57. Further meditations upon food

And these may be a little incoherent because it’s been a long, tiring, sunny day and I’ve just drunk a couple of glasses of much-needed rosé, but…

We do eat well here; not only is the fresh produce good (and yesterday we discovered the weekly marché biologique up in the 17^th arrondissement – a little more expensive, but superb), but so are all the other things – the bread, the cheese, the oil, the patisserie, fish, all that. We are very lucky in that we have these lovely things concentrated on the street around the corner, but that quality you find everywhere in Paris. And it makes me realise that one of the things I find most difficult about living in London is not that that quality doesn’t exist – it does, if you know where to look – but that it is confined to those who can pay for it, and consequently belongs pretty well exclusively to the Chelsea- and Kensington-ites. And English society being as stratified as it is, people who live in, say, Morden, therefore are excluded, by price, distance, and a sort of inverse snobbism. I have a great deal of sympathy for Jamie Oliver and his campaign to get people accustomed to eating and demanding good fresh produce. Good food, good ingredients, are such a delight and they should be accessible to everyone.

Incidentally, that accessibility of fabulous produce is also one of the things I love most about Adelaide. I’ve seen markets in quite a few countries now – I do try to check them out wherever I go – and the Adelaide Central Market stands up pretty damn well.

So… food highlights of the past couple of weeks:

• A tarte aux poires, from our regular boulangerie/patisserie – they have mastered the art of desserts that aren’t too heavy, rich, or sweet.
• A pile of fresh vegies from the marché biologique, roasted slowly and served with good olive oil drizzled over the top and fresh basil
• A superb brebis (sheep cheese), pressed in fresh thyme and specially recommended by the fromager, who supports my project to work my way through every cheese he stocks (wasn’t it de Gaulle who asked, ‘how can you govern a country that has four hundred varieties of cheese?’).
• A big dish of enormous fresh blueberries, also from the marché biologique – a stall that was selling only blueberries
• moules – ‘très bien elévées’, I was assured by the fishmonger – literally ‘well brought up’ – cooked in wine with porcini mushrooms
• at lunch today, a lovely fresh salad – just an assortment of leaves – with a thick mustardy dressing, from the Bistro de la Place in the Place de l’Église in Montfort l’Amaury*

This last we shared with Claude (the curator of the Musée Ravel and one of my favourite people in the world), her grandson, his partner and their little baby, just two months old and very beautiful, with his (Indian) mother’s dark skin and big brown eyes. Then we went to the Musée Ravel and spent most of the afternoon playing the piano, which was, as always, a delight. The Erard likes La bonne chanson – Fauré owned and loved Erards himself, and sonorities and colours just flow out of Ravel’s instrument into Fauré’s music. Especially the string 4tet texture of the first song of the cycle – the straight-strung Erard gives a different colour to each voice, so the polyphony comes beautifully to the surface.

* A restaurant Ravel would certainly have visited, since it’s been there since well before his time. In actual fact the square is now officially the Place de la Libération (since 1945 or thereabouts), but none of the Montfortois actually call it that; since it is the Place de l’Église, why call it anything else?

We spent six days last week in London, but of that there is little to say. I am beginning to think that Emily’s London Diary was perhaps not the best title for this page, since I find life most interesting when I am not, in fact, in London. That said, the British Library is a truly wonderful place, and – unlike the Bibliothèque nationale – it is free. Unlike the music department of the Bibliothèque nationale, it is also open and functional, so it wins out there. It is also usefully located right next to Kings Cross St Pancras station, so it is very handy for Paris. On Monday I worked there all day, then met Roy out the front, had a quick dinner and got on the Eurostar. An excellent system.

Roy played a fabulous concert of Fauré chamber music with some Royal Academy colleagues, in an amazing venue – Wilton’s Music Hall, near Wapping, apparently the oldest music hall in the world (it dates from 1850 or thereabouts, was left derelict through much of the 20^th century, and is now in operation again as a theatre and concert venue, and it is very beautiful and extraordinarily atmospheric).

And… that was about it for London, really.