The Italians, French and Spanish love everything which doesn’t love me. Which meant my quest to find a recipe that catered for my food intolerances (no onion garlic, wheat or dairy) led me to a three ingredient French classic - le rocher à la noix de coco. In other words, coconut macaroons.
LE ROCHER À LA NOIX DE COCO
January 13, 2016
Despite the simplicity of the recipe, I roped in my Mum to help in the kitchen. Over spilled sugar and coconutty fingers we shared our talents with each other. Mum, the seasoned country cook, taught me her tricks for egg beating and creating meringue ‘peaks’. In between her instructions I recounted the historical significance of the dish before us.
“So Catherine de Medici, wife to King Henri II’s pastry chef brought the macaroon to France from Italy in 1533. During the Revolution some Benedicte nuns democratised the sweet by selling them the public.
Mum are you listening?
They soon travelled across the continent and each country developed their own unique take on the basic recipe. With the export of new ingredients through colonisation, coconut was added and in this recipe completely replaced the traditional use of ground almonds.
I guess in that sense the spread and specialisation of the dish truly illustrates the power of food to both unify and separate the pluralistic European identity.”
She just told me to pass the spatular.
The scene was somewhat symbolic of our identities. Here was my mother, the ever pragmatic, stoic nurturer teaching her daughter, the-book nerd-devoid-of-most-practical-life-skills, how to bake. And no matter how detailed my political take on European cuisine was, it wasn’t going to make macaroons appear out of thin air.
Plated amongst my colleague’s creations, mes macaroons weren’t the flying off the table. But for me and other’s in the room with dietary restrictions, they allowed us to experience inclusion. So often food is a point of restriction, exclusion and distinction - for individuals, regions and nation-states. But the Food Fair demonstrated how cuisine can be a collective experience felt ever so subjectively.