Offal - Awful?

A few things I've read recently and a trip to the hyper market today got me thinking about offal and how in the states it seems to be increasingly unpopular, the same is true in England as well. Yet it seems as popular as ever here in France. Maybe its an Anglo-Saxon thing?
I'm old enough to remember that my Mother (who was not much of a cook) used to cook offal. We had liver, beef heart, & kidneys that I can remember. I also remember that pickled pigs feet which came in a big glass jar were a real treat. I still like all of those things.
In France everything is used it seems. And many of the offal items are not exactly cheap either; they're certainly not virtually given away, if you can find them, as they are in the states & England. There is a huge variety of 'bits & pieces' that one can buy. I'm going to go through as many as I can remember with some purely personal comment upon my like & dislikes.

LIVER. I like liver; especially calves liver. It needs to be gently cooked and the traditional bacon & onions do go well.
KIDNEY. Again a thing I like. I'm lucky enough to be married to a Northern English woman who knows how to make steak & kidney pie to die for. Her suet dumplings to go with it a equally heavenly.
TESTICLES. Can't think of a more honest name & I hate the euphemisms. In any case I'm pretty neutral about them. I'll eat them if presented, but I'd probably never order them in a restaurant. Too many other things I like better.
TRIPE. As far as I'm concerned there's nothing much to like or dislike about tripe. It doesn't have much taste or character as far as I can tell. I do, however, like some of the dishes that its put in. Its one of local local specialties here and they do some nice dishes.
STOMACH. Otherwise known as haggis in the English speaking world. It very much depends upon how the haggis is made. I've had awful & I've had divine.
TÈTE DE VEAU. Yummy! A favorite dish. Rarely bad & usually delicious.
HEADCHEESE. Another euphemism, but I love it anyway. I am especially fond of the French version studded with chopped up little cornichons. I've also had a form of rillettes made wholly from bits of a pigs head. That was pretty nice too.
TROTTERS. Pied de porc in French. As I mentioned above I like them pickled. Most of the other ways I've had them are Ok, but pretty tasteless in my opinion. I did have some which had been marinated, pounded flat & roasted which were wonderful. This was at a restaurant in Madrid & I've never seen them done this way again.
PIGS EARS. The French love these, but I've never seen the attraction. Again, fairly tasteless in my opinion. Now then when we used buy baked pigs ears for our dog sthat was different story. They loved them!
QUEUE. Pigs tail, another thing the French seem to love. I can't say that it has much taste, but it does seem to add a certain nice consistency to the dishes where its used.
PATES, TERRINE'S & MOUSSES. Most tend to use offal of some sort even if its only liver. Anyway there are few that I don't like. Its great fun here to go into the charcuterie and have choice of 8-10 or more to choose from. Love it!
FRITTONS. I don't know just how local these are, but they are a type of pate made with various bits & pieces including types of offal. I've seen them made from duck, veal and pig. Some taste pretty good others are a bit off putting.
Around here there is another type of fritton as well. This is a duck's carcass (the breasts, legs & thighs have been removed.) which has been slowly cooked in duck fat so the meat that left has been turned into comfit. I only know of one place to buy them already done, but you can buy the raw carcasses fairly easily. Probably not really offal, but sort of in the same vein. Its an interesting alternative to using the carcass for making stock.
STUFFING. Most forcemeat stuffings are all the better for having the bird's offal included as are gravy's.

What have I missed? Don't know, but if anybody wants to remind me feel free.

Bottom line is that overall I like offal more than not. We'd have a poorer diet & cuisine without it. So...

Vive la France! for keeping it going.

THE ham - its been a long wait

There he is the whole ham. Notice how beautifully he's wrapped? Sort of ugly isn't he, but having waited a year for him he's beautiful to me and to my friend Andrew. The ham is the result of our adventure last year of joining in with French friends to butcher a whole pig. Well, actually it turned out to be two pigs as there were quite a few of us. (I've written up the whole adventure earlier in this blog.).
Because it was the first time for Andrew & I we sort of wimped out and decided that we would share half a pig between us. We had a great time during the whole process and both ended up with lots of several kinds of sausage and several kinds of pate. These were easy to divide up. For the ham we had to wait for it to cure. Local lore says that takes one year; who are we to argue. (The cure by the way is a simple salt cure not much else.) So the ham was finally ready a week or so ago & our friend Jacques brought it over for us. We now had the problem of how to divide the ham in two - equitably!
After considerable thought it was our friend Robert who came to our rescue. Rob is a retired farmer/ jockey/ butcher. He reckoned that he had a way to cut up the ham so the ended up in four pieces that could be equitably shared. This sounded better than sawing it down the middle which was the best the Andrew & I had come up with so we agreed to let Robert have a go.



Rob started by cutting off the hock.

As you can see the ham has a really nice color and is tender & moist. Of course we had a taste. It is great! Wonderful flavor, not too salty. I think our French experts we were working with knew what they were doing. Its for sure we didn't.






Next Rob cut out what he called the 'chine'. It the smaller piece in the middle of the picture. Apparently this is a different set of muscles .


Now came the cut cut where Rob took out the leg bone and then cut the ham into two large pieces. These were the Topside and the Silver side. (if I got it right the Silver side is the inside of the pig's leg and the Topside is the outside of the leg.)



The piece in the center of the picture is the topside (or at least I think it is. We'd been drinking wine as we watched Rob so I wasn't paying as close attention to what he was doing as I should have.)



In any case it was now time to divide up as we had four pieces of ham plus a bone.

I asked Andrew to choose first as I'd dragooned him into the whole thing to begin with.

Here's what he chose. The chine & the Topside.

I got the silver side, the hock and the bone. We're both happy.

The whole thing has been a great experience. We'll probably do it again next month.

The frugal shopper - French style

I recently read about buying foie gras here in France now that its on sale after the holidays. That's good advice because it really is much cheaper than normal. Still foie gras is expensive even at half price. That got me to thinking about frugal shopping for food here. Eat well, but save money. Its possible if one sticks to seasonal items, has a freezer and learns the ropes. In other words learn to food shop the way the French housewives do. They are in a word - frugal.

Now, when it comes to the big holiday meals the French don't count the cost. They buy whatever they want at whatever the cost. Foie gras at full price, oysters, expensive cuts of meat, cheeses, pâtisserie desserts, chocolate, the lot. But in everyday cooking they tend to be frugal. They follow the seasons, they use the markets and they prepare slow cooked meals with inexpensive ingredients.

Here are few of the things I've learned from them:

A freezer is necessary so the one can take full advantage of the sales. Especially the meat sales.

Meats: Follow the sales for sure. Beef & veal is always pretty expensive; even when on sale. Lamb is normally expensive, but does go on sale. For example I'm going to buy a couple of half lambs today at 5.30 euro per KG. (a little under $4.00/lb.). Pork is of very high quality here and is inexpensive. When on sale its really cheap. Belly pork for $1.50/lb for example. The pork sausage (de Toulouse) is both wonderful and moderately priced.
Birds range in price. There is cheap battery chicken, but a proper free range bird is relatively expensive ($7-8.00/lb) When available fresh duck leg/thighs are very cheap. Breasts are normally not cheap at $8-9.00/lb. Turkey breasts & leg/thighs are cheap. Recently our local supermarket has been selling quail from Spain at a very low price.

Vegetables: The first rule is to buy from the market whenever possible. The produce will be cheaper in most cases and fresher. Winter is difficult as the imported stuff is relatively expensive & the quality not that great. Leeks are a real staple here being local. Cauliflower and broccoli are also good. Onions, shallots and potatoes stay inexpensive. Most other veggies start to get expensive.
Given what's available we have adopted the French custom of having lots of soups. A staple here are the various kinds of squash & pumpkin which make for great soups as, of course, do the leeks.

Fruit: Apples are the best bet here as there a lots of local varieties (my favorite stand at Villfranche market always has at least ten types available + great cider!) Oranges & Clementine's come in from Spain with good quality & price. Pears are good. Pretty much everything else suffers.

Cheese: There's not too much seasonal price variation, but there is a lot of 'quality' variation. For example; plain old brie vs. brie de meux vs. raw milk brie. The price difference is about 3X per pound. Or take the range from Cantal to Salers. Here price about doubles from $6.00/lb to about $14.00/lb as you go from Cantal-jeaune to cantal- entre doux to cantal- vieux to Laguiole to Salers. All the same cheese family, but a huge difference in price. There's also a large variation in price amongst the range of blue cheeses. Then there is in addition a huge range of 'manufactured' or 'commercial' cheeses. (sort of the French equivalent of Velveeta) These are cheap & some are actually edible.

Charcuterie: The range is so large that its hard to make comparisons. Certainly the pre-prepared dishes are expensive in general although things like celeris rave & carrot salad are cheap & good. Pates range from very expensive to pretty cheap depending upon ingredients. Rillets tend to be a great buy as are fritons. One could totally eat from the charcuterie, but it would be expensive.

General food stuff: Basics are reasonable and there's not a lot of variation. We find most ready meal type packaged goods in the freezer or on the shelves to be pretty awful. See my comments about the Uk equivalents. Jams, jellies, chocolate, snacks and so forth are abundant & cheap.

We've been out of the states too long to make comparisons, but we do find things cheaper here than in England.

Overall though we find it fun to be frugal. Shopping & eating like the French is no hardship; we enjoy it. We still revert to & enjoy eating occasional American or English meals, but by & large we're becoming more & more 'French"