Barbecue Bonheur

Pursue Pleasure à la Plancha

Barbecue, as I’ve said, is our secret weapon in summer. Few French people will admit it, but they envy the American—and Australian—knack for the grill, with its Quest for Fire immediacy to food. In the past few decades I’ve seen many of my compatriots return from visits to America toting barbecue paraphernalia.

Barbecue is not only perfect for entertaining. It also fits in with the trend among many French to desacralize gastronomy, keeping what is pure and elemental while forgoing the stuffiness of service and dining ritual—women still bring their lapdogs to restaurants, but men wear ties less often. Some formalities will persist, as they should: close though the French may get to a BBQ shack, you will never find an eatery serving a precious Salers steak, from four-year-old Auvergne cows, on paper plates. And ketchup on fries? Jamais. But in most other respects, the French have shown themselves eager adaptors of this excellent American ritual. At Houston’s renowned Goode Company Barbeque, I observed a sign inviting patrons to bring their own meat in for barbecuing—there, deep in the heart of Texas, an invitation to planned and thoughtful eating that could warm even a French woman’s heart. Nowadays in France—all over Europe, really—you can buy any model Weber barbecue you want, including gas grills like the one we’ve enjoyed in New York for sixteen years!

I fell in love with barbecue the first time Edward grilled me a steak. A friend had given us an extraordinary bottle of red wine, and so Edward decided to splurge on a porterhouse. As the grill heated he sprinkled the meat with just a few small pieces of garlic here and there and poured on the juice of a lemon, then grilled it with some portobello mushrooms. Seasoning took place at the table. Of such simple things are memories made.

The French being the French, and perpetually innovating in their obsessions with food, quality and pleasure, they have taken a turn back to the future, rediscovering a nineteenth-century Spanish invention that does the grill one better, at least health-wise. La plancha, a magically conductive steel griddle, allows one to cook very fast without much fat, and because it is a flat, unbroken surface, there is less risk of charring the food. Purists will complain that this defeats the purpose of barbecue, but doctors agree that charred food can be carcinogenic—don’t we have enough of that in our food chain already?

Though it wants for the glow of coals, the plancha offers the great virtue of cooking, as chefs say, à la minute—basically, just before you’re sitting down to eat. At the same time it preserves the textures and flavors of fresh produce. And not least, it can be used both indoors and out. The Spanish have used the plancha for years to make tapas, their very extemporaneous and varied food of little servings, which, naturally, the French adore. Variety is no problem, because you can cook most things in a matter of minutes once the plancha is really hot.

Maybe it was my American nostalgia. Or maybe it was the odd pleasure of dislocation, as Woody Allen expresses it: “When I’m in Paris I want to be in New York, and when I am in New York I wish I were in Paris.” But one year Edward and I were in Spain around Thanksgiving, and I longed for turkey. A friend in Barcelona indulged me with a delightful Spanish interpretation of turkey scaloppine with Marsala and sage. Just two hours before our expatriate version of the feast that would have taken all day to prepare à l’américaine, she had put a small slice of the incomparable Iberico ham on each turkey slice and overlaid that with a sliver of mozzarella and some fresh sage leaves. She then rolled up the scaloppines and secured each with toothpicks before transferring them to a deep dish; over it all she poured some Marsala (Sherry works well, too), olive oil, and a dash of salt and pepper. After basting the scaloppines a few times, she popped them into the fridge until it was time to cook them: eight to ten minutes on the preheated plancha. In the last two minutes, she added the lovely accompaniment of apple slices. We enjoyed it with a wonderful Rioja, but I have served the meal at home very happily with a good Zinfandel. Anyone who has suffered the blandness of the comical misnomer that is Butterball should give this delicious Thanksgiving à la catalan a try. It may not supplant the traditional roast turkey with all the fixings in autumn, but in summer, you’ll be thankful for an easy little taste of tradition while the leaves are still on the trees. The only thing missing will be the apples. Apples can be found in summer, as everything can, but they aren’t meant to be. And with so many alternatives, we shouldn’t miss them too much.