Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Looking for fresh sweet corn in France


It all started with eggs.
We ordered eggs from the local farmer, we have to pick them up once a week.
Around a year later, we could get the hens.
Yes, we will eat the hens who give us eggs every week.
We got two this time and hubby cooked one with a French recipe (poule au pot). He didn't like it so I ate it all (I love everything with soup especially long simmer soup).
One more hen to go so I decided to cook it the Chinese way. Checked online on the recipe and found one that requires sweet corns and dried scallops. Looking at the recipe I was drooling, I so miss those chicken soup!

My mother sent me dried scallops so the only thing I needed was some sweet corns. I planned to order them online but couldn't find any in chronodrive. I had to make a stop to the grocery store just to find them in precooked form and they were wrapped in some liquids and displayed in the organic zone. I was skeptical but decided to give it a try. It turned out so delicious that even Aelig loved it (well hubby is someone who doesn't appreciate Chinese soup). Aelig ate a lot of dried scallops, it paid off to have mom sent them all the way from Malaysia.

So, what's going on that I can't find fresh sweet corns in France? I saw plenty of corn fields here. A friend told me that corns are food for animals. Some might get offended if you serve them corns. Here, they are usually sold in can (kernels). I have never seen people grilling corns here, most of the time I find them in salad.


I miss the time we could buy fresh corns on the road sides or from pasar malam (night market). My mother would boil them or steam them. Just need to remove the outer husks and the hairs before cooking them. The taste is scrumptious. How about grilling it with some butter? Simply heavenly. We usually leave the cob so that we could hold the cob while eating.

If I have a garden, I would plant some. Someone told me that since they are plenty of corn fields here, I could just go and "take" some. lol

7 comments:

  1. Yep, with the exception of salads, corn is for pigs in France. So don't go stealing any from the fields, it's definitely not sweet corn!!

    I miss corn on the cob too, but luckily now Picard sells them frozen - you should check it out sometime!

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  2. Ok thanks I will check it out at Picard.

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  3. Hello Bee! Pau-Lynn, fellow Klang girl who wrote to you a couple of times. Do you know (or yourself?) any Malaysians who have came to France using the visa de long sejour? I'm having difficulties with the only document that is giving me the most headache - international medical coverage. None of the local insurance company seem to provide int'l coverage of a year. Any idea? Thanks in advance !!

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  4. Hi Paul-Lynn,

    I came to France with student visa so I'm not sure about entering with your situation. However, when I arrived in France, we went to CPAM and when the person in charge knew that we had been living together for more than a year, she enrolled me to the French medical system and I got the carte vitale around 2 months after.

    Let me know if you still need me to find you someone who entered with a long term visa.

    Bee Ean

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  5. Hi again,

    Just got confirmation from Veronique that she entered France with long term visa and was immediately covered by CPAM. So, there is no need for international medical coverage. You can contact Veronique at her blog:
    http://roni-bergugnat.blogspot.com/

    or leave me your email so that I could give you her email. She is ok for you to contact her.

    Hope this helps.

    Bee Ean

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  6. Hi Bee (and Veronique)! So grateful for your reply but I believe Vero went under the long term visa (for spouse) as we are not married and the visa requires me to have a medical coverage BEFORE i leave so it's more complicated. However, Benoit has a rdv tomorrow with MAAF a local French insurance company so hopefully it will work out as I have just spent the whole day (and sleepless night) searching for local insurance companies, which resulted in a visit to AXA KL who told me that the International Medical Insurance would be a lump sum of RM16k. SIAO.

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