voices in food.
French lessons
MY COOKING YEAR: FEBRUARY
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)
RECIPE DEBORA ROBERTSON
Smoked haddock parmentier
PHOTOGRAPH KRIS KIRKHAM
FOOD STYLING EMILY GUSSIN
STYLING SARAH BIRKS
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.