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| PHOTO 1 | PHOTO 2 | PHOTO 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Market morning at Place des Prêcheurs—the classroom where there are no desks and somebody is waiting behind me. | The French butcher counter: suddenly every noun, verb, and hand gesture matters. | The goal: pork, herbs, glorious browned edges, and proof that the conversation was worth it. |
A French butcher script, pork vocabulary, and one ambitious ATK roast send me practicing at Aix’s Place des Prêcheurs market.
There is French practice. And then there is French practice with a pork roast at stake.
I have practiced French in classrooms.
I have practiced it with flash cards, apps, vocabulary lists, pronunciation exercises, and patient teachers who presumably knew what they were getting into when they chose this profession.
I have practiced by listening to my California friend, who lived in Paris for many years, describe her experience of standing in line at the boucherie many times before she had the courage to go inside. She practiced her French by listening to the others in line talk about what they anticipated purchasing.
But there is another level of language learning entirely:
Standing in front of a French butcher and attempting to explain exactly how I would like him to cut a 1.4-kilogram piece of pork.
Not just:
Je voudrais un rôti de porc, s’il vous plaît.
Oh no.
That would be far too easy.
This particular roast needed to be boneless. It needed its fat cap left intact. That fat needed to be lightly scored in a crosshatch pattern, but not too deeply. Then the butcher needed to make a pocket lengthwise through the roast without cutting it completely in half.
And, while he was at it:
Please don't tie it.
But could I have some butcher's twine?
Because I'll tie it later.
After I brine it.
And stuff herbs inside it.
Bienvenue en France.
Today’s French lesson is apparently advanced pork surgery.
The culprit: America’s Test Kitchen
This all began because I have new cobayes coming for dinner and wanted to make America’s Test Kitchen’s Herb-Crusted Pork Roast.
The technique is clever. ATK starts with a center-cut pork loin roast with a good layer of fat. The fat gets scored, the roast gets brined, and a pocket is cut through the center so an intensely flavored herb mixture can be tucked inside.
Then the roast is tied, browned and finished with more herbs and a breadcrumb-Parmesan crust.
In other words, it is precisely the sort of recipe that makes me think:
That looks delicious. I should absolutely make that.
Followed approximately eleven seconds later by:
Oh dear God. I have to explain this to a French butcher.
The official America’s Test Kitchen video is here:
Watch America's Test Kitchen's Herb-Crusted Pork Roast on YouTube
And if anyone wonders whether I am exaggerating the specificity of my meat request, watch the first few minutes.
I am not.
The roast really does need the little pocket.
My classroom is now a butcher truck at Place des Prêcheurs
One of the pleasures of living in Aix-en-Provence is that grocery shopping does not necessarily mean walking beneath fluorescent lights while pushing a cart.
Usually it means walking into the open-air market around Place des Prêcheurs, past vegetables, cheeses, flowers, olives, herbs, people greeting vendors they clearly know, and all the noise and smells of a Provençal market morning.
The Ville d’Aix keeps current information about the city's markets here:
Aix-en-Provence — Les marchés de la ville
And among those stalls is the butcher truck.
Which makes this a particularly wonderful—and terrifying—place to practice French.
Because there is no little button marked “repeat listening exercise.”
There is a butcher.
There is a pork loin.
There may be ten people waiting in front of me and ten people waiting behind me because it's a popular vendor.
And sooner or later I have to open my mouth.
So I wrote a script
I have discovered that I do much better in these situations when I practice the conversation beforehand.
That isn't cheating.
For a while, I think I regarded prepared French as somehow less legitimate than spontaneous French. Surely real French speakers don't rehearse what they're going to say at the butcher.
Of course they don't.
They've been speaking French since they were approximately two.
I have not.
A script lets me practice the vocabulary, anticipate what might happen and—most importantly—avoid reaching the crucial moment and blurting out:
Le cochon… euh… avec… le trou…
So before heading to the market, this is what I have been practicing.
My French butcher script
First, the basic order
Bonjour. Je voudrais un rôti de porc dans le filet, désossé, d’environ un kilo quatre.
Hello. I would like a boneless pork loin roast, about 1.4 kilos.
C’est pour six personnes.
It’s for six people.
Already, if I successfully get through this part, I feel I deserve a small certificate.
But we are just getting started.
Please, whatever you do, don't remove the fat
Je voudrais garder la couche de gras, s’il vous plaît.
Ne retirez pas le gras.
I would like to keep the layer of fat, please. Do not remove the fat.
This is an important sentence because trimming meat beautifully is part of a butcher's job.
Unfortunately, America's Test Kitchen and I are arriving with other plans.
I am essentially saying:
"That lovely piece of professional trimming you are about to do? Please resist."
Now for the crosshatching
Pouvez-vous quadriller légèrement le gras, avec des petites entailles en croisillons ?
Can you lightly score the fat, making a small crosshatch pattern?
Pas trop profondes, seulement dans le gras.
Not too deep, only into the fat.
I particularly like quadriller.
It is one of those French verbs that suddenly becomes enormously useful once discovered.
Un quadrillage is a grid or crosshatched pattern, and quadriller can mean to mark something out in a grid.
In this case, my French vocabulary has advanced to the point that I can give geometrical instructions to pork fat.
Progress comes in unexpected forms.
And now, monsieur, could you put a hole through my roast?
This is where the script becomes particularly valuable.
Et pouvez-vous faire une poche dans le rôti, dans la longueur, pour que je puisse mettre des herbes à l’intérieur ?
And can you make a pocket in the roast, lengthwise, so that I can put herbs inside?
A slightly more natural variation I have also been practicing is:
Pouvez-vous faire une poche dans le rôti, dans le sens de la longueur ?
Can you make a pocket in the roast, lengthwise?
Then comes the sentence upon which dinner potentially depends:
Il ne faut pas couper complètement le rôti en deux.
Please do not cut the roast completely in two.
Because a butterfly-cut pork roast is useful.
It is simply not what this recipe wants.
I need a pocket.
Not two pieces of pork staring at each other across the butcher paper wondering what went wrong.
And please don't tie it. Yet.
Ne le ficelez pas maintenant, s’il vous plaît.
Please do not tie it now.
That verb is another useful discovery:
ficeler — to tie with string/twine
Then I can explain why I am apparently interfering with every normal step of roast preparation:
Je vais d’abord le mettre dans une saumure et mettre les herbes à l’intérieur.
I am going to brine it first and then put the herbs inside.
Une saumure is brine.
That is one of those words I had very little reason to know until suddenly I desperately needed it.
And finally:
Est-ce que vous pouvez aussi me donner un peu de ficelle de boucher ?
Can you also give me some butcher’s twine?
Followed by:
Je vais le faire cuire aujourd’hui.
I am going to cook it today.
And then, presumably, I smile confidently as though this entire exchange has been effortless.
The vocabulary hiding inside one pork roast
This is exactly why I like using real errands for language practice.
One recipe gave me an entire miniature French lesson:
un rôti de porc — pork roast
le filet de porc — pork loin
désossé — boneless
une couche de gras — a layer of fat
le gras — fat
quadriller — to score/crosshatch
une entaille — a cut/slit/notch
en croisillons — crosshatched
une poche — a pocket
dans le sens de la longueur — lengthwise
ficeler — to tie with twine
la ficelle de boucher — butcher's twine
une saumure — brine
des herbes — herbs
faire cuire — to cook
None of those words came from a chapter called At the Butcher.
They came because I actually needed them.
And that seems to make them stick.
The emergency version
Of course, there is the script I practice at home.
And then there is the version my brain may actually produce when confronted with a busy butcher truck.
So I also need the emergency version:
Bonjour. Je voudrais un rôti de porc dans le filet, désossé, d’environ un kilo quatre.
Gardez le gras, s’il vous plaît.
Vous pouvez quadriller légèrement le gras ?
Et faire une poche dans le sens de la longueur pour mettre des herbes ?
Mais sans couper complètement le rôti en deux.
Ne le ficelez pas, s’il vous plaît.
Et je peux avoir un peu de ficelle de boucher ?
If necessary, this can be accompanied by the international language of pointing, hand gestures and displaying a photograph from the recipe.
French language education recognizes many pedagogical methods.
I personally favor French plus mime plus photographic evidence.
French learner tips: one butcher counter, five levels
A1
Start with the thing you need.
Je voudrais un rôti de porc, s’il vous plaît.
That alone is a successful interaction.
A2
Add quantity and a simple instruction.
Je voudrais environ un kilo quatre.
Gardez le gras, s’il vous plaît.
B1
Explain what you want done and why.
Pouvez-vous faire une poche pour que je puisse mettre des herbes à l’intérieur ?
That little pour que je puisse suddenly makes the request much more flexible.
B2
Describe the preparation precisely.
Pouvez-vous quadriller légèrement la couche de gras, sans couper trop profondément ?
Now we're operating on meat.
Advanced
Understand whatever the butcher says back.
This remains the final boss.
The part I am beginning to understand about scripts
The revelation for me is that rehearsing a conversation doesn't make the French less authentic.
It makes the eventual conversation possible.
When I practice quadriller, saumure, ficelle and dans le sens de la longueur at home, I am not memorizing a performance.
I am building little pathways in my brain that I can hopefully find again when there is market noise around me, refrigerated cases humming, someone wrapping sausages in paper, and a French butcher waiting patiently for the rest of my sentence.
And if things go well, something rather wonderful happens.
The script stops being a script.
It becomes something I can actually say.
Today, apparently, that sentence is:
Pouvez-vous faire une poche dans le rôti, dans le sens de la longueur ?
There are probably more poetic milestones on the road to speaking French.
But very few of them end with a herb-stuffed pork roast.
Sources for further information
America's Test Kitchen — Herb-Crusted Pork Roast video on YouTube
Ville d'Aix-en-Provence — Les marchés de la ville
Your turn
Have you ever rehearsed an absurdly specific conversation in French before going into a shop, market, pharmacy or restaurant?
And what is the strangest vocabulary word you learned simply because real life suddenly made it indispensable?
Share the script, the triumph—or the sentence that came out completely differently once another human being was standing in front of you. The rest of us may need it someday.
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