Fwd: Security and stuff.....

It's a shame that because of a few unscrupulous Companies and people life is made so difficult. When these spammers are found, it will be expensive for them....! That's a promise..!

Dommage que la vie est rendu si difficile par quelques Compagnies et gens avec peu de scrupule. Une fois trouvée, cela va revenir très chère pour eux.....! 

C'est promis!

Schade das das leben so schwierig gemacht ist durch einige Gesellschaften und Leute ohne Skrupel. Wenn Sie ausfindig gemach worden sind wird das sehr teuer fur sie werden.....!         Versprochen!

     

There are many places on the Internet where you can go to "Find out how to", but they all tend to be "genteel" places, and don't really tell you the BEST way.
..Now these little babies sometimes present "genteel" people with a problem, because they tend only to know them in this form...easy to eat..and eatable in the "genteel" fashion - with knife and fork......!
Unfortunately the taste isn't there!
Today I found some freshly landed sardines in the Halles here, so - into my basket they went.
Now I'm going to cook them - BBQ probably - and eat them in the time honoured traditional way, so scorned by those "food snobs" who have forgotten that the original knives and forks are still available - they're dangling - attached to your wrists....!..Girlies can do it too, and guys just love doing it - it's total freedom.......I'll give you a little story about how I learnt, and not only is it thoroughly enjoyable, but is even "genteel" and doesn't put others off their food by having to watch sardine heads disappear into the mouths of  hungry males - or females.
I learnt this in a rather "posh" fish restaurant in Riyeka, in the one time Yugoslavia...I've written about the place elsewhere already https://sites.google.com/site/ianwmitchellswebsite/oh-those-communists and a real education it was.
Two business men sitting nicely within our viewpoint were relishing and ravishing some poor little grilled sardines, quite simply by picking them up by hand (they are a kind and genteel fish - the offer head and tail to do so), then running their teeth gently and calmly into the flesh of the fish. all the way up one side, just leaving the filet bone, genteely turned the whole thing over and did the same on the other side.This is what they were left with neatly attached still to head and tail!
Nobody had been offended, disgusted - everyone was happy, but of course those natural utensils were just a little sticky and smelly.....No problem - a slice of lemon was used as "wash tissue", a piece of bread as towel.....then the piece of bread was popped into the mouth....!
Now this wash, as I said, in a relatively high class place, so if it's good for all those highly placed communists of Tito, then it's good for anybody.....!
So - now you know.....go enjoy and don't ever be scared of using your fingers, just maybe not for the soup.......



Bonne Appétit!

Friday...fishy time....

  Friday merits fish....Firstly because the choice is larger, secondly because the fish is fresher, thirdly because the prices are lower and fourthly because I'm not Catholic, but if I can profit then ....OK! Actually the dish I'm eating this Friday lunchtime can be made equally well any day of the week because it's main ingredient is "Morue" otherwise known as "Salt Cod" - and it is the national basic ingredient of Portugal in particular, where it is used in some manner almost daily. Morue is not a cheap affaire, but it is so strongly tasted that - like true caviar - little is needed.
"Morue" is also a collective name, but is generalised as "COD"....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod in English, and involves a multitude of other fish than the simple Cod known by everyone. In fact the dried version used in France and elsewhere for these delicious dishes is actually known as "Stockfish" in English and even in German.
In French it is known as "Morue" but is strictly speaking the dried salted version of "Cabillaud" (French for Cod) and other latin languages.
 http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morue
In other words, strictly speaking one can't really go fishing for "Morue" or "Stockfish" because the Cod it is generally made from just simply doesn't swim around dried and/or salted.....
Thoroughly confused now....? So can I get on with the cooking of the Morue in a Brandade.......?
It's so simple and so good....all you need is your dried and salted cod, a whole heap of GARLIC......all pounded together to give a creamy substance at the end....so simple, but so tiring...all that pounding, but like whipped cream, we have cooking machines that take most of the work out of it nowadays!  When you've got as far as this, then not only are you in need of a longish pause, but of something to eat and drink as well!
But.....firstly you have to decide what you are going to add to this creamy terribly concentrated mixture.
You can add cream and use it for little canapes - on biscuits, rounds of toast or bread and served with the apéritifs...there are so many possibilities of service - just do it!
Or even as a first course - mixed with cream or bechamel sauce,spread on toast or baguette bread, passed under the grill just to brown it - gratinée.... Or served as a gratineed dish by itself, accompanied by fresh crispy bread.
Even small "accras" - small or large balls of creamed Morue dipped in coating batter and deep fried...for the Apéritifs - for the entrée for the main course.....
Personally, I'm going to make my Morue into "Brandade de Nimes" or "Brandade parmentier" - mashed, creamed potatoes mixed together with the Morue.....couldn't be simpler or better...served with deep fried in olive oil, triangular croutons, maybe some black olives....... a touch of decoration, simple but effective, parsley and lemon, fresh crispy crusty bread....and you're off on a world trip of total pleasure.....
I did warn you that all this work makes you hungry.....so I'm off...!
Bonne Appétit.....
 

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iwmpop(mrlemarquis)     -     Vauvert, France     -      Juillet 2011

In vino veritas.......

... and sometimes a lot of other stuff that shouldn't be there!
It's always been the case. Wine is held by some people in a sort of "snob" value, mainly by those who know very little about it.
The Japanes and the Chinese are now catching up with the Europeans and Americans, both on drinking the stuff and being taken for a ride by unscrupulous dealers.
The latest one attracts attention again to the higher priced (and over priced) wines from the Bordeaux region of France. All of these bottles......are fakes, and expensive fakes to boot!
This doesn't really bother me too much, I am not a consumer of Bordeaux wines, the real ones are prohibited, firstly because of their price, and secondly because of their (for me) extremely high content in "tannin" - or "uric acid" . This is produced naturally in most Bordeaux wines, particularly high in the red variety, and it serves for prolonging the "ageing" process....the higher the "tannin/uric acid" content, basically means the longer one can lay the wines down, over many, many years.
Of course, this leads to "trickery" - home wine makers can buy the stuff ready for use, the problem is that most home wine makers don't know just how much is already contained in their home made wine.
Not important you think.....WRONG!
You see - uric acid naturally or artificially created, is responsable for something other than the storage period of wine.
It's responsable for a nasty little condition - most painful - that little illnes called........Arthritis or Arthrosis! Commonly called GOUT, and generally associated with aristocratic gentlemen with their feet heavily bandaged and up high on a footstool...it's a source of amusement, but, beleive me - if you've got it.....it is not at all amusing,  and can be highly dangerous as well.
 Yes, these images are of extreme cases, but each individual reacts differently ..but is it really worthwhile paying expensively priced wines to get here...?
The Japanese and Chinese are slowly making their own discoveries - particularly with "doctored" Bordeaux wines. Of course not all Bordeaux wines are "doctored" but more and more are becoming so. Cheap imitations - mixes of rough and ready wines from all over the world are taken, synthetic products (such as the same "coolant" you put into your car radiators) are added to alter the taste and sweetness and all kinds of other products that do this and that, until you could almost beleive you WERE drinking high class vintage stuff - and the price is appropriate!
Highly dangerous cocktails of chemicals totally unnatural and totally dangerous.
One of the ways to be sure, or almost, that you're drinking what you paid for, is to look very carefully at any labels on the bottles. The intelligent wine cheats are - thankfully - not so intelligent when it comes to labelling their lethal products! Not always quite as directly as this one..... but generally there is something to be discovered - somewhere....now and then in the restaurant itself..after all - somebody has to refill- somewhere!
As a last illustration, I recall in the 70's/80's a scandal breaking concerning Austrian wines, so "pansched" (German word meaning mixed up) with the famous car coolant that the authorities actually used it on Austrian and Swiss motorways in winter as a replacement for salt - to melt the ice and snow....
From here..........       ........to here....

.................passing later to here......

........all in the name of "Gastronomy".........

Bonne Appétit    -    A Votre Santé! 


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iwmpop (mr le marquis).    -   Vauvert, France    -     Juillet 2011

14 Juillet - Bastille Day

Well - I just found some time before the festivities begin.....Bastille Day - Quatorze Juillet....same thing, and I suppose because they were rather busy cutting heads and things off on this day, the originators didn't have too much time to make up special menus or even dishes for the occasion. Over time, there haven't really been many efforts made to invent any, the day being a sort of family  and social event. Probably for this reason, most people stay at home, rather in the style of the Americans on the "4th of July" and burn the devil out of bits of meat and fish over the open fires called BBQ's, or group together with friends and neighbours occasionally to put on a sort of small local community meal together.
Not surprisingly, being France, one of the reasons for the bloody Revolution was food, or the lack of it....A certain Queen of France stated, when told that "the people had no bread to eat" suggested that "they should eat cake".....I suppose as well that this was one of the reasons she lost her head over the issue.
It doesn't pay to play with the French on the matter and question of food - as she learnt - to her cost!
Since Bastille Day falls in the height of Summer, things tend to take place outdoors, which almost guarantees a downpour! Since it's a National Day, menus vary largely with the various Regional products, and tend to have dealings with the well known "natural" but very typiqually French things. (in all manners of preparation....)
It's almost as though they delight in expressing their total Frenchness, and why not..... they are!
and like to prove it even in the pan....!
Strangely, the younger French are no longer such avid eaters of these delicacies, and seem to prefer something like this as part of their National Day meals......which when served with  "frites" is actually the National dish of a neighbour to the French...Belgium! Of course it's delicious, but it isn't French.....!
Eaten all the year round, it's strange to note that the entire home production of mussels in Belgium is.....ZERO!
They don't cultivate them at all, and all the moules/mussels you eat in such quantity in Belgium are imported from France - Holland and Germany....
There are often....everywhere in Central Europe, whole evenings given up to "Moules/Frites" evenings...days....lunches....where you pay a price and eat as much of the stuff as you can, always hoping there isn't just ONE mussel that isn't good, or you're going to be staring at ALL the mussels you ate, surrounded by masticated chips as well! Not a pretty sight....
Of course the French eat other well-known dishes of National pride, like ..Coq au vin....or little Regional specialities such as  .."Boeuf Bourguignon" (a beef stew made preferably from red burgundy wine - excessively expensive but a délice!) My local variation is "Gardienne" very similar but made with the less expensive local wines of the Gard and the Hérault, and using bulls meat as opposed to cow (beef) - The bull's meat comes generally from the local Arena's - it's the period of the bullfighting season...Noble beasts in a stew....? At least that way, their deaths serve some purpose, although the amount of adrenaline pumped out makes the meat tougher and much longer cooking.
Incidentally, for the same reason, "game" meats are always more tender if the animal is "ambushed" rather than after a long chase when the adrenaline is pumped into the muscles, but try telling Hunters (Chasseurs) that fact...!
So - there we are, what started as a suggestion from Royalty to "eat cake" has finally developed into another French food orgy...
    ....so - enjoy it!