Cuisine

A comparative digression on French and Belgian cooking Please don’t get me wrong: I yield to nobody in my general admiration for French cuisine (it’s their word, after all). Particularly the wonderful downscale regional varieties that you can find (or at least could, back de mon vivant1) in workingmen’s rural cafés and little concession eateries in small-town train stations. That said and truly said, candor obliges me to report that the French really don’t know how to make ice cream. Nor what we almost oxymoronically call French fries. The Belgians do both jobs at a celestial level. I always found French glace to be watery, overpriced, and served with unbecoming stinginess. And the less said about French frites,2 the more nearly charitable. And now, dear reader, you get to learn of the “Big Mike.” I hope fellow mission alumni will see this treatment of a beloved yarn and tradition and feel moved to elaborate and correct it. Here’s what I’ve retained: Elder Mike Jarvis (joyously present at the annual French Mission reunion last October 5 [2008]) was and is an impressive physical presence. The Poirier family of Seraing, Belgium, ran an ice-cream parlor out of their home, and it was already a favorite of the local Mormon missionaries when, one day in 1960 or 1961, Elder Jarvis filled the front door and inquired, perhaps in French, “I’m BIG MIKE: do you have anything here big enough for ME?” Undaunted, the delightful M Poirier went behind the counter and invented, on the spot, the “Big Mike:” three generous scoops of their wonderful, rich, Belgian ice cream, pressed down to fill a decorative bowl level with the top, with a cookie stuck in the top. It’s not recorded, here at least, how many “Big Mikes” “Big Mike” himself consumed on that occasion, but there was soon a highly unofficial competition afoot, to determine just how many a missionary could put away at a sitting. I seem to recall that the record stood at eleven when President Hinckley heard about it and delivered some gentle but authoritative guidance on the subject of the dignity of our calling… Valerie reminds me that when I stopped by with the folks while we were across the river for Youth Conference, Mammy took President Hinckley’s position before he enunciated it, and I managed to absorb only two “Big Mikes” on that occasion. I plan to have more to say on this cherished topic in the context of my second French Mission, in 1968, when Mitt Romney and I shared a particularly sweet and memorable visit to the Maison Poirier. 1“When I was alive.” The kids in Rennes got a huge kick out of my use of this expression. They’d go to correct my unidiomatic French and then do a double-take, as it dawned that I meant it ironically. 2The French pronounce it “freet.” Their pathetic product (nearly as bad as its American counterpart) doesn’t deserve the same name as the supernal Belge “fritt,” cooked in hot beef fat and pronounced with the Germanic short-i sound that Metropolitan French doesn’t have. Wallon French in and near Belgium, on the other hand, cherishes its own phonology. Liège in 1963 was blessed with crowds of pushcart “fritt” vendors, where for ten Belgian francs (about a dime) you could obtain (to your waistline’s detriment) a double sheet of newspaper, rolled into a cone, and filled with searing hot “fritts,”, fresh from the grease and topped with your choice of sauces. My favorite was always aïoli (hand-made, dark yellow garlic mayonnaise). They gave the name of “sauce américaine” to what seemed to be an odd mixture of mayonnaise and ketchup, with a bit of cayenne pepper.

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Updated May 2011

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