November Fog, Cassoulet, and Leftovers

Elevens and Eperlans

S' il y a du brouillard en Novembre, il y a Noel en Décembre.

Claude used to say this every November. “If there is fog in November, there is Christmas in December.” And there is. Every year. It happens as a natural climate condition as the first cold nights meet the still warm running Garonne River, and just like that—a Foggy Day in Gascon Town. Most days the fog will lift and burn off by 11:00 or so, but there are these days where the heavy damp air sits like a cloud on our heads and only the warmth of a wood stove and a cooking pot of beans for cassoulet can lift the gloom from Gascony. 

The eleventh day of the eleventh month at the eleventh hour… peace at last.

November 11 is always solemn, foggy, and bone chilling. I can remember my first November 11 in France—the early barge days. The Julia Hoyt was moored alongside a canal before a lock in the north of France just before the Marne River and we were basically out of fresh food. I didn’t realize that November 11, Armistice Day, was a ‘serious’ holiday in France and everything, including the canal locks, was buttoned up tight. The mood was grim on board; the crew was restless; it was foggy and damp; the makings for a mutiny. Just as I was lamenting the lack of commerce and movement at what should have been lunchtime, a friendly lock keeper came strolling up the towpath with a splashing plastic bucket full of small fish. Eperlans. For fritures. Dozens of them! He had fished all morning on his day off and said his wife would support no more fish in her kitchen so he wondered… would I be interested? Oh, joy and gratitude, Mais oui, mon éclusier!

Having survived many a smelt run on the Pacific coast of California, I knew a small fish loved frying without consulting a recipe. These delicate European cousins were smaller, just as big as your pinky, almost translucent, and still swimming. Fourteen years later, I would learn to catch them at dawn with nets from a river boat by the chef at a river side restaurant. We ate them for lunch with a squeeze lemon over the platter of hot and crispy fried ​​Osmerus eperlanus (éperlan d'Europe) and drank a chilled glass of Macon-Villages chardonnay. Little by little, my memories of November 11 grew into a multi-layered movie only I remember and taste.

Another November 11th, my brother came to visit for the first time. He had missed the grand tour of Europe being a newly minted techno-wizard from MIT,  and so he didn’t experience his first French days until we were grownups and I had been settled here for over a decade. We did the usual rounds of famous Bordeaux wine houses and quirky armagnac cellars of the Southwest and ate two hour long lunches in village cafés. But it was standing in the village square at my Ste. Colombe as a silver band played the Marseillais and school children read out the names of fallen soldiers—“morts pour la France” —from the village monument that was Jeff’s true French moment. We then gathered in the village hall with the rest of the chilled neighbors for a glass of wine offered by the mayor.

Walter Elmo Hill USN early-1940’s

Our own father had fought in two wars in the Navy and his 20-year service colored our childhood throughout the fifties. Photos of our 18-year-old Dad in Navy blues fresh from an Oklahoma cotton farm are a reminder of how wars change civilizations. I could have been born in Tulsa, learned to fish bass on private lakes, and make peach cobbler and red eye gravy for breakfast. A long stretch of sandy beach on a Pacific island was my fate instead. Eschewing sweaters, and socks, eating pineapples like apples, and thinking snow was meant for flavoring while eating from a paper cone became my Hawaiian heritage. I whispered thanks to my Dad for his service and my sunny early childhood as the band played on. And thus I added yet another layer of November Eleventh’s souvenirs for me- brothers, village monuments, the Marseillaise, my teenage Dad, and a communal apéritif in the village hall.

Elaine Tin Nyo and Me by Colin Usher

Leftovers taste best

November is the eleventh month. Each month for the last eleven months, I have written an introduction to a slim volume of stories and recipes curated by my culinary cohort Elaine Tin Nyo. Titled A Gascon Year it was conceived as a bonus for my cooking school members but became the true beginning of this newsletter and new book Finding France: a Gascon Year—as well as being the best way to use a fat archive of blog posts and recipes published over a dozen years on my previous website. Think of it as “Verbal Leftovers”—those things we cook too much of and love so much we will eat it over and over. My great niece Caroline once announced that I was best at cooking leftovers—meaning I could turn an old dish into a new tasting dish like magic. Hmmm. One of my superpowers? And Elaine's superpower, besides being a dumpling Queen and the accomplished conceptual artist that she is, is her ability to look into a rat’s nest of old writings and pull out a cohesive new edition of a seasonally fresh catalogue of my favorite stories and recipes. Together, with some community edition support, we have managed to keep up to schedule. This November is, of course, dedicated to Cassoulet. And I will send all my Paid Subscribers and Supporters a copy to say Merci!

Leftovers at this time in my kitchen often feature cassoulet. Or confit du canard. Or lentils and foie gras. (Seriously, I just had a small cold dish for breakfast!) Leftovers in my head are the dozens of times I have told the same stories to visiting guests and students about how I bought a barge. Or where I buy my fat ducks for confit. Leftovers in life are the many times I repeat an experience and yet still remain hungry for more.  I fill a small autumn squash with leftover cassoulet and foie gras butter to create the Sweetheart Cassoulet—a winter meal for two. Much more than the sum of its parts.

And so I repeat my French year, November to November, since 1987 when I crossed the Belgian border on board the Julia Hoyt and headed south through the wine countries of Champagne, Burgundy, Beaujolais. There were mushrooms to learn and conserve, game to cook, and rosé champagne to drink. Each year here at Camont, I continue to celebrate my November rituals—planting tulips and trees, cooking and conserving ducks for winter cassoulets, and stacking firewood closer to the kitchen door. I create my own version of Thanksgiving with a family of friends and find something fun and unexpected to do for my birthday. For many years, I have given myself the gift of not knowing where I’ll be next year on my birthday—a true Sagittarius cadeau. This year its a big one. I am abandoning the fog and first frosts of Gascony for a longer journey home to the States, a gathering of the clan, a salty farewell to my sister, and return to my tropical birthplace for a longer ‘holiday’ than I ever remember taking. I’ll be gone from France, but France will remain with me as I welcome the Hawaiian sun to warm these November bones on a nostalgic RoadTrip. Finding France continues from the road next week.  And a bonus to my paid subscribers, I will be sending an e-copy of A Gascon Year—Novembre in the next paid newsletter. Thank you for your continued support.