Trying Norwegian Food with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Learning about Norwegian Food with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

"How do Norwegians make any money from their fundraising dinner when no one wants to eat the main dish?” I asked my mother during my first Wisconsin winter.  My question concerned lutefisk, dried salt cod reconstituted in lye that is boiled and steamed to make it palatable…supposedly. 

 

I knew that in its Italian form as codfish, you could fetch top dollar for this delicacy.  I wanted to see what the Norwegians did with codfish.

Lutefisk dinners are no small time affair.  One of our Lutheran churches in town served 2,500 meals in one day in well orchestrated shifts.  My great-aunt bought the family tickets to attend one of these events, because she was 104 and “not feeling like cooking this week.”  On the appointed day, we arrived at church.  Smiling ladies in starched white frocks with flower embroidery led us to our tables and served us.

The pale, white lutefisk flaked away and did not have much flavor; it tasted better with butter.  The Norwegians cook the fish outside in a hut, so the church will not have a fishy aroma.  I discovered that the older generation of Norwegians did eat lutefisk and enjoy it just like little my daughter.

We supplemented our token lutefisk portion with Swedish, or rather Norwegian, meatballs made from ground beef, pork, and veal and seasoned with meat sauce.  The pan gravy from the meatballs covered the boiled potatoes and went under the green beans.  Homemade, flat, tortilla-like sheets of potato bread called lefse accompanied our meal.

The lefse tasted good with cinnamon and sugar, but was merely a prelude to dessert.  We started out with a warm pudding called rommergrot made from cooking heavy cream, milk, and a little flour together.  Brown sugar tops off the rommergrot, but that is not the end of the Norwegian dessert fare we sampled.

Bonde Pike sounds like you should be eating another fish dish, but it is another delectable sweetie.  The church ladies make a crushed graham cracker shell for this dish, add a thickened cherry filling, and top it all off with whipping cream.

 
You do tend to put on a little weight during a Wisconsin winter supporting all the church fundraising efforts, but supporting the community in small town America certainly is tasty.

Lutefisk dinners form the backbone of winter entertainment small town Wisconsin.  Our little town newspaper had just run an article about the Sons of Norway going to net the year’s catch of lutefisk in the local river.  The spoof article heralded the new season of Lutefisk dinners organized by the local Lutheran Churches.

By Ruth Pennington Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Celebrating German Christmas in Small Town Wisconsin with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Learning about German Christmas in Small Town Wisconsin with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Once I took my daughter to our town’s local history society in Wisconsin.   The history society was holding a German Christmas party, since many of our town’s settlers were German.  The only thing I knew about German culture in our town despite my attempts to find out about it was that the local supermarket had a German name.  

This market had a large selection of marinated hareng, brats (sausage), and locally brewed beers.  We did not have a bakery in our town, but several towns over they had German bakeries with rye bread and pumpernickel bread.  I found those flavors to be too strong, but thought they would be good with Wisconsin cheese selections.

This resulted in a mini quest by me to find what was German about German culture.  When I begin an anthropological search mission, I go to cookbooks.  I read The Cooking of Germany by Nika Standen Hazelton (Time-Life Books, 1969), who led the life of a diplomat’s daughter.  

She wrote about what women in 1969 and what women of today most probably sought to do for guests – make them feel like royalty with the quality of the food and service surrounding it.  She wrote that German women all practice schően decken (to set a table beautifully).  I could certainly see that at the German Christmas party.

Red, ironed tablecloths displayed glass dishes of Christmas cookies, Kaffe (coffee), and napkins with bells and holly on them.  German coffee I discovered was strong yet smooth.  My daughter was more interested in the cookies offered to her by ladies with newly coiffed hair and Christmas pins on their dresses with belts at the waist.  Each cookie tasted of the Middle Ages with flavorings such as allspice, cloves, mace, black pepper, and anise in cookies such lebkuchen and pfeffernüsse.

There were many photos of the early German settlers, but there was no sheet describing German settlement in our town.  German culture is somewhat hidden in the United States, but I am sure it is protected.  The German grandparents in town could probably tell you who everyone was in the photographs on the walls and in some cases what was happening in the agricultural cycle depicted.  As a city girl, I felt removed from “the land,” especially after reading books on organic gardening. 

We left the photo exhibit to join the Christmas carol singers.  We sang in English and in German – Silent Night (Stille Nacht) and O Christmas Tree (O Tannenbaum) to organ music.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Learning about Moroccan Culture through its Cuisine by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Learning about Moroccan Culture through its Cuisine by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

Raymond A. Sokolov coined the word “gastroethnography” to describe a method of examining a society in his book Why We Eat What We Eat: How Columbus Changed the Way the World Eats.  

Gastroethnography proposes the study of another culture through the preparation of its food, food items that are worthy to be eaten, table etiquette, geography, and historical events.

Who prepares meals and in what situation gives us ideas about social organization.  In the article “Une Odeur de Sainteté” by Mohammed Kacimi El-Hassani, readers can see that traditionally in wealthy Moroccan families, it was always the female family members who prepared meals and not servants.  Female family members ensured that that foods were made with fresh ingredients to prevent food poisoning.  Cooking allows many women to express creativity as well.

This creativity comes after a long apprenticeship in the kitchen that begins early.  Moroccan cuisine requires many hands to reduce spices and nuts into powder, for example.  The wealth of able hands challenges the need for food processors, and purists say that ingredients prepared by hand taste better.  Measuring cups and recipe books are rare in the traditional Moroccan kitchen.  

Ingredients for meals come from Morocco’s Saharan climate up to its sea coasts.  Moroccans traditionally like to mix different flavors in their dishes, and it is easy to see this tendency in their national dishes described by Claudia Roden in her book Mediterranean Cookery:  Moroccon tagines are stews cooked with meat and fruits usually; Couscous features a tagine with steamed small pasta; and Bisteeya, a pigeon pie decorated with patterns made by cinnamon.

The etiquette around a Moroccan meal is characterized by hospitality.  Visitors are offered many dishes that must demonstrate shaban, or abundance.  Diners who eat in the traditional manner use the three first fingers of the right hand along with bread to bring food to their mouths.  At the end of the meal, Claudia Roden writes in Mediterranean Cookery that diners drink three glasses of mint tea.

This refined cuisine and its meal ritual are born out of the combination of geography and history.  Morocco only lacks arctic regions and tropical rain forests to offer its inhabitants a wide range of food products.  From a historical standpoint, Moroccan cuisine has benefitted from three important periods – the Arab immigrations in the seventh century; the Kingdom of Andalusia in what is today’s Spain, and the Columbian Exchange that brought New World products to the Mediterranean and beyond such as peppers and tomatoes.

Good cookbooks can be a first foray into a foreign cuisine, if you cannot learn from cooks of a particular culture like that of Morocco.  The best cookbooks tend to be information packed, contain photos of processes not only finished products if they are included, and attempt to provide recipes for people from all levels of society.  Some of the best cookbooks around, by the way, have no photos or images in them.  These seem to be the kind of cookbooks that home cooks cherish.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Louis XIV's Use of Fairy Tales for Political Ends by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Louis XIV's Use of Fairy Tales for Political Ends by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The politics of seventeenth century France revolved around the efforts and success of Louis XIV (1638-1715) to unify the kingdom of France around his person to the detriment of the provincial nobility, who had mini kingdoms of their own in the Middle Ages.  Under Louis XIV, the warrior knights of the Middle Ages became concerned with fashion and free food.  Louis XIV paid Swiss mercenaries to wage war, so he could control his pesky French noblemen and their wives.

In particular, Louis XIV weakened the nobility by allowing a portion of the bourgeoisie (i.e. lawyers, financiers, and doctors) to assume positions of prestige and limited power. He granted nobility to some, who brought great amounts of income to the kingdom.   Charles Perrault (1628-1703), the author of Les Contes de ma mere l’Oye (Mother Goose Tales), was a member of the bourgeoisie called upon to serve the king.  

Perrault supported the political objectives of Louis XIV in his fairy tales, especially his Cinderella and Donkey Skin tales, whose models of feminine beauty played into the unification strategy of Louis XIV by demising the number of people who could compete for the throne against his family.

The tale of Cinderella is one of a step daughter from a previous marriage, who becomes a servant to the children of her father's second marriage.  Cinderella dreams of becoming a princess despite her being a servant.  

Cinderella’s fairy godmother gives her fashionable clothing to wear to the palace and other accoutrements of aristocratic position such as a carriage with fine horses.  Cinderella meets her prince, who later identifies her by placing a thin glass slipper on her foot; only a feather light woman could wear such a shoe. 

 

In Perrault’s version of Cinderella, Cinderella forgives her jealous step-sisters and finds them rich husbands, so they would leave her alone it appears.

The heroine of Donkey Skin, unlike Cinderella, is already a princess and not a member of the bourgeoisie when the story begins.  Her father, the king, wants to marry her.  With the assistance of her godmother, the princess uses several ruses to avoid the incestuous desires of her father.

When the princess could no longer avoid her father’s advances, she leaves the country to protect her virtue.  The princess must wear a donkey skin to hide herself, but her godmother assures her that her clothes and jewels will accompany her everywhere.

The ending of Donkey Skin resembles that of Perrault’s Cinderella.  A prince finds his princess by placing a ring on her very little finger.  The prince’s family is thrilled to find out that Donkey Skin is a princess, who does not really wear a donkey skin everyday like a peasant.  

In the last scene, Donkey Skin forgives her father the king for wanting to marry her.  However, in an absolute monarchy, everyone must obey the king despite what the church says is moral; the king assures food, clothing, and shelter in greater amounts than cloistered nuns.

The moral of these two fairy tales is that women who conform to the king’s ideal of beauty get to be part of palace life, especially if they forgive the king for any trespass.  including incest. 

 

Perrault subtly informs readers that well-clothed women of slight weight are ideals of beauty for their delicate physical size; thereby making many of them incapable of self-defense or of danger to the king or his family without a weapon.

Women had already lost their political rights by the time of Louis XIV due to the rigid implementation of the Salic Law, which was promulgated under Charlemagne (circa 742 -814).  Salic Law prevented noblewomen in France from inheriting dominions or ruling as sovereigns to reduce the division of property in the kingdom.  Noblewomen were supposed to become part of their husband's "house" as far as property and land were concerned.


Despite Salic Law, the power of Catherine de Medici (1519 – 1589) must have lingered in the mind of Louis XIV as to what women could do just as queen mothers.  The menace of possible female leaders in the land with the example of Joan of Arc (1412 - 1431) must have also worried Louis XIV, but he effectively dealt with his problems by subtle and not so subtle means of control.

Among his methods of control were dictating models of clothing fashion, determining cultural program offerings in which he starred at Versailles inside the palace and out in the gardens.  The king wore ballet slippers while all his courtiers wore heels.

Louis XIV also encouraged competition among nobles as to whom could participate in the “Lever du Roi” or “Waking up of the King” to help him bathe, shave, dress, and eat.  He would change favorites every two weeks or so for special food and drink treats during ballets, theatre, and puppet shows as well.

Finally, like the women in Cinderella and Donkey Skin, who need a godmother to arrange for their positions in society, Louis XIV made sure that even his most prestigious courtiers knew that they held their positions due to royal prerogative alone.  Demeaning women leads to the demeaning of men as well.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Uncovering Secrets in Jean de la Fontaine's Fables with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Uncovering Secrets in Jean de la Fontaine's Fables with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The morals that are stated or are implied by many of Jean de la Fontaine’s (1621 – 1695) Fables often criticize the powers-that-be of 17^th century France, notably King Louis XIV (1638 – 1715).

La Fontaine was astute in criticizing the government in the form of fables; it most probably saved his life.  Louis XIV and his courtiers evidently found nothing in common with the animals and insects described in the Fables. 

La Fontaine likely formed his dislike of Louis XIV when his patron, the Superintendent of Finances, Nicolas Fouquet (1615 – 1680) was tried and imprisoned by Louis XIV for corruption.  La Fontaine suffered after Fouquet’s disgrace as well by having to pay a large fine for using an aristocrat’s title in his name and having to seek a new patron.

La Fontaine begins his Fables with the story of the grasshopper and the ant.  The grasshopper asks the ant for food, which the ant refuses to give him.

The implicit moral of the fable is to economize to prepare for difficult times.  The financial vocabulary that La Fontaine uses all point to an economic interpretation of this fable with words such as interest, principal, debtor, and borrower being used in the text.

The lesson here is that small-scale economies apply to the kingdom as well.  Louis XIV’s projects such as diverting the Eure River to supply the fountains at Versailles with water were expensive.

La Fontaine’s ultimate moral in the grasshopper and ant fable may have been that kings should manage their treasury and save money rather than divert rivers and engage in wars.

The absolute power of Louis XIV may have served as the subject of La Fontaine’s fable of the wolf and the lamb.  The lamb tries to persuade the wolf not to eat it using reason and logical arguments. However, the wolf eats the lamb without remorse, using force to do so.

Force appears to win the day in La Fontaine’s Fables, because rulers, subjects, and La Fontaine’s animals are susceptible to flattery.  In La Fontaine’s fable of the crow and the fox, a crow holds a piece of cheese in its beak. 

When the fox flatters the crow, the crow opens it mouth to show off its beautiful voice. When this happens, the crow drops its meal to the fox below.  The moral of the fable is that flattery harms those who listen to it and believe it, which suggests how Louis XIV was able to divide and conquer his once-powerful nobles.

Looking for veiled political criticisms such as these in Jean de la Fontaine’s Fables adds another level to appreciating La Fontaine’s work and to understanding the era of Louis XIV.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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The Dictation of Mérimée - a French Grammar Game Described by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The Dictation of Merimee - a French Grammar Game with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget - Ruth Pennington Paget

I first saw a framed copy of the Dictation of Mérimée  created by Prosper Mérimée (1803 – 1870) in the home of my husband’s grandparents.

I knew that this had to be a dictation after years of doing grueling Friday dictation exercises in my high school. My French teacher would read a passage for half an hour that we students would write. Then, we would pass our papers to the student behind us and correct the dictation exercise.  I credit dictation exercises for my command of French grammar.

French is full of traps related to homonyms. The sound “oh” can be written as “o,”, “ô,” “eau,” “ault,”, “eaux,” “au,” “aux,”, and “ot.”

You have to know your vocabulary words and be analytical about applying grammatical rules. In French class, dictation correction time solidified correct usage in our young minds. We all wanted perfect scores to show how polished our French was.

As we students advanced through high school, our French teacher gave us dictation exercises from works such as Antoine Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince and Gustave Flaubert’s Salammbô. (Salammbô takes place in Carthage in the 3rd century BCE after the First Punic War.) These dictations were somewhat easier for us, because we were reading these books in our French class.

So, when I saw this framed dictation about a dinner in Saint-Adresse near Le Havre, I knew I had to ask my husband’s grandmother a question, “Is this a famous dictation?”

She laughed and said, “It is infamous. It is the Dictée de Mérimée. Napoleon III had trouble with it, but the Austrian ambassador to France only made three mistakes on it.”

The Austrian ambassador was the Prince de Metternich. The dictée that Mérimée created in 1857 was part of the entertainment at the court of Napoleon III in Compiègne, France. The Empress Eugénie made 62 mistakes and Napoleon III made 75 mistakes.

Dictations have remained a part of French culture and not just in school.  I was surprised to learn when visiting one of the great-aunts in my husband’s family that she attended a weekly dictation club where she and her friends took turns choosing and reading the dictations that others wrote. 

Sometimes they chose passages from French literature, but mostly they made the passages up themselves.  (No doubt the made-up passages were full of exceptions to the rules.)

After that discussion, I felt like going home and reviewing French grammar books like Le Petit Bescherelle and taking advantage of the many dictations that are now available on the web. I always liked my French teacher’s dictations that required etymological knowledge in addition to analytical ability.

My family’s copy of the Dictée de Mérimée written on parchment is in a frame on a wall in our home in Germany (now Monterey County California).

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Navigating the Colonial French Business Meal with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Navigating the Colonial French Business Meal by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Savvy business people know that understanding the etiquette that surrounds a business meal can foster relationships that are crucial for doing business in foreign countries. The success of your product or service may have its beginnings in the impression you make at the dinner table.

Nowhere is this truer than in France. The well-thought out contrast of cold versus hot dishes, textures, seasonings, difficulty of preparation, and choice of wines to go with dishes make ordering a French meal a pleasurable intellectual exercise. How well you can put this savoir faire into practice can contribute to the impression that your French counterparts retain of you.

The French meal begins with the very agreeable custom of drinking an apéritif. This is usually a sweet wine or another alcoholic beverage, which should stimulate the appetite. One of the most popular apéritifs is kir. It is made with white wine and blackcurrant liqueur (crème de cassis). Even more popular is kir royal, which is made with champagne.

Plain champagne will always be welcome as an apéritif as well. Those diners seeking the flair of Provence should try anise-flavored pastis. Drinking whiskey is an accepted British habit. The apéritif, always taken in moderation, should serve as a gastric warm up.

In the past, the French preceded the entrée with an hors d’oeuvre, but nowadays business meals are being scaled down. The appetite-opening entrée begins the meal. The French are confused by the American use of entrée to describe the main dish in American fare. 

In France, the entrée can be almost any kind of food depending on what you plan to eat after it.

Ham from Bayonne served with fresh figs or cantaloupe is a popular entrée during summer months as well as vegetable terrines. Shellfish show up frequently during the winter months with raw oysters, called fresh oysters in France, being the premier dish. 

Other favorites are baked scallops on the half shell and boiled langoustines, a soft-shelled crayfish. Foie gras in aspic is an especially luxurious entrée. Any entrée should just ever so slightly satisfy your appetite on the way to the main dish called the “plat principal.”

Meat or fish is the usual main dish, but the cooking techniques are often what set French cuisine apart from the cooking in the United States, for example. Poached fish whets the appetite for a dry white wine. 

Chicken simmered in wine literally falls off the bones in the dish called Coq au Vin (Chicken in Wine Sauce). Roasted meats, especially lamb shanks, remain a favorite, because meat accompanies red wine so well.

The French are by no means finished eating after the main course. A simple green salad with vinegar and oil dressing sometimes follows the main course. The French never drink wine with salad as the vinegar clashes with the wine. If you want to avoid appearing uncouth, you should do the same. Many restaurants proceed directly to the cheese course.

The arrival of the cheese platter signals that serious business discussion can begin. It may even merit opening another bottle of wine. In a restaurant, you can point at two or three cheese offerings on the cheese platter if you do not know the names. 

However, it is better to ask the waiter what the names of the cheese are and then select a few. The waiter will give you your cheese selections.

You may never have to do it, but it is good to know the correct way to cut the cheese in France:

Round cheese in wedges

Log shaped cheese in rounds

Square cheese in little squares

Flat-topped pyramid cheese in squares

Wedges in slimmer wedges

Knowing these fine points could earn you some brownie points with your dinner guests on the way to dessert.

Many French people drink a sweet wine or semi-sweet Champagne with their dessert. This holds true for all desserts except for those containing chocolate, which taints the taste of wine. Luscious desserts served in dainty portions explain how the French stay so slim.

The meal usually ends with a cup of espresso. The French never drink coffee with their meals. Strong, bitter espresso bears no relation to the mild American beverage. Preferred after-dinner drinks are cognac and armagnac. Some restaurants even offer their patrons a cigar.

A final word should be said about dinner conversation. French businesspeople have elegant, old-fashioned manners. They will not aggressively seek out personal information. 

Instead they will let you slowly reveal your personality through your discussion of current events, interests, and French culture. The French are justly proud of their heritage and they will appreciate knowledgeable references to it during dinner.

Cigars can be smoked at the end of the meal, usually by men.

Bon appétit!

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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