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Drawing (and eating) in Paris
By Ann | November 24, 2008
Welcome to another (long overdue) edition of Q&A. Today we chat with author and artist Lucy Knisley, who recently published a graphic-novel travel-journal, French Milk (the title refers to Lucy’s love of le lait francais — read on for her description of its deliciousness!). Charting Lucy’s 6-week trip to Paris with her mom in 2006, the book offers a voyeuristic glimpse into their daily adventures. Lucy explores, draws and eats her way through the City of Light with gusto — and along the way comes to terms with the reality of adulthood lying beyond her soon-to-end college years.
French Milk began as a “drawn journal” that you kept during a trip to France with your mom in 2006. During your travels, while documenting your daily adventures, did you ever imagine your personal journal would be read by others?
When I started to document my trip, it was mostly because I felt that I was at a pivotal time in my life, and thought that the trip would be meaningful to me and to my mom (and it was!). I wanted to be able to remember the time of such uncertainty and passion. As it progressed, it went from “personal journal” to “Maybe I should put some of this online,” to “There might be something worth sharing in here, as a whole.” It’s still completely my journal, but by the end, I realized that there were threads that bound it together as a story, too.
Sometimes it’s strange to realize that people are reading through my personal journal, but I’m almost always met with readers who have felt similarly at 22, or who were delighted to share in my experiences of Paris.
What was it like spending six weeks traveling with your mom?
My mother is an exceptionally good travel companion, especially in France, as she worked as a chef for many years, and can read almost anything on a French menu. In my last year of college, we were both getting to be a little more independent from one another, so the trip was a good reminder of the things that made us so alike; our mutual love of food and art. The downside, though, was that at a time when I was teetering between adulthood and teenager-hood, being around my mom made me revert to near-infancy. At times I whined and complained and threw myself into dramatic funks that I recall with a wince. I’m not sure anyone ever grows out of that parental-proximity reversion to a younger self, but fortunately (for my mother) it’s not permanent.
This is a food blog so we couldn’t help be struck by the way your love for all things gourmet colored your book. How did you become interested in food? And what’s so good about French milk, anyway?
Well, growing up, my mother was working in various cooking and restaurant professions. She’s been a professional caterer for most of my life, and has worked in farmer’s markets and gourmet shops since before I was born. My family lived in New York City when I was growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, and you could eat there incredibly well for much less than it costs to do so nowadays. Artists and musicians could come there and get part-time work in the food industry (this is how my mother originally started out — to support her painting), whereas now those jobs are reserved for serious culinary students.
We were always surrounded by my mother’s gaggle of punk-rock, sculptor restaurant bum friends, winging it in my mom’s kitchen, trying to figure out how to cook a flan with eight different recipes. My father is a passionate go-out-and-eater, and neither of my parents believed in “kid food” or babysitters, so I was along for the ride, whether I liked it or not. I spent much of my childhood hanging out in restaurant kitchens or bakeries, and all my summer jobs consisted of working in farmer’s markets or fromageries. Between my dad’s affection for restaurants and my mother’s incredible cooking skills, it was next to impossible to grow up without a strong attachment to good food.
As for French milk, there was a certainly quality to it — a combination of its lack of contact with plastic, its freshness and nearness to the cow, and probably its less rigorous homogenization process, that gave it this sweet, decadent taste. I love milk, and drink it every day, which is sort of unusual for an adult in America. The connotations between milk and childhood are pretty strong, which is why it’s meaningful that it tasted so especially sweet in Paris, when I was clinging to the last vestiges of my time as a kid.
What are you working on now? Any plans for another graphic novel travel journal?
In fact, I’m working on a new book entirely about food! I have such a lot of food memories to choose from, and I’m excited to blend food writing with the graphic novel form. In our family photo albums, we have more photos of meals we’ve prepared together than we have pictures of people and family members. It’s coming along, and I think it’s progressing nicely, but I keep remembering new food memories I want to add — I’m not sure it’ll ever get finished!
Lucy’s Top Five things to eat and/or drink in Paris (aside from milk, of course):
1. Foie Gras. When I wrote French Milk, there was a foie gras ban in Chicago, where I live. It was a real blow as foie gras is my favorite food, though quite a few people find it disgusting and cruel. I have to say, though, that many people seem to ignore the disgusting conditions and cruel treatment for KFC chickens, as compared to free-range foie gras geese and ducks, which often don’t begin their overfeeding until their last weeks.
2. Baked goods. Besides the obvious morning croissant, which is nothing like the bready American versions, there were incredible discoveries to be made in nearly every single (abundant) boulangerie. I had wonderful sour plum tarts with sweet cream, unbelievable macarons (from Pierre Hermé and Ladurée) — these were my mom’s favorite treat from the trip. My favorite was a tiny round chocolate cake, dusted with powdered sugar, that squishes in your mouth like liquid chocolate — a fondant from a bakery on the Marché Mouffetard. I still think about them once a day, at least.
3. Cerise ice cream from Berthillon. This stuff is incredible — most of the gelatos and ice creams there are really good, but the cerise (cherry) is made with dark red cherries, and the ice cream is the deep color of a pomegranate. It tastes like biting into the first cherries of the season, after a long winter of anemic fruit.
4. A paper bag of roast chicken and potatoes from the Marché Mouffetard (they do this at many Parisian markets, but the Mouffetard was my favorite). They roast the chicken on spits above a trough containing the small new potatoes. The fat from the chicken drips down to flavor and fry the potatoes, and they cut rosemary from the market into the trough. You can pick up the small, succulent chicken with a scoop of potatoes in a paper bag for cheap, and carry it home quickly while the grease seeps through the bag.
5. Other faves from the market: Oysters, mushrooms, cheese and cornichon. While most restaurants in Paris will feed you well, the best meals I had were bought at the markets, and prepared at home by my mom. The ingredients were just so fresh and delicious, and the acquisition of them always came with some sensory or visual delight — the oyster men will shuck you a taste-test right out of the ice trough, with quick knives and wet hands. The mushrooms are presented in an array of types that look gorgeous, and keep us coming back even though our mushroom vendor was rude and unpleasant. We ate cheese for lunch (or dinner) more often than I care to admit. The fromageries are dizzying with powerful scent and each cheese is so tenderly arranged. Cornichon (tiny, very sour pickles) are old favorites of mine, from when my uncle owned a little gourmet store down the street, and I would go there to pick them out of a barrel. There are still places in Paris where they’re arranged like that! I love it.
Oh jeez, five isn?t enough! I loved Le Coupe Chou (the little cabbage!) (9-11 rue de Lanneau, 5ème, tel: 01 46 33 68 69), a restaurant hidden off the beaten path, with stone walls and fireplaces and wonderful food. Loved the falafels in the Marais, and the kir royals, and the onion soup, and I shouldn’t have started to do this before breakfast!
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2 Responses to “Drawing (and eating) in Paris”
Comments
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November 24th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
What an entertaining Q and A! Lucy, I thought your book was a delight. As someone who came to Europe for the first time with his parents, I can sympathize with a lot of your emotions! Regardless, it is amazing, isn’t it, how the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of Paris inspire creativity — no matter what your age, no matter who you’re with.
December 19th, 2008 at 11:51 am
What a cool sounding book! Wished we had read it before our trip this summer. It makes me think of a grown-up, Paris version of Peter Sis’ Madlenka books. Will definitely read before our next trip to Paris. (BTW, I like Charlie Trotter and all, but I’m glad the foie gras ban is over.)