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shopping in France just got better!


mint
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In recent weeks, I have managed to dénicher the following:  muscovado sugar, glacé cherries (3 different types), brown basmati rice, lemon curd, brown porridge oats, dried chilli flakes......at this rate my cooking will be the celebration of all of the Dordogne[:P]

Anyone else able to find some hitherto unheard of and unfindable goodies in French shops?  Do share, might make life more bearable even though the exchange rate is dire, GPs are as rare as hen's teeth and and S1 forms are no longer passports to health care?

Oh, go on, there MUST be some things that are beyond price?

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My son has recently found all sorts of 'treats'. As you mentioned, lemon curd, as well as HP sauce, and Lyle's golden syrup. He can usually get cheddar cheese too and sometimes crumpets, which he says are wonderful with foie gras.

Must admit that we never found a French cheese that we liked so well for cheese on toast, and our son loves cheese, any cheese, hard, soft, blue, green, stinky, all of it.
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Yes, have found cheddar cheese but only the one type, Wyke Farm, ready portioned and encased in plastic.  OK but not like a piece freshly cut off a block.

Never seen treacle but I still have some in an old tin whose lid has to be prised open with a large screwdriver.

No mustard powder either.

But some nice crystallised ginger, not at all gluey, and will be yum in a moist fruit cake[;-)]

The crystallised clementines I found in le Grand Frais, however, are unsurpassed and I think I'd have to go to Spain to get similar!

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Well just for once we seem to be ahead of the curve Mint. We also have prepackaged Wyke Farms which is OK for cooing, but the cheese counter in our Auchan also has blocks of White Cheddar cut to order - Cheddar fremier. - as well as the red. These are also Wyke products but the white cheddar is pretty good. Friends brought out some Cathedral City over the summer, and while the taste was different, if I had been scoring them I would have ended up with very similar scores.

And yes for melting onto toast/crumpets or just on top of things, Cheddar is impossible to match.
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We have a cheese stand on our local market that sells cheddar in blocks, usually.  NO idea if it is fermier though.  Does take better than the plastic wrapped stuff which you can indeed by in most supermarkets here.  Casino now even have their own branded cheddar, I've had cathedral city as well, OK, but somehow just not like the real thing.  Now if we are talking about missing a certain cheese, Cheshire, Wensleydale, Lancashire - don't get me started.  All much nice than Cheddar, except for cooking. Though I prefer St Agur to a Stilton .. 'cos it spreads nicely on sliced bread!!

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Is it snobbery, protectionism or a total lack of adventurousness, I wonder, that prevents the French from even trying to look farther afield for cheese ( or wine, or many other culinary delights)?

Whether it's a proper cheese shop, a deli or just a supermarket in the UK, we can buy cheeses from all over the place. Ditto wine.

It's all very PC and what have you in terms of "food miles", carbon footprints etc., but on the other hand, it means sticking religiously to what you know as the only option.

My cheese shop think I'm trafficking Cheddar, between the amount I buy to take to France for myself and the amount I get asked to bring for French friends...so it's definitely not because they don't like it, just that they can't get it. Why, I've even known the odd French person take quite kindly to a New World wine without spitting it out at the first gulp.

And it's very much not just British immigrants. I've trafficked Branston Pickle, Piccallilli and Grapefruit squash (in fact, everyone French who has ever had a glass of squash at our house has been an instant convert).
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On a recent brief return to my old Vendée stamping-ground, I was amazed to see in my (now hugely poshed-up) HyperU store a range of those tasty Welsh cheddars that are encased in wax.

On the other hand, French friends are always asking me to bring them Stilton; I have never seen that for sale in France.

I guess the wax-wrapped "cheddars" travel/keep better.

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Those Welsh wax wapped chedders are very good indeed. Pity I am on a strict diet!

The French are brainwashed into believing that their food and wine are the best in the world and that it is unpatriotic to eat anything else. Plus, imported stuff is often very expensive.

Quite how that is reconciled with the national gluttony for crup pizza and unimaginative pasta beats my feeble brain
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Stilton (blue Stilton) is available in our Auchan and also from time to time in Grand Frais. Red Leicester - also available in Grand Frais as Vieux Leicester - looks old and dried out under its plastic wrap - it isn't. Wensleydale, proper crumbly Lancashire or Cheshire - still waiting for the world to change. But they do have Blue Shropshire - not my personal favorite but OK - and little cheddars wrapped in wax - which I will personally avoid.

And before ALBF gets on his hobby horse, I also love Danish, Norwegian, French, Italian, Spanish cheeses. They each have a character of their own and we should refrain from saying that A is a good substitute for B or A is as good as B. There are good'uns and not so good'uns [according to your own tastes only] and they all have an individual character.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Latest finds:  seedless grapes (green and red), silky tofu and not the rough nasty coarse stuff found in most supermarkets and cardomom pods.  MUST be possible to concoct a dish, maybe as an entrée, with these 3 ingredients alone?[:D]

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[quote user="idun"]My son has recently found all sorts of 'treats'. As you mentioned, lemon curd, as well as HP sauce, and Lyle's golden syrup. He can usually get cheddar cheese too and sometimes crumpets, which he says are wonderful with foie gras.

Must admit that we never found a French cheese that we liked so well for cheese on toast, and our son loves cheese, any cheese, hard, soft, blue, green, stinky, all of it.[/quote]

Never thought of fois gras with crumpets!  Must try it, next time I buy crumpets, which seem to be reasonably easily available ici!

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[quote user="mint"]
Latest finds:  seedless grapes (green and red), silky tofu and not the rough nasty coarse stuff found in most supermarkets and cardomom pods.  MUST be possible to concoct a dish, maybe as an entrée, with these 3 ingredients alone?[:D]
[/quote]

Gosdh, Mint, RED seedless grapes!  Can sometimes get white, and I have some in the fridge au moment, but red, that I have never seen.  What a spirit of adventure and discovery you have!

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One thing I have never seen in France (that is all the bits of it that I have visited) is sherry.  British people tell me oh pineau is the same.  I beg to differ but pineau is NOT the same as sherry.  I find pineau disgusting but, although I hardly drink nowadays, sometimes I come in from a bracing walk and feel that I could murder a glass of Bristol Cream.

OK, a bit fuddy duddy and it's the housewife's ruin and so on but I have never claimed any sort of sophistication, have I?

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Tio Pepe!

In another life I couldn't give the stuff away!!!!! IF I had a bottle though I would cook with it if I couldn't get rice wine.

I am not much of a drinker, but when I do, I like fortified wine, and in France would buy Maury as an everyday apero!
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  • 1 year later...
I am re-visiting this thread because it is the season for getting in the seasonal goodies, n'est ce pas?

Back to le Grand Frais for their wonderful glacé cherries and whole clementines (treated like the cherries), some great fat sultannas, candied ginger, some Wyke Farm cheddar, and even Hellman's mayonnaise.  Alas couldn't see any treacle.  Anyone knows where to get some or a French equivalent?

On the plus side, got some really nice eating apples, really fresh blette and spinach, fresh garlic and Cevennes onions.

Felt like I was in one of those supermarket sweep events where you can load up with everything you can get your hands on in 10 minutes! Just for once, I didn't look too closely at the prices, only at the products.......[:D]

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Strange that you should mention Bien Manger.  We get a food parcel (kids obviously think the elderly pair could do with it) every year from BM.

Usually, some wine, biscuits, mustard and a whole load of cheeses which do not smell too good after they have been packed in one of their special panniers.  We never had the heart to say, look don't bother with the parcel this year.....not looking a gift horse in the mouth, etc!

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Mint wrote : Strange that you should mention Bien Manger. We get a food parcel (kids obviously think the elderly pair could do with it) every year from BM.

Never having heard of them before, I had a look and I have found some sherry on their site :

https://www.bienmanger.com/1F37559_East_India_Solera_Xeres_Ans.html

Perhaps you could pass this link to your offspring as an alternative to the cheese offerings ?.
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