While we find it difficult to curb an appetite for professional-looking appliances and state-of-the-art cabinets, standard staples of high-style performance are often missing in French kitchens. Appliances sit in plain sight. There are few quartz countertops or family-friendly islands touting togetherness, let alone twenty-first-century computer centers lauded for their own prowess.
Noticeably absent, too, are paneled upper cabinet doors. Instead, open shelves brim with pitchers, pottery, glassware, platters, trays and other paraphernalia illustrating just how passionate the French are about their cuisine. Within easy reach, or sous la main (meaning “under the hand”), are la batterie de cuisine—the copper pots, pans, bowls and molds—dented from use—that cooks hold dear. For centuries now, master coppersmiths in the small Norman village of Villedieu-les-Poêles have forged gleaming cookware.
Unlike those of us who tend to tuck clutter out of sight in designated cabinets, the French prefer that cutting boards, porte-couverts (cutlery holders with knives that carve, chop, pare, peel and dice), richly glazed confit pots, small appliances and baskets for storing fresh bread vie for counter space with collections of tin molds: some for baking, some for chocolate making and some to satisfy cravings for sorbet or ice cream. Windowsills meanwhile, flaunt mossy pots of sage, rosemary, chives and basil.
Hardwood floors sweep uninterrupted from dining rooms in some regions, while sleek black-and-white tile lends distinction in others. Far from an afterthought, unglazed, oversized squares or octagons of terra-cotta tile have the flavor of Provence, Burgundy and the Loire Valley, where clay is plentiful and there’s ample charm.
In a country long the uncontested capital of haute cuisine, most kitchens are surprisingly small, thanks to everything from being more about cooking than socializing, to resisting change from the time when they were servants’ domains, to homeowners who perhaps do not wish to invest in expanding and improving one’s kitchen.
Lanterns pieced together with vintage parts (by Area, Houston) and an antique cast-iron fireback (from Liz Spradling Antiques, Houston) add dimension while making a vivid statement. The roomy island works for before-game snacks as well as homework.
Fresh vegetables have the power to make just about everything taste better.
Until the end of World War II, bread was mostly rounded—a shape called boule, meaning ball. Thus, the French word boulangerie, a place to buy boules. Later, bakers began creating the baguette (stick) and the ficelle, a skinny baguette extracted from the French word for “string.”
A stateside kitchen captures the quintessence of French country with salvaged cupboard doors, reclaimed stone countertops and a farmhouse sink.
Berries, a rich source of antioxidants, are worth every calorie, whether offered at an irresistibly chic Parisian pâtisserie or right off the vine in Provence.
For the French, the ordinary seemingly holds no charm. For even the commonplace is arranged in noble fashion—if Marcel Proust’s shell-shaped madeleine, made for dipping in tea, can be considered ordinary. But, then, in a sign of the times, a collegian can now major in culinary arts, and more specifically, culinary design.
Behind doors transported from France sit an abundance of timeworn bowls commonplace in French homes.
After being salvaged from a property in Jura, a French village near the Swiss border, an eighteenth-century stone garden table made its way to Houston. The pitcher is from the Paris flea market.
A door from a property in France opens to a diverse collection of wine, readily accessible for entertaining. No matter that storing wine on the main floor of a home rather than in an isolated area underground brings its own set of cooling and humidifying challenges. An oversized wheel of Camembert is all that is missing.
Whether the view is grand or intimate, there is pleasure in dining al fresco.
An eighteenth-century table that once filled multifunctional needs in a manor house in Normandy now serves versatile needs in a twenty-first-century stateside home, where it is in keeping with the kitchen’s informal dress code. Dining rooms did not span the continent until the mid-nineteenth century.
In keeping with the French love of dogs, they are welcome most everywhere. In restaurants, they seem to know that they are expected to “sit” and “stay” at the table without whining, much like children in France are to do.