As expat Debora Robertson grapples with the intricacies of the French language, a vocab lesson leads her to the fish counter – where the wares are eyes-sparkling-fresh. Next bit of coursework: mastering parmentier (it’s French for a world-class pie)
MY COOKING YEAR: FEBRUARY
In my five decades on this planet, here’s one thing I know about myself: I do very poorly when bored. I just cannot. My brain switches off – or not so much switches off, but drifts to menu ideas, decorating schemes, puppies, kittens, knitwear. Sometimes I have to take my bored self in hand, as I did when I moved to a new country – southwest France, to be precise – back in lockdown.
Once we’d moved, though, a new boredom threat lurked. I love to talk as much as I love to cook, and a life of stumbling conversations when I think of what I want to say only when the other person is 100 metres away is a mournful prospect. One of the first things I did when I got here, then, was to find a French teacher. Young, pretty and cool in that nonchalant way of young, pretty, cool French women (an ankle boot, a floaty skirt, a scarf wrapped around at least twice), Diane arrives every Monday morning to torture me – sorry, teach me.
It’s incomprehensible to her that I can earn a living writing when I have only the barest idea what the passé composé or les pronoms toniques are. I explain that when I was at school in the 1970s we weren’t really taught grammar. She thinks I’m kidding. So as a kindness to make up for my unfortunate past, she sometimes plans outings for us which are more enjoyable than nailing the passé composé.
My favourite of these was a visit to the local fish auction at Grau d’Agde. We are surrounded by water. We live on the Étang de Thau, a huge saltwater lagoon that flows into the Mediterranean. The local economy floats on these waters. I have been to fish auctions twice before, in London’s Billingsgate and in Sydney, both of which required getting up at a time I like to call the middle of the night. Here, mercifully, the fish auction gets going at a suitably Mediterranean 3pm.
As we arrived, the men were sorting their catch into blue and yellow crates at lightning speed, tossing a huge eel into one crate, handfuls of prawns into another and some iridescent mackerel, sole and glittering silver sea bream (the ‘dorade’ that’s so popular on menus here) into others.
Next, the crates go onto the conveyor belt inside the auction house where they glide past buyers seated in steeply raked seats as though in a theatre. These people are buying for shops, restaurants and supermarkets loc
