Return from France

I insisted we spend the day in the supermarket. Not in France, but in a French supermarket. The goal was to get some wine, and maybe the odd pack of oysters or something. We did our regular shopping (wine and oysters and herbes de provence) and made haste towards the border. But wait! Can't we still have lunch in France? Lunch is a bit difficult in small towns at 5pm. We went window shopping in a border town before we sat down to our French Meal.

French Meals consist of French components that you would never find in one particular region, often not the region you are currently in. Paris may be the great exception because you can get everything there, but that would have been another blog entry that I was too engrossed with food to actually write. We did however find a leitmotif to carry us through our meal: garlic. Ail may be the only word the Workaholic knows in French, it is certainly very relevant to him.



The Amuse-bouche may have even set other people off. It was a terrine. It was a fantastic terrine but it was, well, bits of meat packed into jello.


The frog's legs could have been my thing but they were joined at the hip and looked like mangled barbie dolls. The Workaholic claims they are "like chicken wings" which confuses me because every time we go to his home town, we get chicken wings covered in hot sauce. These were covered in garlic. I am confused by the legs, joined at the hip, claiming to taste like wings. I am fairly certain that these wings have never seen a bottle of Frank's Red Hot in their day.

You may have already heard of escargot. We call them: the ultimate garlic delivery method. The crevices in snails enabled an extremely effective delivery of garlic, parsley, and butter to my mouth.



The truely Alsacian specialty was certainly the light as air tarte flambee. It's a French pizza, minus the tomato sauce, lessen the cheese, crust is paper-thin and ideally imparted with a kiss of a charcoal oven. This particular model was topped with topped with lardons (like bacon minus the cult surrounding it) and garlic. Lots of garlic. I may be able to fend off the Twilight movies for a few more years, thanks to the amount of garlic on this tarte flambee.

There we are, full of food, following our GPS. It tells us to cross the Rhine. We don't realize that we have to take the ferry at this particular juncture. So we pay the ferryman (in coins, no less) and cross the river. Our adventure in decadence behind us, our adventure with new wines about to start.

Snail-Speed Ahead!

Last year, on a rainy evening, I was walking down a country road. My companion, a city-boy with a softspot for animals, saw something on the side of the road, in the grass. It didn't look like a worm. "What is that?"
"Oh my God, it's a tasty!"
"A tasty?"
"An escargot. A Weinbergschnecke. A snail. Put them in garlicy butter & Mmmm!"

Later on that same walk, we found an abundance of escargots. If we'd had a bag (or a clue) we would have picked up all the snails we saw & eaten them. Later, at home, of course.

We sat down and thought about farming our own snails. There are not too many relevant online resources available, unless you are in Nigeria & want to do it for financial reasons. I am in Germany and I want to do it for gastronomic reasons. Or because I like to have my own little experiments, I'm not sure which.

Until the day that I can harvest my own snails (or at least feel confident enough in my knowledge to cook the snails I find in the springtime on my own) I will make do with the frozen ones I find in the freezer section of the supermarket. They're kind of cute - they come in a little wooden basket & are in the shells.

The only thing that I have of my own which is worth sharing is the pseudo-snail-pan I create out of tin foil to prevent the snails from rolling around while in the oven. I just wrap foil around the shells in a labyrinthine manner to lend them a bit of stability. The garlic butter stays put, and it's all a little treat with a crusty bread, a salad and a bottle of white wine. The sort of special-casual meal that invites you to sit a while, snack & exchange agriculture ideas.