Emily in France 🇫🇷 Musings on Lobster
Behind the story: a few tidbits that didn't make it into the BBC
One of the most difficult parts of doing a job you love as much as I love mine is finding balance.
… You know what… let’s scratch finding and say “aiming for.” Because while balance has indeed been my New Year’s resolution for God knows how many years, more often than not, I can't help but take on too much. I love what I do, which means I say yes to too many fun things, which means that I’m nearly always already at full tilt… and then another fun project comes up, and I end up working all day on a Saturday… or spending my weekend attempting to wend my way to a remote corner of Normandy during a transport strike just for the opportunity to tell the story of someone whose passion I’m captivated by, all the while furiously transcribing interviews with five Picodon producers in an attempt to tell a well-rounded story of one of the most fascinating goat cheese AOPs I've had the pleasure to explore.
Of course, my tendency towards “too much” that ends up surfacing in the work, too. Those close to me are accustomed to my plaintive whines that a story is coming together at seven or eight times my target word count. (A current draft of an article I’m working on about the downfall of the French café is currently only six times what I need – and that, friends, is progress.) Trimming back the detritus to get at the core of the story I want to tell is a crucial yet painful task, especially when there’s so much meat to the story itself, so many other angles that could have been explored, if only I were writing a book rather than an article.
Cédric Delacour is a passionate young fisherman working off the Normandy coast, following in the footsteps of his grandfather and uncle before him. His story is at the heart of my most recent piece for the BBC, which delves deep into Delacour's uphill battle in a world rocked by climate change and ever-cheaper industrial food. I’m proud of the story I told, but it doesn't convey half of what I discovered when Delacour invited me aboard his tiny Manola this March, so I wanted to share a few tidbits – and a few photos – that didn't make the final cut.
After months of rescheduling amidst transport strikes and bad weather, we met at the wholly reasonable hour of 8:30am. A few weeks ago, my imagined pre-dawn awakening might have been more on par with reality, but by late March, Delacour has already begun shifting away from the winter’s nearly nocturnal net fishing to setting and checking casiers, traps whose rhythm is merely a question of the tides.
“The wind changes,” he says. “The tides never do.”
Delacour learned the trade, motivated less by true avocation than inertia.
“I didn’t really know what I wanted to do,” he says, and then prevaricates. “I wanted to work with the sea.”
Beyond this, he had a clearer idea of what he didn’t want. Oyster farming he laughingly dubs “a rubbish gig… like growing stones.” But aquaculture – shrimp, perhaps, or seaweed – held more appeal than filling his grandfather’s galoshes.
“Fishing is hard,” he says. “It didn’t seem to be a job of the future.”
Nevertheless, after graduation, he boarded the Bréfort once more, to keep himself “occupied.” A year and a half later, occupied turned to occupation, and at just 20, he bought his 75-year-old grandfather’s boat.
“I still have it, in Cherbourg,” he says of the Bréfort, though he has since transferred his professional fishing license to this plastic model, purchased in 2014.
While he works, I take refuge in unoccupied corners, which becomes more difficult as we reach the end of a 15-trap line, especially given the nets still taking up much of the scant space. Net fishing is a more intensive endeavor, demanding ten or twelve hours at sea – “and sometimes all night long,” according to Delacour, who nevertheless enjoys the variety.
“In winter, I get sick of them,” he says of the traps. “Catching a bit of fish changes things up.”
It also means he can catch his own bait – red mullet or dogfish – which he dexterously inserts into each trap before releasing the line so they fly from the back of the boat to sink the 13 meters below the surface.
Net fishing also provides the opportunity for Delacour to welcome a first mate, albeit temporarily. A second set of hands is useful for managing the five kilometers of rope bedecked with hooks, but come spring, his boat isn’t large enough to render the company worthwhile.
“I’ve been trying for years to keep one,” he says, noting a permanent first mate would double his official trap threshold to 400. “But the boat really doesn’t allow it.”
His operation is the smallest of the three professional local fishing endeavors; at the beginning of his career, he was frequently in the company of his grandfather, his uncle, or his former first mate – a fox terrier who had a habit of pilfering frozen fish –, but all have since passed away.
In all three categories, most of what comes up goes right back into the water: Laws preclude him from keeping any spider crabs measuring fewer than 12 centimeters from eye to rear; brown crabs must measure 15 lengthwise; lobsters’ cephalothorax – from “the hollow of the eye to the base of the head” – just 8.7 millimeters. But while Delacour boasts a handy three-in-one measuring device, he reaches for it only rarely: So swift is he with his judgment of the caliber of the crustaceans that often I just barely glimpse crabs caught on the wind, as though flying from the traps back into the sea.
Cheese of the Week
Yesterday I hosted a food tour where, among other things, I shared one of the most perfect Bries de Meaux I’ve seen of late (gleaned from the selection at Laurent Dubois, the subject of a profile I'm currently working on for France Today… stay tuned, coming soon!)
We agreed that the Brie was the platonic ideal of Paris’ most famous cheese, and while I definitely don't want to offend any of the six other Bries out there, the truth is that there's something about this fan favorite that keeps me coming back time and time again. With less stank than Brie de Melun and more brininess than the Brie de Nangis Americans tend to be more familiar with, it toes the line between rich, creamy, and just a little bit funky, and while it goes from under- to over-ripe as quickly as an avocado, I can't help but love it.
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
I quite liked the vibe of Le Goncourt, with its no-reservations policy, mismatched plates, wooden tables, and tiled floors evoke that sort of flea market shabby chic vibe that has become so popular in Paris in recent years. But in spite of a true stellar of a beef dish, there was still something about the food – and the experience – that I found wanting. More on the blog.
Discover more of my foodie finds via Instagram @emily_in_france and on the blog.
What I'm Writing
1. One of France's last remaining sustainable fishermen on the Normandy coast remains stalwartly dedicated to providing the prized blue lobster to restaurants and home dinner tables. For the BBC.
2. Bartender Julia Momosé of Kumiko, which late last year landed Chicago on the 50 Best Bars list for the first time since 2018, shares her best recs for homestyle cooking and the best ramen in the city. For InsideHook.
3. This burger recipe is a Michelin-approved take on the Big Mac, complete with Clint's Cattle beef, mustard butter, and "1001 Island" dressing. For InsideHook.
What I'm Saying
Cheese is alive… and to ensure it grows up properly, most cheesemakers rely on the expertise of an affineur or ager. To explore the world of French cheese aging – plus cheese etiquette and desert island cheeses – I’m joined on Navigating the French by Jennifer Greco, cheese educator and the American expat on a mission to taste all of France’s fromages.
What I'm Reading
1. In keeping with a habit I have of always reading a book set in/about a destination I'm traveling to, this book came with me on a recent trip to Rome. I've only started reading short story anthologies very recently, and I like the experience, even though by its very design, an anthology can include some stories I enjoy more than others. (And some I don't like at all.) I loved the format of this anthology, which sees stories from different areas and indeed different time periods arranged higgledy-piggledy, evoking, in their organized chaos, the very city they depict. Standouts for me included Via Veneto Notes, which recounts the early years of devising La dolce vita, as well as Lorette Ellerup. And if almost only for its depiction of la cucina povera, I fell hard for Romulus and Remus.
2. Given how much I work with cheese (both in an intellectual sense and in an actual, physical sense) I think a lot about leftovers: about how cheese and butter were truly only born as a means of using and preserving leftover milk, but also about what on earth to do with the frozen bits of Comté taking up prime real estate in a freezer that is rarely large enough for an ice cube tray. So I loved this story about the secret life of leftovers, which explores not only ancestral recipes for using up scraps but also the deceptiveness of best by dates and the modern pendulum swing towards dumpster diving. In the New Atlantis.
3. Self-improvement has been a defining factor of the mass media for decades, and as someone who always feels like I can be improved (yes, I'm a perfectionist, what of it?) I found this essay about sobriety – and whether it’s the right path for everyone – fascinating. In The Cut.
A bientôt !