Lesson Transcript

Hey guys! It's Pierre from France and welcome back for a new video this time about French food - top 10 French dishes and related vocabulary. This is today’s topic so it would be less about grammar but more about food and good stuff. So without further ado, let's get started with some food.
The first one, the most famous food here is fromage, le fromage “cheese” in French. This is really important in France. We eat a lot of cheese and it's not like any kind of cheese. When you eat in France, you can do a full course which means you do entrée / plat / fromage / dessert. It means like first course, main dish, cheese, dessert. So this is quite common to do that in France and personally, with my family, I do that every day. So you start with some entrée like salads or tomatoes and then you've got the main dish and then some cheese and that's what is interesting here. You can eat like any kind of cheese. Usually, you add bread with it but you eat your cheese like that and there are many, many different kinds of cheese in France and usually, it's original stuff. It means like depending on where you are in France so this is a super nice map of the French nation and then depending on where you are, you will find some famous cheeses. The most famous one, you can find them everywhere, but some of them are really difficult to find sometimes. So there are many different kinds of cheese.
Here or some adjectives that you can use to describe cheese.
Le fromage est dur like “the cheese is hard”. Sometimes, the cheese is hard. It's dur. Sometimes, it’s “soft” - le fromage est mou, or sometimes, it’s “creamy” - le fromage crémeux “creamy”. Also, cheese French is sometimes really smelly and you have to say in French - le fromage sent fort like a strong smell. It's smelly. You say that usually in French - le fromage sent fort.
I would like you to know more about two different cheeses that are quite famous and the first one is personally my favorite - le comté, comté. Comté is from this region in France, Franche-Comté which you can notice the name of the region - Franche-Comté, comté, the same. So here is a map of France and Franche-Comté is somewhere here. So 1A stands for this comté. So this is really good and this is “a hard cheese” le fromage dur.
Then you’ve got this one - camembert, also quite famous which is from Normandie. Normandie is over there. This cheese is more creamy than comté like around the cheese, it's quite hard but when you cut it, it’s creamy inside and really good. The more smelly it is, the more creamy it is. So here are some cheese. Of course, there are so many cheeses. You can check by yourself for more cheeses.
Let's move on to the next one, bread, or in French pain. You probably all know this cliche about French baguette like all French people are always with their baguette under their arms, but it's not a cliche. Personally, I used to buy a baguette every day like not all French people are doing that but, personally, I do that. So yeah that's the most common bread in France and my favorite personally, baguette. I guess you all know what is a baguette so this. Usually, you go to a breadshop called boulangerie in France and boulangerie, you can find them like almost everywhere in France. It's really common and that's why I can buy my bread every day by going there. But in boulangerie, you can also find some poisson or other kinds of bread.
Here are two other kind of breads that or quite common. I guess this one is the second most common - pain de campagne. It's like a kind of bowl, you see? In English, maybe you would say farmhouse bread. So in French, pain de campagne like campagne, pain de campagne. So those two are quite famous and you can find them in almost all boulangerie, all breadshop. So this is quite common.
Here is like what you can call sandwich bread in America, but in France you have to say - pain de mie and it's quite different like those two are really hard like you remember, we can also use these adjectives for bread like this is quite hard, but here it's really soft and you all know, you can find that everywhere in the world. When you say that, like to me it's not like real bread like for me when you say bread, those two breads appear in my mind so this is not bread and usually you can do sandwich with that. But in France, you use usually baguette or pain de campagne if you want to do some sandwiches and I really like doing sandwiches with a baguette. This is so good and you should try it.
So this is bread and maybe you wonder how we eat the bread. So first, I said like sometimes sandwiches but that's not the most common way. We eat during the fromage, like we eat cheese and bread, like it's classic. You have your piece of cheese and a piece of bread and you eat them together. But you can also eat them for breakfast and you put some jam and some butter and you eat that. This is quite common in France or sometimes you drink that with your cup of coffee. You've got your bread and your coffee and you just eat them together.
Also when it's the time for the main dish, for the plat, you have some pieces of bread usually like on the table and you can eat them like that, like it's really common. I think it's a bit similar to rice in Asian countries. Here, you can eat bread at any moment during your meal especially during the main dish.
So this is bread. Those twos were quite general food, but now, I would like to talk about more regional food that's why I decided to draw a map. So here are some other foods that are regional food like French food is really regional.
So let's first start with boeuf bourguignon. It’s from the region called Bourgogne. You probably know this region like in English you say Burgundy. This is quite famous for white wine and it's over here. So here is the Burgundy region, Burgundy, and this plate is quite famous over there but you can eat that everywhere in France, but originally it’s from this region.
So it consists in a beef stewed in red wine so if you want to explain that in French, you would say - boeuf mijoté au vin rouge. Boeuf stands for “beef”, mijoté is like “stewed” and vin rouge “red wine” - boeuf mijoté au vin rouge.
Usually with your beef, you add some other ingredients like pomme deterre which is “potato / potatoes”, “onions” like oignons and some carottes “carrot”. So this are the main ingredients that you can find when you cook a boeuf bourguignon. This is quite famous in France.
Next one, let’s move on to another region which is… this region is called Lorraine and this food is called quiche or sometimes sometimes quiche lorraine. Quiche lorraine is a specific kind of quiche but probably the most famous one. Lorraine is this region. So here, you can find quiche or quiche lorraine.
It consists in a tart like that and you cook the tart with eggs and cream and you add also on top of it, cheese and some bacons, but you can choose other ingredients, but that’s the common recipe. So in French you would say - tarte avec des oeufs, dela crème du fromage et des lardons. So here tarte “tart”, quiet easy, oeufs “eggs”, crème “cream”, cheese, I forgot to write it here in English, but you have to say fromage “cheese” and here, lardons “bacon”, some sort of bacon. It’s not like the exact translation but in French, instead of really specific kind of bacon like usually it's some matches of meat.
So here is like the quiche and usually you can eat that like when it's hot, but after cooking, you can just wait and eat it cold and it is quite good as well so it's up to you, you can choose.
So let's move on to the next one. This is gratin dauphinois like from the Southeast region and maybe, if you know the name of the city, Grenoble, which is close to Lyon, over there, you can find this plate, quite famous, but personally I'm not from this region and I can eat like gratin dauphinois. It’s quite a common plate so you don't need to go there if you want to try a gratin dauphinois.
It consists in some pomme de terre so you remember “potatoes” and you slice them like tranchées, pomme de terre tranchées “sliced potatoes” and you bake them in milk like dans du lait. Pomme de terre tranchées et cuite dans du lait, cuite dans du lait “baked in milk”.
So here is some kind of drawing. You see the plate and here are all the sliced potatoes and you just add milk and of course some salt and sometimes peppers and it's up to you, but this is the classic recipe. You add milk and then you just bake that and you've got your meal - gratin dauphinois. It’s quite easy but quite good and you should try it if you can have the opportunity to find it.
Let's move on to the next one which is ratatouille. You probably all know the movie Ratatouille, the Disney movie, but this is a name of a plate in France. It's from Provence. Provence is a region over here. So number six is over here, six, like it's close to Nice if you know the name of the city, Nice. Ratatouille is like something you eat more in summer, but it's hot.
It consists in some stew like it's a stewed vegetable dish. So in France you would say - ragoût de légumes. So ragoût stands for “stewed” and légumes stands for “vegetables”.
Here are the classic vegetables you're going to use if you want to do a classic, an authentic ratatouille. You need to know all those ingredients if you want to be a real French for your own ratatouille.
The five main ingredients in ratatouille are those ones. First is tomates “tomato”, then courgette which means “zucchini”, courgette, then aubergine “eggplant”, aubergine then onion, we’ve seen this one before, onion. In French, oignon, a bit different. Then garlic which is in French ail, short word, ail, okay. So those five ingredients are always in a classic ratatouille.
So let's move on to the next one which is… I'm sure you know it, crêpes from the region over there which is Britannia. So maybe you know like sweet crêpes like you add some sugar or some jam or anything, but here, it’s a bit different. This is crêpes salés which is salted crepe or crepes, “salted crepes” crêpes salés.
The main difference with a sweet crepe is that you use buckwheat which is in French sarrasin. So you cook your crepes with this sarrasin and you can call it as well crêpes sarrasin, crêpe au sarrasin so you can say that. You eat that as a main dish and it's not a dessert, it's a main dish. The classic crepe like the classic crêpes salés would be with jambon oeuf fromage like crepe jambon oeuf fromage which means like ham-egg-cheese crepe. So you can say that like in restaurants. In many restaurants like not only here, but like over there, those are really good, but in every restaurant where you can have crepe, there is always this classic like jambon oeuf fromage. So yeah, jambon is “ham”, oeuf is “egg” and fromage is “cheese”, we've seen that before.
Here is like a kind of drawing. Here is like the folded crêpes and here is, in red, the yolk and like some ingredients over there. There are some specialized shops which are called creperie. This is like a crêpes shop and it’s really common over there and even though in the whole France and over there, you can have your main dish, your plat which is a crêpes like a salted crepe and then for your dessert, you can have your sweet crepe. In those shops, there are many different kind of crepes and there's this classic but you can also find like with salmon, with chorizo or mushrooms. You can find a lot of different kind of crepe so you should try it and it's not like a plate that you try once and that's it. That's a plate that you can try a lot of times because it's always different.
Let's move on to another one - raclette which is not originally a French food. This is from Switzerland here. But, the influence of this plate was quite important and it's really famous in whole France now, but in this region, it was really famous like it's a plate that is supposed to be eaten by people living in mountains. So over there, there are a lot of mountains and this is a classic plate. If you ask French people, they would probably say that raclette is something French because we like eating raclette in winter. Raclette is the name of the plate but also the name of the specific cheese that you use when you do a raclette.
The raclette consists in putting some cheese like some melted cheese on some potato. So here, it's your plate. There is this potato and you add this melted cheese on it. So this is like the base but you don't eat like that. Usually, you eat like a lot of potato like it's kind of social activity where you take your potato like there is a plate with potato, each person take the potato and then add the cheese on it and you do that like a lot of times and you discuss with people so this is like a really social plate.
Usually, you eat that with charcuterie which is a kind of like a lot of hams like sausage or ham like a lot of meat. We have two different ways to say sausage in French. We can say saucisse sometimes or saucisson which are two different kinds of sausages. You can buy all that in boucher. You can go to the boucher and if you go there, you can buy all that. It is called in English like butcher shop and it's also quite common in France and you can eat charcuterie. So charcuterie is almost always mixed with raclette, but it's also something that we like eating as an entrée “first course” like you've got a plate with some some ham, some sausage and you can eat that together. So yeah that's quite common and usually that's one of the most favorite food for French people. It's not a real meal like you don't cook a lot but it's a plate with a lot of different kind of meat and a lot of French people like it.
The last one… let's move on to the last one which is from Paris and a quite recent dish. It is named hachis-parmentier. At the end of the 19th century, the potatoes in France were supposed to be inedible like you can't eat it, but someone called Parmentier while he was living in Paris decided to create a dish made of potato and this dish would be so delicious that everybody will eat potatoes and will understand that you can eat potatoes.
So it consists in like a mix of potato and some chopped beef. So in French we would say - mélange de pomme de terre et de boeuf haché. Mélange de pomme de terre “potato”, et de boeuf haché, mix of potatoes and chopped beef and you can add an -s here, et de boeufs hachés, mix of potatoes and chopped beef, or you can also just remove the two -s like it doesn’t really matter. Mélange de pomme de terre et de boeuf haché so hachis-parmentier.
So you've seen that I presented a lot of dishes from France and here, there is like a kind of big hole like it's not that I don't like this region but I didn't have time to explain to you all the different dishes that you can find in France. Here, it’s really famous for the wine. This region is really famous for the wine, but there are also many plates that are famous but I really wanted to talk about those tens because they're really important in France.
So I hope you really liked it and if you want more videos, you can subscribe to this channel if you haven't subscribed yet and if you really like it, you can just click on the like button and leave a comment in the comment sections. If you want more videos on French learning, you can go to our website FrenchPod101.com. You will find a lot of resources to improve your French. That's all for me for today. It was me, Pierre, and see you on next lesson. Bye!

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