An Egg, and a Fish

I am not sure yet whether I will be cooking for Easter this year. I just came back from France and didn’t plan anything before leaving. So now of course, our friends and family have plans. But if I were cooking, I would know just what to make. Our menu in Paris for the past two years. Incredibly simple “oeufs cocotte” with fresh peas, feta, and dill, pulled off the Internet. The classic French Seven-hour lamb, which involves getting up early if you are hosting lunch but is so rewarding. And really, not much more than sticking your lamb into the oven and go back to bed if need be. For dessert, I think I would go with this wonderful lemon pudding by Melissa Clarck, which I made for friends a few weeks ago. Another simple and rewarding affair. To be had with shortbread, maybe. Store-bought would be fine.       

As for me, I would be happy with just a hazelnut-filled chocolate egg in its shell by Maison du Chocolat. They are quite expensive, particularly in New York. But once a year, they are so worth it. I would kill for that egg and already secured two ahead of time this year, for me and my husband. Last time we had Easter in New York, I showed up at the store a few days before, and the eggs were all gone. I knew better this time, and the cute flowery packages are safely tucked away where my children can’t find them. They will have simpler, cheaper chocolate, I am sorry to say.  I might share the good ones with the teenagers, but anybody under ten would not be able to appreciate them. So, the boys will be fine with their Walgreen’s renditions.      

Despite my gushing about Paris churches, we are not a religious family. My husband is Jewish, and my parents grew up Catholic like most French – and, in my mother’s case, Spanish - families, but did not raise me in the faith. Which I lament sometimes, as I wish I had had more ceremonies and spiritual guideposts when I was younger. And a more convincing, reassuring way of explaining death to my own children these days. But we do celebrate Christmas, and Easter, if only for the food, the egg hunt, and the chocolate. Whatever you are celebrating these days, make sure it involves something sweet and comforting. We all need it these days.      

In France, Easter definitely rhymes with chocolate. The eggs hidden in homes or gardens for children to hunt on Sunday morning, are always small chocolate eggs. I did not know about the strange American tradition of plastic CVS eggs filled with jelly beans or candy or silly little toys. It struck me as quite unpoetic the first time I saw them at my husband's aunt's Easter brunch, some twenty years ago. Unpoetic, and inedible, which are two major crimes in my book. Still, I had fun, as is often the case with anything American for me. Not always beautiful, but life-affirming, big, and fun. I have great memories of those Easter brunches on the Upper West Side. Particularly the Peeps marshmallow chicks that my husband's cousin J would stick in the microwave, waiting for the crucial moment when they would inflate, without exploding and smearing everything with their gooey mess. This is one thing we can do here, that we definitely could not in Paris. I'm not sure I would even mention this tradition to any French person. They might gag on their Easter chocolate and excommuniate me on the spot. But in New York we are safe. The Peeps have been purchased and the children are ready for them. I am ready too, and even got some CVS eggs, and a pound of jelly beans. It is true that my children never really ate all the chocolate they collected on Easter. It gets to be too much very quickly, and I found myself, year after year, with an embarrassing amount of uneaten eggs that I invariably had to throw away after a few weeks. At least the plastic eggs are reusable, and don't need to always be filled with sugar - although they tend to be. See? It seems like after only a few months, I have already become a convert of American Easter tackiness. Color, plastic, sugar, and a good old mess. For me, growing up, Easter meant something else altogether. As an only child in a small family, I spent that day with my parents, and paternal grandparents most year. I don't remember hunting for eggs, but maybe I did. Easter was still associated with chocolate, however. To me, it was the big egg or bunny filled with chocolate-covered almonds or small chocolate fish, that children usually received as gifts around that time, to mark the end of Lent. My grandmother used to give me one of those chocolate treats every year. At least I think it was her. It could also have been my mother's childhood friend, who tended to give me all the things I wished my mother had given me, particularly when pastries, and sugar, were involved. The main thing I remember is the "friture", or "fry", that small chocolate fish and shellfish that usually fills the bellies of other chocolate delicacies, or are sold on their own. You see them in every chocolate shop in France, and they are a major part of our Easter chocolate landscape, in remembrance of Christ's Miraculous Catch in the Gospel of Luke.

This is a uniquely French tradition, I think. And to me, a bit of an oldfashioned and melancholic one. Indeed, the adorable little fish, and sometimes cute calamari and turtles, came to our house through a cousin of my grandparent's elderly neighbor, who visited from Limoges twice a year. All my grandparents's neighbors were retirees, just like them. It seemed like their entire building complex had been built for retirees, as I never saw anyone young there, besides my parents, and myself. That neighbor was particularly old, and her cousin, even more so - at least in my young self's eyes. I also viewed Limoges, where I had never been, as the epitome of an old person's abode, one of those provincial French towns famous for one thing - in that case, porcelain - but otherwise forgettable and where no one in their right mind would ever think of residing. Limoges, ennui, and white hair, went hand in hand in my mind. Suffice it to say that every year, the old lady visited around Christmas, and Easter, and always left us a box of chocolates, to thank my grandmother for helping her cousin with grocery shopping and other small errands. We only saw her briefly, and after a few years, not at all. But the chocolates were always there, in their dark green box and their faint smell of violet. At least I associated them with that smell, maybe just because that's what old ladies smelled like, in my mind. All I really remember is the box, and that the chocolates were indeed delicious. And that at Easter, they came in the form of "friture".

I did not like the fish as much as the hazelnut-filled eggs, the "oeufs praliné" as we called them. The fish, sadly, were not filled, which undoubtedly made them a little boring as far as taste was concerned. But they were so pretty with their plump little mouths, and perfectly rendered scales. Even today, when I see them in chocolate shop windows in Paris, they just delight me. Indeed, I couldn't resist getting a small bag of them when I saw one by the cash register at Boulanger de la Tour a couple of weeks ago, before I had my almond croissant epiphany. I didn't eat much of them when I came back, but it was reassuring to have them on my kitchen countertop, as a souvenir of these quiet, lonely, oldfashioned Easters of times past. Everything that my Easters haven't been, since my children have been around.