Côte,
Côtes, Côtières, Coteau and Coteaux
A Bone-In Rib Steak, a Rib Roast, a Wine Growing
Region, the Coast, and More.
from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman
A bone-in rib-eye of beef.
Photograph courtesy of ian
https://www.flickr.com/photos/peanutian/2332671822/
Côte, Côtes, Côtières Coteau and Coteaux on a menu can be trying, for those, like myself, who never spent enough time studying French accents, gender-linked variations and plurals. However, when dining in French restaurants, the other words on the menu listing tend to minimize any problems
Côte and Côtes
Bone-In Rib Steak/s, a Rib Roast,
a Cutlet/s or a Chop/s and Vegetable Stalks or Ribs:
Côte
on French menus:
Côte de Bœuf, Frottée au Romarin et Cuite au Beurre Noisette –
A bone-in beef rib steak rubbed with rosemary (before
cooking) and cooked in a beurre noisette.
When ordering a dish like this, ask for the weight as
a single portion will often be intended for two diners, and the bone is
generally 40-50% of the total weight.
Romarin -
French cuisine uses rosemary in many savory dishes, and it is part of the herb
groups called Les Fines Herbes and
Les Herbes de Provence.
The chef who used rosemary in this dish was looking for the pine-like aroma
that would have been released by rubbing the steak with it.
Rosemary is a herb found all over the world and is
especially appreciated in French and Italian kitchens. Dried and fresh
leaves may be used, though fresh leaves are preferred. Rosemary is one of
the few herbs where the dried leaves have a stronger taste than the fresh ones,
and in any case, this is a herb that is best when used with a gentle touch.
The climate is perfect for rosemary in most
Mediterranean countries, and so in France, it grows very well in the wild.
Beurre Noisette:
A melted butter sauce where the butter has been allowed to cook until its color
turns a light golden brown and develops a nutty flavor resembling hazelnut
(noisettes). Here, the added nutty flavor of the Beurre Noisette will
add to the flavor of the rosemary, and the butter adds to the Maillard reaction
(the browning) of the steak.
Côte de Veau Rôtie au Jus, Beurre,
Herbes - A
veal bone-in, roasted, rib steak served with a sauce made from the natural
cooking juices flavored with butter and herbs.
The size: Bone-in veal chops, which this is, usually
have an average weight of between 280 grams (10 oz) and 450 grams (16
oz). Since the bone can be 30% of the total weight, ask the weight and
depending on your appetite, you may find that a large serving is enough for
two.
Côte de Veau
A bone in veal chop.
Côte d'Agneau
Grillees Sauce Paloise – A grilled
lamb chop served with a Sauce Paloise.
Sauce Paloise: A child
of Sauce Bearnaise where the tarragon has been
replaced by mint.
Menthe or Menthe Anglaise – Mint, Spearmint, or Garden Mint is the mint variety most frequently used in in French and other Western European cuisines, as well as North America. Mint is everywhere in French cuisine, and beginning with cocktails, you may even find France's venerated pastis, flavored with mint syrup. Fresh mint be used to accented salads and soups, especially cold soups, as do mint entrées (the French first course). French main courses, the plat principal, may have mint sauces. Roast lamb, as in this menu listing, may be offered with a Sauce à la Menthe Anglaise, English mint sauce, though the minty Sauce Palois is more popular when served warm with lamb.
Côtes
on French menus:
(Côtes is the plural of Côte).
Côtes de Bœuf de Charolais, Grillée à l'Os - Grilled bone-in beef
ribs from France’s famed Charolais
beef.
This menu listing:
This sounds like a whole roast from which you will be offered slices. Nevertheless,
more and more French restaurants offer single bone-in ribs cut from a roast and
today on many menus as a Tomahawk. A single beef rib with the bone they can
weigh between 850 grams (30 ozs) to 1,275 grams (45 ozs). Check what you
are buying, as single ribs are usually priced by weight.
Charolais:
The AOP-certified Charolais cattle are renowned for the exceptional
quality of their meat. They were the third French breed to earn the prestigious
AOC designation (now also a pan-European AOP), in recognition of their
consistently superior standards. For livestock, the AOP label not only
guarantees quality but also specifies strict guidelines regarding how the
animals are raised and what they are fed.
Charolais herds are free-range for most of the year,
feeding on a diverse diet of grasses, wildflowers, and herbs throughout the
summer months. During winter, when the cattle are brought into protective
barns, their feed consists exclusively of locally sourced grasses and cereals
harvested from their summer pastures.
Additionally, all AOP-certified cattle must be raised completely free from growth hormones and antibiotics. Calves remain with their mothers and are reared together until weaned.
A bone-in rib roast.
Bone-in rib roast can include 3 to seven ribs.
Photograph courtesy Annie Kavanagh
www.flickr.com/photos/spencersbrookfarm/4610852339/
Côtes de Porc Laquées – Glazed pork chops; they
will have been basted in a honey or a fruit coating. Pork spareribs would be on
the menu as echine de porc or travers de porc.
Laqué, Laquées – Glazed. Display is important
in all cuisines, and no less so in France. Some dishes will be glazed with
honey, soy sauce, sugar, or egg whites etc.
Côtes may
also indicate the ribs of vegetables.
Aligot au Fromage de Laguiole, Verts et Côtes
de Blettes – Aligot with Laguiole
Cheese, Green Leaves and Stems (ribs) of Swiss Chard. (The cheese's name
Laguiole AOP is pronounced as lay-ole, do not pronounce the
g).
Aligot: A
beautiful, mashed potato and cheese dish made in the departments of Cantal in
the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, where
locally, they use a young Cantal AOP cheese
or a local tomme. Over the
border in the region of Occitanie in the department of Aveyron, the cheese will
be a young Laguiole AOP cheese. In the department of Lozère, they use
similar local cheeses.
Added to the cheese and mashed potatoes in an Aligot
are garlic, crème fraîche, milk and butter. This combination
is carefully stirred until long threads of cheese and potato may be drawn from
the pot. From personal experience on a cold winter's evening, after forty
minutes in the cold, while looking for a taxi and no time for lunch, the smell
alone can be mistaken for the ambrosia of the gods. The thought of the mashed
potatoes and an excellent cheese with all the additions makes my mouth water as
I write this.
Aligot will be served, in private homes, with
sausages. Usually, local, small, salami-type, grilled, pork sausages,
though that is not written in stone. Restaurants that offer Aligot on their
menus may also offer sausages, but they often upgrade their menus by
offering duck, roast beef,
or lamb.
Laguiole AOP :
A 30.5% dry weight, hard, unpasteurized, cow's milk cheese; it has a light
golden color with a pleasant smell and a light, slightly fruity taste. The
cheese is aged from 4 to 24 months. From a blind tasting of a six-month and an
18-month Laguiole AOP, the younger cheese was excellent, while the 18-month-old
cheese was more like an aged cheddar with a slight bite. The Laguiole
AOP cheese may only be made with milk from the Simmental and Aubrac cows.
The cows graze freely for seven months a year on the Aubrac high basalt
plateau, between 800 and 1400 meters, for close to seven months a year. In the
winter, the cows are brought into barns and fed on the grasses and wild herbs
collected from the Aubrac plateau during the summer.
Altogether, there are nine AOP cheeses linked to the
Aubrac Plateau: Laguiole, Salers, Cantal, Fourme d'Ambert, Pélardon, Rocamadour, Saint-Nectaire,
and Bleu d'Auvergne.
Aligot in a restaurant.
Photograph courtesy
of Omid Tavalla
www.flickr.com/photos/tavallai/5850019237/
Côtelette and Côte
The words côtelette
or côte may be used interchangeably when referring to chops; though
the use of the word côtelettes, cutlets, usually indicates smaller
chops. The menu may offer cutlets from veal, lamb or pork, but not from beef.
Côtelette de Porc Noir –
A pork chop from the Porc
Noir de Bigorre AOP, the black pigs from
the old French province of Bigorre (today part of the departments of
Hautes-Pyrénées, Gers, and Haute-Garonne) in the Occitanie region.
Porc Noir de Bigorre: This
ancient breed has been raised for over a thousand years in the old French
province of Bigorre, now included in the departments of Hautes-Pyrénées, Gers,
and Haute-Garonne in Occitanie.
Pork is the most popular meat in France, though
restaurants prefer to highlight more expensive cuts of beef and lamb.
Nevertheless, there will be jambon cru, cured hams, and other cuts from some of the most
famous porcine breeds in France on most menus, along with farmed and real wild boar. In the French
lineup of famous porkers, one pig is far ahead of all others in quality and
taste, and that is this one, the Porc Noir de Bigorre AOP.
The
Porc Noir de Bigorre, AOP
Photograph
courtesy of French Ministry of Agriculture
CCôtelettes d’Agneau de Pré-salé - Lamb chops from the
unique lambs raised on the salt meadows along France's Atlantic coast.
Pré-salé lambs: Freely graze, from the time they are weaned, on the coastal grasses and herbs of the marshes that are naturally infused with sea salt—giving the meat a distinctive flavor. For the tastiest lamb in France look, between July and February for menus offering Pré-Salé lambs. Pré-salé lambs go to market when 5 - 9 months old, before then will have been they will have spent at least 75 days, after being weaned, grazing in the salt meadows on France’s Atlantic shores.
The sea-air and the sea salt flavor the grasses on which the lambs feed; that creates a uniquely tasting lamb without even the slightest trace of salt.
Côtelettes d'Agneau
Lamb chops
Photograph courtesy of LeonardKong
https://www.flickr.com/photos/30216515@N05/6923392679/
Nos Côtes
Our coasts. On a menu for the fish and seafood that
may be caught there.
Le Pavé de Cabillaud des Côtes
Normande Rôti – A
thick-cut fillet of roasted cod, caught off Normandy’s
coast.
Cabillaud:
Fresh cod. French chefs do wonders with cod's flavorful, white, flaky meat,
which is at its best when lightly cooked and simply served with a butter sauce,
though sometimes a crème fraîche and
white wine sauce may accompany fresh cod.
Apart from being a tasty fish, cod is and was a
political fish; it is a fish that France and other countries have been to war
over. Long before the oil producers and their exercise of economic power,
seafaring nations fought all over the world for the control of spices. After
spices came wars over fishing rights, with conflicts over cod fishing rights
leading the battle. Until the arrival of refrigeration, fish, and especially
cod, were dried and salted (morue) and mostly imported from Scandinavia.
Then, if you lived more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the coast, that was
the only saltwater fish you saw. Consequently, apart from fresh cod,
France has hundreds of recipes for rehydrated cod that are still very popular,
such as Brandade.
Dos
de Cabillaud Rôti au Beurre, Brocolis et Navet Boule D'or.
Fresh Cod roasted in butter and accompanied by broccoli
and Robertson's Golden Ball turnip.
Photograph courtesy of patrick janicek
https://www.flickr.com/photos/marsupilami92/51984070055/
The Navet Boule d'Or: An heirloom turnip called Robertson's Golden Ball
or the Orange Jelly Turnip. Its various names come from its round,
golden-yellow skin and firm, yellowish-orange flesh. This turnip is milder,
sweeter and more delicately flavored compared to the white or purple
turnips. Its fine texture and taste make it a popular choice for cooking,
and when young, about 7.5cm (3") in diameter, it can be eaten raw and
grated into salads; its leaves are edible and can be cooked like spinach.
Langouste de Nos Côtes
Bretonnes Rôti ou Grillé, Pistou de Basilic - The Rock lobster, the owner of the lobster tail, from our Brittany coasts roasted or
grilled and served with a basil pistou
sauce.
Pistou Sauce: Is the Provencal version of the Italian pesto sauce,
it appeared not long after the Italian pesto; they are close cousins.
Langouste
Lobster Tail.
Photograph courtesy of Elizabeth K. Joseph
https://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/8372407066/
Côtes and Wines:
Wine lists may carry the word Côte as part of a wine's name; then Côtes will indicate the hills, slopes, and valleys within the borders of a wine appellation, a wine-growing area.
Côtes
de Provence AOP - This
is the largest of the nine Provencal wine appellations. While the Côtes de Provence do produce
red and white wines, more than half the wines produced are rosés.
Vineyards Cotes de Provence
Photograph courtesy of Mike Fleming
https://www.flickr.com/photos/flem007_uk/551353352/
Côtes
du Rhône AOP – AOP wines from France’s Rhône Valley that include
reds, rosés and some white wines. This wine-growing appellation is enormous and
stretches for over 200 km (115 miles) from the North to the South of the Rhône
valley along the River Rhône. Other appellations within the Côtes du
Rhône appellation include the famous Château-Neuf-de
Pape, and the Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise, one of France’s most famous fortified wines, as well
as the Côtes du Rhône-Villages. AOP wines, and the less well known, but
unique pre-Champagne, sparkling-wine called the Clairette
de Die AOP..
Côtes
du Rhône Rosé
Photograph
courtesy of Fareham wines,
Côté
(Note The Two Accents)
The
"acute" accent (aigu) over the "e'" is telling you
that there is a sound to be made. Most e's in France have no sound, but
the acute accent tells you that an "ay" sound is correct.
The word Côte sounds like coat and Côté
sounds like coatay.
(N.B. The same exact spelling is used when describing
something that is close by, in French, that's à côté.)
Côté de Saumon Grillée à l’Orange - A grilled filet
of salmon served with an orange sauce.
Saumon: The only salmon that calls Europe its home is the
Atlantic Salmon, and it is France's best-selling fish, just ahead of cod.
Unless clearly indicated, all the salmon in France will be farmed salmon.
Côtières
Coastal.
On your menu for fish and seafood caught locally.
Les Crevettes Côtières
de Bretagne – Shrimps from the coastal waters of Brittany.
The Coast of Brittany.
The multi-colored cliffs of the Cap Frehel along
the Côtes d'Armor, Northern Brittany.
Photograph courtesy of Jean-Marie Hullot
www.flickr.com/photos/jmhullot/2271122071/
Coteau and Coteaux
A hillside or hillsides
Coteaux-du-Quercy AOP - An appellation for red and rosé wines in the old province of Quercy between the Cahors vineyards and the vines that produce the Chasselas de Moissac AOP table grapes in southwest France.
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Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman
behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com
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