La Cuisine Normande/ The Norman Gastronomy Quiz

Answer: Cider with Blackcurrant liqueur

An aperitif is a drink designed to whet your appetite.

Kir is traditionally a dry white wine with blackcurrant liqueur, but you can also choose peache, blackberry or raspberry liqueurs, if you prefer. For Kir Royal, the white wine is replaced with champagne. For Kir Normand, wine is replaced by the famous cider, produced in the region.

Answer: Calvados, beer and white wine

This drink does not taste as if it had a high alcohol content, but it actually does - thus the name.

Answer: L'andouille

L'andouille is a pork sausage smoked in beech wood, then baked in court-bouillon.
Its strong flavor is due to the pieces of pork used in the recipe.

Answer: Le Cotentin

Le Cotentin is located on the English Channel coasts. It's an area very famous for oysters, mussels and others shellfishes.

Answer: La marmite Dieppoise

This is a dish from the city of Dieppe. This is a stew made with angler fish, sole, turbot fish, pilgrim scallop and, mussels. It's cooked with leek, celery, white wine and, cream.

Les tripes à la mode de Caen are meat offal cooked with white wine and aromatic herbs. It's a recipe from the city of Caen.

La salade cauchoise is a salad of endive with apple, diced ham, Gruyere cheese, walnut kernels, seasoned with a lemon cream sauce.

Escalope normande is a meat dish with cream and mushrooms.

Answer: Barfleur

Barfleur has the label of the most beautiful villages of France. This is the smallest village of the department named La Manche. It has kept an authentic Norman heritage. It's very famous about the mussels production as well as being a popular destination for the summer holidays.

Answer: A slice of cushion of veal cooked with mushrooms, cream, calvados and a bite of camembert

"A la normande" means cooked with mushrooms, cream and Calvados liqueur for a meat dish.

It could be a little different for a fish dish, but there is always cream.

Answer: Calvados liqueur shot with apple sorbet

The Calvados liqueur is said to help the digestion to continue eating during a festive and high calories' meal.

Answer: Omelette de la Mère Poulard / Le mouton de prés salés

Le prés salé (Salted marsh) is a field which is covered by the sea during the high tide. Then when the water recedes, sheep eat the high salinity grass, which gives a characteristic flavor to the meat. The salted marsh of the Mont Saint Michel is the largest in Europe.

La Mère Poulard is Annette Boutiaut who married Victor Poulard in the Mont St Michel in 1873. She opened a little restaurant, on the Mont Saint Michel, whose beginnings were difficult. While the customers were waiting for their main dish, she offered them a very light omelet, perfectly cooked over a wood fire. The fame of La mère Poulard was born!

Artists and politicians came from all over France to taste her famous omelet.
It's said that the secret of the recipe is the fact that eggs are whipped for a very long time.

Answer: Lobsters

Les Demoiselles de Cherbourg are small lobsters cooked in a court-bouillon.

Answer: Excelsior

L'Excelsior was a cheese produced near Forges-les-Eaux in the XIXth century. It was the Parisian cheese merchant, Androuët, who gave it its name.

The other cheeses are named for the village where they are produced.

Answer: Rice cooked in milk with sugar and cinnamon or vanilla

La "teurgoule" (tordre la goule) means "twist the face".

Its name comes from the fact that it's so good, so the greedy people can't wait for it to cool. They eat it when it's still too warm, that makes them make funny faces because it burns their mouths and tongues.

It's a really tasty dessert made of rice cooked in a earthenware pot, with milk, sugar and cinnamon. The original recipe is with cinnamon, but you can change that to vanilla. We bake it for a very long time (5-6 hours), at a low temperature (150°C).

Answer: Douillon

This is a very old recipe and each family has its own.

It has been mostly unavailable in stores for a long time because it's not a fashionable dessert, but a rustic one. But nowadays, we can buy it, in few Boulangeries/Patisseries (bakery shops).

Answer: Caramels

Issigny is very famous for its dairy industry. You have the possibility to visit the toffee factory in Issigny-sur-mer and to buy all their different kinds of caramels (salted butter, with nuts, with coffee, chocolate, vanilla, apple, Calvados...)

Answer: Le sablé

Le sablé is mainly made of butter.

The dough is very crumbly and looks like sand (sable in french).
It's so delicious, but you must love good butter to appreciate it ;)