Bonjour French Market Friends,
This Saturday is the celebration of Francophonie around the world, 
where French speaking countries celebrate their common language, arts, and culture. We will again be participating in the Francophonie Food and Culture Festival on this Saturday, at the Belgian Embassy Residence, 29 Boshoff Road in Newlands. There will be stalls selling delicious foods and drinks, lots of art and cultural activities will take place. It starts at 10 and runs until 5. Our market stand will be inside the Residence and we will sell a selection of our beautiful products. Come along and celebrate “La France”.
Most of us in ZA today will have experienced some form of internet outage. At first, I was sure there was something wrong in my shop when my point of Sale system and then both my Yoco credit card machines failed to connect to the internet. This is quite a serious issue as I have all my systems running on the internet. In the end we were working with cash and EFTs so we managed to keep our shop running. It was only later that we found out that not only was our little shop having problems, but also major systems across the country, and now I read that it was across Africa, that there were internet access issues due to some undersea cable damage of the Ivory Coast. At least we managed to get back on line and hopefully all the other traders like me across the continent, have been able to reconnect.
In our shop this week we have a selection of Frenc
h and other countries cheeses, including gooey Brie, plenty of buche de chevre, Epoisses, Morbier, Pont l’Eveque, Bleu from the Auvergne, Raclette, Emmental, Ossau Iraty, Reblochon, Truffle flavoured Cheddar, Le Gruyere and Appenzeller from Switzerland and many more.
In our Italian truffle range we are in the Spring White truffle Season until 
mid April and the Black Summer truffle season has just started. The Spring white truffle has a strong aroma and light beige to reddish ochre colour, The skin is almost smooth, unlike the other truffles which have a more knobbly exterior. The Black summer truffle has the mildest aroma of all the truffles. Remember that you need to preorder the truffles 48 hours ahead.
In our seafood range we currently have stock of brown anchovies and white Boquerón anchovies flavoured with garlic and parsley from northern Spain. We have Baerii sturgeon caviar from Madagascar. We
have wild pink salmon roe and Black lumpfish roe from the North Pacific. The pink salmon roe is large with a beautiful colour and is often used as a decorative topping for sushi. The black lumpfish roe is small and black and can be used as décor on many different dishes. We have cocktail sized blinis from Paris which are great, topped with cream cheese and some roe or smoked salmon.
In our herbs and spices range we recently received new stock of hot 
smoked Paprika from Spain, Saffron from Iran and Raz el Hanout an amazing mixed spice from North Africa. The name of this spice mixture means the best of all the spices in the market. We also have Piment d’Es
pelette a mild chilly that grows around the town of Espelette in the Basque region of France.
In our pastry range made in France, we have the frozen Butter croissants, Pain au chocolat, Almond croissants, Chocolate and hazelnut croissants and baguettes, which you pop in the oven, straight from the freezer. They are the easiest things to bake and taste amazing, an ideal solution for a lazy breakfast on a Sunday morning.
A new product we started stocking recently was frozen duck liver (produced in ZA). For my recipe today I decided to make a traditional 
smooth duck liver mousse. The duck’s livers are cooked in white wine, then shallots, garlic and apple are added. These are blended with cream and butter, finally cognac is added to the mousse. Its really delicious, see recipe below. I have ordered in some Brioche loaves for this weekend as I reckon these will pair well with this recipe.
I hear there is a holiday coming up next week on the 21st Human Right’s Day, as always, we will be open from 9 – 2, do pop in if you wish to shop for your favourite French treats.
Have a great weekend.
Regards,
Suzanne and The French Market Team