Odds and healthy sods

I don't know if it's the weather or advancing age, but my joints have felt recently like they need oiling. I can no longer leap out of a chair and dash to answer the phone, I get up and creak my way over. Bizarre. I'm hoping it's the weather.

Just in case, I went to a herborist last weekend with a recipe for remineralising ye olde bones that I got from a magazine I subscribe to called Plantes & Bien-Etre. If you have joint pain, tiredness, breaking nails, hair loss, these could all be due to a lack of minerals which is due to an excess of acidity in the body rather than poor nutrition. The stresses of modern life block the elimination of acid so a helping hand is needed.

The shop, located in the old part of Montpellier, in a beautiful stone building, was fascinating. There wasn't much room to move about because it was filled with goodies. The walls were lined with jars of herbs of every description. My recipe posed no problem to the experienced herborist. She suggested she make three times the amount which would give me a cure of about one month. The bag cost me about €15 which I thought was very reasonable seeing all the good it was going to do me.

La Quintessence, Montpellier

The recipe is designed to stimulate the hepatorenal function and remineralise the body.
Mix 15gr of the following:
Nettle leaves
Horsetail
Birch leaves
Chicory roots
Strawberry leaves
Boil a bowl of water with one tablespoon of the mixture. Turn off the heat and cover for ten minutes. Filter and drink one to two bowls per day for six weeks, once or twice a year. Or you can drink it one week per month over several months.

The article in the magazine says that you should act in three ways only one of which is drinking the tisane. The others are removing the sources of acidose: stress, milk products, animal proteins (bugger!) and industrial food (no probs, I don't touch the stuff); and increase vegetal sources of minerals - nuts, leafy veg.

Tonight we're having roast chicken... with some leafy salad.

But, on Friday I made a tasty nearly veggie meal for which I'll share the recipe. I had a potimarron (small pumpkin) so made a stuffed dish:
2 potimarrons (I had one)
30cl crème fraiche
200g lardons
100g chestnuts (from a jar/sous-vide)
Cut the top off the potimarron(s), and empty out the seeds. Pepper the inside. Fry up the lardons. In a bowl, mix together the cream, cooked lardons and chestnuts, and add salt. Cook at 180°C for an hour and a half.
What I did: I used less cream and lardons, added turmeric and garlic to the mix. It was very tasty.

Served with roasted Brussel sprouts and chestnuts in Balsamic vinegar which were delicious:
Some sprouts
Olive oil
Balsamic syrup (boil up cheaper Balsamic vinegar until you get 1 tbs of syrup).
The recipe calls for lardons but I left those out.
Toss the sprouts in the oil and salt & pepper. Roast the sprouts in the same oven until cooked. Add the chestnuts for the last ten minutes or so. Take out of the oven and dribble over the vinegar. Toss. Check the seasoning and serve.

I've also been doing yoga nearly every day during the holidays as my yoga teacher has been absent. Just ten or fifteen minutes, based on exercises she sent so I don't have to start all over again after a two-week break. If I didn't work, I'd do more, especially when I look at this impressive video of a guy who started from a really desperate situation:

Post by Collective Evolution Lifestyle.

Who knows, I may even end up standing on my head again. I haven't done that since I was about eight. Or not.

More Odds and Sods, but mostly food...

What's been going on recently in your life?

Sandwich jambon-beurre

I might not be in Britain, but I can answer the Daily Mail's cri de coeur: "Is there no one left in the UK who can make a sandwich ? Or rather my youngest can. He went off on a school visit to Lac de Salagou with a Festive baguette-jambon-beurre, as requested. No tomato, no lettuce, no pickle. Just ham and tasty raw organic butter. The ham came from Hyper U. No one's perfect... The Festive baguette sarnie is one of the simple pleasures of living in France, and certainly better than an industrial triangle in a plastic box full of salt and fat that those poor Hungarians were being brought in to make.

Still on the subject of food, I actually bought a couple of paper recipe books recently rather than print off the net. One is the Oh She Glows Cookbook by Angela Liddon and the other is YumUniverse: Infinite Possibilities for a Gluten-free, Plant-Powerful, Whole-Food Lifestyle by Heather Crosby. Not that I'm either gluten-intolerant or a vegetarian, but I like variety, and my DB would prefer to eat as little meat as possible. Both books are written by successful food bloggers whose recipes I've tried and enjoyed, with lovely appealing photos. Funnily enough, both women came to veganism after years of eating extremely badly resulting in increasingly poor health that popping pills did nothing to cure.

The YU book is a guide really on how to incorporate more plant-based food into the average diet. It has sections on the importance of soaking beans, grains and nuts to remove anti-nutrients, how to sprout, how to cook with new ingredients, how to make it all happen. It's quite a challenge to change habits and it's only by taking it in small steps that you avoid reverting to the old ways after a few months.

She gives recipes for homemade spice mixes (Ethiopian, Chinese, Taco, Chai etc.), different sauces and vinaigrettes (Kale and Walnut Pesto, Cashew Sauce, Sweet Potato Sauce, etc), sandwich ideas (Smoky Lentil and Dill, Crispy Eggplant, Sprouts & Tomato, etc.), snacks, and so on. This weekend I soaked some mung beans and amaranth to start sprouting them, and I've just put some pumpkin seeds in a jar of water as I add them to salads almost every day and didn't realise they should be soaked.

I also made a soup from Angela's OSG book: 'on the mend spiced red lentil-kale soup' which was surprisingly tasty. You can find the recipe here. It looks really simple, but the flavours blend together beautifully. I also made her black bean burgers which I forgot about in the oven so they came out rather well cooked, but crumbled perfectly over a kale salad that my DB was delighted to eat after driving back from his Zen retreat in Toulouse.

Talking of Zen, my yoga classes are going well, but I don't think I'm ready for one of the full-on weekends they organise. My DB is taking a couple of Zen courses in town and has been on two Zen weekends. One was too religious-based for his liking while the other concentrated more on meditation. I enjoy yoga for the physical element and the peace, but the group yogi is president of the southern France yoga association and she gave me a magazine to read to encourage me to join and go further into yoginess. It was a bit too much for my superficial taste...!

To help us in our pursuit of regular walks, I bought a couple of blue 1/100,000 IGN maps of the region - the ones that show GR routes and other paths. I love maps and spent some of the weekend poring over them. In searching for the link, I came across a site called VisoRando where you can create an itinerary based on these maps! Just what we need!

At the other end of the health spectrum, we spent part of the weekend the other week at Domaine Puech at the Weekend Cave en Fête where we ate charcuterie, cheese, and oysters, drank the Noémie red wine and were très merry. The producers of the cheese, charcuterie, oysters, champagne, and Alsatian wine were there all weekend and available for tastings. We ended up buying... cheese, charcuterie, wine and oysters. The oysters were 7€ the dozen, so I bought two (dozen). We had a feast on Sunday night!

On a sadder note, last week I had to take my cat to the vet after he developed an abscess in his mouth. He was kept in overnight to have it drained, and came home wearing a plastic Elizabethan-style collar to stop him scratching. He's not pleased at all. It comes off on Thursday, and not a day too soon as far as we're all concerned.

When I bought my sofa a few years ago, I didn't expect it to be so badly made that the back would be falling apart after a bit of rough treatment from the boys... I paid about fifteen hundred euro for it so it wasn't exactly cheapo crap. This weekend my youngest and I turned it on its front (where you put your legs) and I cut the material underneath to reveal... bad quality wood held together with STAPLES! Honestly, it looked like an amateur had thrown it together on his first day at a furniture-making class. My son got out the No-Nails glue and, while I held the sofa up, he gunned the glue into place. While he was working away, we had this conversation:
Me: "Oh it's so nice to be doing this with you. It's really cool that you volunteered to help and didn't have to be press-ganged."
Him: "It's only because I didn't have anything better to do..."
Me: "Hey, don't spoil it...!"
That put me in my place! We left the sofa upright with the packet of cat litter, a dictionary and four books weighing it down over twenty-four hours. Today, we put it back in place, and lo, the sofa-back is no longer wobbly! Result!

So that's what's been going on in my life. Living on the edge as ever...

Goujon Wraps and Samosas - lessons learned (possibly)

While some people are bemoaning the demise of the ready meal, forcing reluctant parents to consider the prospect of actually cooking real food for their kids, I have found myself spending even more time in the kitchen than usual. I do like to cook, I like to eat well, and I hate industrial food (except nems), so I have no problem at all putting on my pinny (metaphorically, who wears a pinny nowadays?) and getting stuck in, usually for around half an hour to an hour max on week days.

I would normally leave long-winded cooking to the weekend, but I have been known to get a mindless bee in my cook's bonnet and won't give up until stung.

So this week saw me coming home from work on Tuesday, for example at just gone 5pm, make the dough for flat-breads, slice up 4 turkey breasts for goujons, chuck them into a marinade, do a taxi run, roll out 16 flat breads thinly, start dry-frying them (a couple of minutes each), do another taxi run, finish cooking breads, take out marinated turkey, dip in egg and dukkah/breadcrumbs and start frying in small batches.

Mine did look something like this!

Talk about time-consuming. I totally miscalculated the time it would take. In the end, I got everyone involved from my youngest doing the washing up to my eldest cutting up salad stuff for the wraps so we could eat just after 8pm! Three sodding hours!! (Minus one hour or so taxiing) but the turkey goujon wraps were yummy, the dukkah giving the meat a delicious nutty, spicy crunch.

Not having learned my lesson, yesterday I had the brilliant idea of making samosas. It would have been fine, had my DB not wanted veggie ones rather than the pork ones I was making for the rest of us. It would also have been fine had not my mincer decided it was a piece of crap and mincing pork was above its price grade. This meant I had to scrape all the squishy bits out of the machine and throw them in the food processor instead. Time, it all takes time!

Mine looked a teeny bit like this, just add black bits and general untidiness

I am throwing out my measly mincer (bought from low-cost store Norma). My cleaner had first refusal, and refused, can't blame her... Enough is enough!

So then I made the pork filling (recipe) with potato, onion, carrots, frozen peas and mild curry paste (I wimped out of grinding and roasting my own spices), and turned my attention to the Hairy Bikers' veggie filling - onion, garlic, garam masala, mustard seeds, turmeric, potato, carrot, frozen peas, curry leaves, parsley (as the plastic bag of fresh coriander that had been lurking in the fridge, possibly for weeks, produced a selection of rotten black soggy stems and leaves... mmm tempting...).

Once done, the fillings had to be added to the samosa circles which I did NOT make, and the intelligence test of how to fold the little sods. I've never been terribly good at geometry so I ended up with a bit of a mess, but miraculously they all held together when they hit the hot oil, all 13 of them, in small batches. It's the cooking in small batches that takes up so much time, isn't it, but by then I'd run out of large frying pans and had to use the wok.

Everything tasted lovely, but it damn well should have done the effort and time it took to make. I won't be getting stung like that again for a while. I'll stick to my slow cooker and a roast chicken this weekend I think. Nice hands-off cooking!

Guess what we're eating tonight? LEFTOVERS! YAY!!

Do you do things à l'envers too? Like busy cooking on week days, cool cooking at weekends?

Food and a Wild Goose Chase

Question: What can you do with some scabby old freezer burnt pork?
Answer: smother it in hoisin sauce, chuck it in the slow cooker or in the oven at 100°C for hours and hours (at least 5). Boil down the juice and Bob's yer uncle.

Tasty shredded in wraps, used in lasagne or simply with the sauce and some fried potatoes. Three French boys including two visitors have just declared it 'delicious' so it must be good!

Still on food, I've had to resort to making fresh fruit salad every day. My boys are too lazy to get up, take a kiwi, peel it or cut it in half and eat it. They are too lazy to take a nectarine, wash it and eat it. They are not too lazy to tuck into a bowl of prepared for them nectarine, apricot, melon and kiwi... with that essential squirty cream.

My youngest and his friends are also not too lazy to light a bonfire in the barbecue having hunted for sticks in the pinede opposite (I'm too lazy to buy charcoal), ask for sausages (having already eaten a hearty dinner) and cook them whilst they toast marshmallows. I'm not interfering except to give them fondue forks so I don't have to make a trip to the emergency department later because someone burnt his fingers, and forbid a towering inferno.

I've had a fascinating day going on a wild goose chase to Nimes in search of the skatepark. It did not auger well as there were two addresses given online, in two different places. They were quite near each other so I supposed one should be good. We stopped off first at TamTam, an all things skate/BMX/VTT/roller shop where my youngest got his scooter seen to by a lovely young man who was toasted by the sun to a gorgeous golden colour.

He gave us vague directions to the skatepark and off we set. We never found it and in the end, as we saw no pedestrians to ask, I said we'd give up and go home. For a large place I don't know where they hid it, but hide it they did, very successfully. There wasn't a single signpost to help out either.

On the up side, when we were on the motorway coming home, at the Montpellier péage we avoided all the queues by following the far right lane which took us to 4 extra booths, all empty. We sailed through in no time at all.

In other food news, Mondial Market, my nearest purveyor of foreign foods, has started stocking Aunt Bessie's Yorkshire Puddings (microwavable), frozen back bacon, sausages, vegetarian sausages and other delights. I bought a packet of the Yorkshires, not because I like them - I think they taste of cardboard - but my boys love them. My eldest was ecstatic when I got them home and showed him. I also bought a packet of back bacon as well as Yorkshire Tea.

And finally, I've noticed that Carrouf Discount does a milk chocolate fruit and nut. As the only other brand to make this here is Nestlé, and I don't buy Nestlé products (and it's rubbish anyway the time I succumbed to desperation and gave it a try), I was curious to know what it tasted like. Normally I wouldn't touch discount chocolate, but it's actually very nice, especially fresh from the fridge. It's not Cadbury's but it's pleasantly similar. Oh happy day!

L'Ail des Ours

L'ail des ours

Isn't that a cute name - Bears' garlic? Not to be confused with Lily of the Valley which is similar but toxic! I'd never heard of it until I came across a recipe for asparagus gratin. It grows in woods apparently but I would never dream of hunting for it in the wild. Not having being raised a child of nature, I prefer my food bought in a bag with a label ta. I don't go mushrooming either as I wouldn't trust myself not to pick the only toxic mush in the forest!

Anyway, I bought a bunch of purple (tinted) asparagus in the supermarket the other day, it being French and the thin green-stalked bunches next to it (at half the price) Spanish. I have nothing against the Spanish but I try and buy local and support the French suppliers whenever I can. They have a hard time competing with the cut price stuff that floods in across the border although in fact there's no competition when it comes to taste. Still, buying seasonal and local is sometimes a luxury!

The other reason for splashing out is that the boys are with their dad so what I didn't spend on chocolate, biscuits, Nutella, and kids' cereal (and the rest) I spent on expensive French asparagus and other tasty bits and bobs like superior lait cru camembert and a large pack of Heineken (on special offer...).

So, have asparagus, will cook, but how? I normally steam asparagus and eat it with a main dish, or do asparagus risotto, but as my bunch is mainly white I'm reluctant to create an anaemic-looking dish of cream-coloured bits. Plus, I felt the need to try something new, so turned to my favourite recipe site: BBC Good Food.

A disappointing 4 pages later of vegetarian asparagus dishes, my dearly beloved having annoyingly turned veggie last year, I thought I'd try the French sites. The BBC's recipes were all for green asparagus and seemed to be variations on risotto, tarts or salads. One exception was for Thai pancakes stuffed with (green) asparagus and egg which sounded yummy but I don't have any limes or spring onions and as I don't go shopping half way through the week, I have to make do. This keeps shopping time and costs down. It also involved quite a lot of work.

Back on Google, I found a list of white asparagus recipe sites and started working my way through them. The sites didn't offer a filter for vegetarian recipes as vegetarians are considered as an eccentric minority in France, so I just had to bite the bullet and read each one. There were recipes with delicate sauces you had to cook over a bain marie, one recipe that cooked asparagus in an almond and parmesan crust, a soufflé, a soup and an espuma. Doesn't that all sound like hard work to you?

Back to the drawing board, and eventually I found Gratin d'Asperges Blanches. Basically all you do is steam the asparagus until they are almost done, then whisk some cream and mix with a couple of eggs. Season this with cayenne pepper, lemon juice and the ail des ours and chuck it in the oven for 10 minutes or so. I have never seen ail des ours for sale but apparently it's a member of the chives family so as my chives are one of the few things left growing in my garden after the super hard Winter freeze killed everything else, I can use them. The recipe called for basil as an alternative but I don't have any of that fresh either. No, it'll have to be chives and parsley. Serve it with parma ham unless you are a veggie in which case don't.

Verdict: I think would have preferred it simply steamed and served with melted butter and a squeeze of lemon juice. It was okay, the asparagus was okay, but it wasn't great. I won't be splashing out on the pinky white stuff again. As a gratin, the eggy mixture was reminiscent of a quiche filling so something of a failure in my book, but it tasted okay. Maybe it really did need the ail des ours...

Cheap de Chez Cheap Suppers

On Wednesday I made one of the cheapest suppers for 6 ever. Wednesday is my shopping day. I'm not keen on shopping but no shopping results in a slow and agonising death so shop one must. There I was browsing Carrouf peacefully (no kids) along the fairly empty aisles (which is why I go on Wednesday, not Saturday) and came to the fish counter.

I don't know about your family but my boys are not keen on fish. My ex-husband and I would have this conversation:
Him: "What's for dinner?"
Me: "Fish"
Him: "What, no meat?"
Me: "Yes, fish"
Him: *sulks*

So this is the environment in which they spent their formative years. My eldest likes salmon and Dover sole but my youngest will only eat smoked salmon, mussels and crab sticks. Undaunted, I bought mackerel. It was €3.50 a kilo! Three mackerel came to the mighty sum of €1.80 and the guy gutted them for me too.

I also bought a cauliflower which was on special offer although I know that the boys hate it.

Back home, I thought I'd hide the taste of the mackerel nicely in fish cakes. The boys like fish cakes, love them in fact. You can put anything in a fish cake and they'll eat it with joy. Odd, isn't it? They don't really like the fish but they love the fish cake.

Of course, fish cakes are a bugger to make, all messy and time-consuming. Still, got to get the vitamins and omega whatsit into the little sods so needs must. I already had some mash sitting in the fridge so whether it was enough or not didn't matter, it was all I had. I wasn't going to start making the mash too (although I've done that in the past, mad fool that I am).


The mash went into a nice big bowl with a dollop of horseradish sauce. I filleted the fish which was full of lovely sensations because the texture was all squashy and soft, and it was easy too otherwise I would have given up. In they went to the microwave with a squirt of lemon and dash of olive oil until just cooked (no point overdoing it), then I flaked them and chucked them into the bowl too together with their juice and a nice pile of chopped parsley, s&p.

I didn't have time to let the mixture cool because we wanted dinner that night not later, so I had to make the patties there and then, which meant a Big Mess. Then I dipped each one in flour, then egg then breadcrumbs. As the process got messier, with fish cakes threatening to disintegrate in the egg dish, so my temper frayed more and more. Once I'd finished the 7 patties I then had to clean up the kitchen. As you can see, fish cakes are not for the faint-hearted. Dedicated idiots only need apply.

I fried them gently in oil and butter and we had one each as they were so filling, with salad and a squirt of lemon juice. That meant Thursday's dinner was sorted too, which we had with broccoli. You can see why I said it must be the cheapest supper ever! They were delicious, and the boys remarked how strange it was that they don't like mackerel but they do love mackerel fish cakes. I just ground my teeth.

Continuing the cheap but tasty (and a lot less trouble) supper, I cooked the cauliflower last night for my TWDB and me. I steamed it (I hate soggy cauliflower), and fried an onion which I put in an oven-proof dish. The cauliflower went on top plus the sauce. I made a white sauce into which I added a shake or two of curry powder and grated aged mimolette cheese plus s&p. I baked it in the oven while I fried up some potato slices so my youngest had fried potato, ham and tomato while we had cauliflower cheese and fried potato. I must say, it tasted very yummy. The curry was a big hit taste-wise and the colour was lovely - all orangey and vibrant. Much more attractive than the pale cauliflower cheese made with cheddar.

No photos, I'm afraid. I'm too lazy to take photos of my cooking, and frankly, after making the fish cakes what I needed was a large glass of wine and a nice sit down. My camera was way down on my list of priorities. You'll just have to use your imaginations.

Meatloaf on Trial

I made a meatloaf this evening, the first time ever. It's funny how you have something on your mind for a while and then you finally get round to doing it. My moment of truth came in Carrouf when I decided to buy some pork farci to go with the mince meat I had at home. I thought you had to use pork and beef in meatloaf.

Actually, it turns out you can put in practically whatever you like. The Gastronomy Economy book uses ground lamb and aubergine in a sort of moussaka-like meatloaf. I had a look at two receipes on the internet here and here and mixed and matched and made it up as I went along.

I had some sad bits of veggie lurking in the veggie draw so chopped them up and chucked them in - some green pepper and red piment (no idea how hot it is...), onions, parsley and loads of garlic. I used up all the meat which made tons of mixture so I made two meatloafs. I pressed the mixture into a loaf tin and then turned it out onto my roasting tin rack. Twice. If you leave it in the tin you have to pour off the liquid and fat half way through and that sounds like a fag to do. I rustled up the glaze, with less sugar than suggested, and it's now doing it's stuff in the oven.

The plan is to freeze one. Isn't that economical? I'm quite getting into this economy gastronomy lark. Maybe I should make an EG River pin. Would that connect me to the rest of the world of economy gastronomists? Isn't that the point of this River malarky? I'm not sure I'm feeling brave enough to grapple with recalicrant river networks right now... maybe later...

At the weekend I made the EG pumpkin risotto and that was tip top yummy. I didn't follow the recipe precisely because I was cooking for a non-cheese eater, so left out the gorgonzola, and added fried bacon bits instead. I managed to do most of the preparation in the same pan - toasting the walnuts, frying the bacon and then frying the pumpkin, having given the pan a quick rinse. It wasn't exactly an easily-prepared dish, but it was very tasty and I don't really mind spending a bit of time in the kitchen to get some extra taste.

If you're interested in reading how one of the particpants in the EG challenge coped, try this blog which is the one where the pumpkin risotto gets an airing.

I've just been down to look at my meatloaf and I must say it looks very appetising and smells terrific. The glaze has done a great job. Let's hope it gets Boy Approval!

Later... the meatloaf was excellent. My youngest even told me I should make it more often, which I will because it was dead easy. The glaze was a great addition because it caramelised and added an extra taste dimension to the top.

A refaire!

Kitchen Talk

1. What's your favourite way of preparing burgers?

I like making them myself with minced beef, adding breadcrumbs to soak up the fat, herbes de Provence, garlic, S&P and sometimes a dash of Worcestershire sauce, all bound together with a beaten egg.

They are so tasty that I can't bear to buy ready-made ones any more. I either grill them, fry them or chuck 'em on the barbecue, and always eat them in a toasted burger bun with sweet onion, ketchup and tomato. Mmm

2. What's your favourite way of preparing chips?

I think I do them the Jamie Oliver way. I heat olive oil in an oven tray to 200°C, then throw on the chips I've cut from real potatoes. They take about an hour, and I like them well-tanned. You can either just salt them, or sprinkle over some gremolata (parsley, lemon zest, crushed garlic) which makes them really something. I wouldn't add vinegar as well however. They are way less fatty than cooking them in a deep-fat fryer, and are really tasty.

3. What's your favourite way of preparing pizza?

You can make fab dough in a bread machine. It takes 90 minutes to do and the quantity makes three thin or two medium crust pizzas. I bought some of those pizza trays with holes which prevent the dough from going soggy, and my oven has a pizza programme so they always turn out properly cooked. The boys prefer pizza without cheese but with chorizo and bacon bits, and I like it with cheese and any veggies lurking in the fridge.

4. The asparagus season is over now, but my eldest's favourite way of eating it was in a quiche. Ready-rolled pastry thinly spread with mustard, fried up bacon bits sprinkled over the top, chopped sweet onion and the steamed asparagus all covered with a mixture of 4 eggs and a small box of 15% fat liquid cream with some fines herbes. Twenty minutes in a hot oven (220°C) and Bob's yer uncle.

5. Finally, with the barbecue season upon us, you can run up the best sauce ever by heating olive oil with some ketchup, Branston pickle and water to thin. Add anything you like extra such as a little HP sauce, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, herbs etc. Heat gently and pour over the barbecued meat when ready. Enjoy with crusty bread and a green salad, and your summer is off to a great start!

Bon appetit!

Rouella de Riviere

French meat cuts are sometimes a bit on the confusing side. I wonder if yer average French woman or man would know that a 'rouelle de jambon' was actually a joint of pork, if they'd even heard of it. Wouldn't you expect it to be a gammon steak?

I bought some rouelle de jambon the other day. It was amazing value, so I went in search of a recipe on the internet. The tastiest-sounding one I found was roasted rouelle in beer with honey, on a bed of confit oignons. That sounded yummy, but I had no idea whether what would turn out would be ham or pork.

In the end, of course, it was pork, and the recipe did it proud. I had friends over and they all thought it was delicious. The recipe suggested serving it with red cabbage salad, but I chose baked spuds instead as we'd had salad to start, and I totally adore baked spuds in the winter. The sauce went beautifully with them.

Actually, trying to find a joint of ham is very difficult. I saw some classic ham joints this Christmas, but otherwise, I have to rely on 'palette' which is a cut near the shoulder blade (given the shape of the bone it's attached to). Most ham seems to go to being cured into jambon sec. As I like to cook a joint of ham with parsley sauce, I had to search out what I could use.

It took a lot of trial and error. Even talking to the butchers in the supermarket didn't enlighten me. I know I shouldn't maybe be too surprised about that, they are supermarket butchers, not real artisan butcher butchers, but you'd think they'd know whether the meat was salted or not. It's not rocket science, is it?

They didn't seem to grasp what I was trying to establish. It may have been my French, of course. I was ham hunting some years ago when my language skills might not have been so proficient, but I don't think they were that bad. Asking whether a joint is porc ou jambon is a fairly simple question. I just got looked at like I was mad. (Or maybe that was because of some other reason...)

Mind you, French supermarkets are a lot more sophisticated now than they were. They have changed incredibly in the last 15yrs with very much more choice, and more international products. You can buy decent Cheddar in Carrefour, proper tea (not that Lipton Yellow crap), and flavoured crisps! The fact that I saw ham joints this Christmas is continuing proof of progress - I've never seen them before, and I do look.

Anyway, as we're in an age where frugality is trendy again, I would strongly recommend the rouelle de jambon de porc. It's very cheap, and you can make a super dish in about three hours including preparation. That's no more than a hearty casserole.

Bon appetit!