my favourite pillivuyt creamer
image - carla coulson vicki archer exclusively for living4media
Since writing about the conversation I overheard in the French restaurant and my recipe for magret de canard I have been thinking about the French kitchen and my kitchen in particular... As I wrote my methods and cooking instructions I imagined the utensils I needed to create this dish. I realised that I have been using the same cooking gear since I married and that I have had a love affair with white porcelain for as long. As I reflected on how I would serve my duck breast and mashed potato my first thought was to use our large sized Pillivuyt plates.
I started buying Pillivuyt long before I moved to France... I bought my first plates, pasta bowls and serving platters in Australia... they had been shipped from France to a local distributor... When we moved to Europe, over twelve years ago, I sent them back again... Crazy... all that time on the high seas. Ever since those early days I have been adding to my Pillivuyt collection... soufflé dishes, cups and saucers, bowls and breakfast cups... I am such a fan. It is hard wearing, versatile and the white porcelain makes most food look extra fabulous. I use the jugs for flowers or for juice and I use the large bowls for vegetables or salads. Setting the table is so easy because you can mix and match all the pieces together or add in a touch of antique porcelain for colour and style.
Then I thought about Le Creuset... I dare not admit this but my mother bought me Le Creuset for le trousseau... How old fashioned and funny is that... Can you believe that this tradition even existed? But she was insistent that I set up home in the right way... maybe she is to blame for my love of all things French... Either way the French affair is well and truly established and my Le Creuset pots are still going strong... At the age of 25 I didn't even know what a boeuf en daube was and now I couldn't imagine my French kitchen without my mother's Le Creuset...
All this reminiscing about my trousseau (yes, not only did it include pots, pans, kitchen knives, tea towels and porcelain but bed linen and blankets too...) made me sentimental... in a lovely way... I reflected on the history behind our possessions and how the most simple and basic of household goods can have so much meaning.
I have created a new category at SHOP FRENCH ESSENCE called 'The French Kitchen' and there you can browse through the Pillivuyt porcelain that I have collected, the Le Creuset that I couldn't live without, the knives that I use, the saucepans that are my favourites and the gadgets that make life easier... Perhaps I should have called it 'my trousseau'...
Did you have a trousseau? Or am I the only 'dinosaur' amongst us?
Oh yes, le trousseau....my husband- to- be gave me for Christmas a "cedar chest" to store my trousseau as gathered.
ReplyDeleteCount me as one of the dinosaurs!
:) I so love French pieces in my kitche as well.. I inherited my Le Creuset pieces and I have a collection of Emile Henry in blue.
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to view your French kitchen! aka your le trousseau :)
Xx
Callie
Of course I can imagine how this tradition existed. It is not an inappropriate one, either. There will still be families and marriages, etc. no matter how smart and sophisticated we all seem to think we are getting. My mum got me started in this direction as well; most European mothers do bring up their daughters to learn to run a smooth home. Le Creuset is a great line; I cook with a few of the pots, too. Never a problem cleaning up, wonderful cooking utensils, and all those beautiful colours to choose from.
ReplyDeleteso inspirational...and to think your mother "knew" you so well and supported you so elegantly.
ReplyDeletethank you for sharing...
Il faut peut-être compléter la collection avant qu'il ne soit trop tard...
ReplyDeletePillivuyt est en difficulté :
http://www.leberry.fr/editions_locales/bourges/mehun_le_porcelainier_pillivuyt_en_difficulte@CARGNjFdJSsAFBoHBB0-.html
Oh I love these pieces, Vicki! Headed over now.
ReplyDeleteTeresa
xoxo
Such a lovely post - I don't know what made me smile more, the thought of your well-traveled Pillivuyt on their seaward adventures, the Trousseau your mother started you out with, or your whimsical sentimentality over it -- I share that sentimentality and love the history of the objects that belong to us. I know they are just things, but the cafe au lait bowls bought on my first trip to France, the Kitchen Aid mixer my parents gave me for Christmas one year when I was discouraged at my chances of ever marrying - or having a wedding registry, or the Le Creuset set my aunts, uncles and cousins all pitched in for when Mr. H. and I finally tied the knot. The meals cooked and served, the memories created - they all have these objects as touchstones and I love them for it! Thanks for making me think about this, Vicki!
ReplyDeleteThat reminds me of when I was a teenager and my grandmother would give my cousins gifts to add to their "hope chests" at Christmas and on their birthdays. She told me there was no point in her giving me gifts for a hope chest because she didn't think anyone would want to marry me!
ReplyDeleteLe trousseau - there is nothing dinosaur about it. Best not to use your collection however until your communal renting days are over. Flatmates will either trash it or take it! Sylvia
ReplyDeletePS Vicki it's wonderful having you back after the season break.
I had one too, a wonderfully old, but cared for trunk, filled with monogramed linens, my first silverware and china. It has not survived the many moves, nor my first marriage, but some pieces are still with me. I remember fondly how proud I was a s a young girl to be given pieces at my birthdays. It surely seems old fashioned today, but in many ways the tradition is alive. My daughter just recently ask me if she could keep some china and I told her I would safe it for her trousseau...she laughed, but found the idea rather charming!
ReplyDeletePS: I have that little cow creamer as well! How fun!
Beautiful post...
ReplyDeleteWhat would we do without our Creusets?? ;))
Love the porcelain..gorgeous! Our local gourmet grocer sells it, but I have yet to treat myself!
xoxo,
- Irina
Oh, Vicki....just a few hours ago this morning (I kid you not), I was easily and quickly scrubbing out the large creuset casserole (I'd used it last night to make Marcella Hazan's vinegar and bay leaf roast pork...which can give any cheaper and less well-made pot an extra coat of diamond-hard, permanently inlaid, black enamel), and I said to Herve "If anyone said 'Oh, you've got those French pots to show you spend a lot of months in France each year', I'd say 'Nope... I've got them to show that I spend about 1/5th the time you spend at the kitchen sink every month, trying to CLEAN a used pot."
ReplyDeleteI happen to be a constant and committed cook, and I'm invariably pleased with the results of cooking with Creuset or Fontignac...but I'll admit that my deepest and most gratifying moments occur not when I'm bringing some complex daube out of the oven, but when I set about cleaning the pot the next morning. The final fact is that poorly-made and inexpensive stuff is HARD/impossible to clean. For better or worse,I like to think that I could probably do something more profitable (and, for that matter, lucrative) with my time than spending 45 minutes futilely scrubbing a cheap pot with steel wool.
I've managed to convert even my young, East Tennessee sister-in-law (who has a demanding job, two children and a husband) to French enamelware. Granted....I had to buy it for her....but even she (and she couldn't care LESS about cooking) can't stop talking about how easy "clean-up" is.
More interestingly?.....one of the more interesting (and there's some fierce competition, to say the least) of the anecdotes told in Alexandra Fuller's two, stunning memoirs ("Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" and "Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness") involve her mother's (born in Scotland, before emigrating to Africa) clinging to her set of Creuset pots throughout 30 years of early marriage in late 1950's Kenya...before moving on to Rhodesia (just in time to find themselves in the middle of that civil war)...and then onwards to Zambia.
The ONLY thing (including that of three of her children) Fuller's mother never lost or relinquished to civil wars, insurgent violence, terrorists, and any number of other horrors are her seven, orange, Creuset pots. For various reasons, they were the ONE thing that she tenaciously managed to retrieve from each disaster over four decades.
There's a lovely picture of "Mum with Papa Doc, and Le Creuset pots" taken at their home ("permanent camp", more accurately) in Zambia in 2010.
"Papa Doc" is a particularly bossy Jack russell terrier.
Level Best as Ever,
David Terry
I did not have a trousseau. Unfortunately, my family did not honor this sentimental tradition. As a child of the 60's and a bride of the 70's I thought that even Registering was too elitest and so did not heed to recommendations of family and friends to do so. As a result I spent a lot of time exchanging gifts that were duplicates or just not my style. Oh youth....
ReplyDeleteMy best, Lisa
I loved this post. My girlfriend and I purchased things we wanted to set up kitchen with since the trend towards trousseau were pretty much a thing of the past when we were in our late teens and early twenties. I bought a Le Creuset pot and the original Cuisinart from a kitchen shop that hosted French cooking classes the first year I was married. I still have the pan, sadly the Cuisinart died after about 29 years. What a trip down memory lane. How fun.
ReplyDeleteKaren
Thank you so much for this post! I've always loved simple white dishware and started collecting it for myself after I got married. I've been accumulating dinnerware from Apilco which I can buy through Williams-Sonoma here in Toronto, Canada and have a few platters as well. I've also started builidng a Le Creuset collection (thanks to Christmas gifts from my mother-in-law). I love all this stuff! — dishware, cookware, china, bed linens, table linens, etc!
ReplyDeleteJust curious: do you have a fine bone china dinnerware set? I was thinking of buying a second set of white dinnerware that was a bit more formal, but would also be white. Although the French porcelain is lovely for everyday and casual entertaining, I do find that I yearn for something a bit "finer" and more formal for special occasion entertaining. I'd love to hear your thoughts and those of others. As much as I love all the talk of fashion and beauty, I also take care pleasure in discussing the home, decorating and collecting beautiful yet function things. Thanks! Susan
Dear Vicki
ReplyDeleteThis post brings back many memories. My father (not so much my mother) was a feminist in the 60s - he believed in education and professions for women, because his mother was a strong woman who had brought his family through the depression by teaching music when his father's business was lost in the crashes. So he was very keen for me to graduate from university, enter a good profession and travel and only then get married. For this reason he was against anything that might take me down the marriage track too early, like deb balls, hope chests (or glory boxes as they were often called) and at family weddings when the old great-aunts wanted me to catch the bouquet at cousins' weddings (on my mother's side most of them married as teenagers) he would tell me to keep at the back. He was a wonderful man and I was greatly influenced by him. Sadly he died very young. So when I married at just 22 (a few years after his death) on the other side of the world, there was no gloy box or trousseau and our wedding presents consisted of beautiful things like great art books, silver candelabra, Waterford crystal goblets etc, pictures, but very little that was practical for setting up a first home. However, over time, we also bought the orange le Creuset pots (and still use them and love them, many years later) and because we were in England then I bought the Spode blue and white Italian design which I still have and love - and also gradually the Spode Christmas tree pattern china which we have used every Christmas since. These have all lasted so well that I have told our daughter-in-law she will one day inherit them. Sadly Spode, as made in England, is no more and Waterford has gone through similar troubles. Disappointing to see that Pillivuyt is also in trouble. And totally agree with Terry, the Le Creuset pots and pans are a dream to clean. I think they may even last through to my grand-daughters.
Having a trousseau is so romantic, isn't it. I received a few things passed down from my maternal great-grandmother, but I'm too afraid of ruining them to use them, unless it's a special occasion.
ReplyDeleteOf course I had! i started collecting for it when I was 13 and still Love the things I have now that I am 45! My grandmothers always gave me presents for it and I loved looking at it and sorting through it. We are still using the Bone China teacups, the hand embroidered pillowcasses, the stitched tablecloths and even the Set of Pillivuyt lionhead soup bowls and the milk cow. I even spend my pocket money for it!
ReplyDeleteAnd I am thankful that you brought back the memories of it all!
Yvonne
Ps: and our youngest son to become a Chef later ( He is turning 7). He already chose some kitchenware for himself like a spatula for cake, some baking dishes, cookie cutters, some special mugs and dishes and I had to sew an apron for him. And now I am thinking of buying a small Creuset for ihm he can use and take away with ihm when He leaves our house. He loves our pots but they are too heavy to handle so a small one would be neat....