It could have been 'Old Ladies in dressing gowns and Ducks' but more of that later. We decided to have a good meal so scoots to Albert for the Saturday morning market and wandering around into Les Halles found a great fish stall. Bought a beautiful Dover Sole and some Salicorne (Samphire), however he had other vegetation that we did not recognise. On enquiry we were told it was 'oreilles de cochons de la Baie de Somme' (pigs ears of The Somme Bay) or to give it another name Aster Maritime or it's botanical name Aster tripolium. Well what a treat I thought a new vegetable and couldn't let it pass by! So if you look at 'Le blog de Delices d'edith' you will get the recipe for L'épinard de mer à la creme or pigs ears in cream! One sells the other dosen't. But she is cheating by calling it spinach of the sea rather than pigs ears.
Pigs ears/L'épinard de mer/Aster maritime (or whatever you like to call it)
This together with the Dover Sole and the sauce vierge (virgin sauce) was sublime, well great and interesting meal. Yes the pigs ears were very good akin to crunchy spinach and quite salty. So it's onward to Amiens and stern gland fixed, so all good.
2 comments:
Comment from Niamh:
Dear Mariners,
What's all this about? I understand roughly half of your latest blog post, and am especially worried about the "stern gland". I mean, did it sound sternly glandular, or did the stern have a (swollen) gland? For your information "gland" in French means the same as when you leave out the i in "(sauce) vierge" and we all know from bitter experience what howls of Gallic laughter that one brought about.
I think it is high time you salts came ashore and headed for the good old Cap Sizun. That is where I am off to and I look forward to first-hand accounts of all these adventures in French ports-with-no-pubs, weird vegetation, not to mention "glands".
With love from your mystified land-lubber friends,
N & PE
No wonder I got some strange looks when I said we had problems with our stern gland. It was leaking and needed stuffing! The cavity round it is called a stuffing box!! I'm learning new terms all the time.
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