Aubrac
Aubrac is a small village in the southern Massif Central of France. The name is applied to the surrounding countryside, properly called L'Aubrac in French; the Aubrac region has been a member of the Natura 2000 network since August 2006. It straddles three régions. Aubrac is a volcanic and granitic plateau that extends over an area of 1,500 km2; the volcanic eruptions occurred between 6 and 9 million year ago and were of Hawaiian type with fluid lavas. There are therefore no individual volcanic cones; the volcanic zone occupies the west side. The average altitude is about 1,200 meters with the highest point at 1,469 meters in the south. All the region has been eroded by glaciers during three glacial periods; the Aubrac includes four glacial lakes: lac des Salhiens, lac de Saint-Andéol, lac de Souveyrols and lac de Born. In the south, the highest summits of the Aubrac dominate the Lot valley. Bovine breeding is the main activity on the plateau. Aubrac has its own bovine species called "Aubrac", well adapted to the environment.
The cows are bred for their meat. The milk was made into cheese in "burons" or " mazucs ", which are small structures in the middle of the pastures. Today, the majority of these structures are in ruin; the "Laguiole" cheese is now only made by a dairy in the village of Laguiole and resembles Cantal cheese. The region is known for its knife industry, it is here. The factory of Forge de Laguiole was designed by Phillippe Starck. By 1000 BC, the Celts had occupied the region. In the period of Roman Gaul, Gaulish tribes called Rutènians occupied the area. Julius Caesar stated, their capital Anderitum became Javols. The Rutenians, who may have come from the Danube delta and who gave their name to the Rouergue, became allied with Vercingetorix. In the early Middle Ages, Grégory of Tours recorded an incident of a Pagan rite at the lake near Mount Hélanus. A pilgrim of St. James, survived after a fight in the area; the village of Aubrac grew around the hospital. The Dômerie was home to the knights of the Order of Aubrac until the French Revolution.
The monks fed and sheltered passing pilgrims, rang a "Bell of the Lost" during times of snow. The rules of life at the Dômerie in Latin dating from the Middle Ages are available in an online version. In the 11th century, a certain Gilbert, who married Tiburge, countess of Provence, appointed himself count of Gévaudan; this Gilbert had a daughter, Douce I, Countess of Provence, married to Ramon Berenguer, Count of Barcelona, brought him all the rights to Gévaudan and Carladès. The rule of the counts of Barcelona in Gévaudan gave rise to a serious argument with the bishop of Mende, who considered himself lord and count of the country. After many local conflicts and the war between the lords of Armagnac's French kings Charles VII and Louis XI this country lost its true identity. However, the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela has always brought many visitors; every last weekend of August, a literary festival takes place in Aubrac: Rencontres aubrac Medieval latin text Campsite La Romiguiere Aligot-Saucisse: Aveyron, that's good!
Official site of Aubrac Bulletin board of Aveyron Official Site of Saint-Chély d'Aubrac Official site of Lozère Official site of Aveyron Views of the ancient Dômerie Photographs of Aubrac cows Les Rencontres d'Aubrac, a literary festival about mythology Aubrac
Gauls
The Gauls were a group of Celtic peoples of West-Central Europe in the Iron Age and the Roman period. The area they inhabited was known as Gaul, their Gaulish language forms the main branch of the Continental Celtic languages. The Gauls emerged around the 5th century BC as the bearers of the La Tène culture north of the Alps. By the 4th century BC, they spread over much of what is now France, Spain, Switzerland, Southern Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia by virtue of controlling the trade routes along the river systems of the Rhône, Seine and Danube, they expanded into Northern Italy, the Balkans and Galatia. Gaul was never united under a single ruler or government, but the Gallic tribes were capable of uniting their forces in large-scale military operations, they reached the peak of their power in the early 3rd century BC. The rising Roman Republic after the end of the First Punic War put pressure on the Gallic sphere of influence. After this, Gaul became a province of the Roman Empire, the Gauls culturally adapted to the Roman world, bringing about the formation of the hybrid Gallo-Roman culture.
The Gauls of Gallia Celtica according to the testimony of Caesar called themselves Celtae in their own language, Galli in Latin. As is not unusual with ancient ethnonyms, these names came to be applied more than their original sense, Celtae being the origin of the term Celts itself while Galli is the origin of the adjective Gallic, now referring to all of Gaul; the name Gaul itself is not from the Germanic word * Walhaz. Gaulish culture developed out of the Celtic cultures over the first millennia BC; the Urnfield culture represents the Celts as a distinct cultural branch of the Indo-European-speaking people. The spread of iron working led to the Hallstatt culture in the 8th century BC; the Hallstatt culture evolved into the La Tène culture in around the 5th century BC. The Greek and Etruscan civilizations and colonies began to influence the Gauls in the Mediterranean area. Gauls under Brennus invaded Rome circa 390 BC. By the 5th century BC, the tribes called Gauls had migrated from Central France to the Mediterranean coast.
Gallic invaders settled the Po Valley in the 4th century BC, defeated Roman forces in a battle under Brennus in 390 BC and raided Italy as far as Sicily. In the 3rd century BC, the Gauls attempted an eastward expansion in 281-279 BC, towards the Balkan peninsula, which at that time was a Greek province, with the ultimate goal to reach and loot the rich Greek city-states of the Greek mainland, but the majority of the Gaul army was exterminated by the Greeks and the few Gauls that survived were forced to flee. A large number of Gauls served in the armies of Carthage during the Punic Wars, one of the leading rebel leaders of the Mercenary War, was of Gallic origin. During the Balkan expedition, led by Cerethrios and Bolgios, the Gauls raided twice the Greek mainland. At the end of the second expedition the Gallic raiders had been repelled by the coalition armies of the various Greek city-states and were forced to retreat to Illyria and Thrace, but the Greeks were forced to grant safe-passage to the Gauls who made their way to Asia Minor and settled in Central Anatolia.
The Gallic area of settlement in Asia Minor was called Galatia. But they were checked through the use of war elephants and skirmishers by the Greek Seleucid king Antiochus I in 275 BC, after which they served as mercenaries across the whole Hellenistic Eastern Mediterranean, including Ptolemaic Egypt, where they, under Ptolemy II Philadelphus, attempted to seize control of the kingdom. In the first Gallic invasion of Greece, they achieved victory over the Macedonians and killed the Macedonian king Ptolemy Keraunos, they focused on looting the rich Macedonian countryside, but avoided the fortified cities. The Macedonian general Sosthenes assembled an army, defeated Bolgius and repelled the invading Gauls. In the second Gaulish invasion of Greece, the Gauls, led by Brennos, suffered heavy losses while facing the Greek coalition army at Thermopylae, but helped by the Heracleans they followed the mountain path around Thermopylae to encircle the Greek army in the same way that the Persian army had done at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, but this time deafeating the whole of the Greek army.
After passing Thermopylae the Gauls headed for the rich treasury at Delphi, where they were defeated by the re-assembled Greek army. This led to a series of retreats of the Gauls, with devastating losses, all the way up to Macedonia and out of the Greek mainland; the major part of the Gaul army was defeated in the process, those Gauls survived were forced to flee from Greece. The Gallic leader Brennos was injured at Delphi and committed suicide there. (He is not to be confused with another Gaulish leader bearing the same name who had sacked Rome a century earlier. In 278 BC Gaulish settlers in the Balkans were invited by Nicomedes I of Bithynia to help him in a dynastic struggle against his brother, they numbered about 10,000 fighting men and about the same number of
Franks
The Franks were a collection of Germanic peoples, whose name was first mentioned in 3rd century Roman sources, associated with tribes on the Lower and Middle Rhine, on the edge of the Roman Empire. The term was associated with Romanized Germanic dynasties within the collapsing Roman Empire, who commanded the whole region between the rivers Loire and Rhine, they imposed power over many other post-Roman kingdoms and Germanic peoples, still they were given recognition by the Catholic Church as successors to the old rulers of the Western Roman Empire. Although the Frankish name does not appear until the 3rd century, at least some of the original Frankish tribes had long been known to the Romans under their own names, both as allies providing soldiers and as enemies; the new name first appears when their allies were losing control of the Rhine region. The Franks were first reported as working together to raid Roman territory, but from the beginning these raids were associated with attacks upon them from outside their frontier area, by the Saxons, for example, with the desire of frontier tribes to move into Roman territory with which they had had centuries of close contact.
Frankish peoples inside Rome's frontier on the Rhine river were the Salian Franks who from their first appearance were permitted to live in Roman territory, the Ripuarian or Rhineland Franks who, after many attempts conquered the Roman frontier city of Cologne and took control of the left bank of the Rhine. In a period of factional conflict in the 450s and 460s, Childeric I, a Frank, was one of several military leaders commanding Roman forces with various ethnic affiliations in Roman Gaul. Childeric and his son Clovis I faced competition from the Roman Aegidius as competitor for the "kingship" of the Franks associated with the Roman Loire forces; this new type of kingship inspired by Alaric I, represents the start of the Merovingian dynasty, which succeeded in conquering most of Gaul in the 6th century, as well as establishing its leadership over all the Frankish kingdoms on the Rhine frontier. It was on the basis of this Merovingian empire that the resurgent Carolingians came to be seen as the new Emperors of Western Europe in 800.
In the Middle Ages, the term Frank came to be used as a synonym for Western European, as the Carolingian Franks were rulers of most of Western Europe, established a political order, the basis of the European ancien regime that only ended with the French revolution. Western Europeans shared their allegiance to the Roman Catholic church and worked as allies in the Crusades beyond Europe in the Levant, where they still referred to themselves and the Principalities they established as Frankish; this has had a lasting impact on names for Western Europeans in many languages. From the beginning the Frankish kingdoms were politically and divided between an eastern Frankish and Germanic part, the western part that the Merovingians had founded on Roman soil; the eastern Frankish kingdom came to be seen as the new "Holy Roman Empire", was from early times called "Germany". Within "Frankish" Western Europe itself, it was the original Merovingian or "Salian" Western Frankish kingdom, founded in Roman Gaul and speaking Romance languages, which has continued until today to be referred to as "France" - a name derived directly from the Franks.
The name Franci was not a tribal name, but within a few centuries it had eclipsed the names of the original peoples who constituted it. Following the precedents of Edward Gibbon and Jacob Grimm, the name of the Franks has been linked with the English adjective "frank" meaning "free". There have been proposals that Frank comes from the Germanic word for "javelin". Words in other Germanic languages meaning "fierce", "bold" or "insolent", may be significant. Eumenius addressed the Franks in the matter of the execution of Frankish prisoners in the circus at Trier by Constantine I in 306 and certain other measures: Latin: Ubi nunc est illa ferocia? Ubi semper infida mobilitas?. Latin: Feroces was used to describe the Franks. Contemporary definitions of Frankish ethnicity vary both by point of view. A formulary written by Marculf about 700 AD described a continuation of national identities within a mixed population when it stated that "all the peoples who dwell, Romans and those of other nations, live... according to their law and their custom."
Writing in 2009, Professor Christopher Wickham pointed out that "the word'Frankish' ceased to have an exclusive ethnic connotation. North of the River Loire everyone seems to have been considered a Frank by the mid-7th century at the latest. Apart from the more respected History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours, two more colourful early sources that describe the origin of the Franks are a 7th-century work known as the Chronicle of Fredegar and the anonymous Liber Historiae Francorum, written a century later; the author of the Chronicle of Fredegar claimed that the Franks came from Troy and quoted the works of Vergil and Hieronymous, the Franks are mentioned in those works, by Hieronymous. The chronicle describes Priam as a Frankish king whose people migrated to Macedonia after the fall of Troy. In Macedonia, the Franks divided; the Eur
Provinces of France
The Kingdom of France was organized into provinces until March 4, 1790, when the establishment of the department system superseded provinces. The provinces of France were equivalent to the historic counties of England, they came into their final form over the course of many hundreds of years, as many dozens of semi-independent fiefs and former independent countries came to be incorporated into the French royal domain. Because of the haphazard manner in which the provinces evolved, each had its own sets of feudal traditions, taxation systems, etc. and the system represented an impediment to effective administration of the entire country from Paris. During the early years of the French Revolution, in an attempt to centralize the administration of the whole country, to remove the influence of the French nobility over the country, the entirety of the province system was abolished and replaced by the system of departments in use today. In some cases, several modern regions or departments share names with the historic provinces, their borders may cover the same territory.
The list below shows the major provinces of France at the time of their dissolution during the French Revolution. Capital cities are shown in parentheses. Bold indicates a city, the seat of a judicial and quasi-legislative body called either a parlement or a conseil souverain. In some cases, this body met in a different city from the capital. Île-de-France Berry Orléanais Normandy Languedoc Lyonnais Dauphiné Champagne Aunis Saintonge Poitou Guyenne and Gascony Burgundy Picardy Anjou Provence Angoumois Bourbonnais Marche Brittany Maine Touraine Limousin Foix Auvergne Béarn Alsace Artois Roussillon Flanders and Hainaut Franche-Comté Lorraine.
Cheese
Cheese is a dairy product derived from milk, produced in a wide range of flavors and forms by coagulation of the milk protein casein. It comprises proteins and fat from milk the milk of cows, goats, or sheep. During production, the milk is acidified, adding the enzyme rennet causes coagulation; the solids are pressed into final form. Some cheeses have molds throughout. Most cheeses melt at cooking temperature. Over a thousand types of cheese from various countries are produced, their styles and flavors depend on the origin of the milk, whether they have been pasteurized, the butterfat content, the bacteria and mold, the processing, aging. Herbs, spices, or wood smoke may be used as flavoring agents; the yellow to red color of many cheeses, such as Red Leicester, is produced by adding annatto. Other ingredients may be added to some cheeses, such as black pepper, chives or cranberries. For a few cheeses, the milk is curdled by adding acids such as lemon juice. Most cheeses are acidified to a lesser degree by bacteria, which turn milk sugars into lactic acid the addition of rennet completes the curdling.
Vegetarian alternatives to rennet are available. Cheesemakers near a dairy region may benefit from fresher, lower-priced milk, lower shipping costs. Cheese is valued for its portability, long life, high content of fat, protein and phosphorus. Cheese is more compact and has a longer shelf life than milk, although how long a cheese will keep depends on the type of cheese. Speaking, hard cheeses, such as Parmesan last longer than soft cheeses, such as Brie or goat's milk cheese; the long storage life of some cheeses when encased in a protective rind, allows selling when markets are favorable. There is some debate as to the best way to store cheese, but some experts say that wrapping it in cheese paper provides optimal results. Cheese paper is coated in a porous plastic on the inside, the outside has a layer of wax; this specific combination of plastic on the inside and wax on the outside protects the cheese by allowing condensation on the cheese to be wicked away while preventing moisture from within the cheese escaping.
A specialist seller of cheese is sometimes known as a cheesemonger. Becoming an expert in this field requires some formal education and years of tasting and hands-on experience, much like becoming an expert in wine or cuisine; the cheesemonger is responsible for all aspects of the cheese inventory: selecting the cheese menu, receiving and ripening. The word cheese comes from Latin caseus, from which the modern word casein is derived; the earliest source is from the proto-Indo-European root *kwat-, which means "to ferment, become sour". The word cheese comes from cīese or cēse. Similar words are shared by other West Germanic languages—West Frisian tsiis, Dutch kaas, German Käse, Old High German chāsi—all from the reconstructed West-Germanic form *kāsī, which in turn is an early borrowing from Latin; the Online Etymological Dictionary states that "cheese" comes from "Old English cyse, cese...from West Germanic *kasjus, from Latin caseus "cheese"." The Online Etymological Dictionary states. Compare fromage.
Old Norse ostr, Danish ost, Swedish ost are related to Latin ius "broth, juice.'"When the Romans began to make hard cheeses for their legionaries' supplies, a new word started to be used: formaticum, from caseus formatus, or "molded cheese". It is from this word that the French fromage, standard Italian formaggio, Catalan formatge, Breton fourmaj, Occitan fromatge are derived. Of the Romance languages, Portuguese, Romanian and Southern Italian dialects use words derived from caseus; the word cheese itself is employed in a sense that means "molded" or "formed". Head cheese uses the word in this sense; the term "cheese" is used as a noun and adjective in a number of figurative expressions. Cheese is an ancient food. There is no conclusive evidence indicating where cheesemaking originated, whether in Europe, Central Asia or the Middle East, but the practice had spread within Europe prior to Roman times and, according to Pliny the Elder, had become a sophisticated enterprise by the time the Roman Empire came into being.
Earliest proposed dates for the origin of cheesemaking range from around 8000 BCE, when sheep were first domesticated. Since animal skins and inflated internal organs have, since ancient times, provided storage vessels for a range of foodstuffs, it is probable that the process of cheese making was discovered accidentally by storing milk in a container made from the stomach of an animal, resulting in the milk being turned to curd and whey by the rennet from the stomach. There is a legend—wit
Charcuterie
Charcuterie is the branch of cooking devoted to prepared meat products, such as bacon, sausage, galantines, ballotines, pâtés, confit from pork. Charcuterie is part of the garde manger chef's repertoire. Intended as a way to preserve meat before the advent of refrigeration, they are prepared today for their flavors derived from the preservation processes; the French word for a person who prepares charcuterie is charcutier translated as "pork butcher". This has led to the mistaken belief; the Food Lover's Companion, says, "it refers to the products pork specialties such as pâtés, galantines, crépinettes, etc. which are made and sold in a delicatessen-style shop called a charcuterie." The 1961 edition of Larousse Gastronomique defines it as "he art of preparing various meats, in particular pork, in order to present them in the most diverse ways." In the first century AD, Strabo recorded the import of salted meat from Gaul and the Romans may have been the first to regulate the trade of charcuterie as they wrote laws regulating the proper production of pork joints, but the French have had some influence.
In 15th-century France, local guilds regulated tradesmen in the food production industry in each city. The guilds that produced charcuterie were those of the charcutiers; the members of this guild produced a traditional range of cooked or salted and dried meats, which varied, sometimes distinctively, from region to region. The only "raw" meat the charcutiers were allowed to sell was unrendered lard; the charcutier prepared numerous items, including pâtés, sausages, bacon and head cheese. These preservation methods ensured. Forcemeat is a mixture of lean meat emulsified with fat; the emulsification can be accomplished by sieving, or puréeing the ingredients. The emulsification may either be smooth or coarse in texture, depending on the desired consistency of the final product. Forcemeats are used in the production of numerous items found in charcuterie. Meats used in the production of forcemeats include pork, seafood, game meats, game birds and pork livers. Pork fatback is used for the fat portion of forcemeat, as it has a somewhat neutral flavor.
In US usage, there are four basic styles of forcemeat. Straight forcemeats are produced by progressively grinding equal parts pork and pork fat with a third dominant meat which can be pork or another meat; the proteins are cubed and seasoned, rested and placed into desired vessel. Country-style forcemeats are a combination of pork fat and garnish ingredients; the finished product has a coarse texture. The third style is gratin; the final style is mousseline, which are light in texture using lean cuts of meat from veal, fish, or shellfish. The resulting texture comes from the addition of eggs and cream to this forcemeat; the word sausage is derived through French from the Latin sal,'salt', as the sausage-making technique involves placing ground or chopped meat along with salt into a tube. The tubes can vary, but the more common animal-derived tubes include sheep, hog, or cattle intestinal linings. Additionally, animal stomachs and bladders, as well as edible artificial casings produced from collagen and inedible plant cellulose or paper are used.
Inedible casings are used to shape and age the sausage. The two main variants of sausage cooked. Fresh sausages involve the production of raw meat placed into casings to be cooked at a time, whereas cooked sausages are heated during production and are ready to eat at the end of production. Emulsified sausages are cooked sausages with a fine texture, using the combination of pork, beef, or poultry with fat, cure and water; these ingredients are emulsified at high speed in a food blender. During this process, the salt dissolves the muscle proteins, which helps to suspend the fat molecules. Temperature is an important part of the process: if the temperature rises above 60 °F for pork or 70 °F for beef, the emulsion will not hold and fat will leak from the sausage during the cooking process. Pâté and terrines are cooked in a pastry crust or an earthenware container. Both the earthenware container and the dish itself are called a terrine. Pâté and terrine are similar: The term pâté suggests a finer-textured forcemeat using liver, whereas terrines are more made of a coarser forcemeat.
The meat is ground, along with heavy seasoning, which may include fat and aromatics. The seasoning is important, as they will be served cold, which mutes the flavors; the mixture is placed into a lined mold and cooked in a water bath to control the temperature, which will keep the forcemeat from separating, as the water bath slows the heating process of the terrine. Pâté and terrine are cooked to 160 °F, while terrine made of foie gras are cooked to an internal temperature of 120 °F. After the proper temperature is reached, the terrine is removed from the oven and placed into a cooling unit topped with a weight to compact the contents of the terrine, it is allowed to rest for several days to allow the flavors to blend. Galantine is a chilled poultry product created after
Truyère
The Truyère is a 167-kilometre long river in south-western France, right tributary of the Lot River. Its source is in the south-western Massif Central, north of Mende, it flows west through the following départements and towns: Lozère: Le Malzieu-Ville Cantal Aveyron: Entraygues-sur-TruyèreThe Truyère flows into the Lot in Entraygues-sur-Truyère. Its main tributaries are the Bès near Albaret-le-Comtal, the Goul near Saint-Hippolyte; the Truyère feeds several reservoirs, like the Lac de Grandval and the Lac de Barrage de Sarrans, to supply hydroelectricity. The Garabit Viaduct, built by Gustave Eiffel, spans the Truyère near Ruynes-en-Margeride. Http://www.geoportail.fr The Truyère at the Sandre database
