Behind the French Menu

Bigorneaux - Perwinkles (Winkles). Periwinkles are a Treasured Part of a French Seafood Platter. Winkles in French Cuisine.

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

Bigorneaux - Winkle (periwinkles).

The French love seafood and eat more oysters than any other nation in the world; however, a large seafood assortment at home involves an enormous amount of work. That makes seafood platters a popular choice in fish and seafood restaurants. Bulots, whelks, and bigorneaux, the periwinkle, France's ever-popular sea snails will be on all but the smallest renditions.

Periwinkles on France’s Atlantic coast.

Apart from the large restaurants along France’s Atlantic coast, there are hundreds of small seafood restaurants with seasonal menus made up of whatever came off the boat that morning. In these restaurants crabs, especially the crab tourteau, the edible brown crab is always the star, but whelks and winkles are just as popular. All will be boiled in separate herb and wine flavored broths, allowed to cool and then served cold with all the requisite tools for removing their shells. Crab meat is firm and flavorsome and whelks and periwinkles are tasty and slightly chewy but not tough. Fresh mayonnaise and French fries, chips, will usually be the only accompaniments. A bottle of white, rose, or red wine will round out a meal that with a coffee will cost less than 10 Euros. Heaven by the sea. Explanations on removing the shells will be offered, with a smile, for first-time visitors. Caveat Emptor: In a seafood restaurant in town with well-dressed waiters expect to pay double.

Periwinkles, winkles, ready to dip in melted butter.

Photograph courtesy of TripAdvisor

If you have been to the Caribbean and enjoyed conches and abalone then whelks and winkles should not be strange, they are close relatives as are escargot, France's ever popular edible land snails. The texture is similar, and 80% of their enjoyment is the texture. By the way; the English expression “to winkle something out” is taken from the work required to remove the winkle from its shell; the only tool you need for a winkle is a toothpick.

Fried conch, the periwinkle’s cousin, with French fries.

Photograph courtesy of David Berkowitz

www.flickr.com/photos/davidberkowitz/8250890078/

Periwinkles are found in in the sand near the coast in France, Spain, and the UK and until the 1950’s periwinkles were a favorite UK seaside snack, There they were offered, served cold, with vinegar, salt, pepper, or lemon juice. Today, along England’s coastline in ports like Folkestone where ferries for France leave there are still stands and restaurants that serve periwinkles. N.B.: They will be on the menus as winkles.

Periwinkles, winkles, on French Menus:

Assiette de Fruits de Mer: 5 Crevettes Roses, 5 Huîtres, 3 Langoustines, Bulots (150g), Bigorneaux (40g), Crevettes Grises (40g) – A seafood platter of 5 pink shrimps, 5 oysters, 3 Dublin Bay prawns, 150 grams of unshelled whelks, 40 grams of unshelled winkles and 40 grams of sand shrimps. The fresh seafood on this menu will be very lightly cooked, only the oysters on the half-shell will be raw. From the size and variety of offerings, this platter will be plenty for two or three. Seafood platters are a great way for visitors to try seafood delicacies that are not on the menu at home. They also provide an opportunity to taste seafood that may be on the menu at home but will always have had their real taste and texture hidden by a sauce. The same menu that offers a platter like this will also list the individual items by the dozen or half dozen.

A plateaux de fruits de mer

Photograph courtesy of bDom - artiste – www bdom info

www.flickr.com/photos/bdom/29799132862/

Bigorneaux au Vin Blanc Accompagnées de Pain et Beurre – Winkles prepared in white wine and served with French bread and butter.

Periwinkles in a hard cider sauce with chives

Photograph courtesy of the bostonwannabe.com

Bigorneaux Poêlés à l'Ail – Winkles lightly fried with garlic. This will be a French entrée, the first course.

Plateau de Fruits de Mer: 1 Crabe, 5 Langoustines, 6 Huîtres Creuses n°3, 6 Crevettes Roses, 6 à 8 bulots, une Poignée de Bigorneaux – A seafood platter including 1 brown crab (the crabe torteau), 5 Dublin Bay prawns, 6 Japanese (Pacific) oysters size 3, 6 pink shrimps, 6-8 whelks, and a handful of winkles. This is a large platter and even a small crab will offer close to 200 grams of white meat without the shell. The Japanese, Pacific, creuse oysters noted here by size (size 3), indicate an unshelled weight of 66 - 85 grams each. The offering on this menu listing is enough for four or five diners and it may be served on a three-tiered platter. The whelks and winkles on this listing are served in their shells. The visitor might not know for how many diners a listing like this is suitable. Ask.

Periwinkles with lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves

Photograph courtesy of the Taste of Oregon

Salade de Bigorneaux et Citron Confit - A salad served with winkles and pickled lemons. As part of a salad, the winkles in this menu listing will not be in their shells. The word confit may confuse as it has many meaning on French menus, and how a fruit confit is prepared depends on the chef. Fruit and vegetable confits may be slowly cooked with wine, wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar, sometimes added brown sugar and offered as a sweet jam, condiment or garnish. The taste of a fruit confit intentionally contrasts with the main dish. Other vegetable or fruit confits, when served like the one above will not be sweetened but lightly pickled in salt. (Confit de Fruits are completely different, they are a candy, a sweet, where the water has been replaced by sugar, and they may be stored unrefrigerated for months).

Periwinkles with Vermouth and Shallots

Photograph courtesy of the Taste of Oregon

Winkles are always cooked before being eaten, and they may be served hot or cold. Only half the winkles on French menus are locally caught, none are farmed, and nearly half of France's needs are met by imports, mostly from the UK where they plentiful but not no longer in demand in local markets. The French are worried about their supplies when Britain leave the common market. There are many other edible sea snails out there but winkles and whelks are still found in quantity, and not yet threatened by overfishing.

Pied a Peche – Fishing on foot

On France coasts “pied a peche” (fishing by feet) is popular with seaside visitors in sandy areas. At low tide, the holidaymakers will learn how to spot the breathing holes of sea snails and clams in the sand; then, as long as they are prepared to spend an hour or two they may collect winkles and clams (palourdes) on rocks and in the sand by the bucket full. They will take them back to the self-catering apartments beloved by French on their four to six-week annual vacation. With a bottle of wine, fresh bread and butter, they will be part of an inexpensive and tasty dinner.

Pêche à pied - fishing on foot.

Photograph courtesy of Rhian

www.flickr.com/photos/rhian/36291882871/

Bigorneaux in the languages of France’s neighbors:
(German - gemeine strandschnecke), (Italian- lumaca di mare), (Spanish – bigaro),

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Behind the French Menu
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Bryan G. Newman
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Copyright 2010, 2018, 2023.

Rhum- Rum. France’s Rum Agricole Martinique AOP. Rum in French Cuisine.

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

Rum on the rocks.

Photograph courtesy of the Evening Standard, UK.

In every French chef’s storeroom, there are two or three different types of rum; one of them will always be France’s Rhum Agricole Martinique.AOP. Rum will be there with AOC Cognac, Armagnac, and Calvados. These four AOP 40% alcohols are behind many of France’s most famous dishes.

Before rum there was sugarcane, and before the import of sugar from sugarcane anything in Europe that was sweetened was sweetened with honey. In 1492 Columbus discovered South America and by 1505 Portugal began sugarcane plantations in Brazil. Shortly thereafter Spain started their sugarcane plantations in Cuba with rum following on. When Spain and France were at peace France had regular deliveries of sugar and rum; however, during their frequent wars, France’s supplies came from captured Spanish and Portuguese ships arriving from the New World. Sugar was worth as much as silver and only enough sugar reached France to satisfy the very wealthy.

France begins cultivating its own plantations.

At the end of the seven years’ war in 1763, France gave England her North American possessions in return for the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique (and Saint Lucia) along with other possessions. France began her own sugarcane plantations and soon after rum production was in full swing. At that time, all rums were made from molasses, a brown treacle left over from the sugar production process. The plantation system was behind much of France’s terrible attachment to slavery and while the French revolution was supposed to end slavery in 1794 Napoleon I in 1802 allowed it to continue. French laws ending slavery finally came into force in 1848.

Sugar cane in a plantation.

Photograph courtesy of llee_wu

www.flickr.com/photos/13523064@N03/15273920249/

Rum on French menus:

Baba au Rhum Généreux –Avec sa Bouteille de Rhum sur la Table Pour l'Imbiber sur Mesure - A generous serving of rum baba with the bottle placed on the table for the diner to soak the baba according to taste. Rum baba is one of France’s most famous desserts and indeed, the most famous dessert made with rum. Rum baba comes with a long and well-documented history.

Rum Baba

Photograph courtesy of Dan

www.flickr.com/photos/bhamsandwich/3075960488/

Crêpes au Chèvre Fraise au Rhum – Thin pancakes, crepes, served with fresh goat’s cheese and flavored with rum.

Filet Mignon de Porc Flambé au Rhum – A filet mignon, tenderloin, fillet of pork flambéed in rum. In French cuisine, the term filet mignon does not refer to a beef tenderloin, the beef filet, but rather to the narrow, almost pointed, end of the beef tenderloin. If a filet mignon is on a French menu it is a pork tenderloin unless otherwise noted.

Pavé de Saumon Grillé (+/-230g) Flambé au Rhum, Sauce Antillaise (Crème Fraîche, Ail et Ananas), Achards de Légumes, Riz Long Thaï Parfumé au Jasmin – A thick cut of grilled Atlantic salmon (approximately 230 grams) flambéed in rum and served with a Sauce Antillaise (made with crème fraîche, garlic and pineapple) and “archard” vegetables, with long-grain Thai rice scented with jasmine. There is no single recipe for Sauce Antillaise, so most menu listings, like this one, will include some detail. (The Antilles Françaises, the French Antilles are France’s Caribbean departments and dependencies which include the departments of Guadaloupe and Martinique and the dependencies of Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martine). Achards de légumes are a French-Creole dish from the Indian Ocean island of Réunion; it is a mixture of lightly fried vegetables, cut into thin strips and flavored with ginger, garlic, turmeric, and vinegar. Here the dish is served with the long-grained Thai rice of which some sought-after varieties have a natural jasmine scent.

Sorbet Ananas, Vanille et Granité au Rhum – A pineapple sorbet flavored with vanilla and served with a rum granité. Granité is the French version of the Italian Granita which began as sugar, fruit, and water served with crushed ice, (it is often called sludge in the UK and the USA). Now French granités have gone upmarket and will include sweet wines, rums, and brandies.

Savarin au Rum

The addition of Chantilly cream to a Rum Baba makes a Savarin au Rum.
The Savarin is named after Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, (1755 – 1826),
the first philosopher of food.

Photograph courtesy of Alchetron

Tartare de Fruits Aromatisé au Rhum et à la Vanille de Madagascar- A fruit Tatar flavored with rum and vanilla from Madagascar.

Rum and coke.

Photograph courtesy of Ryan Clare

www.flickr.com/photos/ryawesome/4280728468/

The British Navy changes the daily ration

of French brandy for rum.

Rum was popular everywhere, but in the 1600s and the early 1700’s the British Navy traditionally gave its sailors a daily ration of French brandy; that, despite France and England being at war through the 1600s. In the 1700s the British Navy finally said no to French brandy, and the British Navy sailors received rum from British Caribean possessions. (I think the British still allowed their officers to drink French brandy. Since, when Admiral Nelson was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1802 his body was sent home for burial preserved in a cask of brandy). Britain formally ended the tradition of a daily tot of rum in 2007.

The different French rums.

There are many excellent rums produced in all of France’s island departments and dependencies as well as in French Guiana. They include dark rums which get their color from caramelized sugar or molasses. The darkest rums are generally based on molasses and aged in heavily charred barrels that give them much stronger flavors than the darkest Rhum Agricole made directly from sugarcane.

Nevertheless, in the 1900’s nothing except the producer's credentials guaranteed the age and how a rum was produced. An amber or dark rum from one producer can taste very different to that of another. Today’s French rums are made from molasses or sugarcane juice, with only Martinique’s AOC Rhum Agricole legally limited to sugar cane juice. For other rums, the reputation of the producer and the language on the label is the only guarantee of the method of production and the rum’s age.

The introduction of factories that produced sugar from sugar beets closed hundreds of sugarcane plantations.

When France began making sugar from sugar beet on the mainland France’s Caribbean sugar plantations lost their primary market. The plantations which fought off closure began to make rum directly from cane juice of which they had plenty. That started the argument over which was better rum from sugarcane juice or rum from molasses?

At the beginning of the 20^th century, there were still hundreds of rum distillers with a huge variety of names, colors and alcohol levels in their products. Unless the background of the producer was known there was little to differentiate the product from bottle to bottle with many using generic names like Captain’s rum or similar. In the 20th century with so much sugar being made from sugar beets the world prices for sugar went down and down, and more and more sugarcane plantations closed. With so many plantations closed the lack of sufficient molasses for rum production for many distilleries was a real rum do. (I apologize, but I couldn't help myself). To continue production many Caribean distilleries have begun to import molasses from China and elsewhere.

The only AOP rum is Rhum Agricole Martinique.

Only France’s islands made enough rum at competitive prices to keep their sugarcane plantations open, but there were still hundreds of different labels and no control. In 1996 France issued regulations for Martinique’s Rum Agricole AOC (now AOP) that only permitted rum made directly from sugarcane from the island of Martinique. In 2004 Martinique’s Rum Agricole received its Pan-European AOP. (France INAO office is the trusted controller and enforcer of all AOC, AOP, and Label Rouge quality standards). Martinique’s AOP rum can only be made with the sugarcane juice distilled within 48 hours of harvest. The initials and names used to show the age of the rum are very similar to those used for AOP Cognac, Armagnac, and Calvados.

4 AOP Rum Agricole Martinique producers and products.

Photograph courtesy of Serious Eats.

The name and ages of Rhum Agricole Martinique AOP:

Rhum Agricole Martinique Vieux– A minimum of two years in oak barrels.

Rhum Agricole Martinique Très Vieux, Réserve Spéciale, Cuvée Spéciale or VSOP – Aged for at least four years.

Rhum Agricole Martinique Extra Vieux, Grande Réserve, Hors d’Age, XO - Aged for more than six years.

Older Martinique Rhum Agricole is produced by some of the AOP producers, and they have added their own labels for 10 year, 15 year and older rums.

Other French rums have a variety of labels which include the words traditional, planter's choice, navy rum, Caribbean rum, and more. But only rums with a Martinique AOP have AOP on the label.

Ti – Punch.

When dining in any of France’s islands or in a French mainland restaurant serving French-Créole Antillaise Cuisine a Ti-Punch will be the cocktail of choice at the bar or on the menu. A Ti-Punch began as a rum and lime cocktail drunk at celebrations; now it is served whenever a rum cocktail is called for and its recipe may change slightly with the location.

T-Punch

Photograph courtesy of Chilled Magazine.

The English language website of Martinique is

http://us.martinique.org/

The English language website for Rum Agricole Martinique is:

http://www.rhum-agricole.net/site/en/aoc_decree

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AOP, IGP and Vin de France. New Labels on French Wines.

Ail - Garlic. Garlic in French Cuisine.

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