Free Monsieur Pamplemousse and the French Solution by Michael Bond Page A

sweltering hot during the summer months because their one-time mainstay, the voyageurs commerces , were themselves fighting a losing battle with customers who were now placing their orders via the Internet.
    On the gastronomic side, it took no account of those restaurants whose over-elaborate menus meant only one thing; prefabricated frozen meals. Often, if the truth be known, well beyond their ‘consume by’ date.
    To cap it all, at the end of every day, five hundred boxes in Le Guide ’s questionnaire covering every item from Ashtrays in the bedroom to Zabaglione in the restaurant, had to be marked with a tick or a cross, comments being added where necessary.
    ‘I’m sorry, Couscous,’ he said. ‘My mind was on other things.’
    ‘Well,’ remarked Doucette, ‘whatever it was, Pommes Frites seems to have caught the bug as well. He’s hardly touched his plate. Don’t tell me he has his mind on other things as well. Just look at his face. Knowing he doesn’t like fish, I got him something different.’
    Monsieur Pamplemousse pulled himself together. Doucette was right. It must be extremely galling to go to so much trouble over a meal, only to have it treated with a lack of respect.
    For the time being, he relegated his problems to what Monsieur Leclercq would have called the ‘back burner’.
    Doucette had chosen well. What he fondly called ‘the prawn dish’ fitted his mood after a long day behind the wheel; the bottle of white Corbières Vieilles Vignes from Roland Legard, just what the proverbial doctor might have ordered.
    ‘Couscous,’ he said, ‘you are une perle ; and adventurous with it, branching out into unknown territory all by yourself like this. The Languedoc is a vast area.’
    Doucette went a becoming shade of pink. ‘I am not married to a food inspector for nothing.’
    Monsieur Pamplemousse returned to the matter in hand.
    Although he had nicknamed it the ‘prawn dish’, he might just as well have called it the ‘egg dish’, or ‘the one with the sliced tomatoes’; for all three ingredients were combined in separate layers. Enveloped in a cheese sauce, capped by a layer of breadcrumbs, and cooked in the oven until the top was golden brown, it was a dish for all seasons.
    Spearing a particularly large prawn, he held it up to the light. ‘ Parfait !’ he exclaimed.
    Their good friends, the Pickerings, whose recipe itwas, maintained the dish was at its best in the early part of the year, when it could be accompanied by peas fresh from the garden and roast potatoes. But then, les Anglais were wedded to what they called their ‘two veg’.
    Being French, Monsieur and Madame Pamplemousse were content to accompany their version with a fresh, green salad.
    There were other minor differences of course; the prawns in particular were a good example. According to Mr Pickering, theirs were deep frozen and rarely, if ever, recovered their distinctive taste after being shelled by machine somewhere or other on the far side of the world, whereas the Pamplemousse’s were sea-fresh from the local poissonnier .
    But wasn’t that so with most recipes? A flourishing industry had been built up satisfying the insatiable need of people who invested heavily in cookery books hoping that something magical would happen, only to blame anyone but themselves when it didn’t. In the end it wasn’t only a matter of fresh ingredients; the hands that melded them together were important too.
    ‘I am very lucky’, he said, ‘that you have the touch, Doucette. It is something you were born with, unlike some.’
    The ‘unlike some’, was a reference to her sister Agathe, who had certainly missed out on that score with her tripes à la mode de Caen . It was a case of being wise after the event, but in retrospect he often wished he hadn’t been quite so lavish with his praisethe first time they met when he had been on his best behaviour. From that moment on he had always been given it as ‘a treat’
    Realising