Chez Moi Quotes

“My eye keeps escaping towards the big blue lacquered door that I've had painted in a trompe-l'oeil on the back wall. I would like to call Mrs. Cohen back and tell her there's no problem for her son's bar mitzvah, everything's ready: I would like to go through that door and disappear into the garden my mind's eye has painted behind it. The grass there is soft and sweet, there are bulrushes bowing along the banks of a river. I put lime trees in it, hornbeams, weeping elms, blossoming cherries and liquidambars. I plant it with ancient roses, daffodils, dahlias with their melancholy heavy heads, and flowerbeds of forget-me-nots. Pimpernels, armed with all the courage peculiar to such tiny entities, follow the twists and turns between the stones of a rockery. Triumphant artichokes raise their astonished arrows towards the sky. Apple trees and lilacs blossom at the same time as hellebores and winter magnolias. My garden knows no seasons. It is both hot and cool. Frost goes hand in hand with a shimmering heat haze. The leaves fall and grow again. row and fall again. Wisteria climbs voraciously over tumbledown walls and ancient porches leading to a boxwood alley with a poignant fragrance. The heady smell of fruit hangs in the air. Huge peaches, chubby-cheeked apricots, jewel-like cherries, redcurrants, raspberries, spanking red tomatoes and bristly cardoons feast on sunlight and water, because between the sunbeams it rains in rainbow-colored droplets. At the very end, beyond a painted wooden fence, is a woodland path strewn with brown leaves, protected from the heat of the skies by a wide parasol of foliage fluttering in the breeze. You can't see the end of it, just keep walking, and breathe.”
― Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi: A Novel

“...moters ir vyro santykiai panašūs į dangaus skliautą. Tai mėlynas, tai juodas, kartais debesuotas, kartais lietingas, nesvarbu - vis tiek dangaus skliautas tas pats. Neapykanta, kurią jaučiame seniau mylėtam žmogui, neturi nieko bendra su kitomis neapykantomis. Ją maitina buvusi meilė.”
― Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi: A Novel

“I serve him a portion of chocolate, pear and pepper tart with a glass of chilled rosé. I watch him eat, and think that, in the end, he didn't lie: he is eating in my restaurant. Except it's not supper time, so he did lie. I look at him and think he's feeding off me because I put all of myself into that first tart, that inaugural dessert. I kneaded gently, melted patiently, saved the juice as I sliced, then incorporated it into the pastry, with the Masai-black chocolate, my brown pastry in my hands, rolling it out and shaping it, rolling it out and shaping it, the pepper over the pears because I believe- in the kitchen as in other areas- in the mysterious power of alliteration. The peppercorns are dark on the outside and pale yellow on the inside, not crushed or ground. Sliced. My pepper-mill is a grater, creating tiny slices of spice.”
― Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi: A Novel

“Every memory is moaning softly inside me. Don’t leave me, begs the past. Don’t abandon us, weep the images. Time itself is talking to me, admonishing me. I draw up my legacy against its inexorable tide.”
― Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi: A Novel

“Fresh vegetables there."
He leans forward and I lean with him; my knees crack, his don't. He has created an opening under the window and built a larder cupboard of wicker and bamboo. Luxurious cabbages, self-satisfied leeks, arching chard, earthy carrots, ravishing little turnips and all sorts of different squashes, some with markings like an ocelot, some shaped like gourds and others sheltering under impish bonnets of stalk.
"Dried vegetables."
In wooden pails, raised off the ground by hollow bricks, there are black-eyed beans watching me, lentils sleeping, haricot beans slithering and chickpeas tumbling.
"Dairy products."
There is now a portable chiller cabinet above my fridge. It is opened by means of a large aluminum handle which you lift then turn. It's a precious old-fashioned kitchen until harboring the cool half-light so beneficial to goat's and ewe's cheese, fresh cream and yogurt in strainers.”
― Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi: A Novel

“Our tapas look exquisite: little squares of spiced honey-cake decorated with goat's cheese and roast pears, chicken livers on port on slices of potato with onion marmalade, rolled up radicchio with honey and haddock. Ben has been to buy some boxes from the patisserie to stow our treasures. The exotic menu is made up of taramasalata, roulade of tuna and capers, salad of peppers sautéed in garlic, and aubergine caviar. It isn't very exotic for an inhabitant of the Balkans but it probably would be for someone from Vietnam or Brittany. The giant salad really is a giant: there's a whole meal in it, from the first course to the dessert and all that with no rice and no tinned sweet corn. Slivers, slivers of all sorts of different things- vegetables, cheese, fruit- all blended without crushing each other, side by side without working against each other.”
― Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi: A Novel

“I make a list of my assets- caviar of aubergine, pepper salad, spiced fish, cheese pasties, potato salad with chilies, taramasalata, artichokes with oranges, broad beans with cumin, filou parcels of tuna and capers, triangular patties of meat, egg and coriander... I arrange intersections, detours, associations, improbable meetings. The exoticism will stretch from the Far East to Asia Minor. My battalions are lining up, an infantry of vegetables and a cavalry of crunchiness. I inspect my munitions between the flanks of my spice rack, curcuma and ras-el hanout standing to attention in their glass phials. Oregano, sage, poppy seeds, nigella, red berries, black peppercorns. I need mountains of garlic, pine kernels, olives, preserved lemons...”
― Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi: A Novel

“Onion skins- light, translucent, golden- swirl round the chopping board in the draft created by my knife. I think of Ali Slimane's sublime white onions, as sweet as fruit, like light bulbs because, rather than being reflected in them, the light seemed to emanate from them.”
― Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi: A Novel

“While I'm waiting for him to come back I make some shortbread biscuits which I will serve with figs in whisky and a vanilla zabaglione. I rub some shoulders of lamb with garlic and harissa, and put them in the oven, then blanch some celery and chard before glazing them with brown sugar.”
― Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi: A Novel

“I see a lavish procession of frothy strawberry mousses, strips of smoked eel, bundles of mixed seaweed and mushrooms, exquisite spiced biscuits and specialist honeys. The photographs show pyramids, three-arched bridges, palaces with several floors and balconies and terraces- works of art for the delectation of the mouth. I admire a Golden Gate Bridge made of nougatine, an Eiffel Tower of profiteroles and a Taj Mahal in meringue.”
― Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi: A Novel

“My favorite chapter is about dogs. In it the author explains that dogs are not animals. According to him, or her (I don't know what sex authors are in the same way I don't know their names), dogs are a concept. A Doberman is not much like a Cocker Spaniel which shares few characteristics with a Chihuahua; a Saint-Bernard can meet a Pekingese and, theoretically, they can mate, but does that ever happen and would it be a good thing? Because, although zoologically they belong to the same species, in practical terms it's blindingly obvious they're not made for each other. The author went on to say how amazed he (or she) was that his three-year-old daughter (the tendency to mix personal life with reasoning makes me incline towards an Anglo-Saxon writer) could always recognize a dog when she saw one in the street, even though the animals she pointed at so enthusiastically- delighted by an opportunity to display her combined mastery of language and categorization- didn't look anything like each other. If a cat appeared, even a big beefy one, she would not be fooled. If a pony turned up, even the smallest of its lineage, smaller at the wither than a Great Dane, she would not cry 'Dog! Dog!' She knew. Even if they don't bark, have their ears trimmed so they prick up, or are bundled into miniature anoraks to protect them from inclement weather, dogs maintain their conceptual integrity.”
― Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi: A Novel

“The beetroots come out of the oven and I shower them with walnut vinegar. The chard gushes into the colander and I sprinkle it with lemon juice and pepper. My worktop is a battlefield: pips, tops, droplets, stains, leaves and peelings- everything piles up and oozes. I melt at the sight of pink beetroot blood on a cucumber heart.”
― Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi: A Novel

“I take out salad ingredients, vegetables, herbs and several knives: peeler, smooth-bladed and serrated. I cut half a cucumber into cubes, then move onto the mushrooms which I slice into little slithers, I go back to the cucumber, cutting wafer-thin slices, skip to topping and tailing green beans, pop whole beetroots into the oven, I scoop the flesh out of avocados and grapefruits, and put the chard into boiling water. The whole idea is not to get bored. The theory, because I have a theory about peeling things, is to leave room for random opportunities. With cooking, as with everything else, we tend to curb our instincts. Speed and chaos allow for a slight loss of control. Cutting vegetables into different shapes and sizes encourages combinations which might not have been thought of otherwise. In a salad of mushrooms, cucumber and lamb's lettuce, the chervil needs to stay whole, in sprigs, to make a contrast because the other ingredients are so fine, almost transparent, and slippery. If its thin stems and tiny branches didn't contradict the general sense of languor- accentuated by the single cream instead of olive oil in the dressing- the whole thing would descend into melancholy.”
― Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi: A Novel

“I'm going to do table displays for them with passion flowers," he coos. "Circlets of convolvulus for the little girls. I'll use lots of jasmine, of course. I'll have to get used to making crystallized rose petals instead of the usual sugared almonds, they're so much more refined. For big venues I'll use vines and ivy dotted with big blousy roses. Lilies are very tough, very strong. I'll mix wild flowers like cow parsley and camomile with more sophisticated things. Lots of greenery, eucalyptus, ribes...”
― Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi: A Novel

“All of a sudden the veal is in front of me and the smell of it is intoxicating. I could pick it up in my hands and bite right to the bone, like the wild animal I have become. But no. I look at it, study it. I analyze how it's been cooked, prod it with the tip of my knife, then make an incision: pink blood- some water, a bit of juice, nothing really- oozes out and blends with the brown sauce where Chinese artichokes drift past green beans so fine they look like chive stems, only firmer.”
― Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi: A Novel

“At the far end of our plot he'd cleared a little square patch of land and planted herbs: thyme, rosemary, parsley, coriander, chives, sage and mint. I asked him if he was worried they'd be polluted by the city air. "You're all polluted yourselves," he said, but without animosity, not judgmental. "You breathe the air, what difference does it make if you eat it? It's already inside you." At night I used to visit our vegetable patch with a torch. I would crouch down with my feet on the bare earth and watch the velvety sage leaves catching the moisture, covering themselves in it, soaking it up. The rosemary held up its tiny daggers in the darkness as if trying to burst bubbles of water hovering just above the ground. And the tall tubes of chives, the spiky, green, seriously weird hair-style of a subterranean onion reaching upwards. Thyme crawled over the soil, like a detachment of the Resistance, grouped together, efficient, close-knit. I used to stay there thinking, resting. I liked being with plants, they're neutral, they don't talk, don't hear anything, have no longings or needs.”
― Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi: A Novel

“I've ordered ice-cold ficoide in truffle vinaigrette. Ficoide is a rare kind of salad with thick fleshy leaves prettily arranged round a delicious pulpy stem. I don't know where you buy the stuff. At Chez moi I have ordinary lettuce and romaine lettuce, and also rocket which I toss into gravy because I've got an idea rocket is a meat-like plant: I'm keen to reconcile it with its animal tendencies. It's a waste because most people leave it on the side of the plate, shriveled and pathetic as if it were a failed garnish. Still, I press on with my attempted trans-categorization: I feel it's what the various foodstuffs expect of me, what I'm supposed to give to the world. Rocket with meat. Avocados with fruit. White wine with cheese. I realign friendships, cheat at Happy Families.”
― Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi: A Novel

“Fish fingers don't feature on my menu and I immediately hate myself for the arrogant way I put my menus together. What makes so-called serious food, dishes that are meant to be refined- cod loin in blackberry jus with wild mushrooms, millefeuilles of lamb and aubergines, torte of mascarpone with grapes and cognac- what makes them any more worthy of being served at Chez moi? I find my own elitism repulsive.”
― Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi: A Novel

“Why's the pavement on this chard tart all green?" my mother asks. She's never trusted me and probably thinks I've let it go moldy. "Because I've put chopped dill and chives in it. It looks better and it makes it lighter too." My father spits it out. He doesn't like herbs. He thinks they're for girls and for cattle. My mother's the only person I know who calls a pie crust a pavement. I think it's sweet and can pardon her the offense. Has she forgiven me mine? The raw tuna marinated in cébette onions is a success I regret. It cost a fortune and it's so easy to do it's soulless. It's the sea they should be thanking, not me. My own vanity is intoxicating. I've made the decision: no more raw fish.”
― Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi: A Novel

“I've thought at length about stocks and leftovers. How much should I buy? What should I cook? How long should I keep it? I've thought about it and found an answer: do what you would for a large family. With fish: raw on the first day, cooked the next if it hasn't been eaten, made into terrine on the third and soup on the fourth. That's what my grandmother does. That's what most women do and no one's ever died from it. How do I know? It would have been in the paper. With meat it's the same, except I think tartar is a bit vulgar, so I cook my meat the day I buy it, then it becomes meatballs, soft little meatballs with coriander and cumin, celery tops, fronds of chervil, cream, lemon and tomatoes, roasted in garlic. There's no third chance for meat. Well there is and there isn't. I'm not allowed to write about it. With vegetables it's even more straightforward: raw, cooked, puréed, in soup, as stock. It's the same for fruits. Dairy products are such a help: they hold up well. I have a particular weakness for them. I trust them completely. Juices, of every sort, are kept separately in glass jugs. Very important, glass jugs. That's something else I got from my grandmother.”
― Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi: A Novel