Above is a photo of the scene of the rue Gay-Lussac, on the morning of 11th May, 1968, after a night of intense fighting that lasted until 6am. I walked down this road at the end of last year, and was expecting some sort of scar or reminder to be visible, but I didn't see any. In the aftermath of May, exiled in Belgium, Guy Debord wrote a recipe commemorating this night, and it was called Gay-Lussac Croustade.
Guy doesn't even give a recipe for this, just saying that ' Pierre Le Graveleur is charged with creating it.' The footnotes for the recipe (or absence of it) says it's 'a splendid flaming lobster served on a bed of mussels and hot chestnuts.'
A long time ago I was in a college left wing society which was called - by us - Paris 68. I once had to tell someone on the phone what our group was called, so I couldn't see his sardonic smile or him rolling his eyes, but he did say 'harking back to the good old days, are you?' - he kindly left out the word 'kids'. So far, this May, I've not read articles about the events of 68, but I firmly believe that heaps of garbage have been written about it, not least the one that wasn't about 68, but was called 'we are living through a golden age of protest'. I did misguidedly watch Joan Bakewell on the BBC talking about the revolutionary year, which ended with some suffragettes, which, actually, just sums up the programme, for me, anyway.
So, the food. It worried me hugely, buying a lobster, getting the meat out of it, mussels, I've got a problem with shellfish. I woke up very early one morning wondering if I had something large enough to cook the lobster in, but then realised he was already cooked. I had decided I would cook Lobster Thermidor with the actual lobster, after I'd carefully piled everything on the plate.
I now know why Guy said that the execution of the dish would be done by someone else, and at times, many times I wanted to hand it over to someone - anyone. To put all this in context, I should add that I am the woman who, when wanting to use crab for the first time, bought two tins of prepared crab and threw them away before even opening the tin properly, as it smelt like the whole ocean was in my kitchen.
Actually I couldn't believe the mussels opened, and so far they haven't poisoned my husband. I put it all carefully on the plate, and here is the photo :
Try as I might, and ever increasing amounts of brandy being used, I couldn't get the bloody thing to catch fire - as you can see with the match - and this was one of the times when I was cursing Guy for getting me to this point. Also my cat - not actually my cat, but my daughter's - was mewling at the open window all the time I was doing this. Which was off-putting. I had cursed Guy slightly before this, but I think it was just nerves.
Once I'd got the mussels out of the way, I felt elated, and then remembered dismembering the lobster. I've watched various videos of what to do, and it looked terrifying. All day it was defrosting, looking at me, and even my very vegetarian daughter was fond of it by the end. When I tried to dismember it, it was actually way easier than I thought it would. Just like the video, I whacked the claw with a knife and pulled the flesh out. I found the cross on it's back and only felt mildly upset shoving the knife in, but it was fine. By the end I felt like one of the women fighters in the Spanish Civil War, and I felt like I could do anything.
Actually, I hated the Lobster Thermidor, and only had a tiny taste of it. I loved the preparation, the infused roux and the wine reduction. Lobsters can swim undisturbed in the sea as far as I am concerned, but that might be because I bought a frozen one, and had been warned it might not be the right sort, but there was no way I was having a lobster lepping around my house, especially as I have a cat consider, and I don't even have a piano or much of a hallway, and if you haven't read More Pricks than Kicks then read it.
I'm glad I did it, and, like Alice I am now going to do the washing up. What can I say? For me, all the way along, I always knew this was going to be the worst one, what with shells and lepping and all. At one point I said to the long suffering husband why I hadn't just said I too would leave this to someone else, but it felt like a cop out. I think I enjoyed it, most of it, and I'm glad I did it. This afternoon I looked at my copy of Enrages and Situationists in the Occupation Movement, France, May '68, the book they wrote in their seclusion in Belgium after May, and while these recipes were thought out. I looked at the picture of where the barricades were, the graffiti of 'I take my desires for reality because I recognise the reality of my desires' in the Sorbonne, and, for once, didn't feel sad or anything because I hadn't been there, but I just felt a whole lot closer to it all. It surprised me, because, of all the stuff I'd expected to feel, it wasn't that.
And now, the washing up.
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