Finessing Your French

Most people, when they arrive in France, have enough French to negotiate shopping adequately enough. Je voudrais ('I would like') followed by reading the name of the item off the label and pointing will get you what you want most of the time. The trickiest bits of the transaction when you are a newbie are remembering to say bonjour before making your request and working out how much it is if you have bought multiple items and there isn't a cash register readout to take a sneaky peak at.

Fairly soon, especially if you live here, you realise that shopkeepers and market stallholders are asking you questions too. Usually these questions are easy to get the gist of because of the context, but what are they actually saying?

• avec ceci? -- literally 'with that?', meaning 'anything else?' The problem is it sounds like avec soucis?, which would mean 'with worries?' and doesn't make any sense at all. This one had me so bemused in the early days that I eventually asked a bilingual friend to explain.
• ce sera tout? -- literally 'that will be all?', meaning 'will that be all?' This one sounds like ça ce ratou, but 'ratou' isn't actually a French word, so it doesn't mean anything. It took me ages, but I did eventually figure this one out myself. It can also be used as your response when asked 'avec ceci?' -- 'non, ce sera tout, merci'.
• ça va aller? -- literally 'that's going to go?', meaning 'is that alright?' You hear it a lot, not just at the market, and it too can be either a question or a response depending on intonation. It usually sounds like ça va les, which I couldn't make mean anything particularly sensible, although I got very quickly that the phrase meant something similar to ça marche ('that works') when used as a statement. This one took me the longest to figure out, but it finally dawned on me, without having to ask anyone.

 And then there is the question of how to pronounce the names of the supermarkets. Here is my take on it:

• Auchan -- pronounced Oh-shuh, with the stress slightly on the second syllable. As an Anglophone you will really struggle not to give it a nasalised 'n' on the end, but try your best. It is not pronounced 'ocean', and doing so (not by me, thank goodness) has been known to make French people laugh.
• Carrefour -- pronounced Carr-foor, with a slight stress on the last syllable and a proper gargling French 'r' in the middle, but not too much 'r-ing' at the end. It is not pronounced 'carry four' or 'care for'.
• SuperU -- pronounced Su-pair-u, with fairly even stress on each syllable and the final 'u' pronounced so you are almost whistling. It is not pronounced 'super you'. The 'u' is a sound that doesn't exist in English and you will just have to listen to native speakers and practice it.
  
• Intermarché -- pronounced uhn-tair-mar-shay, with a slight stress on the last syllable. It is not pronounced 'intermarsh' or 'intermarshay'.
• LeClerc -- pronounced luh-klair, with the stress on the second syllable. It is not pronounced 'lee-clerk'.

Note: This is a reworking of a post I wrote more than a decade ago. The main changes I've made are to incorporate some points made on the original post by linguist Ken Broadhurst regarding how one could express in non-technical writing the pronunciation of the supermarket names.

Ratatouille

Organic heritage tomatoes at the Jardins Vergers de la Petite Rabaudière, where I buy my veggies.

It's ratatouille season in France, so here is a recipe to use up your tomatoes, aubergines, peppers and zucchini.

 

Organic homegrown zucchini (photo from our archive).

 

Ingredients

A big aubergine, cut into 2cm chunks

Olive oil

2 medium zucchini, cut into 2cm chunks

1 large yellow onion, roughly chopped

1 red and 1 yellow sweet pepper, cut into 2cm chunks

3 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped

4 medium tomatoes, cut into 2cm chunks

Pinch red pepper flakes

Pinch of sugar

1 tbsp red wine vinegar

½ tsp dried thyme leaves

Ground pepper

 ¼ cup torn basil leaves

Method

1. Salt the aubergine and allow to drain for 20 minutes. Dry with paper towel.
2. Heat olive oil in a pan and cook the zucchini for a few minutes.
3. Add more olive oil and the aubergine to the pan, cook for a few minutes.
4. Add more olive oil, the onion and the peppers to the pan, cook for a few minutes.
5. Add more olive oil, the tomatoes, red pepper flakes and sugar to the pan and cook for 10 minutes.
6. Add the vinegar, thyme and pepper to the pan and cook for 15 minutes.
7. Stir the basil into the pan contents and serve.

 

Garlic drying in a shed on one of our walks.

 

Tomatoes.

 

Organic heritage tomatoes.

 

Organic tomatoes at the market in Preuilly.

 

Onions drying in a shed on a farm near le Petit Pressigny.

 

Chillies drying at a specialist herbalist.

 

Ingredients for ratatouille.

 

A serving of ratatouille.

Organic green and yellow peppers at the gardens of the Chateau de Villandry. Visitors can take these for free (you are encouraged to leave a tip for the gardeners if you do so).

Everything You Need to Know About French Pink Radishes...

Anyone who has ever been to France will have noticed that French people love small pink radishes. Except in the depths of winter they are piled high at the markets. French consumers describe them as cool, crunchy, thirst quenching and a bit spicy. They are very much a feature of spring salads here and liven up the palate after winter. 

 

Organic radishes at les Jardins Vergers de la Petite Rabaudière last week.

They've been cultivated for at least 4000 years. Charlemagne was a big fan and recommended that one cultivate them in abundance. They are indeed very easy to grow, and very prolific. You can grow them almost year round, and they take about a month from sowing the seed to harvesting. The best are grown between March and June, and this year they are now in full swing at our local organic market garden, les Jardins Vergers de la Petite Rabaudière. The worker I spoke to said they are particularly good this year too.

 

Organic radishes being washed at Les Jardins Vergers de La Petite Rabaudière last week.

These little pink radishes come in a number of guises. They can be more or less spicy, spherical or long, pink all over or bicoloured pink and white. The larger ones grown in the summer and autumn are hotter, and they are prone to splitting or being hollow and fibrous. If they go soft it means they are not fresh. When you are buying, choose small, hard, vividly coloured radishes, with green leaves that are not showing any sign of wilting or rotting. And don't discard those leaves -- use them in soup!

The central and western Loire Valley, from Orléans to the Atlantic coast is where most French radishes are grown commercially. So living where I do I have access to the freshest and best. Shame I'm not really all that fond of round radishes. I prefer daikon, and only if it's pickled...

 

Organic radishes at Les Jardins Vergers de La Petite Rabaudière.

France produces nearly 50 thousand tonnes of pink radishes a year, second only to Germany in Europe. French people consume on average 1.5 kilograms each per year of pink radishes.

Pink radishes are mostly water, so they aren't very calorific. They are a good source of fibre, Vitamin C, folic acid (Vitamin B9), potassium and polyphenols (antioxydants).

 

Fabrice Lecomte with his radishes from Villandry at Loches market (photo from our archive).

Ideally, eat them the day you buy them or the next day, while they are as firm and crunchy as possible. They will keep in the fridge in a perforated plastic bag for a week maximum. If they turn out to be spicier than you would like, then pickle them.

To prepare them cut the leaves off so that a tuft of stems remains. Pinch off the hair root at the other end. Use a knife to scrape off any bits that look unappetising. Wash in cold water, scrub with a brush if necessary, drain and dry. Eat with gusto.

Mostly they are eaten with a pinch of salt, a dab of butter and some good bread, but they can be enjoyed in other simple dishes.

• chop finely and add to a creamy dressing for salad greens.
• chop roughly and add to potato salad.
• use instead of cucumber to make a different version of tzatziki.
• fry in butter with thyme and serve with chicken.
  

 The black winter radish and the white daikon are also popular in France.

Garance Apples

Garance is an interesting new apple variety, released in 2014, and developed by the French Institute of Agronomy Research INRAE and various commercial partners. The smallish fruit matures in October for picking, and is grass green almost entirely covered by a crimson blush. It's a very distinctive looking apple, and has been specifically targetted towards organic growers, particularly in the south of France. It is disease resistant, medium sized and doesn't need much care or inputs. The ancestors of this variety are a hybrid of Idared and Primo, then crossed with Pitchounette.

I discovered it because Sandy, from our local organic orchard Fruit O Kalm, had a box of the fruit at the market one day. She explained she only had one tree, but was very impressed by its performance. Naturally I bought a couple to try. The fruit is very crunchy, juicy, sweet and perfumed.

 

Sandy on her organic apple stall in Preuilly sur Claise.

I assume it is named after the dyestuff. Garance is French for madder Rubria tinctoria, the plant from which the red dye alizarin is extracted.

Reinette d'Anjou Apple

Reinette d'Anjou is an old variety of apple, vigorous and productive, particularly suited to home gardens or organic orchards. The fruit are yellowy green with a red blush. The flesh is slightly soft, but still crunchy, with a very good balance of acid to sweetness. They are good eating apples from harvest in October into the winter, and will keep for cooking up until April.

 

Reinette d'Anjou at the market in Preuilly, on the stall of our local organic orchard Fruit O Kalm.
 

It's not widely grown, and deserves to be better known. The fruit is a good size, and juicy, so it's a good one to juice. The origins of this variety are not really known, but it is typical of the varieties that have emerged from the Anjou area.

An Antique Butter Kneader

I spotted this unusual hand mill at the annual summer brocante (flea market/garage sale) in Preuilly. I wondered what it was for and asked the vendor. As soon as he said 'c'est pour malaxer le beurre' I knew exactly what it was because I'd seen the process performed in modern stainless steel on video. It is for kneading butter after it has been churned and before it is shaped into pats. An apparatus like this is for the best butter, so the object is rare because not all farmhouse butter producers did a thorough kneading.

 

It is for working the butter so that the last few drops of buttermilk can be squeezed out, and salt crystals can be added and evenly worked in. The salt will also draw out even more liquid, so that the butter is said to 'weep'. If you want to see a malaxeur à beurre just like this one in action, visit La Maison de Beurre in Saint Malo (Brittany) and check out the very similar machine used by Bordier [link]. A lot of people consider this to be the best butter in the world.

Traditionally these 19th century machines are made of teak, so I assume that is what the wood of this one is.

I can remember my mother making butter, up until I was about 10 years old (ie 1970). After the house cow was milked, by hand, the cream was separated from the milk in a centrifuge with an electric motor housed in a small shed at the bottom of the garden. Then the cream was beaten in the stand mixer. Once Mum had something that looked more or less like butter it was flushed a couple of times with water, then tipped out onto the bench and beaten and squeezed with hand held wooden paddles rather than run through a butter kneader. Then with those same paddles it was shaped into blocks (pats), making sure to give a nice pattern from the ridges on one side of the paddles, before being wrapped in waxed paper for storage in the fridge.

Shellfish in the Stream

Most years I go to the summer fete at Séligny (population 250). This is because I have several friends who live there, the natural history association Botamyco37 that I'm a member of puts on a display, and one of the best melon producers in the area sells their delicious Charentais melons at their peak. 

 

This bloke had excellent saucisson, from Maine et  Loire to our west. I bought wild boar, wild mushroom and bull.

 

This year I had lunch with friends Jean, Michel and Michelle. The menu was melon, moules frites and tarte fine aux pommes. Simple and classic. 

 

The Charentais melons on this stall come from a farm just outside the village. I bought three.

 

My friend André lives in a house on the edge of the village that was his grandparents before him. Everyone in Séligny not only knows one another, but they are related. Jean told me his grandmother married three times, so almost everyone is greeted with 'ah, mon/ma petit.e cousin.e !'. This term is used in French to indicate a familiale link that is not as close and direct as first cousin, but might be several times removed.

 

The village restaurant.

 

André informed me that the mussels for the fete menu had been stored overnight in the brook that runs through his garden. He also told me that back in the day, his grandfather used to keep the community oysters fresh in the same brook. But in those days many people's untreated sewage discharged straight into the stream, and André's house is downstream of the entire village...

 

The remains of our meal.

The menu for the day.

Filming in Town

Recently the comedy duo Les Bodins filmed sequences of their new film in Preuilly. Apparently it's about the biggest goats cheese in the world and events that go rather wrong. The market square was given a makeover and several of my friends were extras (Fr. figurants). Lieutopie, the community café, was paid €200 as compensation by the film company because one Saturday they were unable to open, and they were quite happy with that. By all accounts it was a fun time and the stars made themselves very accessible. There were lots of selfies with and without the main characters circulating on social media. As I passed on various errands I took the opportunity to photograph whatever the action at the time was. 

The pizza kiosk on the right is part of the film set. It was erected and painted over the course of a couple of days prior to the filming.

Many of the market stalls were our real regular traders. This is my friend Sandy's organic apple stall, just zhuzhed up a bit with pretty baskets. Sandy normally uses ordinary fruit boxes to lay out and display the apples. She'd be forever refilling baskets like this in real life!

The bunting was provided by the film company.

This stall is completely the work of the film crew.

The tarpaulin wrapped object in the middle of the photo is the 'giant cheese' (naturally, a log shaped goats cheese).

Packing up.

I see that my friend Catherine's house was turned into the town hall, and the apartment next door became a real estate agent.

Packing up the last few props.

Daliclass and Bicolor Apples

Daliclass is a modern French apple bred from a hybrid of Elstar and Pilot. It is crunchy, juicy and acidic. As is the current fashion for best selling apples in the supermarkets, its yellow rather tough skin is heavily streaked with red. It is considered by French consumers to resemble favourites such as Reine des Reinettes and Golden Delicious. Orchardists like it because it is disease resistant and pest resistant, bears a good crop every year and harvest is neatly tucked in between Gala and Golden Delicious.

The other box, on the right, is labelled 'Bicolor' which is not an apple variety, but a technical description of certain varieties which are predominately red, but with a yellow wash. Gala, Akane and Jonagored are examples. It seems to be a trend to sell apples under this label rather than be specific about the variety. These appear to be very consistent and all the same variety, but I guess next week the box could be full of a different variety.

Trompettes des Maures

At the market in La Roche Posay.

The name Trompettes des maures for this highly prized mushroom seem to be one chosen for commercial reasons. You often see it labelled thus when it is sold pickled or dried in jars. I suspect the thinking is that 'mort' (death), pronounced the same as 'maures' (Moors), does not sell.

Growing in the Forest of Preuilly.

The name used by anyone foraging for them is Trompettes de la mort, and this name owes its origin to the mushrooms period of growth, around All Saints' Day.

They are black, the color of mourning, which helps their association with the dead. But in fact it seems likely that there was a semantic shift, and originally the name was "trumpet of love"! A nickname that comes from their cornucopia shape, a symbol of generosity. When they appear they are often abundant, another link with the cornucopia idea. 

As well as trompettes des maures, they were sometimes also referred to as truffe du pauvre (poor man's  truffles).  

At Loches market.

Chataignes and Marrons

Last October one of the market stalls I buy mushrooms and vegetables from in La Roche Posay had sweet chestnuts. There were two different sorts, marked 'marrons' and 'chataignes', and they were different prices. So I asked the stallholder what the difference is.

Cultivated sweet chestnuts (marrons) on the left at €7.50/kg and wild sweet chestnuts (chataignes) on the right at €5.80.

According to him, marrons are cultivated, and a premium product, whereas chataignes are the wild ones that are foraged in the forest. But beware -- marrons can also refer to horse chestnuts, which are not edible.

In cultivated chestnuts, known as marrons in French, there is just a single big 'nut' in the husk (Fr bogue), whereas in the wild chataigne there are usually three 'nuts' nestled together in the prickly husk. The popularity of the term marron came about because chestnuts were seen as poverty food and the word 'chataigne' was associated with hard times.

Chataignes are smaller and paler, and traditionally dried to preserve them and kill any insect infestation, then ground make flour. They were important for preventing famine in areas that were too steep to grow grains of any sort. Marrons are used fresh for roasting and candying (the famous marrons glacé that are such a treat at Christmas time) because they peel more easily.

In Season at the Market in Preuilly

 We are at the height of summer fruit in the market in Preuilly.

 

Sandie has three varieties of organic figs from her orchard Fruits O'Kalm on the edge of town.

 

Surprisingly, the green ones are the most 'figgy'. The apples behind are from a very early cropping tree that is an unknown but very good variety.

 

Blood peaches. Expect to see these on the menu at l'Image, the newly reopened restaurant on the market place in Preuilly. I happen to know that Chef Chris bought 3kg of them.

 

This year there is a bumper plum crop. These yellow plums are an unknown variety. I served them roasted, with a dollop of mascarpone.

 

Damsons.

 

Sylvain has more organic tomatoes than he knows what to do with from his market garden Les jardins vergers de la Petite Rabaudiere just outside of Preuilly. He has resorted to sending a tonne of them to a processor in Le Blanc.

 

Organic heritage tomatoes at the farm shop at La Petite Rabaudiere.

All the produce shown is organic and grown on a farm just outside Preuilly. You can purchase the veggies from the farm shop on Monday from 16:00 to 19:00 or at the market in Preuilly on Thursday mornings. The fruit can be purchased at the market in Preuilly on Saturday mornings.

Link to the Facebook page of Les Jardins Vergers de la Petite Rabaudiere: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064620014397.

Chocolate Coated Strawberries

In France strawberries are always labelled with their variety. Some varieties are much more popular than others, and last week I just missed out on the Gariguettes from my preferred local strawberry producer at the market. So I bought Candiss instead. 

This was a variety I'd never heard of, but they looked lovely. They are a particularly bright shiny scarlet red, with bright yellow seeds and a round conical shape. Quite juicy, soft, not terribly aromatic, they have a good balance of acid and sweetness. The fruits are large, about 20g each, and keep well. The plants are vigorous, upright, easy to harvest and resistant to disease, but only produce one crop a year, fairly early in the season, from April to June. It is a variety that was released in 2008.

Candiss strawberries.

I decided to dip them in chocolate. For those who take an interest in such things, one chocolate coated strawberry is about 60 calories.

Tomber dans les pommes

Recently Simon had a vasovagal faint and passed out just before having an angiogram. The colloquial phrase for fainting in French is 'tomber dans les pommes' and I wondered why. Various people told me various things, so here it is.

It appears to be widely believed that the phrase comes from being overcome by the fumes when distilling calvados or fermenting cider. Whilst at first glance this seems plausible, there doesn't appear to be any real evidence for it being the origin of the phrase. It smacks to me of a back formation, conflating the strong green apple smell of malic acid you get when fruit is fermenting (including grapes for wine) and the danger of CO2 in the process, then associating it with a phrase that mentions apples.

Organic heritage apples at our local market.

According to another explanation, it comes from an expression by George Sand to indicate extreme fatigue. George Sand apparently wrote about 'etre dans les pommes cuite' (to be in the cooked apples) in a letter to a relative. In her day it was common for disgruntled theatre goers to chuck apples (baked or spoiled) at performers. Tomatoes were too expensive in those days to consider chucking, but it might have been baked potatoes (pommes de terre)... The idea is that cooked apples are structurally weak, collapsing easily. It just doesn't seem a satisfactory explanation to me as the two phrases don't seem close enough in meaning to me. I feel George Sand's intent was more like 'pédaler dans la semoule' (to pedal in semolina -- to be working hard but getting nowhere).

The most convincing explanation I have seen is that the expression is a corruption of the medieval phrase 'tomber dans les pâmes', which means to lose consciousness. The only reservation I have is that the medieval expression went out of use in the 15th century, and 'tomber dans les pommes' doesn't appear in the lexicon until 1889. On the other hand, there is still the literary phrase 'tomber en pâmoison' which means the same thing and continued in usage into the 17th century before becoming obscure but not disappearing entirely.

Homegrown apples.

The 'proper' French word for fainting is 's'évanouir' (to faint).