Bizarre French cuisine I've just eaten....

[Pert_UK]

I'm just back from France and have eaten some VERY odd stuff whilst over there....Here's what:

Snails served hot in garlic butter and which were very nice - much better than the cold seasnails I've had before (which aren't very good). Frog's legs were boney but good - midway between chicken and fish in texture and taste (almost like scampi in some ways).

The steak tartare was ENORMOUS!!! Looked like about 5 burgers' worth of raw minced steak, mixed with raw egg and seasoning and spices, and served with pommes de terre dauphinoise. Absolutely gorgeous, but a bit too much raw meat for one person to eat.

We accompanied the meals with house red wine by the carafe and I finished it off with a Calvados and an espresso. I was in Les Deux Alpes skiing with friends over New Year.

We also had cheese fondue with bread, oil fondue (Bourguingnion?) with meats, raclette cheese which you melt at the table under a weird heater then scrape off onto your potato and charcuterie. Another dish was like a witch's hat with spikes all over it and a flame underneath. You took raw pork, turkey and beef and hung it on the spikes to let it cook at the table.

Sound good to anyone?

[Stinky The Clown]

1. That all sounds good ..... and not at all bizarre

It all sounds like pretty standard fare .... except for that last one with the hanging meat on the spikey "witch's hat" device. I saw something like that (maybe the same thing?) being used at a street fair in NYC a year or two ago. The booth was being run by an Asian looking family and I didn't try their offerings at the time (I was waaaay too busy with many other goodies already in hand!).

They had small hibachi-like burners with these conical open wire frames over them. They took some meat (unidentifiable to me) and hung it in the conical wires and allowed it to cook. At the time, it seemed to me just another way to grill. But your post put me in mind of it.

In your experience, once cooked, was there a selection of dipping sauces or other condiments with which to dress the cooked meat?

[Pert_UK]

2. No sauces.....a few vegetables though.

To be honest, we weren't massively impressed with this way of cooking - it didn't really add anything to the enjoyment of the dish and we were worried that raw pork and beef were being mixed on the same plate and then served with the same utensils. You need to be really careful about pork (and turkey) to avoid food poisoning, but beef can be eaten raw (if it's decent quality) or at least rare once you've sealed the outside.

We much preferred the oil fondue, where you just plunged bits of beef on skewers into a pot of boiling oil until it was cooked to our preference. The cheese fondue was also fantastic. The "witch's hat" was just a bit of a gimmick IMHO. BTW, it was a solid "hat" with spikes sticking out, rather than a mesh or net effect.

We did get decent grain mustard to accompany the meal, plus the potatoes which were nice and creamy.

To be honest, I think that this meal is more "cliched" French than standard French fare, but it was good to try a few of the national dishes. It's a mistake to assume that French families sit down to snails every night IMHO.

I think that this cooking method would actually work better with flavoured/marinated Asian style meats.

[XanaDUer]

3. I had the best strawberries in my life in France...

I can still remember them...