Differences

Mount Canigou from our gite

I'm thinking of France today. I'm having ago at a recipe I found in one of those free supermarket magazines, the sort of thing you find in Tesco, Asda or Morrisons here. Needless to say it is written in French so the French dictionary has had to make a re-emergence as I check some of the words.

This particular recipe is for Quiche a la Sardine, Sardine Quiche to you & me. It's very similar to a Sardine & Tomato Flan I make, an old favourite. I feel quite extravagant as my old recipe uses just half a tin & half a tomato in the filling, whereas this one uses a whole tin & a whole tomato.

As I read the instructions, I'm struck by some of the words & their associations. First I come to "Pate brisee", literally "broken paste". Looking at the picture I guess at shortcrust pastry & sure enough that's what it turns out to be. How you get to that from broken paste I'm not sure, beyond the fact you rub the fat into the flour, so it resembles breadcrumbs. Is this the broken paste?

I read on. I have to "tapissez" the base of the flan with mozzarella. Now I know "tapis" is a carpet. Sure enough tapisser is the verb from that noun. It can also mean to wallpaper. Either way I have visions of home decorating rather than cooking.

"Creme fraiche" always leaves me in a quandary. English creme fraiche is not the same as French creme fraiche. In France it is literally what it says, "fresh cream". Since this recipe calls for "creme fraiche liquide" I'm assuming it means single cream. I know "creme fraiche epais" is double cream. I still find myself wondering what the French must call what we call creme fraiche. For that matter what is un-fresh cream? UHT, perhaps? Or is fresh used to differentiate it from soured cream? Who knows? They surely can't sell stale cream!

Looking through the adverts in the magazine I'm struck by some of the apparent similarities of products in France & England, & yet they can be so different. In this edition there is a big ad for Knorr soup, easily available here. But these flavours are quite different. So in France you get "red soup" (tomato & red pepper), "white soup" (asparagus & cauliflower), "orange soup" (pumpkin & carrot) & "green soup (spinach & pea) - quite different varieties from here.

Even when you get something that sounds the same, it doesn't follow that it is the same. This dawned upon me when our French friends gave me a recipe for a fabulous apple cake they make. I tried to make it at home. It just didn't taste the same. Next time we went to France, I checked I'd written down all the ingredients. Yes I had. Then I looked more closely at their sachet of baking powder. In the list of ingredients in the small print on the packet was lemon. Needless to say I hadn't thought to add any lemon in any form to my cake. Since then Marie always makes sure we return to England armed with sachets of French baking powder to make apple cake. Our drawers are filling rapidly with baking powder as these days I rarely bake!

Vive la difference. What more can be said!