Balenthia in Ethpain

Muchos thankos.

 

It's what I had at Casa Roberto. Paella Valenciana. With snails. For
starters I had little fish cooked in bread crumbs, complete with their
head and eyes. It was an interesting gastronomic evening.

The best paella I had was in the Pyrennes, with chicken and prawns and
stuff, but I wouldn't tell a Valencian that.

 

shame on you.

Taxis everywhere is the name of the game apparently.

It could be cold by the time I get there, which is now set to be late
September. They are now saying that they hadn't noticed that when they
wanted me over coincides with a company wide sales shindig to do with
new products that we are not supposed to know about yet which I was
playing with today. I didn't realise my arrival had was liable to have
that much effect on them.

Pardon?

 

We have a company boat with the name of the firm on the sails and
everything. The MD's son has graciously volunteered to sail it all
round the world. Nice of him to take an interest in the family firm
innit?

Which is good news, local food is always a treat and much superior to
other stuff. Take Tiptree Strawberries and an example.

So what is "my hovercraft is full of eels"?

 

Just consider "Valencian paella" rice with whatever a Valencian farmer might
have at hand. Snails, sometimes, but I haven't seen it as a rule... There
are hundreds od variations, anyone can CLAIM their own as the most
appropiate.

According to this and with the help of Babelfish and some coment of mine:
http://www.lapaella.net/principal.aspx

According to most puristic (the paella nazis) there are two classes of
paellas:

Valencian paella, done with chicken and rabbit, garrofó (a local variety of
string bean), tomato, green beans (in Valencia we put "tavella", "rotjet"
and "ferraura", that are local varieties of green beans), pimentón sweet,
olive oil and saffron or, in its defect, nourishing colorante and, of
course, the rice. In season also it admits artichoke and peas.

Paella of seafood or marine paella, the one that in addition to the usual
rice are made with products of the sea like the sepia, calamaries, mejillón
or clótxina (Mediterranean variety of mejillón, but but small, fine and
flavorful) prawns, Norway lobsters, galeras, lobster, clams, garlic, olive
oil, sweet tomato, pimentón, saffron or colorante and a broth made with
small fish that in Valencia we called morralla.

But the paella in Valencia is much more that a pair of stews with rice, are
hundreds of prescriptions that are faithful reflection of the culinarias
traditions of the zone where they are elaborated. In this Web...

If the fish is small enough and well fried you can eat it complete...

That's a "mar i muntanya" (sea and mountain) as it mixes land and sea food.

And have a nice trip

 

I think I could be adopted.

Er... Tiptree Strawberries, of course!
(what he says?)

http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/hovercraft.htm
Catalan: "El meu aerolliscador està ple d'anguiles"

(top tip: some Valencians will insist in their language as a different
language)
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=cat

 

Ah, it's the same word as in French then. Do you know what, 'il y a
anguille sous roche!' means?

D.

 

fukkem, if they can't speak English I'll shout at them.

 

<googles>

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_d'expressions_au_sens_figuré

Yes!

 

Oh nice pag...what the ****?

'il y a un piege [1] quelque part' ??

That's not what it means. Fucking Wiki fucks up again.

It means, 'you're up to something!'

D.

[1] can't do accents in tin

 

And another error: 'avoir les chevilles qui gonflent'. It's not
'gonflent', but 'enflent'.

**** me, did Cab and Ace knock that page up between 'em ??

D.

 

Using the patented Mavis Beacon "Hunt&Peck" Technique, Switters

My kid sister once stopped her boyfriend in his tracks half-way through
a plate of whitebait with a facial expression:

"What? What? WHAT?"

"But, you eat their *bums*!"

--
Wicked Uncle Nigel - "He's hopeless, but he's honest"

WS* GHPOTHUF#24 APOSTLE#14 DLC#1 COFF#20 BOTAFOT#150 HYPO#0(KoTL) IbW#41
SBS#39 OMF#6 Enfield 500 Curry House Racer "The Basmati Rice Burner",
Honda GL1000K2 (Falling apart) Kawasaki ZN1300 Voyager "Oh, Oh, It's so big"
Suzuki TS250 "The Africa Single" Honda ST1100 wiv trailer Norton 850 Commando

 

Whitebait, yes? Very common over here, although they're normally coated
in flour or a light batter before deep-frying, rather than breadcrumbs.

 

Yeah, them the critters. I'm pretty sure they weren't battered, but they
were covererd in something that was a golden brown, and sort of hid their
heads.

Problem was, it was a massive plate of them, followed by a massive paella.
I was fucking stuffed.

 

I was with the misses.

Cold? September? I don't think so. I've been out there in late October
or early November for the past 4 years, and it's been far from cold during
the day.

Sorry, forgot who I was talking to.

 

heh, I had a discussion with a waiter about this. He basically said it
was the same language, just spoken differently like English is in the
North and South of the UK.

 

Let's say they speak as western Catalan (Lleida and southern Tarragona)
speakers do.

 

Well actually it is October now but the dates have gone firm, sort of.
From what I can make out I am being given training in state of the art
door knob twisting and forelock pulling but they are skipping the taxi
hailing #101 entirely and fast tracking me to palming £50 notes with an
extra 1 and a half credit course in added obsequiousness. Stuff so
advanced apparently they need to train on it first.