Behind the French Menu

Boudin – A Sausage. The Boudin Blanc and the Boudin Noir; Pork Sausages and Black Puddings. The Sausages of France II.

from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

A Boudin Blanc with creamed potatoes and braised lettuce.

www.flickr.com/photos/pussnboots/350911922/

Boudin – A sausage.

The word saucisse arrived in England in 1066 with the cooks of William the Conqueror and those of his Norman-French barons. The Norman cooks brought hundreds of French words into the English kitchen, and the word saucisse became sausage in English. Sausages would go on to play a leading part in the traditional British and Irish breakfast. As French cuisine developed uncooked sausages became boudins with saucisse and saucisson indicating salami or pre-cooked sausages, but that change never made it back across the channel. For more about the French connection and the English kitchen, click here, and for more about the many other French sausages click here.

Choose your boudins

Photograph courtesy of Trip Advisor

The boudin noir like the British and Irish black pudding is a pig's blood sausage. On French restaurant menus boudins, blanc, and noir are the most popular sausages and maybe served grilled or fried. Boudins will be on the menu for light lunches or dinner with smaller versions on the menu for an entrée, the French first course. Sausages, of course, will not be on a French breakfast menu. France’s Charcuterie -Traiteurs, the French delicatessens, are extraordinarily creative and in many, you will also find vegetarian boudins and seafood boudins.

Boudin d'Homard – A lobster sausage.

Boudin de Saumon – A salmon sausage.

Boudin Vegetarian -A vegetable sausage

The Boudin Blanc – A pork sausage.

A boudin blanc is nearly always pork; when it is veal, beef or other meat, it will be clearly labeled. (Some of the most highly rated boudins blanc are made with pork and cabbage, and then their provenance will be on the menu).

Boudins blanc on French menus:

Boudin Basque au Piment d'Espelette – A pork sausage from the Basque country made with the signature red peppers from the town of Espelette.

Boudin Blanc de Lapin et Pommes Caramélisées - A rabbit meat sausage accompanied by caramelized potatoes.

Boudin Blanc Grillé, Sauce Estragon – A grilled pork sausage served with a tarragon sauce.

Boudin Blanc Maison au Porto – The restaurant's homemade pork sausage flavored with Port.

Boudin blanc served with braised kale.

Photograph courtesy of Michael F. Weinberg

www.flickr.com/photos/luckymikerocks/4345495514/

The Boudin Noir – Black Pudding Sausages.

The Boudin Noir is made with a wide range of recipes that depend on local tradition though most do include onions, oatmeal, the herbs, though the herbs and spices may differ widely. A French boudins noir is usually smaller than the black pudding sausages seen in the UK with the most popular just large enough for an individual serving. The UK and Irish black puddings are made in large sizes, with fried or grilled slices, not a whole sausage part of a full traditional British or Irish breakfast. Boudins noirs will often be in menus with a variety of apple preparations which are the traditional French accompaniment.

The boudin noir on French menus:

Boudin Noir, Oignons et Pommes – Black pudding sausage served with onions and apples.

Croustillant de Boudin Noir sur une Purée de Pommes de Terre et Carottes – A crispy black pudding sausage served on pureed potatoes with carrots.

Ravioles de Boudin Noir - Ravioli stuffed with meat from a black pudding sausage.

Trio de Noix de Saint-Jacques, Boudin Noir et Foie Gras Poêlé – A triple meeting of flavors including the meat of the king scallop, a boudin noir, and lightly fried duck foie gras, fattened duck’s liver.

Boudin Noir served with choucroute.

Photograph courtesy of Robert

www.flickr.com/photos/rdpeyton/3408482516

Foire au Boudin de Mortagne-au-Perche.

The sausage fair in Mortagne-au-Perch.

If you like boudins noirs, black puddings, then visit the town of Mortagne-au-Perche, in Normandy, and you will begin to realize that the boudin noir is not a sausage for the French, British and the Irish alone; this is a sausage of importance to all humanity. From all over the world, in the spring, usually the third Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in March, sausage lovers come to the Mortagne-au-Perche sausage fair. The fair is for all sausage lovers though the competition is only open to those who produce the black pudding sausages.

Confrerie de Goûte Boudin.

The brother and sisterhood of the sausage tasters in Mortagne-au-Perche.

These valiant knights work hard to prevent the import of low grade foreign imports.

Photograph courtesy of Actu.fr

In Mortagne-au-Perche sausage making reputations and history are on the line, and traditional rivalries attract supporters and sausage groupies. Over 100 producers and their supporting teams will be competing while others will be earning their keep by selling all types of sausages and food products. Since this is Normandy, the drink of choice is Norman cider. The way the herbs are used and the method of preparation of the sausage is what makes the difference. The recipe will have been handed down through the generations and guarded closer than the secrets of Coca-Cola syrup.

Eating the product.

Join the boudin noir eating competition at the sausage fair.

Photograph courtesy of Actu.fr.

The organizers of this international competition are the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Goûte Boudin, the brother and sisterhood of the knights of the black pudding. Should you limit your consumption of black pudding to a couple of slices for breakfast once or twice a month then you could not join these valiant knights; a true Knight of the Black Pudding must promise to eat at least one whole sausage a week for life. This is a solemn promise and the would-be knight must take the oath with a long pronged fork that holds a sausage over a grill.

Boudin Noir aux Deux Pommes.

Black pudding accompanied by potatoes and apples.

Photograph courtesy of Marie Claire

If you feel the same way as these knights do about black puddings, get your travel guides out to double check the dates of the next fair. Mortagne-au-Perche is in the department of Orne, Normandy and about 140 km (87 miles) from Paris. The Tourist Information Office has an English website.

France has tens of different sausages with tens of different names; for a short introduction to those that may be on your menu anywhere in France click here for the link.

If you are feeling thirsty after the tastings at the fair visit the nearby town of Nogent-le-Rotrou, the headquarters of the cider tasters. Nogent-le-Rotrou is just 30 km (20 miles), away from Mortagne-au-Perche and here is based the Commanderie Percheronne des Gouste-Cidre; this confrerie style brother and sisterhood promote all French ciders, and there are many. For more about French cider click here.

A traditional English breakfast

Just out of the frame are the accompanying bacon, tomatoes and baked beans!

Fried bread in bacon fat is the optional extra.

Photograph courtesy of Ewan Munro

www.flickr.com/photos/55935853@N00/5652623969/

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

Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

For more information on the unpublished book behind this blog contact Bryan Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

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

Searching for the meaning of words, names or phrases

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 DuckDuckGO. 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.

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Comté AOP - The Premiere Cheese of France. Comté in French Cuisine.

from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

Comté AOP cheese.

Comté or Gruyère de Comté is a firm, semi-hard 31.3% fat, yellow, rich, nutty-tasting, unpasteurized, cow’s milk cheese. The cheese comes from the high pastures in the Jura Massif mountain range, in the new super-region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté.

Comté has been produced for over 700 years, some claim 1,000 years, and it was the first cheese with a substantial and well-organized production to be awarded an AOC. Furthermore, Comté is one of the few cheeses where each and every cheese is checked and graded before being permitted to carry the AOC/AOP label.

The AOP logo

The flora in the Jura Massif is extraordinarily diverse. Depending on where the Montbeliarde or Simmental cows that provide the milk graze there will be grasses with different wild flowers and herbs. These differences are reflected in the milk and, ultimately, in slightly varying flavors and colors of the cheese. In their winter barns, the cows are fed the local grasses collected in the summer and a limited amount of grain. No silage can be fed to these cows at any time and French law forbids any use of coloring additives for all its cheeses and butter. So in the summer, the Comté cheese will be a bright yellow from the milk as the cows graze in the high pastures; while cheeses produced by the same cows in the winter will be lighter in color. The calves must be raised by their mothers, and antibiotics and growth hormones are forbidden at any time. The slightly different tastes in the cheeses produced at different times of the year and in from different herds will not be noted except by the experts who buy the cheese for distribution, and, of course, some real cheese mavens.

A leading member of the Montbeliarde Comté production team

Photograph courtesy of Ylliab Photo

www.flickr.com/photos/ylliabphoto/26290088954/

Comté cheese on French menus:

Cordon Bleu de Veau au Comté - A veal escalope wrapped around a slice of boiled ham and cheese. Traditionally that is a French Gruyere, and Comté’s other name is the Gruyère du Jura. After wrapping the escalope is breaded and fried. Cordon Bleu de Veau and the same dish made with chicken breast are recipes from the mid-20th century; however, the Cordon Bleu, the award of the blue ribbon, is much older. The Cordon Bleu was part of an award created by King Henry III of France, in 1578, for outstanding service to the French Crown.

Croque Monsieur au Comté - Croque Monsieur; a simple but tasty French fast food. This is a toasted sandwich made with Pain de Mie, French sandwich bread, cooked ham, and cheese. The sandwich is soaked in beaten egg and then fried gently or toasted until the outside is golden brown and the cheese inside melts. Croque Madame is the same recipe with an added fried egg. In France Croque Monsieur is nearly always made with Comté or French Gruyere.

Fondue Savoyarde (2 Personnes Minimum), Comté, Beaufort et Emmental, Accompagnés De Salade – A Savoy cheese fondue from (for a minimum of two persons) made with three cheeses, Comté, Beaufort and Emmental and accompanied by a small green salad. Recipes for dishes similar to this cheese fondue date back two or three-hundred years, but cheese fondues only became famous internationally with the growth of winter sports in the 1950’s. Today’s Fondue Savoyarde will usually include three Savoie cheeses. The first two will be Beaufort AOP and Comté AOP the third will be chosen from among the Abondance, Emmental de Savoie or French Gruyère cheeses. The Fondue Savoyard calls for the cheeses to be melted in white wine with a light touch of garlic. Since the taste of the fondue changes with the percentages of the different cheeses used every restaurant’s fondue has its own unique taste. There are also cheese fondues made with additions of the Savoie’s much-appreciated kirsch cherry liquor.

Fondue Savoyarde

Photograph courtesy of Pedro Cerqueira

www.flickr.com/photos/pcerqueira/5402321948/

Risotto d'Épeautre au Comte – A risotto made with spelt and Comté cheese. Spelt or Dinkel wheat is a relatively coarse, but mild, and slightly nutty flavored ancient member of the wheat family; it is the forerunner of modern wheat. In France, spelt is grown commercially in Provence, and there it may be cooked like a rice dish, prepared as a risotto as in this recipe, served as a vegetable or used to give body to a soup or stew.

Soupe à l'Oignon Gratinée au Comté - Paris and Lyon claim the original recipes for French onion soup and both are outstanding. Here the menu listing fails to note the recipe's origins but the soup will have been made with toasted bread with Comté cheese on top and browned under the grill.

French onion soup glistening with the cheese on top.

Photograph courtesy of Hotel du Vin & Bistro

www.flickr.com/photos/hdv-gallery/6992212974/

Comté Vieux de la Fruitière et sa Confiture de Cerises - A “vieux” matured Comté direct from the fruitière, the dairy, and served with a cherry preserve, a cherry jam. Since all Comté cheeses are matured for at least four months this menu listing will be for a cheese that has been matured for at least one year.

The Comté production

With Comté’s huge popularity it is not a simple matter to control the production. The regulations require the milk to be made into cheese within 24 hours and the cows are milked twice a day. The farmers keep the dairies working round the clock and so it will be extremely rare for milk to wait even 12 hours before the cheese making process begins.

To keep to that tough schedule, the farmers use co-operative dairies called fruitieres. Each fruitiere serves fifteen to twenty farmers, and none will be more than 25 km (16 miles), from each farmer’s herd. The cows do not go on holiday so every fruitiere must work 365 days a year.

Aging Comté cheese

Nevertheless, the dairy, the fruitiere, that makes the cheese does not do the aging. The fruitiere does, however, choose the aging cellar; the maison d’affinage. To add to the decision-making process, each maison d’affinage has different qualities, and each group of cheeses may differ. The changes occur all the time, and each aging cellar is chosen for the heat and humidity level that it offers. Comté cheeses are aged for a minimum of 4 months with the best cheeses being aged for one to two, or even more years. The registers showing where last week’s cheese and the cheese from two years ago is aging, and that can create transport scheduling headaches. Comté like other firm yellow cheeses, including Salers AOP, English Cheddar, and others are best when well-aged. On a restaurant’s list of cheeses or in a fromagerie, a cheese shop, look for a Comté Vieux, an old Comté or a Comté Affinée an aged Comté Good cheese shops will offer you a sliver of two different Comtés to compare before buying and you can't do that in a supermarket.

Comté Vieux – Aging Comté Cheese.

Photograph courtesy of Barney Moss

www.flickr.com/photos/barneymoss/9520659622/

The testing of every single cheese labeled Comté AOP.

Every single Comté cheese is tested, and that includes organoleptic tests. Organoleptic tests cover taste and smell. While the taste makes for some 50% of the grading the external appearance of the cheese and defects such as external cracks and holes also affect the final grade. Cheeses with over 15 points, out of a maximum of twenty, earn the right to use a green label and to be called Comté Extra. Cheeses with grades of 12 to 15 points are labeled with brown labels and marked Comté AOP. Cheeses with less than 12 points may not be sold as Comté and will be sold to commercial cheese producers for cheese spreads and other cheese flavorings.

Green labeled Comté cheese

Green is not necessarily better than brown.

Comté and Comté Extra

Many French men and women also automatically assign a better taste to the green label and the words Comté Extra. Despite that, the taste of the brown labeled Comté cheese is rarely very different to the green. Do not pay more, without tasting, for that green label. Within the grading system, the shape and appearance of the outside of the cheese can add one or more points, and a poor looking cheese can have a fine taste but lose a point or two because of a poor exterior surface. A cheese marked Comté Extra, and a less valued Comté AOP may have the same taste. N.B. Within all Comté cheeses, there are usually small holes; this is a natural part of the cheese-making process and seen in all French Gruyère type cheeses and does not affect the taste in any way.

Where does Comté come from

The Comté’s appellation covers parts of five French departments: Ain, Doubs, Jura, Saône-et-Loire, and Haute-Savoie. Other great French cheeses come from here, and they include Bleu de Gex AOP, Mont d’Or AOP, and Morbier AOP, Charolais AOP, Maconnais AOP, Chevrotin AOP, Tomme des Bauges AOP, Reblochon AOP, Abondance AOP, Beaufort AOP, Tomme de Savoie IGP and French Gruyere. They may all be tasted and enjoyed when traveling in the area

Lunchtime for the production crew

Photograph courtesy of Ylliab Photo

www.flickr.com/photos/ylliabphoto/17473436186/

The Comté cheese roads.

If you are traveling to the Jura you arrive, or even before you leave home, call the French Government Tourism Office; ask for a copy of their Les Routes du Comté, the Comté cheese roads.

The official Comte website that gives information on the cheese roads is only in French. Nevertheless using the Bing and or Google translate apps make the website clearly readable.

http://www.comte.com/visiter/savourez-le-temps-sur-les-routes-du-comte.html

The cheese roads offer access from all parts of the cheese making areas. The roads take you past farms, dairies and maturing cellars, as well as vineyards, wineries, local cheese museums, and of no less importance, a variety of restaurants. Combine this map with the well-designed Jura wine road; called La Route Touristique des Vins. A lot of thought went into planning this wine route; it includes, apart from vineyards and vintners, cheese producers and other places of agricultural, gastronomic and historical interest along with nature walks and much more. See how these maps interconnect and then take the combined route.

Like the cheese road, the website for the wine road is only in French, but Google, Bing and others translate the website very well.

The wines of the Jura

The wines that will be recommended to accompany Comté and other local cheeses are the two most famous sweet wines of the Jura: the Vin Jaune, their yellow wine, and their Vin de Paille, their straw wine. To accompany your meals try their Arbois AOC, reds, roses and whites along with their sparkling Cremant de Jura their Vins de Franche-Comté IGP and for your digestif cherry liquor the Kirsch de Fougerolles AOC or the Macvin AOC.

The Macvin AOC comes with an ancient tradition, and from my investigations, it is so ancient that no one seems to be very clear about it when it all began! The Macvin AOC is produced in a similar manner to the Pineau de Charente from the Cognac region and Pommeau from the Calvados apple brandy.

The Jura in summer.

Photograph courtesy of deepakhere.mypixels

www.flickr.com/photos/7164796@N04/7890070334/

To add to your enjoyment of the breathtaking scenery in the center of the French Jura are beautiful lakes and this is one of the less traveled parts of France. Even the Prefecture of Jura, the provincial capital, Lons-le-Saunier, has only 20,000 inhabitants. The Jura Massif includes most of the region of Franche-Comté and part of the departments of Saone-et-Loire in Burgundy and Ain and Haute Savoie in the Rhone-Alpes. Visit the regional Jura park, the Parc Naturel Regional du Haut-Jura.

http://www.parc-haut-jura.fr/

The Jura in Winter.

Photograph courtesy of kbxxus

www.flickr.com/photos/kbxxus/16284772250/

If you arrive in winter you may still enjoy the cheese, but the mountains and valleys of the Massif will be covered with snow; so take your skis. The Jura provides some of the best skiing in France

Taking Comté AOP cheese and other French cheeses home.

f you wish to take a whole Comté AOP cheese home, you may have some difficulty with one of these cheeses in your hand luggage. The average Comté AOP cheese weighs between 30 to 48 kilos (66 – 105 lbs)! In a fromagerie, a cheese shop, anywhere in France, order a one-kilo wedge, or more if you wish, and have the shop vacuum pack the cheese. Failing the availability of vacuum packing use plenty of tightly wrapped plastic wrap.

At home, the Comté AOP cheese will keep well when refrigerated like other hard yellow cheeses but never freeze it; it will lose its taste. See the post: Buying Cheese in France. Bringing French Cheese Home.

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

Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

For information on the unpublished book behind this blog write to Bryan Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

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

Searching for the meaning of words, names or phrases

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.

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