So....guess what my favourite thing about traveling is? Its the food I reckon....Its the food, then trying to find the recipes for the food, and then buying the things to make the food to take home with me so I can attempt a good stab at it.
This trip was a 2 week long business trip...first to Italy and then to the South of France, which was a total food fest :)
When ever travelling I always like to make sure I try something I have never had before...this has led to me eating things which might not be very urm...politically correct to some peeps, so I shall refrain from listing them all, but perhaps my proudest moment was the guinea pig salad I had in Peru. I didn't like it much but I ate it and thought it would make a good story someday for my grand children...who hopefully won't have any furry pets....
This trips extravaganza was Gesier's - turkey gizzard...in a salad, and it was so good I ate it 4 times over the course of 5 days in france lol! It seems however that I failed to take a photo....
Secondly I had supions...baby squids...I am a squid lover it has to be said, but the name....I love the name supions....
Rubbish pic...but it was taken on my iphone.
Also ate religeuse....which are like choux buns with creme patisserie filling, they are meant to be nuns, lol, I first had one of these when I was 13 on my french exchange, and I have never forgotten how good it tasted.
Those are just a few treats I ate, but suffice to say I am always inspired to cook when I get home from my travels. This time I was lucky because I went to France in my Van, which meant I could fill it up with as much French ingredients and wine as I could manage. I won't tell you how many bottles of wine I purchased, you would think I was alcoholic, but mainly its for dinners/cooking and for presents...so I am sure it will go fairly quickly lol!
Now the ingredients leads me onto the next conundrum. I love flour...the different types, the protein contents and ash levels and how it effects the dough, and yes I read extensively about flours, sad I know, but I have an obsession with substituting ingredients to get the authentic effect..I mean how many times have you come home from holiday and cooked something and it just doesn't taste the same....its not just because its not accompanied by a tequila, the beach and some sunburn, its because probably the ingredients are not the same...remotely....I know this because of my obsession with pizza bases and my eternal quest to get super thin ones like in Italy, its all about the protein and ash levels in the flour! I will write more about this another time, but suffice to say, I purchased about 6 kilos of french flour, so that I could compare them the the british versions to find out what matches the best for patisseries etc.
I also bought 3 cooking books in French...yup, and no I don't speak french that well...but strangely I learn fast when reading cooking books...who knew huh? Perhaps I should try and learn all languages this way!
I bought bread machine book...cause it looked awesome...and 2 patisserie books. So far from one of the patisserie books I have made 3 things, an almond an apricot tart, creme patisserie....OMG how easy is this??? super easy...will translate recipe and take pics etc soon, I promise, and something else but I forget now...
So now I am being boring, there are no pictures and thats what peeps want...but if you are like me and you are flour obsessed, the table at the bottom is quite interesting: scrap that, this is much better...
I need to do some more research and compare then to the flours I have...I will write a post for me more than anything soon. I am about to make some bread from the book 'du bon Pain' which is called Pain Marguerite, it has kamut flour in it and I have some.... I'll let you know how I get on ;)
Chow!
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