Ptipois

Because, by referring to "growers", you were precisely focusing on the "grand crus" yourself, i.e. on artisanal production, not on the brand name bottling companies. There, exactly, laid the trouble with your statement. By saying that growers blend their oils with foreign produce, which in France they are not supposed to do, you're pointing your finger at their trade. I asked you immediately if you could be more specific, which was the least I could do, and only now are we getting the beginning of an explanation from you. Why is this coming so late? Wasn't I very clear from the start? If you had only said that bottling companies sold blends, that would have been right, but not worth mentioning as a revelation coming from "informed sources", because this is no secret at all, and blended oils sold in France are never advertised as a 100% French product. So I'm still assuming that since you wrote "growers", you were thinking of growers in the first place. Weren't you? Maybe you still fail to see the difference between bottled brands and artisanal producers. That would explain everything. So why did you write "growers" and not "supermarket commercial brands"? Of course not all olive oils *consumed* in France are extra-virgin. Not anymore than in other countries. But nobody said otherwise. But again, directly referring to "growers" means referring to the artisanal production, which is 100% French origin. The blends you're writing about here are not 100% French product and not advertised as such. So I don't see where the problem is, and I fail to see the interest in your first statement. And let's be exact, you began by saying that French growers were adding oil "from outside of France" and now we've turned to oil "graded lower than extra virgin". This is, again, something different. What a mess — I believe you may not have a very clear idea of what exactly you're referring to, and if you don't, how could I ever ? Sorry, but you're still not getting it. I don't need a proof that Auchan or Carrefour supermarket blended oils are blended! Nobody claims them to be 100% French olive oil, still they are subjected to strict control in acidity level and organoleptic value. But growers are not involved in that. Quite clear, but in no way the answer to my question following your first post... Gosh this is tough... But we have come a long way from accusing the French artisanal growers to muddling through the vast marshes of supermarket blended oils of various European origins. If this is what you meant in the first place, then you should not have used the word "growers", because this has nothing to do with growers. Is that so difficult to admit? And besides, if really you meant "supermarket brands" and not "growers", I fail to see the relationship between plain fraud, i.e. the Baumanière affair, involving treachery on the quality and origin and the addition of lamp oils, and the controlled, measurable situation of supermarket blended oils, which is a completely different matter.

I, and the AOC and AOP growers of France, are not the ones who have something to prove here and facts to provide. I rather think you are, after your undocumented accusations of an entire trade. You obviously are pretending not to understand what I have written, even bringing confusion through the use of words. This is such a display of mauvaise foi that I will not go on with this conversation unless you do answer my initial question. Just a few things, because I am stubborn and like to make sure I have made myself clear: - I am at loss trying to understand how you ever could come up with the so-called "purchased foreign oils" rate in, say, each one of the 10 most successful French olive oil moulins (artisanal growers) without knowing about them in the first place — since you're asking me what they are. Even more at a loss locating "the best-selling moulins" because their production is quite small and confidential and I do not even think there are figures to classify their sales. If you have a special means of investigation to analyse the oils of those artisanal moulins once I've given you their names and then detect adulteration, they must be super-human means indeed. But who knows? - Of course, as I wrote, olive oil bottlers like Puget and L'Olivier don't count since they do blending as a rule and do not pretend to sell only French produce, we do agree on that. So they're out of the way. Chains like Oliviers & Co have made a specialty of selling AOC-AOPs olive oils in urban locations, but they do also sell some non-AOC olive oils and maybe some blends too, but everything is advertised for what it is and there is nothing to investigate there. What remains is the AOC and AOP growers, and growers who do not have the AOC but claim to sell only the product of their land. Growers then, the ones you referred to in the first place. - If you could prove that artisanal olive growers in French moulins regularly use a proportion of foreign purchased oils in their production, then I'll be glad to forward the info to the DGCCRF (reminder: the French fraud repression office), who will be extremely interested, for this is clearly a job for them, and since I am not the origin of the info I'll be even gladder to direct the DGCCRF to you, and then you and your more informed sources may bring them precious help in uncovering a harsh, collective case of AOC fraud. I am sorry I cannot come up with the ten artisanal moulins producing the best-selling oils, for the reasons I explained above. I can think of a few that really come out of the lot though and have achieved some fame, so we may assume they are some sort of best-sellers. So, for instance, what is the percentage of foreign purchased olive oils in: - Moulin des Ombres, château de Montfrin (website here. This one makes it to some supermarket shelves. - Domaine de l'Olivette, Manosque (website here. - Moulin coopératif de Mouriès, Bouches-du-Rhône, AOC vallée des Baux (website here. Watch your ears.) - Moulin Alziari, Nice. Website here. - Château Virant AOC Aix-en-Provence. Website here. - Moulin Ramade, Nyons AOC. Website here. All those moulins have obtained medals or distinctions of some sort during the last few years, resulting in their availability to a relatively larger public and, for some, their presence on the shelves of some upper level supermarkets, or even urban supermarket chains like Monoprix. So that's the closest I can get to "best-selling French-produced oils". They are not chosen for their reputation or quality per se, but for their commercial exposure (all of them have websites). Please note that these products emanate from "French growers" and not from bottling companies. And let me remind that you still haven't answered my first question. I am doing you quite a favor in answering another question of yours when this first condition hasn't been fulfilled. I'm afraid the results of your search will not be worth much as long as the nature and reliability of your sources is not made clear here.

I'm afraid you are. You are trying to mess up words. "Olive oils sold in France" is not the same thing as "olive oils produced in France". You did begin by mentioning "growers". Enough said. Not full of BS? Well I think you're the one who has to prove it in this case. If you can prove to me that olive oils produced in France by local growers are not 100% produced in France, this is the time to do it, for that is exactly what you said. That would be an interesting revelation and I am sure the DGCCRF (Direction générale de la concurrence, de la consommation et de la répression des fraudes) would find it very useful. If your sources are so well informed, you'll have no difficulty bringing the proof here. Or maybe — get out of the mess by admitting your first statement was poorly stated?

Excuse me, but first of all you're replying to a question of mine with another question, and still haven't answered my question regarding your "informed sources". I am not going to follow you on this track. Secondly, in your first post, you were clearly not referring to French bottling companies selling blended olive oils but to "growers". That is quite a different matter, and quite a shift from your initial statement. Here is your post again: You were plainly stating that French "growers", without further precision, were typically adding a large proportion of purchased foreign olive oil to their production. Unless you are really bad at expressing yourself, this meant artisanal growers and not bottling companies, which of course use olive oils from other countries (which are still subjected to drastic control according to the classification of EVOOs and VOOs in France and should NOT contain refined or lamp olive oils). For instance, Puget is a famous bottling company, selling high-quality blended oils for a reasonable price. Now Puget does blend, you don't need to fetch the proof for me. But Puget is not a grower! So if you referred to bottling companies (which you didn't mention at all in your first post), your "more informed sources" are only stating the obvious, and in that case I wonder why you found that worth mentioning. But if you did refer to "growers", and you did, you're referring to the artisanal AOC and AOP producers whose oils are 100% from their own trees and that is grossly inexact, to the point of insulting a trade that is truly dedicated to producing a genuinely local, regularly controlled, high-quality produce. The problem with the Baumanière oil was not precisely that it was blended — cheaper, brand name oils are blended, under strict supervision regarding the quality and purity. It was that, given the origin it claimed to have (the vallée des Baux), and its price, it was not supposed to be blended, and much less to contain "huiles lampantes" in their unrefined state. The oil was not what it claimed to be, a premium grade olive oil, hence the fraud. That fraud was committed either by Charial and the SVB, or (more likely) by the SVB without Charial being allowed (or trying very hard) to take a closer look at its composition and origin. He sure should have taken a closer look. But the Société de la Vallée des Baux, which is supposed to promote the pure oils produced in the Les Baux region and nothing else, seems to be more of a culprit.

I beg your pardon?

Please do not shift from your original statement, please don't twist my own (I never wrote "everybody is doing it", actually you're the one writing that) and answer my initial question. Spanish olive oil can be good. But that is beside the point. The point is purity of origin in a context of AOC (appellation d'origine contrôlée). And, outside of the AOC regulations, how exactly domestic olive oils are classified, denominated, tested and commercialized in France, a subject about which you don't seem to know much about. I am aware that my tone is somewhat offensive and I'm sorry for this, but I do feel offended on the behalf of many French producers and their families whose honesty and dedication to quality is plainly attacked through your insinuations. Saying that the way I (according to you) "detest any scrutiny and defer blame" makes you "rethink just how widespread is this type of thing" is quite a harsh way of implying that I might be trying to cover any dishonest practices of French oil producers. I think you have some nerve and it is my turn then to wonder why it seems so important to you to spread the rumor that French olive oil producers do massive blending as a rule. And, may I add, I have not seen any scrutiny in your post, only innuendo and imprecise accusation. You did write : "I'm told be more informed sources that adding olive oil that comes from outside of France is typical. Since olive production is so tentuous, the growers usually use anywhere from 20% to 50% purchased oils in their blends." So, what are your "more informed sources"? You haven't answered this question at all, and you even keep on stating that French olive oil is massively blended with oils from other origins as if this were a solid fact. But unless your "more informed sources" prove to be serious and tried, I will consider this nefarious BS, because indeed there is no solid fact of this sort. I have studied the subject of European olive oils pretty closely. Time sure has passed since 1956 and though limited, French olive oil production is doing allright, and please note that it is no mass production and is not designed to be. Premium olive oils in France are not blended, or they would never get, or keep, the AOC, which, in order to be kept year after year, requires regular testing to be done. I am not saying that a few examples of fraud cannot exist, as was the case with the SVB and Baumanière, but that is what they would be — fraud. By no means a common practice.

Recently on french TV there was a report about olive oil, showing the cargos of cheap olive oil from Spain in Italian harbors (I even heard of "huile lampante") ready to feed the oil bottling companies. This may last a while longer before the European Union sets the situation right. Even when I did not know about this, I always wondered at the blandness of most medium-priced Italian olive oils, compared to oils from other origins that were most of the time cheaper. As for the most expensive Italian olive oils, marketing has made all of them to taste "too green", with an acrid, raw flavor obtained by pressing immature fruit. Besides I always found them much too expensive for their quality. However, the "green" taste is the most successful and sought-after nowadays. But I much prefer olive oils with "black" taste (from ripe slightly fermented fruit, as in Portuguese and Moroccan olive oils) or "mature" taste, as in the Eastern Mediterranean olive oils. My favorite olive oils these days are French, Moroccan, Greek, Portuguese, and Turkish. The oil I use the most frequently comes in plastic bottles, costs 6 euros per liter and comes from Southern Morocco. It is wonderful. Halal butchers carry it. No need to spend more. For special occasions I use château de Montfrin, which is wonderful too.

Yes, that is the case: a single example of scam on a very limited scale. And obviously making use of the chic reputation of Les Baux olive oil and, above all, of the Oustau de Baumanière, a place where rich clients from all over the world are likely to buy a bottle with only the caution of the 2-star restaurant, not the consumer vigilance that is now a characteristic of olive oil commercialization in France. Today, the French olive oil buyer is very taste-conscious and origin-conscious. A quick look at the olive oil department in any supermarket would tell you, as well as the existence of chains specialized in high-quality olive oils like Oliviers & Co. There is no reason to incriminate French olive oil production from this isolated case. There is not only an AOC system but all commercialized olive oils are subjected to strict control, sometimes after the retail stage if necessary (as the Charial story shows). There is an imprimatur for every price range, and it seems that this olive oil escaped the test for some reason. Controls are regularly led in retail shops, and that's how the Fraud Repression service, visiting a shop in Les Baux in 2000, and probably taking samples of everything that was sold there, discovered that the composition of the Baumanière oil was not what it should have been. So there was a trial, which got its conclusion recently. These controls are frequent (olive oil producers have a reputation to maintain), and olive oil frauds don't often make it to the news here. The fact that this one did is rather to the credit of the French production.

See, one simple way to turn a phrase, and here is the doubt already. The damage is on its way. I'm not saying that Charial is the only chef in this situation but I'd be very surprised to discover that many other of his peers do the same thing. "Huile d'olive lampante" (translated as lamp oil) is not exactly only fit for lamps. It is a low-grade olive oil containing more than 3,3% acidity. It is edible when refined but considered unfit for consumption it its raw state. Now what exactly means "unfit for human consumption" in the French legislation remains to be examined; as a rule the threshold is kept very high owing to the "precaution principle", so it is possible that Charial wasn't found likely to poison anybody. Another reason for the relatively low fine may be that the chef was not found as guilty as the Yahoo News article presents it to be, which becomes clear when you read the French coverage of the facts. At least it is presented with a little more detail. For instance here. It appears that Charial claims to have been abused by the Société de la Vallée des Baux (SVB), a company commercializing the very prized and expensive oils from Les Baux-de-Provence and distributing the Baumanière brand. The court decided that he stood responsible for the purity and origin of the oil, and found him guilty not to have done that. However, the chef appeals on the grounds that he was never allowed by the SVB to evaluate the olive oil properly and therefore claims that he was abused by the SVB. I have to say that, amongst the French olive oils I am familiar with, the huile d'olive de la vallée des Baux is the one I have sometimes been suspicious of. SVB was the first French company to commercialize designer bottles for huge prices, Italian-style. And at times I have found the quality and taste to be underwhelming. I also heard some rumors that may well echo the situation GordonCooks evokes, but I only heard them about la Vallée des Baux, never about another origin. Maybe Charial was only the victim of a situation that had become customary with SVB. It is not clear whether he was aware of any alteration before the oils were tested. At any rate I'd have been much more careful if I had been him, and in the very best of cases he appears as more than a little silly.

Well, what do you think? I believe I made myself quite clear in my previous post. And that menton1 added some crucial information. Besides, I asked you if you could please be more specific and you're replying beside the point. Again, what are your "informed sources"? And why should they say such a thing? Here in France we have AOCs and careful checking of commercial olive oils, as well as a very strict classification that, as a rule, no one kids with. French-produced olive oil is not taken lightly here, the production is too scarce and precious. I don't believe there are enough dishonest producers to establish a rule, and certainly one two-star chef in overhyped Provence taking advantage of the situation is not enough to give French olive oil a bad name. The way that you jump from this particular case to state that everybody does the same thing is, to say the least, abusive. Olive oil is a beloved, sacred food in Southern France, and the natural attitude of its producers is utter respect. Of course I am referring to the grands crus of French olive oil. But the situation is not different for the cheaper commercial brands like Puget, which are of very good quality, sometimes assembled from several sources, but then they don't claim to be grands crus and include no lamp oil or other rubbish, or the producers would be in dire trouble. The champions of olive oil prestidigitation are the Italians, not the French. What do your informed sources say about this?

Typical ? More informed sources ? Could you be more specific please? OK, Charial did a very jerky thing (I doubt he's more than an exception), but please don't present French olive oil as "typically" altered. This is unfair and inexact. I can vouch for many of our grands crus — oils from Nyons, Manosque, Nice, Languedoc, etc. I know most French olive oil producers to stick to the quantities corresponding to their small-scale olive production and that's all. And Southern chefs who do promote some special olive oils are not all gangsters, and support outstanding produce. In France the legislation on the composition of olive oils is extremely strict, defined by exact denominations. Perhaps you're likely to be gypped by a grand chef who surfs on the wave of Provençal hype, and you won't read the label. But you're much less likely to be gypped at any Carrefour or Leclerc where the label will tell you all. By the way this practice ("coupage") is particularly common in Italy, at any rate more than in France, but that doesn't get the news.

Faon is always a masculine word whether the animal is male or female. There is, occasionally, the use of a little-employed word, faonne (pronounced as in fan). Bichette is not frequently used except as a mark of affection towards a woman. And maybe in a hunting context. Chevreuil is not the same animal species as the cerf so a chevreuil is not a young deer. Chevreuil is Capreolus capreolus, the roe-deer, a small member of the Cervidae. The young is a faon (as for the cerf), the male is a brocard, the female is called chevrette. Chevreuil is the species. Cerf (Cervus elaphus), that's the stag. He is taller and has larger antlers. The female is the biche, the young is the faon (as for the chevreuil). There is also the daim (the buck), smaller than the deer. The female is the daine, the young is (again) the faon.

Not even four weeks, not even six weeks. The other night, they were taking no reservations at all. And didn't condescend to explain when they would be taking them again.

Hello, I am now able to answer a question that I've been hearing. No antiamericanism or any other type of discrimination enters the booking criteria at Le Comptoir. And no, the lady at the reception has no particular kind of prejudice. She is just not nice, period. Last night at the hotel, I was sternly told that the restaurant was fully booked until January. Fine, I said, what about booking for January? I thought she was going to emit fireworks. "We don't have the registers", she snapped. No excuse, no comment, just a "get lost" attitude. My personal opinion is that it's always nice to pop in for lunch and enjoy the great bistrot food, but as far as dinner is concerned, the place is not good enough for that sort of fuss.

Pâtisserie Lerch, sadly, doesn't exist anymore. Yes, Kayser also makes kugelhopf, which always leaves me underwhelmed (too dry). BTW the main Kayser bakery is on rue Monge, near place Maubert. I think their breads are better than their pastries. Try Stohrer, 51, rue Montorgueil. If there's a best kugelhopf in Paris, this should be the one. There's also the Pierre Hermé kugelhopf; Pierre's from Alsace, so they should be okay.

Why such LOUD SHOUTING for an overpriced, touristy bistrot that few Parisians actually ever heard of?

Lucy, your cake looks exactly like the kind of cake that tastes much better than it looks Taking a close look at the original, I am almost positive that it is a quatre-quarts breton base with a caster sugar glaze added just out of the oven, then after cooling the cake is sliced horizontally and filled with a very rich almond cream. I wouldn't add too much flavoring to the almond cream, I would like the nice almond taste to come through, perhaps with a tiny hint of bitter almond extract and dark rum. Rum is a very frequent addition in Breton pastry.

No, it's potato starch. In a French recipe, when "fécule" is mentioned, it's always potato. "Fécule de maïs" will more commonly be printed as Maïzena, the only available brand.

Is this recipe that was given to you of the quatre-quarts type or of the sablé type (the true gâteau breton)? It seems that amandine cake was "a dense sponge", i.e. rather of the quatre-quarts type. As for the butter matured with "levain naturel", I have never heard of such a thing in my life. If this actually exists it must be something about the maturing of the cream, but cream usually matures naturally or is helped with some "ferments lactiques". I cannot see the point of maturing cream with sourdough starter. I'll do a search. The Le Gall butter seems OK for any type of Breton pastry. The addition of fleur de sel is a commercial gimmick (coarse sea salt is just as fine), but if you want to add salt to some unsalted butter, fleur de sel becomes interesting because of its smaller crystal structure. Since it will not melt completely, there will still be a pleasant crunch but you will not find it in the cake. Do add only fleur de sel or fine salt, you need not bother with large salt crystals. The best chocolate pound cake I ever made in my life was born out of extremely limited conditions, I was marooned in mid-winter on the very tip of the Northwestern Finistère coast, hardly a shop was opened miles around, there was a cold windy storm outside and my Breton boyfriend said he was having a sudden craving for chocolate pound cake. Well, we had flour, we had chocolate, we had eggs, and we had tons of salted butter but no sweet butter (Bretons laugh when they see someone using sweet butter). Besides there was no electric hand mixer, only a crank-operated egg-beater. So I mixed sugar and yolks, melted the chocolate, added loads of salted butter as if I were using sweet butter, beat the whites medium-stiff with the crank thingy, etc., and we got the emperor of chocolate pound cakes. That's how I converted to salted butter in pastry.

To make a few things straight: - Amandine is not a gâteau breton. It is a new creation sold on a market stall that happens to be run by Breton people, and it is probably made on a base of quatre-quarts and an almond cream of the type used in gâteau basque. If you wish to make an amandine cake, there are two solutions. The surefire one: find the stall in Cornwall and ask for the recipe. The convenient one: make a quatre-quarts (breton) and fill it with a thick, gooey crème d'amandes, perhaps based on ground marzipan thinned down with a few eggs. If I ever find an amandine cake on a market, I'll update the information. - There are many types of cakes made in Brittany but only one deserves to be called "gâteau breton", period, and another one is sometimes called "gâteau breton" but more properly, and more frequently, "quatre-quarts breton". The gâteau breton is halfway between a very dense sponge and a sablé, it is very buttery and crumbly, not unlike gâteau basque, and sometimes it is filled with a thin layer of prune jam, in which case it is called "gâteau breton aux pruneaux". The quatre-quarts breton is not a sponge but rather like Madeira cake, thick and dense but melting at the same time. Quatre-quarts means "four quarters", from the proportions of ingredients needed in the recipe (equal weights of eggs - whipped egg whites added at the end -, flour, butter and sugar, plus a bit of baking powder). This is, I believe, the kind of pastry that may be used for an amandine cake, because the initial description of the cake reminds me of quatre-quarts breton. A few hints: any Breton pastry tastes better when made with beurre demi-sel, Breton lightly salted butter. In the recipes cited above, which are all quite interesting, the one by Jean-Yves Crenn seems to me to be the authentic one and the less "chef-creative". I'm not saying that there are no Breton cakes with apples, but "gâteau breton", basically, is a plain crumbly cake with lots of butter and no addition of fruit, with the sporadic exception of the prune jam at times. It may be eaten with whatever fruit, compote, jam that you like.

No nerve was hit. Nothing was overanalyzed. It's just that the joke was unfunny. PS: Markk I like you too but I didn't like your joke. Is that permitted?

You mean the amandine cake? I thought of it but there's no sponge in gâteau basque. The pastry of gâteau basque resembles a certain type of gâteau breton: the crumbly, egg-washed, very buttery version. I'd rather diagnose a case of recent cake creation, based on butter sponge (perhaps Breton-style, i.e. on a 4/4 basis), and filled with an almond cream that might be the same as in gâteau basque (a crème d'amandes or a frangipane that is heavy on almonds). Cakes and pastries sold at markets do not necessarily correspond to traditional recipes, even though they may be found on a traditional-looking stall. Brittany is actually very good at creating new types of cakes.

I didn't know about Kaufmann's books, and because of this I was unfair to him. Indeed if his subject is the study of family dysfunction, the sensationalism wasn't on his side. And besides, studying this kind of dysfunction through food habits seems quite an interesting study indeed. Once again the weight bears on how the press chooses to present things. Wow, what a husband. Lucky girl! I'm all the more impressed because if home baking is not difficult in se, making a good baguette at home is extremely difficult. I too used to have my bowl of levain in the fridge when I lived in NY, but I never dared to make baguette. No you're not. I'd call that sanity.

That was what I thought from my experience of France (ie I meant to say that the author took a bleak view rather than that the outlook was truly so bleak). However, I didn't know if my view was coloured from mostly staying in a place some miles from the nearest fast food restaurant, so it's reassuring to know that your - far more informed - impression is the same. Thank you for a wonderfully detailed response. It is funny to see his obesity scare approach coming so soon after the 'French women don't get fat' articles! ← Well, thank you! Please note that when I mentioned "bleakness in the eye of the beholder" I wasn't referring to you but to the author of the book, who makes the situation appear so hopeless, and then to the author of the article, who follows the view. To John: don't bother about the rosy glasses. Things are, indeed, not so bleak. It's only the art of depressing people with "serious" writing. (All my final judgement reserved towards the author of the book, since I haven't read it, I only know it through the article.)

Maybe you should take a look at the thread "French food, fat and big meals, etc." where the article has just been commented.