Minute larval sardines, anchovies or atherines, usually cooked in omelettes and in small fritters or treated like whitebait. These are increasingly becoming protected.
Butcher's broom. A stiff, evergreen shrub that is both attractive and unusual. It looks a little like a small holly but is actually a member of the lily family. The only monocotyledonous lily, the bitter roots are used in France to make an apéritif called petit-houx. The woody branches of this plant used to be bound into bundles and sold to butchers for cleaning the meat from their chopping blocks.
Warty Venus clams. They should be soaked in running water for a couple of hours to remove any sand.
Praline is a confection made by pouring caramelised sugar, usually with nuts, onto thin sheets to cool. It may also be made by putting crushed nuts and sugar onto a baking dish and then baking until caramelised and then cooling. The brittle mixture is then broken down into a fine powder for use in other dishes. Brittle is a more coarse version.
A name in the Midi for the mantis shrimp. Squill. A flat tailed crustacean with a delicate flavour found from the eastern coast of North America to the Adriatic and Mediterranean. It is related to a crab rather than a prawn and bears some resemblance to a praying mantis, a kind of flat lobster which makes a chirp like a cricket and has lilac marks on its white flesh.
