Well I don't like Cabillaud that much, and don't like fish that much in general, and it stinks in the kichen once cooked, it's a nightmare to get rid of the smell !
Fresh fish doesn't smell worth a damn, and certainly doesn't one need to worry about the smell in the kitchen afterward. Even the smell of Mackerel has gone by the time you've eaten and gone back to the kitchen for the washing up, as long as you start with a fresh Mackerel.
I mean it does not smell when it's raw, I mean once it has been cooked and heated, it the pan and the remains stink, or smell strongly whichever you prefer... I can't leave the remains in the trash bag inside the house, I take it straight outside in the garbage container. However that same smell BEFORE eating the fish/sea food, wets my appetite... but once the stomach is full and I am not hungry any more, my brain somehow interprets the same smell, very differently and wants to get rid of it...
What has happened to French gastronomy when you can't get fresh fish and people don't recognise when it's not? And to think us English used to look up to the French when it came to food. Has it come to the point where Coq au vin means liaison amoureuse sur un camion?
I think the problem is that foreigners live on a puzzle of clichés. They think that just because we are known for gastronomy and this or that, then automagically each and every citizen 1) is an expert in all these subjects and 2) gives a damn to begin with.
That's obviously not the case, real life is not a cliché...
Here the average joe like me does not have time nor money for gastronomy. That's reserved to super expensive and scarce elitist restaurants for the 10% of the population that can afford them. for all the others who need to weight cost / return, gastronomy is not an option. So it's pasta and potatoes and frozen minced beef. A yogurt for dessert if you want to be fancy, hell maybe a bit of cheese if you thought of buying some.
As for my particular case.. .as I mentioned a couple months back, I am not at all your typical French, in so many respects, so you should not take me as a template or reference for anything. If I were like the average joe, I would not be spending time on TEA, hell I would not even be able to read or write English to begin with anyway ! I Don't like alcohol of any kind, so of course no beer and wine, tea, coffee, coca-cola, I don't like most of the food that's popular here, like chocolate with caramel and salt in it, I hate the stuff. Don't like 99% of the chocolates for sale here, they all have some weird stuff put on top of them or inside them to make them look fancy but to me it just makes them disgusting to eat. I could go on an on....
I don't like modern cars (meaning anything that came to the market after the mid 90's mostly), I hate SUVs, but here every one wants modern cars with lots of electronic gizmos in it, tactile screens, ugly huge wheels. SUV's now represent more than 50% + of new car sales. Yes, the majority of "cars" sold now are actually trucks (to me). Ugly ones at that.
I don't smoke either, I don't take drugs/weed, hate rap music, can't drink or listen to music while walking at the same time. Can't type a text message on the smartphone with two fingers at the same time, I hate consumer electronics and don't get along with the user interface of any consumer level electronic gadgets like smartphones/tablets or even micro-wave ovens...it all seems so retarded and convoluted to me, so counter intuitive, I just can't use them... yet somehow everybody else is fluent in using these things, without even reading a user manual which is not provided any more any way ! So clearly something is off with me.
Don't watch TV at all, last TV I "had" was the one in my parents house, but when I left their house in 1998 to go studying in the UK, never bought a TV of my own. Don't listen to radio either, it's just as brain damaging as TV, just without the picture. I hate sun baths in over crowed beaches. I don't like arguing because it's always a waste of time and effort and brings me nothing of value at the end, so I just walk away immediately when someone wants to argue or pisses me off. I don't park my car on slots reserved for disabled people, but everyone does, all the time. Even saw cop car do it once, in front of me, at the super market.
I could go on and on with more examples...
No really, I am not your typical French guy.... I am sorry to be a disappointment Cerebus... but talking gastronomy to me is like trying to teach electronics to a monkey
Hell I am 44 and I still don't have an oven in the kitchen ! That does not help. Don't even have a sofa, every body has a sofa...
However I can see that slowly changing. Now that I have my own house, I can contemplate spending time money and effort to make it a home I am happy with. So will make a nice kitchen, so oven there will be, even a dish washer I think, even a freezer yeah ! And even a Sofa I think...
But that's about as far as my "normality" will go.
I live alone and spending time and money preparing fancy food does not compute. Would be different if I had a family I guess, I would care to cook for them I guess. But being alone, cooking is mostly a chore.
I like the result of it, sure, but spending XX amount of time preparing it, and as much cleaning the dishes, all that for only 15 minutes of eating in front of the computer watching some video on YT.... it just does not add up . Return on investment is way too low.
[/quote]
I do love some sea products though, mostly " Langoustine " and "Coquilles Saint-Jacques ". Google says the latter is called " scallop shell ", and the former " Lobster ", though that must be wrong because I looked at pics of Lobsters and it's the huge fancy expensive stuff you buy only for X-mas. What I am talking about is the intermediate size / type : much smaller than a lobster, but bigger than a mere prawn. It's like a cross between the two.
Generally nowadays the English just call langoustine exactly that.
I love the English language, so convenient !
back in the days when people still smoked in restaurants, cleaned scallop shells were often used as ashtrays in bistro style places.
Oh yeah now you mention it, I can recollect seeing the same thing here as well back in the day !