Showing posts with label cappucino. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cappucino. Show all posts

Caille - Quail. Quail on the Menu in France.

from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

 

  
Quail and their eggs.
Photograph courtesy of Yay Micro.
  
Farm-raised quail taste slightly sweeter than chicken and when simply roasted you will note that slightly sweeter taste.  N.B. Quail is also more easily flavored than chicken and so often that slightly sweeter taste is lost among the other flavors in the cooking process.

Roast quail for three.
Photograph Yay Micro

A serving of quail, a whole European quail, will most likely weigh in at less than 150 grams (5.30 ounces)  and that’s with the bones; if the quail are smaller you will often be served two.
  
Quail on the French menu:
   
Caille à la Stanislas - Quail in the manner prepared for Stanislas, Duke of Bar and Lorraine, France. In the original recipe, the quail was deboned, roasted and then served stuffed with fattened goose liver, foie gras de oie. Caille à la Stanislas is still on some French menus today; however, the amount of fois gras will be greatly reduced from the serving in the original dish. That should not be too surprising, given today's cost of foie gras in France.

Stanislas, before he became a French Duke, was a Polish king who was fired from that job, twice! Unemployed kings do not usually have good job prospects. Nevertheless, Stanislas received the title Duke of Lorraine with a job to go with it from his son-in-law, who was King Louis XV of France. Stanislas also received a chateau outside the city of Nancy in the Lorraine. The chateau was not a small one, and it is still known as the Versailles of the Lorraine. Stanislas's building of three stunning squares in the City of Nancy would make the city world-famous, and the squares are now UN World Heritage sites. Despite Stanislas's great works and (for the times) progressive rule, he is best remembered as the man who gave the name to the dessert Rhum Baba.  Rhum Baba or Rum Baba and other dishes that were first served in Stanislas's chateau.   The Savarin or Savarin au Rhum is based on the Rhum Baba but named after Jeanne Anthelme Brillat-Savarin who lived over 100 years later.

Fig and quail egg salad.
Photograph courtesy of Yay Micro
   
Caille Rôtie Farcie de Girolles, de Cèpes et de Roquette, Sauce Porto – Quail roasted while stuffed with the girolle chanterelle mushroom,  and cèpes, the French Porcini mushroom,  along with rocket leaves. The dish is served with a port wine sauce.  Despite France having its own Port style wines, both Port and Madeira wines will be in every French kitchen and in many sauces.
 
Caille Aux Raisins - Quail prepared and served with grapes.
  
California quail
www.flickr.com/photos/71073348@N08/6920753719/
     
La Crème de Topinambours en Cappuccino et Son Effilochée de Poitrine de Caille – A frothy cream of Jerusalem artichoke soup served with small pieces of quail breast.
 
 The use of the word cappuccino in this menu listing refers to the froth on the soup and not to coffee. When the Italians named their coffee creation cappuccino little attention was paid to the froth. Cappuccino coffee received its name from the color of the milky coffee, which is similar to the color of the hood of a Capuchin friar's robes. However, do not let us get confused by the facts.  On today's French menus cappuccino, apart from when the word is actually used for cappuccino coffee, means froth. The word effilochée in this menu listing indicates the way the quail meat has been cut. Your French-English dictionary  will show the translation of effilochée as frayed; however on a French menu effilochée refers to the way  meat is cut and here it indicates the slicing of quail breast into small pieces to serve in the soup.
  
Salade d'Oeuf de Caille, Pointe d'Asperge et Aiguillette de Canard -  A salad of quails’ eggs, they will be served either fried or boiled, whichever looks better, along with asperge, asparagus spears, and slices of  Magret de Canard, duck breast.
     
Fig and quail egg salad.
Photograph by Apolonia courtesy of freedigitalphotos
    
Salade de Cailles Rôties au Vinaigre Balsamique – A salad of roasted quail dressed with a balsamic vinaigrette.     
  
Quail Eggs
      
The European quail is a little smaller than the American quail. Despite the quail family's connection to pheasants you would not know it to taste one or to look at one. Farms that raise quail also raise these birds for their beautiful eggs; quail eggs are an essential part of quail farming economics.
    
Quail eggs
Photograph by Phiseksit courtesy of freedigitalphots.net
   
Quail eggs taste exactly the same as a chicken egg; however, if you were planning to make an omelet the size of a two chicken-egg omelet you will need about 10 quail eggs.
    
A hen’s egg and a quail egg.
Photograph courtesy of Yay Micro.
    
During the short hunting season, wild quail are legally hunted in France; if they appear on a restaurant’s menu the term used will be caille sauvage, wild quail. Wild quail are smaller and stronger tasting than the farmed variety, but they are also tougher and so they will be prepared with different recipes to farmed quail.
   
Wild quail in the bushes.
www.flickr.com/photos/sidm/4220112535/

In the Old Testament, Exodus 16, it is the quail, along with Manna that God sent for the Israelites to eat in the desert. The original recipe served at that time, has been lost in the sands of the Sinai desert. In France, there are many new and recreated recipes for quail.  

Caille - Quail in the languages of France's neighbors:
  
(Catalan - guatlla, guatla, guàtlera), (Dutch - kwartel), (German - wachtel), (Italian - quaglia comune), (Spanish -  codorniz común).

--------------------------------

Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

 

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

 

Copyright 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019.
 
--------------------------------

Searching for the meaning of words, names or phrases
on
French menus?
 
Just add the word, words, or phrase that you are searching for to the words "Behind the French Menu" (best when including the inverted commas), and search with Google, Bing, or another browser.  Behind the French Menu’s links, include hundreds of words, names, and phrases that are seen on French menus. There are over 450 articles that include over 4,000 French dishes with English translations and explanations.
 
Connected Posts:

  

  

 
  
 
  

Visiting a Cafe in France and the Story Behind Coffee.


 
A single espresso coffee in a demi-tasse.
Photograph courtesy of studio tdes
www.flickr.com/photos/thedailyenglishshow/5612804236/
 
A French café is more than just the coffee and pastries it serves.

A successful French café offers minimally comfortable seating and a place where people may meet regularly, drink coffee, or relax and just let the world float by.


A café, in France.
Photograph by courtesy of mia!
www.flickr.com/photos/_mia/2584964985/

 
In the early evening.
Happy Hour sometimes comes to French cafés
Photograph by courtesy of Archibald Ballantine.
www.flickr.com/photos/johngevers/14004975/ 

The first coffee bean

Long before the first French café, there was the first grain de café, the first coffee bean. That first coffee bean originated on a small evergreen tree in Ethiopia.

Then, just to confuse me, I was told by people who really do know everything there is to know about coffee in the raw that the coffee bean is, in fact, a seed, not a bean.   What we call the coffee bean, in fact, grows inside a coffee cherry, and that makes it a seed. These learned coffee dealers and blenders also told me that you would not want to eat a coffee cherry.  So, we are left with the coffee seed. Despite that fact, I want to avoid confusion in this post, and so I will continue calling coffee seeds coffee beans.


Coffee Cherries on the evergreen coffee shrub.
Photograph courtesy of Foto76 through Freedigitalphotos.net.
 
The first coffee exporter

From Ethiopia, the beans, and the secrets of making the drink, were exported to Yemen. Yemen would then become the world's first international coffee exporter when she started selling the beans to Turkey. In Turkey, coffee quickly became the most popular national drink, and at that time, anyone who visited Turkey came home praising "Turkish Coffee."

Coffee came to Europe with the Turks when the Ottoman Empire invaded and occupied parts of Eastern and Western Europe. You may say that coffee took Europe by force of arms!            

France's first café and oldest café still in operating

Coffee came to France via Austria some years later. Then, according to the accepted tradition, the first French café was opened, in Paris, by two Armenian brothers, Pascal and Grégoire Alep, probably in 1661. The oldest French café still open in France is the Café Le Procope, also in Paris; it opened in 1686. Today Le Procope is no longer a traditional café; today, it is a smart restaurant and not an inexpensive one. Nevertheless, Café Le Procope offers history, excellent food, including a fresh seafood bar, and of course, excellent coffee.                        


The outside of Le Procope today.
Photograph Courtesy of Serge Melk
www.flickr.com/photos/sergemelki/3364276074/

The original owner of Le Procope was an Italian immigrant from Palermo, Sicily, Francesco Procopio; unfortunately, Francesco was not available for an interview the last time I visited.  Le Procope’s traditions include the claim to have introduced ice-cream to France.

            


The inside of Le Procope today
Photograph by courtesy of Michael Rys
www.flickr.com/photos/mrys/176993289/
                                
Having a coffee in Le Procope today.

If you visit Le Procope today when all you want is a coffee and an ice cream, along with a feeling of history, then do so outside their regular lunch and dinner hours. At lunch and dinner, every table in Le Procope is taken. Later, while you sip your coffee, consider that you may well be sitting at the same spot where in the past sat John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Pain, Benjamin Franklin, Voltaire, Danton, Marat, or possibly Robespierre. That is real coffee history.

The oil in the bean is far more important than the roast.           

The packaging of most branded coffees will tell you the type of roast but little else; however, the amount of oil in the bean coffee affects the taste far more than the roast. The perfect roast cannot produce flavor from dry, oil-less beans. For those who will visit France and Italy on the same European trip, you may taste the difference in their coffees. The French use the oiliest beans, followed by the Italians.   

     

Grains de Café, Coffee Beans.
Photograph courtesy of Apple’s Eyes Studio through Freedigtalphotos.net.
                                        
The two beans that fight for your business. 

Behind the scenes battling for market share are two coffee beans, the Robusta and the Arabica, and their various hybrid family members. The Arabica has 50% less caffeine and is considered the best for flavor, but it is much more expensive, and so nearly all coffees on the market are blends of the two beans.

Inside a coffee importer’s warehouses, there are highly trained and highly paid coffee blenders; these employees, like the blenders in the great Champagne and Cognac Houses, have unique taste and olfactory taste buds. For their most valuable customers, the café and restaurant industry, they prepare special blends for each customer. After blending and roasting, these blends will have a taste and smell that does not vary from batch to batch, month to month or year to year.

The barista, the most important individual in the cafe.

In the best French cafés, the espresso coffee machine will be under the control of a maître de barista, a master operator of an industrial espresso machine. The title barista comes from the Italian, as the Italians invented the espresso coffee machines, they also own the name. A barista has nothing to do with a British attorney, a barrister!  Coffee gourmets will tell you that only an expert barista can dispense a perfect cup of coffee every time. The correct heat of the water, the proper water pressure, and the correct packing of the coffee for the espresso machine complete the work of a maître de barista. The makers of the various espresso coffee machines run training courses for baristas. To make the perfect cup of coffee, the barista has to be trained like any other professional.

                              My own coffee production                                   

I am not an expert barista, but I have owned, at various times, filter coffee machines, percolators, and at least ten different espresso coffee machines. Today, balancing taste with convenience, I make a reasonably good coffee at home using a French coffee press.  For the true café aficionados, my coffee may not be good enough to make the top grade, but they are kind enough to remain silent when they are in my home. I have tried similar coffees with other machines in the homes of friends who use other coffee brands, and most of those coffees have also been excellent.


A cappuccino.
Photograph Courtesy of Akeeris though Freedigitalphotos.net.
 
         How the French make coffee at home.
                

In French homes, a cafetière, a French coffee press, was always the most popular method for making the morning café au lait. Filter coffee machines are sold in France, but they are not very popular, and in French cafés and restaurants, espresso coffee rules. Many French homes that do not use a French coffee press use a coffee percolator; however, the pressurized Nespresso-style machines gain ground all the time.     

 


A cafetière, a French coffee press.
N.B. The cafetière, despite its French and English names, is, like the Espresso machine, an Italian invention.
Photograph courtesy of Joe King
www.flickr.com/photos/jking89/4573304032/
 
 
To order coffee in a French café click on this post:
Ordering Coffee in France, The A - Z of Ordering Coffee in France.
 

----------------------

 
Searching for the meaning of words, names or phrases
on
a French menu?
 
Just add the word, words, or phrase that you are searching for to the words "Behind the French Menu" (best when including the inverted commas), and search with Google.  Behind the French Menu’s links include hundreds of words, names, and phrases that are seen on French menus. There are over 450 articles that include over 4,000 French dishes with English translations and explanations.
 
----------

Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

 

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

 

Copyright 2010, 2012, 2016, 2021
 

--------------------
    
Connected Posts:
    
Bistros in France.
  
Brasseries in France.
  
Crepes,Galettes, Gauffres, Mille Crepes, Pannequets and more. 
  
Croissant  (The). The Croissant  and its History. The Croissant is France's Most Famous Pastry, but its Origins Come From Outside France.
  
Glace – Ice-cream. Ice-cream on French Menus. Glacé and Glacée are Desserts That are Frozen, Iced, Chilled or Glazed
   
Millefeuilles, Mille-feuilles, Feuilles, Feuilleté and Feuillantine on French Menus.
   
Milk on French Menus, in Cafes and in the supermarkets.
  
Ordering Breakfast in France; the French Breakfast Menu.
  
Ordering Coffee in France, The A - Z of Ordering Coffee in France.
  
Thé – Tea in France, and a Short History of Tea.
  
The French Connection and The English Kitchen .
  
Tipping in French Restaurants and Asking for French Sales Tax to be Returned.
     
What Happened When I Ordered Eggs for Breakfast in France .
  

 

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