Emily in France 🇫🇷 A Taste for Burned Things
Is this a family trait?
My mother eats her pretzels just this side of burned and takes a cup of coffee to bed. My sister made friends with the fire department of a small Long Island town after setting her toast on fire – aka getting it “how I like it.” My brother loves dark chocolate; my youngest sister is into IPAs. And my dad’s favorite bit of the pizza is the part that’s been kissed by charcoal.
I’m not too sure why, but in my family, we have a taste for bitterness.
In my own life, this manifests in a number of ways. I start every day with a cup of black coffee (or, let’s be honest, several), and in moments when I’m forced to eschew it, I replace it with a golden elixir of ginger and turmeric as bitter as it is spicy. I love lemon rind and grapefruit; I roast my vegetables until they're just this side of carbonized. I dress my lunchtime salad abundantly in tahini, and while the base of the aforementioned follows the seasons, no matter what, I must admit I relish the arrival, come winter, of the bitter leaves I so love: radicchio and castelfranco, endive and frisée, kale and arugula.
These greens are slowly taking their leave for the season; the broccoli is already looking sad, and the dandelion greens have disappeared. At lunchtime these days, I’m reaching for tender baby oak leaf lettuces and crunchy sucrine; my evening meals will be governed chiefly by the sweetness of spring peas, baby carrots, and strawberries, with their fresh, floral notes.
But while I’m an unapologetic sun worshipper, and while I cannot wait until summer’s bounty arrives, there will always be a place in my heart for the bitterness of winter.
I’m resisting the urge to read too far into my taste for bitterness, but I can't help it, least of all now: Having my family in town this week has made me consider this shared trait more closely, the way you do when you encounter distant cousins, searching their faces for your own cleft chin. With every kale salad or tray of vegetables others would deem over-roasted, I feel like I’m united with the people who made me. And once they're far away again, it’ll be one more little quirk – like the fact that my mother and I both sleep with undrawn curtains, or the way my brother and I wield the mot juste no matter how unwieldy – that binds me to them across time and space.
Cheese of the Week
While traveling in Naples a few years ago, I encountered a cheese I absolutely adored, but upon asking for its name, all I could get out of the genial cheesemonger was “cow cheese.” To say that the French obsession with categorization is a little less present in Italy is a major understatement, but I do have a bit more information about this cheese the Piedmont producers at cheese collective Des Martin have dubbed morbidosa, aka “the soft one.” It boasts a springy, soft texture and a slightly washed rind that gives it a lovely lactic tang and just the barest umami hint, meaning it’s supremely easy to love. (It’s also, like most washed rinds, a bit bitter.)
To discover more of my favorite cheeses, be sure to follow me on Instagram @emily_in_france, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and tune into the Terroir Podcast, where Caroline Conner and I delve into France's cheese, wine, and more one region at a time.
What I’m Eating
Le Jules Verne was the very first Michelin-starred restaurant I ever went to, and, just days after it earned its second star, I returned to encounter one of the most surprising, truly delicious fine dining meals I’ve ever had the pleasure to enjoy. More on the blog.
Where I’m Going
1. To my alma mater, AUP, to host not one but two cheese tastings! These ones are exclusively for AUP staff, but if you're interested in planning your own cheese tasting with me in Paris or via Zoom, don't hesitate to reach out – and if you want to dig into the world of French cheese at TERRE/MER, the ceramics and cuisine retreat I host with my dear friend Camille Drozdz in southern French la Ciotat, bookings for our fall weekend October 3 to 6 are open! Subscribe to our free newsletter to receive the recap from our spring edition tomorrow.
2. To Les Philosophes, a true-blue Parisian café, to reconnect with an old friend over classic French fare and Paris’ best tarte tatin.
3. To Le Lautrec, home to my favorite macarons in Paris, so my family can take a bit of Paris home with them.
What I’m Saying
If you grew up worrying the world was a popularity contest, get yourself to France, where the word populaire is better translated as "working class" or literally, "of the people." Without an apt translation for "popular," French society governs itself by different principles, which author Debra Ollivier is more than ready to unpack with me on this episode of Navigating the French.
What I'm Writing
1. When driving through the rolling hills of the Northern Welsh countryside, it would be easy to miss Cosyn Cymru, a minuscule dairy headquartered within a former Catholic church that was built following waves of Irish migration in the 1960s. And yet, since early 2023, it’s here that cheesemaker Carrie Rimes has produced Brefu Bach, ironically one of the country’s only sheep’s milk cheeses. For Culture.
2. From the archives: The award for best baguette in Paris has been granted to baker Xavier Netry from Utopie, an ultra-creative 11th arrondissement bakery I profiled several years ago for the Culture Trip.
3. From the archives: If you want to know more about the contest itself, I can help with that too! I did a deep dive on the concours back in 2019 for the BBC.
What I'm Reading
1. I’ve read many iterations of my dear friend Janet Skeslien Charles’ novel Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade, which tells the tale of the courageous women who banded together to help the inhabitants of the devastated French North during World War I. At long last, the book has come out today – get your copy now!
2. This interesting exploration of the shapes stories take – and why the formula of a story built around a central climax may be reductive at best. In If Not Paris.
3. This exploration of the diversity of the world of one of my favorite spices: black pepper. In the New Yorker.
A bientôt !