Who Says the French Don’t Like British Stodge?

Traditional French village life was fun, but so was corrupting their palates

I guess you have probably heard that French cuisine is among the best in the world?

While British cuisine, on the other hand, tends to be less desired internationally and has a bit of an image of “boring” and “acquired taste” about it.

In which case, you can probably imagine my surprise when the local French villagers in the place where I settled were positively drooling over our favourite British foods!

You may or may not have already read the beginning of this story.

In a nutshell, in a slightly unplanned manner, I had settled in Central France for the time being.

I was living in a small caravan next to the woods, on the only flat part of the field in which it was placed. The rest of the field sloped down to a small stream that flowed out of the little lake, the etang — literally translated as “pond”.

Above the stream was a spring out of which trickled the purest, most delicious water.

I had discovered, just weeks earlier that I was pregnant. Feeling tired and nauseous a lot of the time, I enjoyed the quiet bliss of this field of wildflowers, living among nature, and freedom to swim naked in the etang.

A little about the local villagers

Close to this little nature haven were 3 hamlets that were surprisingly lively for such rural parts of Central France. The social crew was mostly made up of city people who had moved away from urban living and had intentionally chosen to live their lives close to the earth; to grow their food, keep animals, and bring their children up to appreciate the simple things in life.

Over the prior twenty years or so, people “in the know” had migrated there and bought up the houses that, at that time, were only selling for around 2,000 euros. Most young people who were born in the countryside were moving to the cities and houses were being left empty and unwanted.

It was surprising how many people in other alternative communities across France knew of this little haven, and of some of the people living there. Then again, people travel, attend anti-nuclear protests, anti-GMO protests, and such.

As I have learned over the years, the world is much smaller than we are first led to believe it is.

To one side was Les Rivailles, a one-road hamlet with some friendly, arty folk living in it. To the other side was Le Petit Pic and, a little further on, Le Grand Pic — literally translated as The Little Peak and The Big Peak.

There were no obvious peaks to mark these two hamlets but it was fair to say that they were elevated points in these rolling hills, and the whole of the region sat reasonably higher above sea level than the surrounding regions. To us less romantic-sounding Brits, we simply referred to those two hamlets as “The Pics”.

Most of the young children lived in The Pics and the families were often together or leaning on one another for childcare.

The nearby village had a school that the children attended but those who were too young for school would go to a different house each weekday, where the parents in charge would organise activities and feed them lunch. They called this enterprise L’ecole des Petits — school of the littlies — and, since we remained in the area until my daughter was two, we became involved and joined the circle of hosting parents.

One thing that most of the families living here had in common was the love of horses. In fact, this was the reason why my friends, Sarah and Joel, had come to this area to live in the first place. They owned a donkey and two mules but needed to have the flexibility to return to England sometimes for work or to visit family.

They had been told that it was a place where they would have no trouble finding someone to support them with animal care when needed, and so they came to visit and soon settled.

Indeed, pretty much everybody rode and cared for horses there. The children would be put on horseback as soon as they could walk, and adventures on horseback were always on the agenda.

In fact, in the late Spring, after had I arrived to live there, an English woman, Debbie, living in Le Petit Pic with her French partner, Jerome, and their two young daughters, set off in a bow-top wagon on an adventure-holiday, pulled by her horses.

I remember how we all walked the lanes with her for the first small leg of her journey, to wish her well. The smell of honeysuckle lingers when I think of that day, for it was just blooming, and I picked a flower and stuck it behind my ear to smell as we walked along.

The weekly bake — the big event of the week

Community living was important for this French community and there was one community event that was of vital importance — the weekly bake.

It was of vital importance because it was the day that the families would all bake their bread for the week, along with tarts, cakes, and pizzas. As you can imagine, everyone looked forward to this day and the event was never missed!

You see, in many traditional old villages, there would be a village oven. This would be a proper wood-fired, stone oven with a vast space inside to hold many loaves and more. Usually, this oven would be attached to one house in the village.

In this case, it was attached to the house of a man called Vincent, and his family, in Le Grand Pic.

Vincent looked like the classic Frenchman — you could have popped a chef’s hat on his head and he would have looked exactly as you might imagine a ‘typical’ French chef to look like. Not too tall, a little round, a moustache that curled up at the ends, and a big, cheeky smile to go with it.

Several of the men would pitch in for the day, for it was a big job. First, the fire would have to be lit early to allow adequate time for the oven to heat up. Then it would need to be constantly topped up with small pieces of wood — the kind that catches alight easily and burns hot.

Then, all of the scooping in and out of loaves, tarts, cakes and, at the very end, the pizzas, was heavy work.

No one else was allowed to be involved in that part but anyone who wished to bake something in the communal oven could bring their unbaked items along and pick them up later in the day.

A faggot of wood to bake your bread

Vincent asked a small price for the privilege; per family, the cost was two faggots (bundles) of wood or 2 euros. Compared to the large families with three or four children apiece, Sarah, Joel, myself, and our friend, Colin, barely brought anything along to bake, and so we were allowed to get away with two faggots of wood for all of us together.

The baking day was, of course, a high-energy day with kids playing in the yard and families looking forward to delicious pizza and cake to finish the day off with.

Beats the British tradition of queueing up at the fish and chip shop, any day!

Bringing British cuisine to the French

Sarah and Joel loved to invite the local French villagers around to eat food that they didn’t typically cook themselves.

First, they introduced them to Indian curries (now considered to be Britain’s most popular cuisine). The French adored them and asked for more curry nights with us.

Next, they introduced them to Marmite. If you don’t know about Marmite, let me explain quickly…

From Wikipedia:

“Marmite (/ˈmɑːrmaɪt/ MAR-myte) is a savoury food spread made from yeast extract that was invented by German scientist Justus von Liebig and originally made in the United Kingdom. It is a by-product of beer brewing and is currently produced by British company Unilever. The product is notable as a vegan source of B vitamins, including supplemental vitamin B12. A traditional use is to spread it very thinly on buttered toast.

Marmite is a sticky, dark brown paste with a distinctive, salty, powerful flavour and matching heady aroma. This distinctive taste is represented in the marketing slogan: “Love it or hate it.” Such is its prominence in British popular culture that the product’s name is often used as a metaphor for something that is an acquired taste or tends to polarise opinion.” — Source

Most people who aren’t British cannot stand the taste of Marmite. Even the Australians, who have their own version — Vegemite — typically find Marmite too strong in taste.

However, the curious and intrepid villagers of The Pics thought Marmite was fantastic and, soon enough, their kids were all as addicted as any Marmite-loving British child would be.

Hence, on every visit home to the UK, there would be several orders of Marmite for us to return with.

But, if you thought that was an achievement, that was nothing, for…

Pasty-culture took the biscuit

Again, from Wikipedia:

“A pasty (/ˈpæsti/[1]) is a British baked pastry, a traditional variety of which is particularly associated with Cornwall, United Kingdom.[2][3] It is made by placing an uncooked filling, typically meat and vegetables, on one half of a flat shortcrust pastry circle, folding the pastry in half to wrap the filling in a semicircle and crimping the curved edge to form a seal before baking.” — Source

I had originally become friends with Sarah and Joel while we were all living in Cornwall.

Pasties, for us, had been an essential part of life.

Although not the healthiest of foods, they did a mighty fine job of keeping you feeling well-insulated against the Cornish winds. However, in Central France, pasties were a thing of the past. Until that is, we realised we could make them ourselves.

So, one Friday — the weekly village oven day — we made an enormous quantity of pastry dough, along with an enormous quantity of root vegetable and onion filling, and set to work making an enormous number of pasties.

And then, we invited all of the villagers around for a pasty party.

Let’s just say that they were a hit and, from then on, pasties were a regular feature among the French families’ weekly bakes.

And that is the story of how we corrupted the French with our British food.

One day, I shall return to find out if pasties are still being baked in the village oven every Friday.

For now…

Bonne journée

Thanks for reading! Here is the original story that began this series of stories from my time in France:

And the second:

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