Do any of you cook and eat 'french' at home

[idun]

When we were in France our diet was eclectic, but over the years included many french dishes especially local alpine french dishes.

Those of you in the Dordogne, with the wonderful Perigord foods, is your cooking all goose fat, etc........ remember it is a very very good fat, goose fat is.

[betise]

We're not in the Dordogne, but next door, in the Lot. We regularly eat magret de canard, or cuisses, cooked in duck fat. I always have a jar of duck fat in the fridge, for adding to soups or frying potatoes. And every Christmas I make foie gras mi-cuite.

[EuroTr@sh]

Breton galettes are a regular standby here. So quick and easy and so many different fillings. They can be as simple as it comes (ham and cheese, serve with a chunk of bread) or as experimental (seafood, vegetables, andouille, creme fraiche, serve with a fancy salad).

Tartiflette is another regular standby.

[idun]

Miam miam, I love all that food.  

My friend's husband used to make the most wonderful foie gras mi-cuite, absolutely delicious.

I think that all this constant blathering about vegan stuff in the UK  has made me almost a carnivore, I am usually an omnivore, but frankly I do not 'get' vegans or how they live, because it isn't just about food.

[idun]

 Tartiflette is an alpine dish that I make, or husband makes. We

can buy reblochon here, or at least could pre brexit, and if I could get

to the wonderful store I buy it from, would check to see if they have

it.............. and we make this very quickly, as the reblochon is

really smelly.

When making galette bretons, do you ever put a coating of cheese, compte or emmantael then an egg in the middle of the galette breton?

And andouille, well, literally makes me wretch like a cat, whole body rejection........ husband loves it, just shows how differe

[Lori]

I don't know if I cook 'french' so to speak.  I know we both enjoy food products MUCH more here than in the U.S.  And food is SO much cheaper here.  I mean REALLY cheaper, even here in the Paris region.  That was one of the biggest shocks when I went back to the U.S. after 13 years in Provence.  The cost of a trip to the grocery store.  Kept on shocking  me, right until I left.

I tend to cook with whatever is in season at the time.  We like to eat fresh foods whenever possible.  Not a fan of most frozen or boxed/bagged/canned meals.  That said, I have for the first time (due to COVID), purchased frozen vegetables here.  They have been far better than any I tried in the U.S.

When we lived in Provence, I learned to cook all types of things with aubergines, courgettes, tomates, etc.  Also love chou vert frisé.  I had never seen it in the U.S.  Also learned to prepare fresh artichokes while living in Provence.  I had never eaten a fresh artichoke prior to that !  Also had never known what to do with poireaux.  Now it is a staple in winter.

When I would go to the farmer's market in the U.S., when I would buy fresh aubergines SO many people would ask me what I did with them !

Oh and potimarron.  I had never seen one before living in Provence.  Later learned it is called a Hubbard squash in the U.S., but very hard to find.  It is one of my favorites now.  So many things you can do with it.  And the French do a very nice fenouil gratin (another vegetable I had never eaten or cooked prior to living in Provence).

[EuroTr@sh]

idun wrote the following post at 07/02/2021 13:23:

When making galette bretons, do you ever put a coating of cheese, compte or emmantael then an egg in the middle of the galette breton?

Yes I love them with eggs in.

I've probably tried most things as galette fillings, I use whatever's in the fridge. Left-over boiled spuds sliced thin with creme fraiche is good (tho' not if you're on a diet) but if it's too runny it leaks through and it all goes messy. Mushrooms, lardons, black pudding, tomatoes, and usually start with a layer oi emmental. Yum yum.

[idun]

With artichokes do you leaf nibble, dipping the leaf in vinaigrette first? And you end up as Coluche says[:D]:

[Lori]

I enjoy nibbling the leaves with just a sprinkle of salt, but oh yes, they are far better dipped in a bit of melted butter.

That saying is so true too.  I always put out a huge glass bowl for the discard of leaves.  I also learned not to remove the stem.  In 75% of cases, the steamed stem is just as good as the heart.  I peel the stem before steaming.  Sometimes it will be stringy and not good, but most of the time, it is buttery and delicous.

[Lori]

Oh and I had never seen a celeriac before.  Just fantastic and versatile. 

And anchoïade.  So easy to make and delicous.  And home made fish rillettes.  I could rarely find an American who would eat these things.

And the variety of fresh mushrooms that are here every Fall.  Expensive, but amazing.

[Gardengirl]

[quote user="idun"]

With artichokes do you leaf nibble, dipping the leaf in vinaigrette first? And you end up as Coluche says[:D]:

[/quote]

Sorry if this quotation is as bad with Edge on my ipad as it always was with Chrome etc.

I fiarst found that about artichokes on my very first visit to France in 1957 on a school exchange visit! I never cook and eat them, although do so happily if friends offer it when we have lunch or supper with them - but it happens very rarely. I do eat the stalk if it’s offered - which happens even more rarely!

Actually, another food where there’s more left after eating than on serving is mussels - or maybe it’s because they are left less tidily when finished eating! ?

[Lori]

Love moules frites.  We had a particular place in Carpentras that we would go very often for their moules frites.  I do miss that.

[idun]

Ha but Garden girl, I have been told off more than once for not stacking my empty mussels. Neighbours from the north of France and his Mother from Dunkirk, would not be happy when I left the bowl of 'empties' full to bursting when hers looked less than when she started.

This photo shows how she does it, and I never did. Just felt like too much of a faff. So eat with a mussel acting as a pinch, and then stack.... [Www]

[idun]

Lori, I gave a quote from Coluche....... he was such a formidable and important figure for my first years in France, that I hadn't realised that he died so long ago, in 1986.  He started the Restos du Coeur.

He said he was going to stand in the Presidential elections and then he was dead, in a motor cycle accident, but there has always been much debate about whether that had been an accident or not!

[Gardengirl]

I don’t like mussels at all; where I’m from in the north-east they came in jars, which my big brother loved, but which I thought were disgusting. I’ve never ever had any myself, fresh or in jars -which I imagine might have been pickled.

When we were having lunch on the ferry one day when our elder son was about 7, he decided to have moules-frites. My husband ordered them too and showed him how to eat them.

He loved them and ate with gusto: an English family went past and the mother told her son to look at the little French boy eating his bowl of mussels. Our son was so proud of himself to be taken for a French boy. ?

[idun]

GG said :Actually, another food where there’s more left after eating than on

serving is mussels - or maybe it’s because they are left less tidily

when finished eating!

I was just mentioning how my neighbours mother didn't have a huge plate full of empty mussel shells as she put them as they have at the top of that photo all neat and tidy, and 'I' was told off several times for not being so disciplined[Www]

And in the NE now we can get fresh mussels, and we have been able to get fresh cray fish from Hartlepool, at least until the lockdowns we could[:(] and fresh lobsters too.