French grocery store fish counter:
Resulting in our Sunday lunch: fresh trout and panchetta with almonds, roasted brussel sprouts and tagliatelle with crème fraîche. (11 EUR for 4 people).
Here is oyster tasting outside the local bakery. Oysters are from the île d’Oléron off of the coast of France. We also had a butter tasting at the grocery store!
New foods for Ayo. (Hurry, give me more Jerusalem artichoke (sunchoke or topinambour)!).
Gorgeous produce. Check out this escarole (think endive in a salad form). We bought this and a black radish (big, cucumber shaped radish) for kicks:
And of course there was thorough quality control by Ayo himself of all sorts of freshly baked breads: pain de campagne, tradition, céréales, baguette. In the end, the baguette won top teether toy.
Was just thinking of you guys as you embark on your I think #16 flight. Keep telling Cedric that his buddy Ayo is well traveled and that he should have a chat with him on Wednesday about airports and planes.
The food looks amazing…made me hungry. But only 5 more days and I will enjoy my grandmas Sauerbraten and Spaetzle. Oh and yes bread is the teether number one in Europe, my in-laws looked at me with a “really” on their face when I told them to give their teething toodler some bread with a hard crust. Loving the cultural differences 😉
Dear TCK Mama
How can you convert Brussel sprouts into carmelized quarters, sealed in butter that was brought to the point of candy apples poured over the sprouts? How can four trout become encrusted with almonds and covered with horse radish sauce and just fall into two great filets, falling off the bone? And how does tagliatelle marry with the fish and sprouts to balance the horse radish sauce? Well the answer to these questions is that TCKmama and TM were in the kitchen with my dear wifey. No kidding, it looked like a laboratory with exact measures of spices, perfect butter heat, and catching the oven baked trout filled with succulent and moist flesh on the bone. Cut off the heads? Nah. Cut off the fins? Nah. There is a saying, rather political and cynical:”Fish rots from the head down.” This was flavor from the tail up. The quality would have come in at $45 per person at any fine dining establishment. We figured this was maybe $10 a pop. Max. The atmosphere in the kitchen was frenzied pleasure. Eating was relaxed pleasure. It was a sort of good-bye meal because TM,TCKmama and baby Ayo are checking in at the airport this very minute. We had the highest and greatest joy with these guys. Fly safely. Until next time soon.
Dad