FORUM

I went to the cafe des artistes in Laroque last night ( nothing unusual about that for a Friday) they are now doing a very tasty cod and chips with mushy peas , all freshly made with a light crisp batter for 14 euros.
Added to that a pint of cider( or two ) and watching the rugby after a great night.

That is such a great diet - no wonder your rugby league / rugby union and the great cricket team touring Australia just now are doing so well.
Eat like the French - leave your nice old habits on the other side of the channel.....

PatrickF wrote:That is such a great diet - no wonder your rugby league / rugby union and the great cricket team touring Australia just now are doing so well.
Eat like the French - leave your nice old habits on the other side of the channel.....

Thank you for your constructive comments Patrick , very helpfull.

give me a nice entrecôte and haricots vert any day !! yum yum

Place leftover chips between two slices of bread. No need to butter the bread as the chips have been previously oiled and seasoned.
Put onto plate. Put into microwave for 1 min.

Voila! Breakfast .

PatrickF wrote: Eat like the French - leave your nice old habits on the other side of the channel.....

What you mean bland and uninteresting?

I love living in France but I just don't subscribe to the myth of French cuisine, to my mind it is stuck in the last century.

So many restaurants aspire to be 'gastronomique' but not so many of them succeed.

Personally I really enjoy fish and chips as well as Indian, Thai, Italian and Chinese cuisine and it would be nice if they were all available here. Why should anybody give up food they enjoy just because they have moved to a different country?

spj wrote:give me a nice entrecôte and haricots vert any day !! yum yum

I would love to enjoy a nice entrecôte and would love to find somewhere selling one.

I totally agree Allan

I'm still trying to work out what I eat on a Friday has anything to do with "my"
Rugby league , rugby union or cricket team?????

interiors66 wrote:I totally agree Allan

I'm still trying to work out what I eat on a Friday has anything to do with "my"
Rugby league , rugby union or cricket team?????

A few of my Aussie/New Zealander friends went there and had the same meal as you, so thats PatrickF's argument up the Swanee. Maybe you didnt drink enough Cider.

Must admit I have never got into 'gourmet' grub, though have nothing against people who have. I think I'm just a bit rough round the edges. Yorkshire lass and proud of it, but happy to eat anything that I can recognise. Gimme steak and chips, fish and chips, roast beef and yorkshire pud or a good old chip buttie and I'm sorted for lunch and dinner.

On the other hand, I can understand people wanting to get into the French cuisine thing, but I'm just not sure that it exists anymore. Many of the great television cooks are British and have to say that I have had some corking meals out in Leeds over the past few years, and some not so corking meals out in France. Swings and roundabout....depends where you eat, what you order, how much you have to drink first....

"Gourmet grub" i used to be starving after it. I do think the fruit down here is superb and also most of the veg, though i think things like turnip and cabbage are nicer in the UK/Ireland. Im not over impressed with the restaurants here, i think the quality is very variable. My last gripe is that i have yet to find consistently good beef (steak) like Entrecote etc. Sometimes its nice and tender but other times you might as well be trying to eat a Dunlop tyre.

We buy are entrecote steak, whole chicken and liver in Spain. All our veg come from a direct sales at Elne. Superb quality and often only lifted the day we buy and more reasonable than the greengrocers and supermarkets.

I would certainly agree with what's been said about trying to find a decent steak in France.
I've been trying off and on for 10 years and I've yet to find a steak that's even close to what you can find routinely in Ireland.
I've been told that a lot of Irish beef is exported to France, I wonder where it ends up ? Certainly I have been unable to find any of it !

I have seen Irish beef on sale in SuperU supermarkets but only very occasionally and the last time it was €22 per kilo. I have tried almost everything to try and ensure that the French beef (Faux Fillet, Rumsteak, Entrecote etc) is easy to chew. Ive bashed it with one of those wooden hammers the butchers use, ive marinated it but its still pot luck

Entrecote in Spain is very tender. I get mine from Escudero at La Jonquera and its around 8.50€ a kilo.

PatrickF wrote:That is such a great diet - no wonder your rugby league / rugby union and the great cricket team touring Australia just now are doing so well.
Eat like the French - leave your nice old habits on the other side of the channel.....

We do, and regularly pop over to the restaurants in Spain where you will see the french tucking into battered cod and chips, battered fish of all varieties and thoroughly enjoying it!

I'm being serious when I suggest you try Lidl for a not bad steak. They come individually wrapped and not visible (which isn't clever marketing I would say) but the ones we have had are fine. The quality has been consistent.

And so back to fish.....when over the border in Spain you see Bacalao Frito on the menu , give it a go.....! If the restaurant is goodthey should serve a decent battered cod.

Search for a post by Daphne on a restaurant called LA Masia....

Actually, we went 5 or 6 weeks ago for Sunday lunch and it was very busy and very dissapointing!! It's typical when you rave about a place and take other people with you! We'll try it again but mid week, I don't want to write it off because of one dissapoinment!

opas wrote:And so back to fish.....when over the border in Spain you see Bacalao Frito on the menu , give it a go.....! If the restaurant is goodthey should serve a decent battered cod.

Search for a post by Daphne on a restaurant called LA Masia....

Opas
Bacalao is Salt Cod. Not sure it's the type of Cod which would be good for Fish and Chips. But, Bacalao is served a lot in Spain. Even here in the PO you're finding this at the top restaurants. Good but often it's too salty.

Blackduff

I looked a bit further for Bacalao into French and you'll find Morue. The confusing is only one word in Spanish but French and English have two words.

Personally I wouldn't order bacalao for fish and chips in Spain.

Blackduff

Funnily enough I had a fish and some chips left over. Lo and behold ....

re-roasted with a lot of salt and spices............

and imagination by the bucketload for the diners...

Bacalao Frito with Patatas Bravas

Bacalao is usually served in Spain in a tomato based sauce, roasted with garlic or shallow fried, not in batter. We have never had it over salty in Spain, however, we did order it once in a Michelin Star restaurant here and it was so salty it was inedible! It needs to be soaked in cold water overnight with the water being changed a few times, at the restaurant here they obviously hadn't done that!

Hubby has had it several times in Spain and its never been salty. Once he even had it in a salad raw and it was fine.

I've had salty bacalao at the following local restaurants. First, my best restaurant has served some cod salty but only once. Normally their cod is great. The La Trencadis served salty cod once too. The super restaurant on the high street across from the church. I cannot remember the name but it's so expensive I'll not return~I'm a pensionaire.

I have had a great chunk of cod in the Barcelona airport restaurant. This had a light coating and it was cooked in a small bowl of oil, bags of garlic and my appetite. Miammm! Lots of bread to sop up the oil. Wow, I forgot to mention the guendilla peppers were included to this bowl. Double Miammm!

Blackduff

I quite often cook bacalao. Soaking overnight would rarely be enough: at least 24 hours for the sort which is only semi-dried, and more like 48 or more for the stuff which is as dry as a board. Four or five changes of water. Or go to Spain and buy it ready-soaked. And taste it before adding any salt to the dish when you cook it, or to anything else you are eating it with.