Indian spices

[martyn94]

Some of the markets have good herb and spice stalls e.g. St Cyprien,Le Boulou.

Yes, but they tend to stock stuff for French food, or what they have inherited from their own colonial empire. They overlap to a large degree with what I want, but never quite enough.

[Sue]

Try Curry Pax Martin. I am sure you won't be disappointed.

[lonesome paddy]

Yes we all want proper traditional English food like curries & pizzas

[martyn94]

Yes we all want proper traditional English food like curries & pizzas

l

I have French friends (for whom I've cooked quite often, without them gagging) who've said "cook us something typically English". It's easy to do the first course (potted shrimps, say?) and the last one (summer pudding, at the right time of year). But I've always been stumped for the one in the middle. It should probably be steak-and-kidney pudding, but it has to be so perfect to be any good that I haven't had the spine to practise. Any suggestions?

[Lanark Lass]

Meat loaf?

Simple to make and can be served hot or cold.

[lonesome paddy]

Yes we all want proper traditional English food like curries & pizzas

l

I have French friends (for whom I've cooked quite often, without them gagging) who've said "cook us something typically English". It's easy to do the first course (potted shrimps, say?) and the last one (summer pudding, at the right time of year). But I've always been stumped for the one in the middle. It should probably be steak-and-kidney pudding, but it has to be so perfect to be any good that I haven't had the spine to practise. Any suggestions?

Martyn, with your mention of steak and kidney pudding you've brought back memories of my mother making it. She always placed a teacup in the centre of the dish (was it to stop the pastry collapsing ?), a beautiful main course.

[Sue]

We had steamed steak and kidney pudding in the week. Delicious it was too.

[martyn94]

Yes we all want proper traditional English food like curries & pizzas

l

I have French friends (for whom I've cooked quite often, without them gagging) who've said "cook us something typically English". It's easy to do the first course (potted shrimps, say?) and the last one (summer pudding, at the right time of year). But I've always been stumped for the one in the middle. It should probably be steak-and-kidney pudding, but it has to be so perfect to be any good that I haven't had the spine to practise. Any suggestions?

Martyn, with your mention of steak and kidney pudding you've brought back memories of my mother making it. She always placed a teacup in the centre of the dish (was it to stop the pastry collapsing ?), a beautiful main course.

l,

God, you must have been dragged up. My mother used a proper pie funnel, which I'm surprised to find you can still get, eg here


http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PIE-FUNNEL-BA ... XQC-tTFvbt

As the name implies, you are talking about an s and k pie (ie with a baked crust): I was talking about a pudding (ie a suet pastry, steamed - like Sue's). But then again, when are we ever again going to have the weather to make that an obvious "dinner party dish" down my way?

Some horrible meteorological vengeance will no doubt soon descend.

[Ariègeoise]

My mother used a proper pie funnel, which I'm surprised to find you can still get

Mine too ... she had it as a wedding present in 1939. It survived frequent use until she died in 1996, and now I have it along with her old china rolling pin, which dates from the same era. I rarely use the pie funnel but the rolling pin is wonderful!

Martyn, what about cooking your friends a fish pie? Typically British but somehow appropriate for the PO too!

[lonesome paddy]

There you go Martyn, a fish pie with chips.....proper chips not the frozen or wafer thin ones thats so prevalent here. My mother had a pie funnel which she called a pie whistle but i cant recall her ever using it, i suppose being a Yank she had to be awkward.

[martyn94]

There you go Martyn, a fish pie with chips

Not quite enough spuds.

I have actually done fish pie (without the chips: they are the sort of people for whom you budget a baguette per head), and I do it often for myself and mine. But I'd ideally like something that doesn't have any close equivalent in France, not parmentier de poisson.

[Allan]

How about 'Crapaud dans Le trou'? Or anything involving Yorkshire pudding.

I still like your first idea of steak and kidney pudding but if you find that too daunting go for a steak and kidney pie, with or without pie funnel.

It seems that the civilising influence of a good meat pie hasn't crossed the channel, so a pie or pudding would be very English with no local equivalent.

We plan to feed some French friends beef wellington but there is a danger they might confuse it with bœuf en croûte

[Sue]

Steak and kidney pudding is so easy to make!

[martyn94]

Steak and kidney pudding is so easy to make!

I thought it was daunting because I've never made suet pastry, and I don't have cool hands, nor a suitable pudding basin. The hands are past curing, but I will give it a try (I've always wanted to be really retro and add oysters too). Any ideas about where I find the basin and the suet?

[Sue]

You would need to go Marj & Richards Store to buy the suet or ask a friend who is going to Uk to bring you back some. The basin, any household store or supermarket household aisle. No oysters for me!

[russell]

We plan to feed some French friends beef wellington but there is a danger they might confuse it with bœuf en croûte

Don't mention Waterloo!

Russell

[martyn94]

No oysters for me!

Is it that you've tried them and don't like them, or just don't like the idea? If the former, I sympathise (mostly because you're missing something very good). My sister has an aversion to anything with that sort of texture, starting with egg white: it's a genuine gag reaction, so I've learnt long since that she's not just being fussy. But I wish she didn't: it would make "menu planning" that much easier. If the latter, be brave and start with quite small ones.

There's all sort of apocryphal stories of London apprentices rioting because they were expected to eat oysters for 4 meals a day. It was just cheap protein.

[Allan]

I love old fashioned dishes like beef and oyster pudding. Whenever I go to London, I try to have lunch at The Ritz. They used to serve a different traditional dish each day. As I recall, Thursday was steak and kidney pie day and it was brilliant.

A few years ago, they hired a 'celebrity' chef who proceeded to ruin the restaurant.

Go with your oysters Martyn.

[Sue]

I like oysters it is the thought of mixing the beef and oysters. I imagine that oysters are a little like anchovies in that the melt when cooked.

[martyn94]

I like oysters it is the thought of mixing the beef and oysters. I imagine that oysters are a little like anchovies in that the melt when cooked.

They don't melt, but they do save you the effort of adding salt. Poodling around on the interweb I came across this slightly mad blog by someone dedicated to cooking their way through Jane Grigson's "English Food" (I should just open a page at random to get my main course, though my copy is currently 800km away)

http://neilcooksgrigson.blogspot.fr/200 ... dding.html

As another blog post of his makes clear, you can use the same filling in a "pie", and I'll probably start with that, in the temporary absence of suet. Now to find the pie dish...

[Allan]

I think the blog idea may have been pinched from Julie Powell who wrote a blog in 2002 about cooking all the recipes in Julia Child's French cookbook. The story was made into a film starring Meryl Streep.

Are you going to seriously rise to the challenge and attempt to buy raw suet from a French butcher? Good luck with that.

Out of interest, back in Yorkshire, there is a pub that regularly wins pie making competitions and their star product uses a suet and herb pastry

[martyn94]

I think the blog idea may have been pinched from Julie Powell who wrote a blog in 2002 about cooking all the recipes in Julia Child's French cookbook. The story was made into a film starring Meryl Streep.

Are you going to seriously rise to the challenge and attempt to buy raw suet from a French butcher? Good luck with that.

Out of interest, back in Yorkshire, there is a pub that regularly wins pie making competitions and their star product uses a suet and herb pastry

I used to buy lamb's kidneys and veal kidneys from my butcher in Normandy who used to step into his cold room and give you the whole shebang if you wanted. Not the only butcher I've used (but not recently) who carried on doing things properly essentially as a matter of self-respect. I always felt guilty that I didn't make much use of the fat. As you say, fat chance (as it were) of that nowadays: his successor sells dodgy pre-cut stuff that (to be fair) is much more in line with what his punters can afford.

I always (ie about twice) found the Julia Child book tiresomely didactic (as well as the nonsense about measuring things in cups).

[Sue]

Have bought suet from a butchers in Roses, Spain but not the same as Atora and a real faff to grate.

[martyn94]

Have bought suet from a butchers in Roses, Spain but not the same as Atora and a real faff to grate.

l

Atora is quite heavily processed. According to their website they knock out 3,200 tons a year (a "million dumplings a day", which seems like pretty mingy dumplings, though I haven't tried to do the maths). Invented by a French guy living in Manchester, apparently (like Marxism at about the same time, except that Engels was a German). Atora seems to have outlived Marxism, though both of them are past their glory days.

[Rosario03]

I have a yen for a curry every now and then, and normally stock up on spices, dal etc when I'm in Paris. But inevitably you forget things or run out. I deeply resent paying silly prices for tiny jars in the supermarket, even if they had what you want. I've found a wider range in sensible sizes at good prices at La Jonquera, but their range only goes so far.

I found myself short of a few things (garam masala, cumin seeds and mustard seeds, for what it's worth) the other week. I tried some research into online sources on the interweb, but found nowhere in France which seemed any good, and some initially-attractive offers from the UK and Germany were crippled by lethal delivery charges.

Eventually I settled on this outfit on eBay

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/181483625936? ... cc1db&cp=1

The merit for me was that they deliver from India, so that you get the same "post free" prices here as anywhere else. The downside was that they took about 17 days paris taxi Airport to arrive (at the short end of what they indicated). The garam masala seems OK and fresh, and the seeds are as you'd expect.

�8-odd for 3 100g bags is materially more than an Indian supermarket, if I had one handy, but not grotesquely so, and a lot better than going back to Paris earlier than I would otherwise have done.

I offer this for what it may be worth. If anyone knows of a good bricks-and-mortar outlet round here, I'd be glad to know. The only place I've stumbled over is "Asia Center" at Mas Guerido, and that seemed pretty dim and pricey (even for Chinese and SE-Asian stuff).

Humm, I have exactely the same problem :/

[Sue]

You could try ordering from here http://currypax.com/

[Kate]

Martyn....is this you or is it spam? Don't get it!

[Daphne]

Curry Pax highly recommended

[martyn94]

Martyn....is this you or is it spam? Don't get it!

I don't know what you are on about: I guess you may now have deleted whatever it was. For the record, I haven't posted on this thread for over a year. Was someone pretending to be me?

[Kate]

No, it was the post above from Rosaria03 just out of the blue....but maybe it's genuine. Sorry, didn't mean 'is that you' so much as 'have you posted this recently'?