LOW EXPECTATIONS FOR HIGH CUISINE

THE MARCH OF THE FROZEN, FREEZE-DRIED AND BOIL-IN-A-BAG

           It was a small local restaurant in Montmartre not too many years ago. I was lunching with two friends from London. We all ordered canard a l’orange – and burst out laughing when it arrived. The three joints of duck were so identical that they might have been  produced by a 3D printer.  Any preparation clearly consisted of extracting the plastic bags of pre-cooked and sauced duck from the freezer and dropping them into boiling water.

           With rents and labour costs soaring, French restaurateurs have turned increasingly to short cuts:  portions frozen, canned or boil-in-a-bag, cream and chocolate “extended” with fillers, and much, much worse. A visit to one of the big industrial hypermarches reserved for the trade is a depressing experience. Instead of the four-wheel wire chariots, buyers are given six-wheel steel platforms. How else could they carry the 50k canisters of frozen frites, the 10 litre cans of “bechamel -type” sauce, the bottles of “essences” and substitutes supposedly indistinguishable from real beef bouillon or chocolate syrup?

           As the son of a pastrycook, none of this was new to me. Quite early, my father introduced me to the mystery of “Blackjack”, aka Parisian Essence (the French connection is significant.) This inky fluid in an unmarked bottle introduced instant umami or savoury flavour into the blandest of gravies. Monosodium glutemate no doubt came into its creation, but in quantities that, today, would probably be rated toxic.

         My father lived before the arrival of soy protein and the insidious Hamburger Helper. But he already used raspberry jam diluted with apple pulp, “butter cream” that was mostly emulsified margarine, and meat pies filled with 50% beef mince and 50% yesterday’s unsold pies, chopped up, pastry and all. (Customers unanimously preferred these to those with 100% meat. No accounting for taste.)

           All these tricks and many more remain in the armory of today’s food industry. But in France, it seems, not for much longer. The minister for trade and small businesses announced this week that the nation’s approximately 175,000 restaurants may soon be required to indicate with the words fait maison ­- home-made - whether items on the menu were prepared on the premises.

 The “Fait Maison” label has existed since 2014 -  but, as Hamlet said, it’s been “more honoured in the breach than the observance.” Now it’s likely to become obligatory. Not that the restrictions are all that strict. Cooks will still be free to outsource “sausages (smoked fish, rillettes and fish eggs, etc.), cured meats and cold meats, with the exception of terrines and pâtés, cheeses, dietary fats, crème fraîche and milk, bread, flour and biscuits, dried and candied vegetables and fruits. pasta and cereals, yeast, sugar and gelatin, condiments, spices, herbs, concentrates, chocolate, coffee, herbal teas, teas and infusions, syrups, wines, alcohols and liqueurs.”  

So no more cloned joints of duck a l’orange, frozen boeuf bourguignon, canned confit de canard etc. But what can we expect in their place? Even now, some brilliant food chemist – maybe the man who gave us the meatless and gluten-free hot dog - is hard at work on a synthetic chicken so convincing that you could swear you heard it cluck.

Er, just bread and water for me today, François.

Well, maybe skip the bread too….