francofiled

It was a first time visit to Le Pain Quotidien in Kildare Village - and I wondered why I hadn't heard of it before. Of course the initial attraction was the enticing sign in French but a quick look inside was all that was needed to step into the allure of freshly baked breads on artist palette boards and strong flavoursome  coffee served in hand-warming bowls. The concept is Belgian rather than French and I love the story of how originator, Alain Coumont's idea of a traditional bakery was eventually realised, how the name was chosen and how that very first table commune came about. You can read that story here. The place has plenty to offer the vegan diner : Bircher bowls of overnight oats (a favourite in our house), Organic Turmeric eggs with Seaweed and avocado.  For those with a sweet tooth : Raw Nut Cakes of passion fruit and beetroot and the ubiquitous salted caramel - Coupable !   Guilty! Taking up the central area was la table commune - made fr...

Leaving the Queens Film Theatre Belfast today I picked up a very impressive programme for the UK French Film Festival 2017.  Although QFT isn't showing all the films being screened during the festival it is showing seven listed below. The Festival is celebrating its 25th anniversary and the silver jubilee edition of the programme has been extremely well produced and worth keeping as a souvenir reference guide. As a francophile and a francophone it's great to see the number of films showing and the range of cinemas taking part.  The programme contains an at-a-glance guide to what's on and where.  The films are helpfully cross-referenced to blurbs on the content and as well as offering contemporary films, the programme contains several classics. Check out the full listings over at www.frenchfilmfestival.org.uk meanwhile here is the list of seven films showing at QFT: Louis Malle's Le Feu follet - The Fire Within on 25 November Alain Gomis's Félicité on 3...

Speaking engagement.  Talk prepared, car loaded and off to the meeting; brilliant, I'd left plenty of time to find a parking space at the venue and more than enough to offload the selection of French wine and cheeses that were intended for une dégustation that evening. Things don't always go as planned and when I arrived most of the parking spaces were occupied by a single van! There was one space that just might work so if I could just quickly unload the "stuff" for the talk I could squeeze in. Seemed a good idea up to the point when the sickening sound of scraping metal told me it wasn't! ... Thoughts of an expensive evening crossed my mind as I headed to a public carpark about 5 minutes away. There was still just enough time, if I hurried. Got a space okay and opened the back door to retrieve my laptop from the back seat. SMASH! Not the laptop, fortunately, but a bottle of wine I had chosen to accompany one of the cheeses for the tasting. Wine on ...

What strikes me when reading through internet recipes for salade niçoise is the sheer variation of ingredients.  Everyone it seems has a preference. This one prepared by ma conjointe certainly hits the spot. By the time I got around to taking the picture I had already devoured the luscious black olives but still on the plate are the French beans, tomato quarters, potatoes and anchovies.  A lovely vinaigrette was served alongside. Notice too those quarters of hard-boiled egg.  Egg features a lot on those internet recipes but not in my go-to source of French Cookery - Louis Saulnier's Le Répertoire de la Cuisine .   Saulnier had the famous Auguste Escoffier as his mentor and the Répertoire is a quick reference guide to the master's cookery. Interestingly, the Répertoire does not include tuna either although many recipes do. One that I have to hand even states that Escoffier - there's Saulnier's mentor again - calls for tunny fish in oil to be added. It se...

As was promised in my last post on Cases of Cognac to Belfast available here  I added some cognac to a Belfast Crystal glass and paid a silent toast to those mentioned in the post.... Admittedly it was with a VSOP rather than a 3* but then it is whatever's to hand. Right?

The Friend at Hand is more than just an Irish Whiskey shop in Belfast's Cathedral Quarter, it is also an emporium that houses a vast array of whiskeys and whiskey memorabilia; legacies of a bygone time which are definitely not for sale, providing instead a visible, authentic record of the many distilleries around the city in the 19th and 20th centuries.  Among the items on display was the framed telegraph request pictured above. That evocative word - Cognac   - near the top of the page caught my eye and, interest aroused, I noted the date: 8 August 1891. 1891 - This is a remarkably well preserved document but I wondered what on earth was an order for brandy doing as a display item in a whiskey store.  I set about finding out.  The telegraph as you can see was addressed to a company in Cognac.  This lead me to an internet search but my initial queries on Bouhelleau or Bonhelleau and other variants returned zero results. The solution lay in that lovely...

I had held on to them for ages - these old recordings from the BBC Radio French language courses À Vous La France and its follow-on France Extra!  I had the pupil books to go with them and the teacher's guide too.  They served me well in planning lessons all those years ago.  Old friends. With space clearing at home it was time to say Au revoir !  to the K7 - cassette - collection.  No one seemed interested in having the recordings in this format what with CD and MP3 downloads more easily managed. When I brought them for recycling I had a moment of doubt and regret. I'd miss having them around. So I took a quick picture to remind me of the time and effort put into setting timers to record;  labelling the cassettes and creating the J-card covers. Au revoir les K7 !