become a "revelation" about a whole country, while the study is only done on one small town, I think it's only natural that some people stand up and point out how biased the approach is. I'm sorry, but the title of the thread is "The Myth of the French Country Market". Not even of "the Provençal Market". Enough said. I probably wouldn't have reacted that strongly in the latter case. And it is not "at least one market". It is ONE MARKET, period. Not to say that this is the only market functioning that way, but indeed it is a study. The study is done on one market, not two, not three. The least that may be expected from a scientific approach is to widen the field of study. Now my blame is not on Mme de La Pradelle who perhaps only intended to study this particular market. It is on the people who use this study to draw conclusions on French markets in general. Anthropologists had it easy in the old days. They could roam the world and study Papoos, Trobriandais, people from Vanuatu, Jivaros, etc. Given the cultural, technical and transportation means available to the objects of research, it was very unlikely that any Papoo, Trobriandais, etc., would write a reply stating "Sorry, Anthropologist, but you got it all wrong. You've interpreted our culture through the prism of your own, and indeed we don't do such and such a thing for the reasons you mention, and you got confused between detail and globality, the partial and the general, and when we do this or that it doesn't mean what you say, etc." There was no opportunity for the picturesque and so exotic indigène to say his mind and take an active, albeit antagonistic, part in the anthropology of his culture. Sometimes, here on eGullet, I read things about France and I have the definite feeling that some of the posters have no idea that the Internet is an open space, that some French people have actually learned English and happen to read the forums, and may resent being described as zoo animals and their markets as gatherings of exotic bemustached con-artists. Well, now, here is one of those quaint indigènes replying, and telling you things from the inside. Furthermore, an indigène who has carefully studied the subject of markets in France. And Lucy was not born a French indigène but she has certainly become one, through her long and sensible experience of living here. Now this book by Mme de La Pradelle is probably interesting, but I believe it's abusive to stretch its obviously very limited scope to a more universal dimension, however seductive that may be for the sake of romanticism or anti-romanticism (two sides of the same error).

Amen. I'm going to tell you a story. About 15 years ago, I was spending a few days' vacation with a friend in a posh Normandy resort, right at the château of a very famous aristocratic — and wealthy, which isn't necessarily the case with aristocracy — family. My friend was "hired" for the Summer by the Lady because, as a beautician, she could provide her with her very special face massage every other day. We were lodged in a small building in the outskirts of the château grounds, never saw much of the Lord and Lady, let alone their relatives. However, we grew very cordial relationships with their various employees: chauffeur, maids, gardener. Every morning, the gardener would bring us a basketful of fresh vegetables from the château garden. Beautiful carrots, leeks, turnips, potatoes, peas, squash, onions, etc. Once I asked: "Don't your employers resent your giving us all those vegetables?" He said: "You kidding? They only eat frozen vegetables. They won't touch the fresh ones. Once the cook tried to serve them vegetables from the garden and they hated them — too strong, etc. The next day she served them frozen vegetables and they said: "Ah, that's the real thing!" Since then, all the employees have been sharing the garden vegetables between themselves and cook buys frozen vegetables for the masters. Masters still believe that they eat garden vegetables." So there was an arrangement that suited everybody, even though Their Lordships didn't know what was really going on. They were so remote from "ordinary people" and, shall I say, from the true nature of everyday things that they didn't even notice something was wrong. Actually, they liked it the wrong way. I couldn't help thinking of that when I read about Mme de La Pradelle and the results of her research.

So much of the concept of the French idyll (a bike or canal boat ride through the countryside, stopping at a market to gather supplies for a picnic) is based on this ripe artifice that it appears, up close, like that amusing pastime of sacred cow tipping. Or merely merde de cheval. ← "Merde de cheval"? (First of all there is no such expression in France. The word is crottin.) I was clearly referring, in that post, to real small producers whom I happen to have acknowledged in several country, suburban and even city markets. Your reply is somewhat abrupt and keeps missing the point. I never heard of Mme de La Pradelle and her book at the time, visibly she was more of a hit overseas than in her own country. Wonder why. I will reject the hypothesis that her book was ostracized by a foaming-at-the-seams population of those perfid (but so picturesque) French threatened in their shameful practices, for I don't think they'd have felt that a study on one single market would put them in any particular danger. Now the lady may be an acceptable anthropologist, but here is the big, pertinent question: can she shop? Is she a skilled shopper? Can she tell small-producer root celery from bleached, calibrated root-celery at first sight and touch? I'd suspect she doesn't. Maybe (as her name would imply) her maid does the shopping for her while she's doing her research. Maybe, in that case, the maid should have helped in the research too. At about the same time as when her book was published in French, I was a researcher and writer on a book project — a guidebook of Paris and suburban markets — that was quite well documented. The guidebook wasn't reissued by Hachette for profitability reasons but we learned a lot about the subject. Now we weren't backed by "the French government" to study a single market in a touristy region but we did search with much application all the markets of the Paris area. And since, as a writer, I am specialized in products and shopping, I always have a particularly acute interest in markets wherever I go. So you see, as I said, when I see a thread title like "the myth of the French 'country' market" I tend to be attracted by it. And when I see that some people are just too happy to pounce on one very particular and limited example (notwithstanding the fact that, as every research in "sciences humaines", the objective and methods of the research are often more significant than the subject itself) and give a bad name to the "French country market", all regions included, well sorry, that won't do. And while I'm at it, I fail to grasp the pertinence in your mention of the Dior dresses (Dior, really?)and high-heeled shoes for the farmers' daughters. You did that twice, as if it had any significance. Now girls like to dress up everywhere in the world when they have a chance, whatever their social origin. In what way was that a proof of the inauthenticity of Auvergnat farmers? Maybe you think they should have stuck to the layered wool sweaters sung by Vialatte and perhaps straw-filled wooden clogs in order to stay in their place?

Especially obnoxious when the generalization is actually based on a tiny part of reality — in this case, the market of Carpentras, period.