Showing posts with label prawns. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prawns. Show all posts

Crevettes and Gambas - Shrimps and Prawns. Shrimps in French Cuisine.

from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman
behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

Shrimp on the menu.
Photograph courtesy of stu_spivack
www.flickr.com/photos/stuart_spivack/4978036874/
.  
Crevettes and gambas on French menus
     
In France, the word crevettes may be used for any shrimp or prawn, with the Spanish word gamba being used to suggest larger sizes.  A marine biologist will tell you that shrimps and prawns are two quite distinct species; however, who is going to spend the time to re-educate me, other diners around the world, as well as the chefs. When in France and you want to order shrimp or prawns in a restaurant, a fishmonger, or a supermarket, just order crevettes or gambas.  N.B.:  In this post, where possible, I am only using the word shrimps; that may avoid some of the confusion in English. (The Dublin Bay Prawn, in France called the langouste, is neither a shrimp nor a prawn.  See the post Langoustine).

     
Traditional shrimp fishing with horses, Belgium.
  
Shrimps on the menu.
      
French chefs create wonderful dishes with shrimp and in French seafood restaurants, you may order a number of different shrimps. Two of the shrimps offered will be the two most popular pink or red shrimps; a third will be the smaller but very tasty crevette gris, a gray or brown sand shrimp. After these popular three, there are many others, with the crevette géante tigrée, the giant tiger shrimp, leading the popularity stakes. Other shrimps may be on the menu using local or traditional names. Do not be surprised if confusion with some shrimp names occasionally reaches your menu.
   
Shrimps in a seafood market in Avignon, France.
www.flickr.com/photos/string_bass_dave/34017890395/
               
Shrimp dishes on French menus:
  
Brochettes de Crevettes Grillées -  Skewers of grilled shrimps.           
       
Cocktail de Crevettes or a Cocktail aux Crevettes - A shrimp cocktail.  French shrimp cocktails will usually have a fresh mayonnaise or a Sauce Rosé also called a Sauce Calypso or Sauce Cocktail.  They will not be served with American cocktail sauce; the European taste for seafood cocktails does not include horseradish. The basic recipe for this sauce is mayonnaise, ketchup, and Worcestershire Sauce or Tabasco, sometimes with added cognac. 
   
Shrimp and avocado salad.
www.flickr.com/photos/foodista/14320970230/
  
 Crevettes Décortiquées – Peeled shrimps.
    
Crevettes Ail et Persil a la Plancha – Shrimps flavored with garlic and parsley, cooked on a plancha.  The plancha is a solid, thick, flat sheet metal cooking plate and achieves a cooking taste somewhere between grilling and frying.  The plancha may look something like the flat cooking plate of a fast food restaurant; however,  a real plancha has three times the thickness and that gives a very even heat. The Basques claim ownership, as do the Spanish. In the Basque language, a plancha is called a planxa and that name will be on many South-Western French menus.  
                 
The most popular shrimps on French menus:
  
Crevette gris:
    
Crevette gris, crevette boucot, crevette boucard or sauterelle  The sand shrimp, or gray or brown sand shrimp. These are small but very tasty, small, shrimps. When on the menu a sand shrimp cocktail beats a regular shrimp cocktail hands- down. These shrimps, like others, turn pinkish after cooking.
   
Plenty of sand shrimp
    
La Bisque de Crevettes Grises  – A sand shrimp bisque. For more about bisques click here.
  
Croquettes de Crevettes Grises aux Fine Herbes    Round or log shaped chopped sand shrimps, flavored with France’s favorite herb group, Les Fines Herbes, covered in breadcrumbs and deep-fried. Delicious.
  
Crevettes Gris de Zeebrugge  The same sand shrimp as elsewhere; however, here the menu is telling you that these were caught off the coast of Zeebrugge, the port and seaside resort of Brugge, Belgium. There are places at sea considered uniquely special for the fish and seafood caught there. Provenance at sea can affect your wallet as much as it does on land. If you can taste the difference, you will have to pay for it.
               
Tartare d'Avocats aux Crevettes Grises et PamplemousseA tartar of avocado, sand shrimps, and grapefruit.
  
Sand shrimps in the languages of France’s neighbors:  
(Catalan - gamba d'esquer), (Dutch - noordzeegarnaal or grijze garnaal), (German – sandgarnele), (Italian - gamberetto grigio or gambero  grigi),  (Spanish – camarón gris, gamba  gris, quisquilla gris).         
    
Crevette Rose 
 
Crevette Rose or Crevette Bouquette – The common prawn, the pink shrimp; one of the two most popular shrimps on French menus. These shrimps can be up to 10 cms long. They will be part of many recipes and nearly always part of a seafood platter. These shrimps are a favorite for shrimp cocktails. N.B.: The pink shrimp on French menus is not the same as the North American pink shrimp.
    
Shrimp buffet
www.flickr.com/photos/inra_dist/25605258181/
           
Cocktail de Crevettes Rose à l'Avocat – A  pink shrimp served in half an avocado.  Fresh mayonnaise or Sauce Calypso (Sauce Marie Rose), will accompany the serving.
 
Crevettes Roses Grillées au Beurre à l'Ail – Pink shrimps grilled with garlic flavored butter.
        
Flan d'Endives aux Crevettes Rose, Sauce Moutarde – A flan or tart made with Belgian endives.  Here the pink shrimp will be cooked together with the endives and when ready placed on the flan and served with a mustard sauce.
   
Pink shrimps in the languages of France’s neighbors:
(Catalan -pandàlids), (German - tiefseegarnele), (Italian – gambero rosso), (Spanish - camarón, rosado).

Crevette Nordique:
  
Crevette Rouge, Crevette Nordique The Northern shrimp, the Norwegian wild prawn, the Northern pink shrimp, the Deep-Water prawn.  These shrimps are almost always part of a shellfish platter. N.B. The Northern pink shrimp on French and other European menus is not the same as the North American pink shrimp.
                                     
Salade de Crevettes Nordiques et Artichaut aux Agrumes  - A salad of the northern pink shrimps served with artichokes and citrus fruits.

The crevette rouge, the Northern shrimp.
 
Filet de Lotte avec Crevettes Nordiques – A filet of monkfish tail served with northern pink shrimps.
  
Tagliatelle aux Crevettes Nordiques et au Pineau des Charentes The northern pink shrimp served with tagliatelle and flavored with Pineau de Charentes. Pineau de Charentes is a unique and popular aperitif from  France’s Cognac region. For more about Pineau de Charentes click here.
 
Northern pink shrimps in the languages of France’s neighbors:  
(Catalan - gamba boreal), (German -  eismeergarnele, nordmeer or nordische garnele), (Italian -, gamberetto boreali), (Spanish – camarón norteño).
   
Crevette Géante Tigrée 
                                
Crevette Tigrée or Crevette Géante Tigrée  - The tiger shrimp, giant tiger shrimp,  the jumbo tiger prawn, the black giant tiger shrimp. This large shrimp originated in Asia and while giant tiger shrimps are caught in the wild most come from shrimp farms. The stripes gave the shrimp the tiger in its name.  Caveat emptor: Other large shrimp from the Mediterranean and shrimp farms are also called tiger shrimps.  If you really want the giant tiger shrimp, check with the server if the menu listing is for the crevette géante tigrée. 
       
Tiger prawns
www.flickr.com/photos/mysterybee/141083247/
      
Crevettes Géante Tigrée Flambées Rhum, Ananas, Piments d'Espelette – Giant tiger shrimps prepared with pineapples and Espelette Peppers flambéed in rum. Espelette AOP peppers have been grown in France for hundreds of years. The town of Espelette is in the French Basque Country and its peppers are part of many Basque and Basque-influenced French dishes. In season, the houses in and around Espelette may be seen covered in drying peppers.   
     
Crevettes Tigrées Géantes et Pétoncles Sautés de l’Atlantique Nord dans Notre Sauce Rosée – Giant tiger shrimps and queen scallops from  the North Atlantic served with our sauce rose.
  
Giant tiger shrimps in the languages of France’s neighbors:
(Dutch - grote tijgergarnaal or reuzen-tijgergarnaal), (German – riesengarnele), (Italian - gambero tigre gigante), (Spanish - camarón tigre gigante, langostino jumbo).

Shrimps, when cooked, have meat that will be white, pinkish or bluish-white and firm when cooked.  If it you are served a shrimp that is soft or pasty then it is not fresh; do not eat it. Send it back. Do not eat pasty shrimps unless they are being sold as fish paste!

The general name for shrimps in the languages of France's neighbors:
(Catalan – gambe), (German – garnelen, krevette, crevetten), (Italian -gamberetti, gamberone), (Spanish – gamba).

Connected posts:
 
 
 
 
 
 




  

The King Scallop and the Queen Scallop. On French Menus the Saint-Jacque, the Coquilles Saint-Jacques, and the Vanneaux or Pétoncle.
  

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by
Bryan G. Newman
behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com 
Copyright 2010, 2012, 2015, 2018, 2024.
 

 


Cocktail de Fruits de Mer - How American Seafood Cocktails Arrived on French Menus..

from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

 

   
Cocktail de Crevettes
A shrimp cocktail
Photograph courtesy of Uli & Liz Baecker
  
Cocktail -  A cocktail. 

Cocktails began as the alcoholic and liquid kind. They reached France with UK and USA tourists along with the first recipes about 150 years ago. That was the time when Napoleon III made a good impression on Queen Victoria, and Prince Albert and the English began to arrive in their thousands.  Since then French alcoholic cocktails have, as elsewhere, gone in and out of fashion.  Despite the imports of cocktails in the late 1800's France always had its own macerated fruit juice and wine apéritives; they originated with the Romans and came to France as ratafias.
   

Golden Dawn Cocktail
www.flickr.com/photos/chodhound/8606806071/


Ratafia
                    
Ratafia comes from the Latin rata fiat to settle or “ratify” an understanding. Even the Greeks and Romans would say "let's drink on it."  Agreements were sealed with a drink, hence ratafias. The word ratafia is now part of French cuisine.
   

A bottle of Ratafia.
Photograph courtesy of VinoVerve
www.flickr.com/photos/44027798@N02/5619160991/
                  
Those first alcoholic cocktails and their origins have been lost, probably to over-drinking!  Nevertheless, there a large number of stories that surround the origins of the word cocktail but none are particularly convincing or even entertaining, and so I have left them out of this post.
    
Prohibition in the USA

The arrival of prohibition in the USA in 1920 brought the cocktail back into fashion in the USA, and then once again recipes crossed the pond and then the channel. During prohibition, sweet fruit juices and other additions served to make poor tasting, illegally distilled alcohol drinkable. In the UK and France, the best ingredients were nearly always used.
 
Cocktail bars and the cocktail hour
 
As the American taste for cocktails became established so did the American creation of cocktail bars. Then the cocktail bars added the cocktail hour, and that later that became the happy hour.  The bars that offered a cocktail hour were also the first to provide cocktail snacks. The variety of tasty snacks and light meals kept the customers coming back as in the beginning cocktail snacks were free.
 
The better cocktail bars were competing by serving ever more appealing and more appetizing cocktail snacks.  Many of these cocktail snacks have long since been incorporated into restaurants menus around the world. A French entrée, the American starter, may be a seafood cocktail.  Then, at the tourists’ request, French restaurants added cocktails as aperitifs and seafood cocktails as entrees. 

Your French dinner menu may well offer:
  
Cocktail de Crabe
A crab meat cocktail.
Photograph by courtesy of Pocket full of chelle.
    

Cocktail de fruits de mer
www.flickr.com/photos/melyblog/13947969138/
    

Cocktail de Crevettes
A shrimp cocktail
    


A mixed seafood and ravioli cocktail.
Photograph courtesy of frankartculinary.

French cocktail sauce.

French restaurants do not serve US cocktail sauce with their seafood cocktails. The European taste for seafood cocktails does not include horseradish. The French cocktail sauce is called Sauce Cocktail, a Sauce Rosé or Sauce Marie Rose. The basic recipe is mayonnaise, ketchup, Tabasco and occasionally cognac. The French cocktail sauce provides a tasty dressing that is, to my mind, far less overpowering than the American version.

Behind the French Menu’s links include hundreds of words, names, and phrases that are seen on French menus. There are nearly 400 articles that include over 2,000 French dishes with English translations and explanations. Add the word, words or phrase that you are searching for to the words "Behind the French Menu" and search with Google or Bing.

Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

 

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

 

Copyright 2010, 2012, 2015, 2017.

  


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