Scrambled eggs with smoked salmon
Breakfast is a very different ritual in France and Ireland. Generally speaking – though things are changing all the time of course and every home is different – it’s portrayed as un croissant and/or un café vs the porridge/the fry/lashings of tea/the “breakfast roll” etc etc.
The following is a slightly decadent version of an Irish breakfast, though it’s far healthier than “the Big Fry with All the Works”. Basically it’s just scrambled eggs with a smoked salmon twist. Read more…
The Carignan renaissance begins here
Hey Carignan, what's your game now - can anybody play?
Once upon a time Carignan was the most widely planted grape on the planet. It was the single most common vine variety planted in France.
Its vines are late budding, ripen late and are highly susceptible to rot and mildew. They favour a hot climate and long, dry growing season – is it any wonder that Carignan became the grape of Languedoc-Roussillon?
Then something happened. It fell out of fashion.
How to make preserved lemons
Preserved lemons bring a warm summer sunshine into your store cupboard during the depths of winter. They are quite common in Mediterranean recipes, and you’ll find jars of them in Eastern or Asian food stores.
It’s easy to make your own, and in our house we do it one of two ways: either in a lemony brine or in olive oil (we might even try rapeseed oil next winter).
10 more beetroot recipes
We’ve done the beetroot and goats’ cheese, so here are some more simple beetroot recipes as promised.
Le Canal du Midi en chirurgie
“Chirurgie” is French for surgery, and here is a scary new video of radical chirugie, “root and branch” surgery – literally.
Some 2,000 of the famous platanes or plane trees along the Canal du Midi have a fatal disease. So they need to be felled and replaced by disease-resistant ones.
The big cranes and cutters have arrived at Villeneuve-Lès-Béziers, which would be about half-way between Béziers and the ocean. All very sad.
Related posts
Beet, cheese, goats and all
“Oh I hate beetroot.” If you’re of a certain age and your dad didn’t have a vegetable patch, you may have grown up with a horrible kind of beetroot. The detestable kind that came in jars and was pickled to death, ruthlessly executed in a harsh malt vinegar that could strip the paint off the railings of Stephen’s Green.
A soundtrack for the Languedoc
We know absolutely nothing about this short music track, other than that it’s called “Languedoc” and it’s by ”Scott & Manuscott”, from Phantom Frottage, Toronto. Yet it’s quite atmospheric and “filmic” if you give it at least a minute, and it deserves a lot more than the 12 plays it has had so far.
What does it make you think of – Ennio Morricone? “Pet Sounds”? Flamingos in the Camargue? Sit back, relax, enjoy…
‘Italian’? ‘Extra virgin?’ It’s a con
The vast majority of so-called “Italian extra-virgin olive oil” on sale in our supermarkets is fake. Yet, offically at least, nobody cares.
Our numerous authorities, regulators and enforcement agencies turn a blind eye to this big rip-off and public safety issue.
Not that it’s a particularly Irish problem – there are thousands of litres of fake Italian EVOO (extra-virgin olive oil) swishing around in French hypermarchés, and the shelves of their UK and US counterparts too.
Do the Irish really hate the French?
“Hundreds” of French tourists (if you read today’s Irish Times) or even “thousands” of them (if you believe today’s Irish Independent) changed their travel plans and decided not to travel to Ireland after the Thierry Henry handball in the World Cup playoffs in November 2009. Is it all a storm in a teacup?
The population of France grew by 4.2 million between 1999-2009, according to the latest census figures from the INSEE statistics people. And the Languedoc-Roussillon was the fastest growing region.
The national total grew by 7% in a decade, to more than 64 million people on 1 January 2009. The Languedoc-Roussillon jumped more than 14% to 2.6 million people.
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