Kent cobnuts.

I love them.

Every year they ripen at the end of August for two short weeks.
But this year they arrived at the beginning of the month and are finished already.

Global warming has a lot to answer for!

There were loads of them in France at the markets.

Ah no, Mart, they look exactly the same but are in fact HAZEL nuts (like the ones you find dried in chocolate) and taste totally different (I don't like them).

Thanks for clearing that up.

I was unsure everytime I walked past them.

The other French market food I get confused by, is those very small grey crustacaens they sell.(crevettes??)
They seem rather tasteless, and I am allways unsure whether they are a raw food or not, when served.
Whilst on the subject of French markets, I cannot enthuse enough about the smell of a fish market I visited early morning .
Well, what smell, I should say really. There was no fishiness in the air at all just a quality of ozone about, that one would not mind bottling in the home as a plug in.
Rick Stein was right on the TV, a fish market should not smell of fish, or it is not fresh it would appear.
I spent a year growing up by a fish market and it stank.
Last nights catch? I think not.

One more oddity in French markets is the little crabs.
What does one do with them?
Too small to get any meat off, surely they should be put back!

Crevettes are basically just shrimps or small prawns. Or very small langoustines!

I've never quite understood those tiny crabs either (spider crabs?).

Aha! As I thought.
Mere Crill!