French Exchange

Richard Bath shares his experience of “munching like a French peasant”.

I have a guilty secret: my mother was a terrible cook. Not just challenged, but a walking bomb scare with the capacity to produce memorably ghoulish creations. Her spam surprise was, well, a surprise to everyone, no matter how many times you were exposed to it. She made curry without spice. And the things she did to roast beef should be illegal. Salt and pepper were strangers to our house. 

I can say this now because my mum is no longer with us. And in any case she was from that post-war generation for whom meat and two veg was the apogee of ambition (not that she was alone in her ball-achingly utilitarian approach to cooking, as I knew from visits to friends' houses). After all, being brought up in the Gregory's Girl era when butter had given way to marge and the spud had become a poor relation of Smash does not a gastronome make. 

But if Elizabeth David was not required reading Chez Bath, there was at least an annual glimpse into another world. My father worked for the railways and was sufficiently high up the tree that we got free rail travel all over Europe. So we'd traipse off to Europe most years, making the long journey down to Dover or Folkestone, then crossing by boat and crossing the Channel before disembarking at Calais or Boulogne and then making our way to our final destination. 

Sometimes we'd head to Belgium, but invariably we'd make for Paris, from where we'd catch a couchette or sleeper to some far-flung and exotic destination like Barcelona, Pisa, Venice or Nice. I still love travelling by train but back then it was a voyage across cultures and, more importantly, cuisines.

It's difficult to explain to our kids, who've grown up surrounded by artisan roast, just how revelatory it was to poke your head out of the train window as it arrived at the Gare du Nord and to be able to instantly smell that sticky aroma of real coffee. Not the stuff you got when you added hot water to Nescafe, which was all most Brits knew, but the sort of small cup full of liquid tar that you can stand a spoon up in. 

That's when I knew I was in a place where food wasn't just something that filled a hole; that I'd entered a twilight zone where the stuff on your plate was about pleasure, not duty. My poor old dad had a hankering for continental food which he satisfied with sneaky work lunches in the big city, but our summer holiday was the time when mine and my brother's gastronomic horizons expanded. Those were the days of saltimbocca in Italy, paella in Spain, moules frites in Belgium, weiner schnitzel in Austria. 

But it was at the age of 13 when the world of French exchanges entered my life that I started a love affair with French food that is still going strong. I was sent off to Bayonne – by train of course – crossing the Channel and Paris on my own before taking the overnight train to this wonderful Basque market town, just an hour from the Spanish border. 

The French family I stayed with, the Subias clan, had an attitude towards food that stunned me but was completely commonplace in France back then, as now. I went to the shops with my pen-friend's mother, ostensibly to learn the names of all the various ingredients, and watched as she poked and groped every ingredient before buying. She chatted interminably to the shop-keepers and displayed a reverence for food that was beyond my ken. 

Nor was she unusual in that regard. The whole family seemed to spend hours talking about food, and the meals, which went on for hours, seemed never-ending. So much thinking and talking time was devoted to food, and there was also a willingness to eat things in their mouths that turned my stomach. When, for instance, a particularly rustic bouillabaisse turned up on the table and the five siblings started scrapping over the fish eyes, shoving them in their mouths and crunching until the liquid spurted out, I gagged. 

Everything seemed to be about food. After we went to the Corrida and saw a whole squadron of bulls terminated with maximum prejudice, my dinner was a steak from the lead bull, the thick slab of rare meat so fresh it was almost pulsing on the plate. It was so mind-numbingly expensive that everyone else ate a different meal while I sullenly chomped on a slice of Bertie the bull. 

Sometimes I got a glimpse into the belly of the beast, literally. I helped Granny Subias make pate and terrine from scratch, and she taught me how to prepare tripe. 

Madame Subias was such an attentive teacher that over the years I learnt more and more about French cuisine – how to choose cheese, and select suitable wines - and began to look at the slim pickings on the home front with a more sceptical eye. Experiences at that age tend to be more vivid and imprint themselves more indelibly on your mind and your palate, and despite travelling pretty extensively, if I ever find myself on death row and am forced to choose a last meal, then I plan to go out munching like a French peasant.

Richard Bath is the editor of Scottish Field magazine, and former restaurant critic for Scotland on Sunday.