Wednesday, 5 September 2012

Pass the sherry!

We don't drink much sherry - we recently finished the bottle we brought with us two years ago from the UK. We didn't miss it until I wanted to make a courgette soup using a recipe that called for a small glass of sherry - for the soup, not the cook! I substituted a dry white wine - not the same but good anyway. We then added sherry (le xérès, pronounced "keres" or "gzeres" according to my dictionary) to the shopping list.

So far we have visited Leclerc, Intermarché, Super U, Simply Market and even the specialist wine shop Le-Dit Vin in Descartes - no sherry. LOADS of port, even Madeira, but so far the only place that xérès turns up regularly is in La Nouvelle République's crosswords.

Here's the sherry!
That X is handy for a Mots Codés! With the aid of the letters already placed, you replace the numbers in the grid with letters in order to obtain words horizontally and vertically. A good way of learning vocabulary, if somewhat skewed......


Any word with lots of e's in it comes in useful in French crosswords, so here are a few more frequent clues to be getting on with while we play "hunt the sherry".

Fleuve anglaise: Nene
Fleuve irlandaise: Erne
Saison chaude: été
Fabuliste grec: Esope (Aesop)
Divinité: Eole (Aeolus) or déesse
Crochet: esse
Cheville: tee
Héros grec: Enée (Aeneas)
Général Sudiste: Lee (Robert E. Lee)
Estonie: EE
Mer Grec: Egée (Aegean)

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8 comments:

  1. Susan5 September 2012 at 20:44

    I have a large bottle of Spanish sherry, which will take me a long time to get through. Do you want some? Alternatively, use Pineau de Charentes in your recipe.

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  2. Pollygarter6 September 2012 at 00:49

    Some friends are coming over from the UK and they are bringing us a bottle. Many thanks for the kind offer!

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  3. Jean6 September 2012 at 10:38

    A splash of dry sherry is always the "mystery ingredient" I add to soup just before serving it. I found the tip in a Delia book years ago I think and it seems to work every time.

    A bottle of sherry lasts us about a year because soup is the only thing I use it for !!

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  4. Tim6 September 2012 at 15:07

    Looks like we all drink sherry round here then! ;-}

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  5. GaynorB6 September 2012 at 20:20

    We don't! A bottle will usually last us years, but that was befoe your recommendation to add it to soup.


    We eat loads of soup ...

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  6. Tim7 September 2012 at 09:15

    Yes, soups... so do we... the bottle arriving on Monday may not last as long as the other one... which I think came from Pauline's Dad's house... and he only used it for cooking as well!

    This lack of "olde ladies" drinking it must be why Bristol came up with the idea of serving their pale cream sherry "on the rocks"... to try and get people to actually drink the stuff.

    Possibly...

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  7. Jean7 September 2012 at 15:20

    Actually, I do quite like a glass of dry sherry, on the rocks, as an aperitif....does this mean I am now officially an old lady?....the sweet stuff is lovely in an old-fashioned trifle. Now where did I put that bottle.....?

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  8. Tim13 September 2012 at 08:40

    Surely brandy for the trifle, Jean! And if you drink it "on the rocks" you are one of the trendies that the makers of Bristol Cream were aiming at for a new market... and old ladies drink it by the "shcooooner-full"... some repetitively! I believe it has preservative qualities....?

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