The French Thing

FOOD ! That’s what this week-end was mainly about ! During the ‘International Food Night’ –an event organized by the glorious Garden & Weeks Halls– all residents were invited to cook a meal from their country and share it with the others. So I decided, along with Adrien, to prepare a nice ‘Tartiflette’, a potato-based, gratin-like dish with cheese, quite famous in the Alps. I find it typical of France, even though it isn’t ‘haute cuisine’, and it is always praised (at least among the young :D). The cheese on it, ‘Reblochon’, is what makes Tartiflette special, something more than vulgar potatoes, beacon and onions. The cheese on it, ‘Reblochon’, is a shy kind of cheese, it has trouble rolling its way to people plates in France. And although Tartiflette might seem a traditional Savoyard dish, it isn’t. It was designed in the 80′s by Savoy’s cheese-makers to help selling their Reblochon ! This snippet* of history is intended to emphasize the following:

Proposition 1:
Reblochon is a hell of a lot hard to find in London. You won’t find it in any grocery retail chain like Sainsbury’s, Waitrose or even M&S.

We’ve spent our all Saturday afternoon looking for some, in the stores listed above, with no success (at all). At the end of the journey (not ‘day’, ‘journey’, I mean it, it was long!) we finally headed to a small cheese store that Adrien had (thankfully) spotted someday, where we could buy one. At a price. Say £12. But we had it, and we went back home, proudly holding our trophy!

The dinner itself was quite good, although there were some quite common dishes (pastas, or even some plain crisps!). I tasted a bread-and-butter pudding, which I really liked. It was warm, with vanilla and raisins [Note for the French: raisins means dried grapes]. I could also try some authentic, heavy British desert, like a 1 ton (at least) chocolate cake, and some kind of killer, with 100% sugar, 100% butter, 100% chocolate inside… this one was a bit hard to swallow ;-) At the end, there was a small vote, and the ‘French thing’, as some residents called it, was elected the 3^rd best dish, behind Asian cabbage-rolls and the Tiramisu. Maybe it would have been ranked better if it had not been a victim of its own success, and finished 10 minutes after the ‘eating’ had started :)

*sorry about that guys