MINCE

[Polycarpe]

I'm looking for minced lamb, or even beef.

We're having French friends for dinner. After Chicken Liver and Cognac Pâté  followed by Walnut and Blue Cheese Salad, I'm proposing a very English Shepherd's Pie.

I've never looked for mince in France before and now can't find any. I've checked in Leclerc and SuperU. Do I have to pluck up the courage to go into one of the very good local butchers or mince the meat myself?

Any advice would be welcome. Thanks.

Rob

[Dotty0]

Rob

Both SuperU and Leclerc sell mince beef.  Its called steak hache and is along side the steak hache burgers.  Make sure though you don't buy the bolognaise stuff its horrid.

Dotty

[Christine Animal]

When I saw the title, I though you meant like "oh mince!" in French... or "slim".

I have never seen minced lamb, but beef is bifteck haché.  There is also pork sausage meat, chair à saucisse.

Isn't that right TU?  She knows a lot about ingredients.

Sorry Dotty, hadn't seen you answered.

 

 

[Teamedup]

I used to mince my own beef, but my local butcher minces lean braising steak and it is very good and so I pay extra and buy his. If he isn't open, I buy steak hache from say Carrefour, but marked 5% fat.

I have never seen minced lamb, but if I needed it would mince it myself.

 

I am just wondering what a very english shepherds pie is. How different is it from Hache Parmentier?

[Dotty0]

Teamedup

According to others you know about food, so if one was to make a traditional English dish for one's French neighbours, what would one make?

Dotty

[Mistral]

my local Géant sells minced beef and minced pork (viande de boeuf hachée, viande de porc hachée) I've never seen minced lamb. As other people have said, don't get the preparation bolognaise. My husband always ask the butcher in the intermarché to mince beef for him. You just have to ask for it although I've never bothered

 

[Teamedup]

One of the Intermarches near us always has the best tendre de tranche so I only ever buy rosbif from them. Their mince however is not so good, funny isn't it how each butcher is so different.

Hache Parmentier and Shepherds Pie are just about the same thing aren't they? that is why I was wondering what the difference was.

 

 

[Christine Animal]

Yes TU, much the same, though I don't think Haché Parmentier has lamb (maybe that's why it's shepherd's pie), isn't it usually more the chair à saucisse and bifteck haché?

What would brandade de morue be in English, I don't think it exists.  A sort of mash of cod and potato cooked in the oven.

Dotty, what about Lancashire hotpot or some sort of meat pie.. that would be typically English.

 

 

[Dick Smith]

You are mixing 2 somewhat different concepts.

Steack haché is chopped and formed steak with nothing added to it, hachis parmentier is hashed meat (which contains steack haché) with a layer of potato on top.

Shepherd's Pie is lamb, beef makes Cottage Pie. Hachis Parmentier is beef, but still goes lovely with a can of baked beans.

Recipe at

http://www.supertoinette.com/recettes/hachis_parmentier_de_to_di.htm

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Some butchers will mince meat other than beef (lamb for mosaka, veal

for meatballs, and so forth) for you, others won't. It depends how busy

they are as they are obliged(!) to clean the mincer between changes in

the type of meat.

"Hachis Parmentier is beef, but still goes lovely with a can of baked

beans" - poor old Parmentier is probably spinning in his grave at the

thought (did he have a first name?*), but in any case I agree with you.

Is anyone else making juxtrapositions of foodstuffs that would make

Joel Robouchon choke on his cornflakes? I have developed a taste for

rochefort and salad cream toasted sandwiches that I think would

jeopardise any application I might make for French nationality.

* Appearantly he was called Antoine Augustine and is burried in the Pantheon.

[SaligoBay]

[quote user="jond"]developed a taste for rochefort [/quote]

If you mean the blue cheese that comes from up Larzac way, jond, you'll get deported for calling it rochefort!

It's Roquefort, pronounced ROCKfor.

Non mais!  [:)]

[Polycarpe]

Thank you all for the info and feedback. Hâché Parmentier is new to me. So a Shepherd's Pie won't be such a novelty afterall. Damn! Oh well. But then they'll have had nothing like MY Shepherd's Pie. I don't fancy using sausage meat. I'll either go cottagey and use beef or mince my own lamb.

Thanks again.

 

[Christine Animal]

* Appearantly he was called Antoine Augustine and is burried in the Pantheon.

Lucky he wasn't frozen (hachis parmentier), or he might come back to see ya about ya baked beans !

[Teamedup]

Steak haché needn't be formed into 'steaks'. It can be just haché. And if I say viande haché I will get minced beef too.

I have lots of recipes and either they say use beef or lamb for a shepherd's pie or just beef, not one says just lamb, I am sure somewhere there is one, I just do not possess one. And all of these recipes are different in some way,  as different as all the recipes I have just looked up for Hachis Parmentier, but basically they have one thing in common. Minced meat covered in a layer of mash.

What to make, there is no reason why you shouldn't make a shepherds pie.

 

[The Riff-Raff Element]

[quote user="SaligoBay"]

[quote user="jond"]developed a taste for rochefort [/quote]

If you mean the blue cheese that comes from up Larzac way, jond, you'll get deported for calling it rochefort!

It's Roquefort, pronounced ROCKfor.

Non mais!  [:)]

[/quote]

Grief - you can tell what kind of mental condition I was in first thing

this morning! I would like to apologise to the makers of Roquefort and

to the good people of Rochefort (17) for getting them confused. Not

that they're ever going to know.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

[quote user="Christine Animal"]

* Appearantly he was called Antoine Augustine and is burried in the Pantheon.

Lucky he wasn't frozen (hachis parmentier), or he might come back to see ya about ya baked beans !

[/quote]

You know, he might actually approve, now I think about it. He was very

much into stretching whatever meat might be available by adding spuds,

so the further addition of beans might have held some appeal for him.

Interesting guy - he managed to serve both the King of France and

survive the revolution to become a hero of that too. Possibly he was a

little overenthusiatic about spuds, but he had that kind of infectious

lunacy that gets things done. He managed to persaude Marie Antoinette

to wear potato flowers in her décolleté in an early form of sponsorship and got the French to eat potatoes by forbiding them to do so.

[Dick Smith]

I'm amazed, gobsmacked and completely hogswozzled that none of you seem to know that baked beans are the classic accompaniment to cottage (or shepherd's) pie! Escoffier says so (I'm sure).

And to go back to an earlier post - there is no such thing as haché parmentier - it is always hachis, as it isn't just mince, there is onion and other stuff (as many recipes as there are for bouillabase or cassoulet it seems).

And, TU, it is definitely lamb in shepherd's (guess the connection!) and beef in cottage. Anyone who tells you different ain't thinking about it!

[Teamedup]

Yes ofcourse we know about beans with such dishes, husband calls it canteen food and is his ultimate comfort food. Heck I have even served chips and beans with left over boeuf bourgignon on the odd occassion he has felt the need.

But back to the 'pie', when young and looking up this sort of recipe as my mother would no more have purchased mince as have her navel pierced, so I had no inherited mince recipes. All the recipes said either just beef or the choice of beef or lamb.

I got the cottage and shepherd connections, but really how many words truly are exactly as their origins.

[Dick Smith]

Well there you go.

[Christine Animal]

You're quite right Dick, it's Hachis Parmentier, that's what TU and I get for posting too late and Jond too early with his Rochefort.... as long as it tastes all right !

But I would much rather have a nice fresh green salad with my Hachis Parmentier than your stodgy old baked beans.

http://www.mespetitsplats.com/index.php/2005/05/05/87-hachis-parmentier

 

[Dick Smith]

Well there you go. Again.

Actually, BB are a recommended food for diabetics, not stodgy and taste good. Comforting and wholesome on a cold winter's day.

[Viv]

Baked beans are so versatile...for me though it just has to be HP and definately those hard little bullets that are Heinz[:)]