Gastronomy

Normandy, the region where one eats well, offers an ensemble of specialities based on natural regional products. The farmland criss-crossed by hedges and trees gives the cows a rich and abundant diet which ensures that their milk is of good quality.
Butter and cream hold a place of privilege in all culinary preparations, from starters to desserts, and the cheeses - camembert made with unpasteurized milk, Pont L'Evêque, Livarot, Pavé d'Auge and Neufchâtel - are particularly tasty.
The apple is the queen of Norman fruits. Apples are used to concoct the most delicious tarts and to make cider, calvados and the "pommeau" which is sprinkled over all traditional dishes.
The "salty meadow" sheep is reared solely in the seaside meadows next to the Bay of Mont Saint-Michel. The meadows disappear completely when there is a spring tide. The grass that grows there is salty and the sheep that eat it have a particular taste.
Normandy is France's most important region for scallop fishing. Mussels are cultivated in the Bay of Mont Saint-Michel. The region benefits from all sorts of seafood: fish, shellfish and crustaceans.

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On the menu:

Andouille de Vire (a sausage made of chitterlings and eaten cold): the monument of French cooked pork meats. The scraped guts are slowly smoked over beech wood sawdust before being cooked in stock.

Leg of Mont-Saint-Michel "salty meadow" lamb.

This mythical lamb gets its delicate flavour from the grasses that it eats from the Bay Mont-Saint-Michel..
The grass that grows in the seaside soil and is covered up to six times a year by the spring tides is salty and gives the sheep's flesh its special aroma..

Duck à la Rouennaise : the duck is stuffed then cooked. It is served with a blood sauce.

Caen tripe : paunch, reticulum, rennet stomach and cow's hoof, a few slices of carrot and a seasoned stock make up the basic ingredients of this classic dish.

Turbot with cream : the turbot caught near the Norman coast goes particularly well with Norman sauce: a simple béchamel enriched with cream.

Apple tart: made with pie crust or puff pastry, simply served with a bit of crème fraîche or flambéed with calvados, an apple tart comes in a variety of forms, depending on the cook.

Crêpes : sweet or savoury, made from buckwheat or wheat, they are perfect any time of the day with a bowl of cider.

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Mère Poulard's omelette

The knack of Mère Poulard's omelette lies in the way the eggs are beaten. Here is the legendary recipe:
Beat the egg yolks with a whisk and season them with salt and pepper. Beat the whites until they are stiff and add a pinch of salt. Melt some butter in a frying-pan then pour in the beaten yolks. Add one spoonful of crème fraîche. Once the yolks start to cook, fold in the whites, a third at a time. Finish cooking over a high heat and serve straightaway.

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Cider, Perry, Calvados and Pommeau

The juice extracted from the apple becomes cider after fermentation. Like a great wine, cider is described by its colour, its nose, its flavour and its taste. There are three sorts of cider: sweet cider, obtained artificially by stopping fermentation at 2.5°; dry cider which is not very sweet and has a characteristic taste of apples, between 4 and 5° proof; and traditional cider, which is much drier at 5° proof and is made and drunk on the farm.
Perry is made in the same way as cider, but from pears. It is a widespread drink in the region.
The famous Norman "calva" is made by distilling cider. Its manufacture is strictly controlled. Two distillations a year are allowed: one in spring and the other in autumn. To make a litre of calvados at 100% alcohol, one needs about twenty litres of cider at 5°, in other words, around 27 kg of apples. The calvados then ages in extremely dry oak barrels.
Since the 16th century, at harvest time, the fruitiest cider apple juice is mixed with the calvados in order to keep its taste. At the beginning of the 1970s, this mixture was named Pommeau of Normandy and in 1991 it received the "appellation d'origine contrôlée" (the label guaranteeing the origin of wines and cheeses).

The departmental council of Calvados presents its regional products.

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The Norman hole

In the middle of a lavish meal, it is traditional to drink a little calvados. The reason behind this: it dissolves fat. Nutritionists confirm that the alcohol dilates the stomach and so the impression of satiation fades. Thus the "Norman hole" gives the guests back their appetites. Today, restaurateurs have replaced it with an apple sorbet drenched in calavados.

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Scallops

Normandy is the main scallop-producing region. Fishing by dragnet is extremely well regulated.
Scallop growth is irregular, but it takes about three years for them to reach selling size.
When buying them, it is best to get medium-sized ones which are more tasty, rather than the big ones which need to be escaloped.
There are numerous ways to serve scallops, but they must not be overcooked, otherwise they become rubbery and lose all their subtlety.

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Mussel breeding on mussel beds

The legend goes that Patrick Walton, an Irishman, was shipwrecked of the coast of Charente in 1235. The only survivor, he hung up nets in order to fish. Thus he realised that mussels had fixed themselves to the stakes that held the nets. The mussel bed was invented!

Today, a mussel bed is made of a line of 110 posts planted in the sand along 100 metres.
For a long time this breeding technique was only used along the Atlantic coast. It was in 1954, at Viviers-sur-Mer, that mussel breeding in the Bay of Mont-Saint-Michel was born. Since then the intermunicipal port of Le Vivier/Cherrueix has become the first mussel breeding port in France. There are now 271 kilometres of mussel beds and annual production is between 10,000 and 12,000 tonnes. About 300 people earn their living from the mussel beds.

Mussel breeding and the background of the Dol

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Cancale oysters

The oyster-farming centre of Cancale was formerly renowned for its flat oysters. But in 1920, a mysterious disease decimated the shoals which provided all the spat. Today this spat, that the oyster-farmers endeavour to recreate locally, develops in parks out at sea giving the oysters a very particular taste.

The history of Cancale

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Villedieu-les-Poêles copper

The copper manufacturing tradition of Villedieu-les-Poêles has remained intact for nine centuries. The Maltese Knights who had set up a commander's residence, profiting from the presence of ore in the region, gave substance to the industry. Embossing, tinning, beating and polishing are still all done in the traditional fashion. The copper workshop has 300,000 visitors a year.

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