France - Cachou Lajaunie

One day in the supermarket I saw these on the shelf next to the cashier.

These look somewhat fancy, yet classic. I didn't know what it was, and I didn't have time to Google Translate it because I was on the line at the cashier, and it was my turn in 5 seconds after I saw this Cachou Lajaunie.

There's no English or Dutch translation on the packaging. Well, might as well try these. Recently I've been having troubles keeping myself focused for 1.5 hours non-stop in class. Delicious or horrible-tasting, this little peep will be useful.

I opened the package at home and gave these pastilles a try.

The flavour was so similar to what we call Pagoda Pastilles in Indonesia, with stronger cooling effect and perhaps less sugar. It's definitely licorice, but it's so different from the dropjes I had in the Netherlands, so there has to be something in it. My Italian friend really liked it. As for me, I' not really a big fan of these pastilles but these keep me awake in class.

Thanks to Wikipedia and Google Chrome's page translation function, I managed to find out the ingredients: licorice, sugar, starch, lactose, flavored gelatin powder, catechu, iris powder, mastic ressin, essence of peppermint.

Well, the peppermint explains the cooling effect. I'm not sure what iris powder tastes like by itself, but catechu? Cachou? Never heard of it before!

Thanks to this, I did a little research on cachou. Almost all professors who taught me said not to trust Wikipedia, but somehow my gut feeling says 95% of what's written on Wikipedia is correct. Well, it always never hurts to start from Wikipedia and then go on with a more refined research.

So, according to Wikipedia, cachou or catechu is an extract of Acacia that can be used as food additives to provide astringent sensation from tannin, or to provide colour. Catechu, in Indonesian, is also known as gambir. I don't think I've ever heard gambir used as food additives in Indonesia. More like it's a traditional cure for toothache.

I checked on Malaysian Wikipedia on gambir sarawak (still the same catechu) that catechu can also be used as anesthetics (which means eating this will result in less headache during calculation class for me? LOL). But apparently, in Malaysia and Indonesia, catechu is also a cure for early ejaculation. Actually, the moment I searched for gambir sarawak, the first few search results gave me "early ejaculation cure". Seems like this plant has a lot of functions.

By the way, I just realized how nice it is to understand a lot of languages. There are just search results you can read when you type the keywords in languages other than English :D

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France - La Laitière (feuilleté de mousse)

I've been rather busy with exploring Paris lately. And also with class, of course. We attend class from 9 to 5, with 1.5 hour lunch break in between (I love the long lunch break). I feel that there's always something to write on my blog about Paris or the food every single day to the point that I don't know where to start.

Ok, so let's start with this.

The first French supermarket I explored was Franprix because we met nice a corridor mate who showed us the way there. The thing that surprised me the most about French supermarket is the unreasonable length of chilled desserts section. When I was in the Netherlands, the refrigerated section was filled with cheese and ham and perhaps bacon, and tons of yogurt. In ireland, refrigerated section is not the most prominent section.

I decided to get this Nestle dessert because, well, it's Nestle, so it's bound to be good when it comes to something milky (this is my risk reduction strategy, by the way; it's not fool proof but it works most of the time).

Do I understand anything said? NOPE. My knowledge in French is like zero. ZERO. Well, ok, I can say merci, ça combien (I don't even know if I spell this right), s'il vous plaît, pardon, excusez-moi. But that's it.

It's funny how I understand what the ingredients are from the Dutch version (the second paragraph). I can't believe how much Dutch I learned just from going to the supermarket and the open market,. My pronunciation might be off (my Dutch friends would sometimes laugh whenever I tried to say something in Dutch but nevertheless I never give up practicing) but at the very least I understand what they are.

The appearance might not be the best because the top of the mousse was flattened by the seal but this means nothing. This dessert is... superb. Superb. There are thin, crispy layers of chocolate in the middle. It's a well-balanced mix of smooth and crispy textures. And the cocoa flavour is just nice: not too bitter, not too sweet, not too overpowering.

I can't lose weight in France.

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France - Changing my food consumption pattern

I typically prefer Asian food, but when I'm in France, there's no way I should remain so stubborn about food. It's time to explore the gastronomical world, baybeh!

Well, we started with having a mini wine-tasting session. My roommate and I bought 1 bottle of red wine, and two others bought another bottle.

We're students, so we'd like to first start off with cheap wines. Well, we didn't really like the wine on the right, but the one on the left was not too bad. They're not our favourites, though. Which means... more wine-tasting sessions coming along the way!

Along with wine comes the cheese and fermented sausages like salami. Mmmm~

Ok, these are cheap, processed cheese cubes with flavours, but they actually taste pretty good. The mini salami was great accompaniment to the wines, too.

Because I'm a weak drinker, and we didn't have dinner, we decided to eat baguette (costs only 80c! HEAVEN!!). 

I bought what seemed like a tarako/mentaiko called Tarama. It really tastes like mentaiko cream. I put it on the baguette, and it's really yummy!

Aside from meals and wines and cheeses and baguettes, France is also famous for its desserts.

I had a hard time passing through the supermarket aisles in France. Too many awesome foods to look at. They have a great variety of products; not just by brand and flavour, but the type of product itself.

I don't know how busy I'll get at school here, but even if I don't have enough time (or money), I think I can be somewhat satisfied strolling around the supermarket aisles.

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