– it had to be practical and easy to use. I didn’t want porcelain because it is fussy to maintain. Michael heard about a place where he could get any size stainless steel sink, and a friend of ours said that he could intervene and get it wholesale. Michael handed in the sink’s dimensions and got a call back the following week with an estimate that sent him through the roof. ‘Five thousand dollars for a stainless steel sink?’ he said, shaking his head. Apparently, the sink would have to be custom-made, which is what made it so costly. Like the handmade tiles, the handmade stainless steel sink would have to go.
How would we get around this one? Michael had lined a wall in our downstairs bathroom with zinc, just for fun, and he’d loved working with it. One night I heard him soldering in his workshop and I looked in to see him fashioning a zinc box. ‘It’s a sink,’ he said shortly. The next day he brought it to show me. ‘If this thing holds water, this is what our sinks will look like,’ he said. ‘It should work – zinc lasts forever. Just look at all the zinc bars in French cafes.’ He filled it with water and it was watertight. Our sink problem was solved, sort of. He had to figure out how to put in a plug and how to support it, which he did, and the upshot is that we have three custom-made zinc sinks in our kitchen, which are burnished and lovely, and easy to maintain.
With the sinks in place, the drawers all built, the floors laid, Michael could install the yards of marble. He studied all the squares to choose those with the most ochre in them, and the most harmonious patterns. He tried them out on the counters to see how the light fell on them, then carefully rounded their edges before setting them in place. He had fashioned a narrow ledge at the back of the counter-tops on either side of the stove for condiments, timers, knick-knacks, all the little things that clutter a work surface, and he cut small pieces of marble to fit that. When all was installed he had to figure out how to polish and treat it so it would hold up to kitchen use.
We both got on the phone to do some research. Mine led me to an Italian family of masons in Paris; they were very generous with information and offered to have Michael come in so they could give him a marble-treating demonstration. Michael’s research led him to the headstone makers in Louviers. Between these sources, he got the information he needed. The results turned the marble smooth and luscious, and made the colours, which are warm and complementary to food, flowers and people, emerge. A visitor, looking at the marble, said, ‘Do you realize people go to school just to learn how to cut and polish marble and he just did it?’
I had heard that marble was hard to maintain and very delicate, and I wondered how it would hold up to the kind of use I would give it. I needn’t have worried, as it has proved to be low maintenance and very forgiving. Even acid, which eats away at its surface leaving a rough white spot, isn’t as much of a problem as I feared, for those rough spots go away with regular wiping.
The stoves were installed, the counter-tops finished, the drawers ready to fill. I wanted to move in, or at least to decorate. One night, while Michael was at his weekly sculpture class, I opened up some kitchen boxes, trying to figure out what I could put on the mantel that would surprise him the next day. I stumbled onto teapots and soup terrines; it turned out that over the years I’d amassed a small collection in varied bright colours. These I set on the mantelpiece and said nothing. I knew they would get covered with dust as Michael continued to work, but I wanted to see how they would look and I mostly wanted him to see that I was paying attention. He loved seeing them there the next day, giving truth to the adage that it is the little things that make a difference.
I was concerned about hiding in drawers all the many little tools I use a hundred times a day, from measuring spoons to whisks, mixer attachments to fish-bone pullers, because I could see myself getting very frustrated with the time lost opening them, closing them, keeping them orderly. As I stood in the kitchen trying to figure out how I would solve this, my eye hit upon an unmatched pair of brass shelf-supports sitting in the corner, beautiful pieces that Michael had found at our friend Magaly’s second-hand shop. I picked up one and set it on end on the raised shelf at the back of the counter-top, right near the stove. Then I hung measuring spoons, whisks, skewers and tongs on its various levels. I set the other one up on the other side of the stove and did the same. They looked gorgeous without being cluttered. When Michael came in and saw them he said, ‘They’re perfect.’
I’d come up with a schedule for cooking classes, thinking it would be good to hold the first one in June, the beginning of summer when produce is at its most gorgeous, gardens are fresh and growing, markets are taking on their festive summer air. In order to publicize the classes, I did a mailing to all of our lunch guests, to editors I’d worked with over the years, and to various other friends, colleagues and acquaintances who constituted my nascent mailing list. This must have been in February, and I figured that by June I would be well settled in the kitchen, accustomed to where everything was, ready to teach and share. I asked a young American woman who had worked with me before if she would come again for two months to help me settle into the kitchen and do the class. I planned out the schedules.
With the weeks planned and the possibility of people actually coming to take classes, I assessed my cooking equipment. I have a great deal of utensils, but I reckoned I would need more knives and more things like vegetable peelers and melon-ball makers, stiff plastic scrapers and wooden spoons, measuring cups and spoons. I would also need more cooking pans and baking sheets and more wine glasses, and I would need to find beautiful aprons and a multitude of tea towels to match.
I investigated all of the hotels and a bed and breakfast in the area to determine which were best for my ‘guests’. I settled on four places. My favourite hotel is a rambling place in the country, with charming bedrooms and a lush garden just outside the limits of Louviers, in a village called Le Haye le Comte. The most convenient, however, is a hotel in the town, five minutes on foot from our house. It is very comfortable, and it is where most people choose to stay.
I have had to work with the people at this hotel, whose attitude reflects that of shopkeepers I used to meet when I first moved to Paris twenty years ago. Those were the days when you walked into a shop and were greeted with hostility, as though your very presence was an insult, an affront. The people who run the hotel were the same. Though they agreed on a special price for anyone who reserved through me, every additional request – whether it was a reservation for two double rooms, a faxed reservation confirmation, an unlocked front door on Sunday afternoon so guests could get into the hotel, or whatever – was met with almost laughable rudeness and hostility. I suggested to the owner that we meet, thinking that if there was personal contact it would melt the ice, but she brushed me off, telling me that her assistant took care of everything. One would have thought she was the manager of Le Bristol in Paris the way she acted, though I’ve had better luck there. I spoke with the assistant who wasn’t much better. I couldn’t work it out. I sent more than thirty people to them in the first year, all of whom stayed for five days at a time. I knew they were very busy with business groups, but I also knew that they liked having the business I sent their way. I asked a well-placed friend if he knew them, and if he could help me out. ‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said, ‘but I’m not sure if I can help. He – the owner – is all right, but his wife, who takes care of the hotel, is awful, just awful.’ When I heard that, I figured there was little hope.
I haven’t pursued it any further because there has been a perceptible thaw which, in this case, amounts to enormous progress. I still haven’t had a formal meeting with the owners, but I don’t care if I do. What I care about is that everyone who stays there has a good experience and thankfully, thus far, that has been the case.
Sometimes guests choose to stay in a charming bed and breakfast in the village of Heudreville, a ten-minute trip by car. Run by a friendly and energetic woman who takes great pride in fine linens and homemade jams for breakfast, it is a little spot of country finery in the midst of a charming village.
Michael and I had discussed the dates of the first classes, thinking it was possible. But May came and he was still working in the kitchen. It looked nearly finished to me, but
