As much as
we like to rib each other about our differences, France is no different
from America when it comes to a few things. You can discuss amongst
yourselves some of the other things, but the one I want to talk about
today is green onions, or scallions, as they’re called in certain parts
of the United States.
No one can
quite agree on what they should be called so you’ll see them labeled as
either at markets or grocery stores. The one thing about them, though, is
that they’re plentiful. I think every supermarket in America carries them
and they’re very common. The French use a lot of onions and their
relatives, most notably leeks and shallots. But come spring, bundles
of other kinds of onions show up at the markets, like the two that I
picked up this week.
However we
don’t really get exactly what we call “scallions” in France. Come
spring, all sorts of lovely onions, of different shapes, widths, and
names, spring up at the markets. There are cives, civettes, cébettes, ciboules,
and ciboulettes,
the last one corresponds exactly with an English language
counterpart: chives. But if you ask the average Joe, or
Joséphine, on the street, I think they would be hard-pressed to
explain the differences between them.
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