It can start from childhood, for example with the banquets of the Gallic village in the Asterix. When you discover that words and books can make you hungry, that reading makes you hungry, literally, and not just the mind. I was disappointed the first time I ate wild boar, because all I had in mind was the plump and juicy piece that Obelix is feeding on. But when the appetite is fine, everything is fine, isn’t it?
It takes a special talent to write about food. My fellow restaurant critics like Ève Dumas or Iris Gagnon-Paradis fascinate me when they find these words every week that make you salivate. It is about developing a vocabulary, like when we talk about music, for example. And speaking of music, she is not left out in this stomach-hugging word-food accord. If there is a lyricist who gave me the taste of mussels and fries, it is Jacques Brel, with his song I f, in which a friend finds no other solution than this famous dish to console a guy in need of love who bawls in the middle of the street. No, Jef, you’re not the only one who likes mussels and fries.
From Joe Dassin’s chocolate bun to FouKi’s spaghetti-garlic bread, there are those earworms that make you hungry.
We feast and we write it, from as far away as Rabelais whose work has given the gargantuan adjective that everyone understands without having read a single line from the author of Pantagruel Where Gargantua. Moreover, the very horrific giant Gargantua was born by the ear of his mother Gargamelle who had eaten too much tripe on the eve of giving birth! “The gaudebillaux are fat tripe of coiraux,” we read in the mouth. Coiraux, oxen fattened in the nursery and in the marsh meadows. These fat oxen, they had three hundred and sixty-seven thousand quartozen killed so that they could be salted at Shrove Tuesday … ”
What do you want, the dishes and the words have the language in common. I really like writers who write about food, while some cookbook writers sometimes have nice feathers – I don’t think anyone writes recipes like Daniel Pinard, who I nabbed at him anymore. expression “bug” as soon as I put a chicken in the oven.
And if a writer talks about food in a novel, it is inevitable that I will go “Googling” recipes – lately, the oriental foul one in A thousand secrets, a thousand dangers by Alain Farah. Sometimes you don’t even need to, like in Mukbang by Fanie Demeule, where she gives a vegan bulgogi recipe.
Power at the table
Mastering the gastronomic vocabulary is a kind of power, a social marker, because food is in truth something extremely political, in a world where many people do not have enough to eat, when supper meets in the same city. five courses and the Kraft Dinner purchased from Dollarama.
It is never more evident than in The diner, a 1992 film by Édouard Molinaro that I love, an adaptation of Jean-Claude Brisville’s play, where it is at the table that we will decide on France’s new political regime after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo . Talleyrand, this aristocrat who became Minister of Foreign Affairs, and who will have eaten at all the racks in his life for the taste of power and entertainment, invites Joseph Fouché, the terrifying director of the police, to dinner to convince him to restore the monarchy. And for that, he doesn’t skimp on the menu. Truffled foie gras from Périgord (its stronghold), asparagus in peas, artichoke culs with ravigote, salmon à la royale, fillet of partridge à la financier …
You know how to live, Fouche told him, impressed, but obviously suspicious.
Usually, Monsieur Fouché. Knowing how to live and knowing how to die, that with us is known at birth. ”
The table is thus set for a confrontation, Talleyrand recalling his high origins to the common man who rose through the ranks on the corpses of the Revolution.
As we feed people, we know them.
Talleyrand, in The diner, 1992 film by Édouard Molinaro
Fouché will come out of its hinges when, after stalling a rare cognac, Talleyrand will teach him a lesson on how to drink this elixir correctly.
“We take our glass in the palm of our hand, we warm it, we give it a circular impulse so that the liquor gives off its fragrance, we bring it to our nostrils, we breathe it … and then, we put it back and we speak. ”
Exasperated, Fouché breaks his glass, and I laugh every time I retape this film of which even Pierre Falardeau spoke with fascination in one of his books. I must say that I too, impressed by Talleyrand’s menu, have already tried to recreate the asparagus in peas in my student room, by digging small balls into the flesh of large asparagus, then sautéed with savory, cloves, egg yolk and cream, which is a lot of effort for an accompaniment, when you don’t have an army of servants to cook.
Besides, did you know that France’s gastronomic reputation comes from the Revolution, when the kitchen staff of the nobles who fled abroad to avoid the guillotine found themselves without a livelihood? And from restaurants, the critics and the authors who created the words to express the pleasure of taste were born.
Talleyrand is right, we love to talk about food, after all!