French Food

2 March 2008By Zhu 43 Comments

The unmissable… French food!

Although I love my maple syrup on pancakes, I must say I’m always happy to go back to my roots — that’s my excuse for eating jambon/ beurre/ cornichons sandwiches (ham/ butter/ pickles on a baguette) daily.

France is probably most famous for its “viennoiseries” — sweet pastries. The croissant, of course, and also the pain au chocolat (sweet bread with a thin chocolate bar wrapped in the middle). Oh, and the pain aux raisins — sweet bread with raisins. There’s also the flan (custard pie with prunes), the lemon pie, the banana pie with chocolate, the chausson aux pommes (apple pie)… All these can be found in any boulangerie/ pâtisserie (bakeries). They also sell the traditional baguette and you will often find people queuing at noon and at 19:00 to buy bread for lunch or dinner. No meal without bread!

Croissants, Pains aux Raisins and Pains au Chocolat

Lemon Pie, Flan and other Yummy Pastries

We went to the weekly market on Saturday morning and I was surprised to see the demographics changed quite a bit. There are now quite a few “ethnic” food stalls and a lot of first generation immigrants shopping there. That’s nice to see, especially considering markets were dying not that long ago…

So, French were shopping for traditional ingredients as well as Northern African extremely sweet pastries (pictures below). And also olives for the couscous, a middle-east dish: semolina and a mix of veggies (peppers, tomatoes, olives, raisins, zucchinis…) and lamb or chicken, with some sweet sauce. Delicious…

Middle Eastern Pastries

Fresh Olives

And some other food stalls were more traditional, such as these two below: saucisson (dried sausage, often spicy) and huîtres (oysters). Oysters are arguably the “grossest” French dish… they are eaten raw with lemon. Fairly inexpensive in Brittany, people eat them for appetizer.