Adam Balic

Market!!?? Caught by my own fair hand with an orange Czech nymph I will have you know!

This Grayling (Thymallus thymallus) was caught on the river Teviot (Scottish borders). Related to salmon and trout, they are noted for their faint smell thyme when fresh. They are also quite pretty, especially the high dorsal fin. Bit of a rushed job, simply fried in butter (not even clarified, horror). The flesh of these fish is quite pale and tastes similar to trout (brown).

I forgot to add that I had couscous as a Tapas option in Jerez. And so the unstoppable march of couscous conitunes. As a friend said "It's brilliant. You don't have to spend all that time cooking like with rice or pasta".

I guess the Italian relationship goes back even futher then WWII as until Savoy was largely absorbed into France in 1860 (as part of the political agreement with Napoleon III that brought about the unification of Italy) along with Nice, Grenoble would have been even more of a border town. I looked up some recipes from Grenoble, on is pasta baked with poultry or game. The pasta are called Fides, which suggests that they are the same family as the Spanish Fideos or Italian Fidelanza/Fedelini. They are even cooked in a similar manner. What a pity that it isn't possible to see and hear this part of France, pre-Italian unification. I wonder what he people sounded like at what they cooked then.

Oh I was wondering how the wooden Beaufort moulds I saw at the Mens market were used or if they were used at all now. Beaufort is one cheese that I find hard to get in Edinburgh, damn it.

This site has a good description and some historical recipes. I have seen modren versions for sale in Lyon ~ 10 years ago as well. I made mine with a sweet Jurancon (which is in no way traditional, but what the hell), long pepper, grains of paradise, cinnamon, star anise, mace, cloves and ginger.

That is interesting, long pepper (Piper longum and Piper retrofractum) is highly aromatic and I get nutmeg/cinnamon aromas, but it also has a higher concentration of piperine then back pepper (Piper nigrum), so tastes hotter.

Lucy - I am glad it is turning out well. I agree about the long pepper, I have made Hippocras ( Ypocras in French?) a few times and the addition of this spice really likes the other flavours. It is quite a hot spice though, do you detect heat in the vin de noix?

No worries, my pleasure. The Chevre was one of the best I have ever had, creamy, herb with out a hint of bitterness or chalkness. I am going to cook a meal based on some of the stuff from the region on saturday, so I will post some other images of the cheese etc then. I think they enjoyed the meal

I had a quite walk through and a mint tea in the Arab quarter (North African restuarant street). Judgeing from the quality of the Moroccan creramics I saw, I imagine that at least some of this food will be good?

Lucy - I drank homemade vin de noix that were being sold in the local bar and I have bottles of the Croatian version here. I haven't drunk any commercial versions. Both have a sweet element. I think it needs some sweetness, otherswise it risks being unbalanced and bitter. Sweetness balances the bitterness. But I can see it getting too sweet, it requires balance, but you are going to drink it so you should make it to you preference. Goodluck!

After twelve hours of standing in a Scottish river, here is the my Grayling or Ombre in French. Not a Ombre Chevalier as discussed above.

Is mainara sauce the same as scampi sauce? Dude, no wonder there is a issue with authentic in your country

This purist would most likely miss the point then that it is impossible to pin down a recipe like bouilliabaise in a pure form, there are too many variations even in traditional recipes (look at the clafoutis thread on the French board). But it is useful to have definitions. I don't have any clues on American-Italian food, but I assume that Marinara sauce was a tomato sauce for seafood? In this case I can't see there being a conflict with it having multiple definitions as it is a basic preparation. Things evolve, but I still have to know what you are talking about for you to effectively communicate an idea. Just like the fish cake v bouilliabaise it is balance.

Yesterday. Thai fish cakes with salad and rice Today. My first ever ribs (non-authentic), salad and rice

There you go then. You know what the traditional form of the dish is, from there you can determine the merits of the variations. Again if you like call it a variation on a theme (fish stew/soup with saffron, fennel, orange peel, olive oil), the point being that "bouilliabaise" defines this solar system of fish stews which orbits the archetype. I imagine that most people would be surprised if they were served a dish of Thai fish cakes under the name of "bouilliabaise" though right? As I said before, I don't think that an absolute of "authentic" exists in the context of food (obviously there are exceptions) and I personally prefer "traditional", but the concept is important otherwise we would not know what people actually mean when they describe a recipe. It is like language (or at least English) it is defined by peoples use of it, but there also has to be a degree on agreement and continuity otherwise it is the Tower of Babel. There are at least three type of rascasse used in bouillabaisse, they are also key to other Med. Fish stew/soups. This suggets to me that they are very important in some way. There are at least six dozen members of the family (Scorpaenidae) in North American waters are none of these eaten in the States?

I suspect that like other salmonids, the flesh colour is diet dependent. Certainly the Scottish charr have ivory coloured flesh.

I suspect that "authentic" has a different weighting in the Australian v USA lexicon. If you like I would also use 'traditional'. The makings of a traditional boeuf bourguignon are avalible even in Scotland, so I'm not sure why adding an extra layer of complication is acceptable. Lets face it isn't such a big deal for home cooking and Chefs play about with names, that is part of the creative process, but names and labels have a purpose. Anyway, as said I not sure that is such an imporant point, except where an a secondary dish with the same name detracts from the original or is misleading

Ombre Chevalier is the name of the local form of Arctic Charr (Salvelinus alpinus). These fish are salmonids, so closely related to salmon and trout. They also have the most northern distribution of all fresh water fish and they are highly varible in form, there may be several types of non-interbreeding morphs in the same lake for instance. The version found in Scotland looks like this and tastes similar to trout, if paler in flesh and a richer flavour. For added confusion Ombre is the French name for another salmonid, known in English as a "Grayling". These taste of thyme (hence the name Thymallus arcticus I guess) and I am going fishing for them tomorrow.

Fair enough. Plenty of people call it "beef burgundy". It is what it is. ← I also call it beef burgundy . Look every housewife/restaurant in Burgundy is going to have a slightly different version of the dish. That is the nature of cooking and therefore, variation on a theme is part and parcel of "authenticity". That's part of what makes some cooks better then others and what makes regional cooking interesting. But, naming something should identify common elements. In my own private classification I have: Beef stewed in red wine: = anything goes Beef Burgundy= beef stewed in red wine, maybe pearl onions, maybe mushrroms etc. Not olives, orange peel. boeuf bourguignon = beef stewed with red wine with mushroom, lardon and onion garnish. This may not be correct, but at least it is a system and this in my opinion is better then "Well it may no be be "authentic" but is tastes good so what does it matter".

Why not just call the less authentic versions "Beef stew with red wine" then, rather then "boeuf bourguignon"? To me the latter represents a specfic style of preparation (actually more about the garnish I guess), but I guess the might also represent cachet to others. I am not too fussed, but if I ordered boeuf bourguignon and what I got was beef cooked with orange peel, red wine and olives I would be annoyed, not because the dish wasn't good, but because it was not what I ordered. Having said that "authentic" is very hard to acheive in reality. The lamb in the UK is quite different to that in Tuscany, so if I cooked Tuscan lamb recipe in the UK it would not be the same.

DCMark - I didn't mean to imply that all the Italian places in Grenoble were poor, just the places I saw. My friends tell me that the Italian population is quite large there and the food is also good. Sorry, bad expression by me. I don't know the name of the restaurant at all sorry. It is in a square at the back of a large church (catherdral?) near a large park.... What also looked very good in Grenoble was the North African restuarants. I only had time to grab a mint tea though. You know I think that the these areas are one of the most beautiful areas of France that I have seen. I have many alpine flower shots (some of which can be made into local booze, so I will post these later), birds animals etc. It seems that there things of beauty on all scales in this region. You were very lucky.

To say thank you to my hosts for their generosity I nipped down to the Saturday market and bought some ingredients to make a meal. As I was too scared to cook a traditional French meal and due to the ingredients avalible I cooked a vaguely North African meal. Grilled peppers (including an excellent green type called 'beef hearts'), zucchini and braised carrots, grilled eggplant gratin with tomato; chicken tagine with coco beans, olives, lemon and honey; potatoes roasted with lemon and garlic; baked lamb stuffed with apricots, walnuts, barberries and onion and couscous. The lamb was very, very good. Given the amount of damage I saw to the alpine plants when hiking that the sheep had done, I was unsure about buying the lamb at all though. The coco beans after shelling, but before cooking. The beans become a uniform tan colour after cooking, but taste excellent.

My clafoutis from my recent trip to france. Made with griotte cherries from the garden and a recipe done from memory and "feel". It was left over night as my French hosts tell me that they never eat in warm or hot.. These are the cherries that I used and I have to say that authentic or not they had an excellent flavour that I prefer to using sweet cherries.

One trip we made was to visit the farm of some friends of our hosts. They live in the Chartreuse valley in Savoie which is about an hours drive north from Mens The farm and the region in general is dominated by the very impressive Massif de la Chartreuse The owners of the farm originally had no farming background or experience, but after putting in a great deal of effort and sacrifice they now have a beautiful productive farm and a wonderful, if very demanding, life style. At this time of the year the goats graze a meadow during the day and are put in the barn overnight. They are milked morning and night. The goats comming in from the meadow. The goats are rotated in a set pattern, as the are fussy eaters and wuld only eat certain plants if given the chance. In the meadow it self I noted numerous herbs including; oregano, mint, thyme, yarrow, gentian, strawberries and violets amoungst others. The milking I was given a tour of the cheese making facilities, but I was too excited to take any photos, sorry. Essentially two main tymes of cheese are made, a straight chèvre which the milk is cultured before adding rennet and moulding into various shapes and aging. Chèvre at different stages of aging. A larger tomme is also made. This is a 'cooked' cheese, fresh milk has rennet added to it and the curds are heated to 30.C befoer being strained and moulded. The temperature and humidity of the the agin rooms for the two cheeses is also different.