One More Croissant for the Road. Felicity Cloake
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number of regional specialities. Indeed, the benefit of cycling long distances is you can usually justify several items: I even have a Paris–Brest for breakfast one day, though I’m not sure I’d recommend it unless you want to feel slightly queasy for the first few kilometres.
If you’re in a hurry, or simply wish to take your bounty for a scenic picnic, then you may get lucky and find the boulangerie has a coffee machine as well. The coffee is usually mediocre (see here, Pause-Café – Coffee Break), but certainly no worse than the average British stuff, and this does cut out the next step, which is trying to find somewhere to provide the liquid element of proceedings. Note that in my experience, boulangeries in the south and east seem more clued into the coffee wheeze – I didn’t find many in Normandy or Brittany – and not all have milk.
If you want to sit down and enjoy your breakfast like a civilised person, then head straight to the nearest bar, which isn’t just a place to booze – though you are likely to see a surprising number of respectable-looking people sipping beers or glasses of pastis first thing – but a place to drink coffee, read the paper and catch up with friends. Kind of like a pub, if the British were made differently. (Because of this you won’t see many dedicated coffee shops in France, or at least I didn’t, though there’s the odd Starbucks in Paris.)
As long as they don’t serve breakfast themselves, it’s perfectly acceptable to sit down, order a coffee, and bring out the stuff you bought round the corner to enjoy with it: no need for snatching furtive bites under the table while the waiter’s back is turned, though you might want to take the empty bags with you, especially if you hope to repeat the experience tomorrow.
A suitable café is located, overlooking the market, and business concluded fairly satisfactorily, though the croissant itself proves a mere 7/10 – rather soft and bland by French standards. Still, brushing the crumbs from my lips and tucking the petite galette that accompanied my café crème in my pocket for later, it feels like a good start.
Douillons aux Poires, or Pears in Pyjamas
This buttery, lightly spiced Norman classic, which can be made with apples or pears, is usually served warm, rather than scoffed straight from the boulangerie bag as we did, and is lovely with a glass of sweet cider or perry.
Makes 6
6 small, hard pears
500ml cider or perry
100g sugar
1 egg, beaten
Crème fraîche, to serve
For the pastry (or use 500g bought puff)
250g plain flour, plus a little extra to roll out
¼ tsp fine salt
85g caster sugar
150g well-chilled butter
1 Put the flour, salt and sugar into a mixing bowl and grate the butter into it. Stir with a table knife to coat the butter, then drizzle over 2 tablespoons of cold water and keep stirring, gradually adding more (probably about 3 tablespoons more) until it starts to come together. At this point you can use your hands. Wrap and chill for at least 30 minutes.
2 Meanwhile, peel the pears and core from the bottom, leaving the stalks on. Bring 500ml of water, the cider or perry and sugar to the boil in a pan just large enough to hold all the pears, then add the fruit. Poach until just tender, but not soft; how long will depend on the ripeness of your pears. Drain and dry well with kitchen paper.
3 Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/gas 6. Roll the pastry out on a lightly floured surface to about 3mm thick. Cut into thick strips, long enough to wrap round the base of each pear, then roll up to encase it, leaving the stalk sticking out at the top. Pinch together with damp fingers to seal. Brush with beaten egg.
4 Bake for about 35–40 minutes, until deep golden. Serve warm, with crème fraîche.
STAGE 2
Moules Marinières
Moules marinières is not an exclusively Norman dish – you’ll find it all over northern France and Belgium – but Normandy has been exporting mussels to the discerning diners of Paris since at least the 16th century, so they probably know what they’re doing by now.
Aptly, the first 30 minutes of my epic journey are in the wrong direction. A route that looked simple on the map proves easily lost once the signs, so assiduous for the first couple of kilometres through central Cherbourg, stop abruptly, as if the person responsible knocked off for lunch and never came back. All options are thrillingly open as we circumnavigate a busy roundabout searching in vain for clues, eventually ending up in a grim retail park inadvertently following signs for Oncle Scott’s ‘1er restaurant franco-américain aux ambiances country de la longue liste des restaurants en France’ rather than Bricquebec, the town I’ve earmarked for lunch.
My falsely breezy claim that getting out of cities is always the worst part of any ride doesn’t make either of us feel any better, especially after a promising-looking cycle path down the side of a fast dual carriageway is belatedly revealed to be a works entrance when several pieces of heavy machinery overtake us at speed, horns blaring. Thank God, then, for the kind fellow cyclist who, seeing my face contorted with rage over my phone, stops and points us in the right direction: through a housing estate and a dark, dank tunnel under the road, from which we emerge, blinking, into the countryside.
And what countryside! Normandy has turned on a full charm offensive, as if in a belated attempt to erase this morning’s carwashes and tile showrooms from our minds – we pedal past sleepy cottages with chickens pecking away placidly in their shadow, through banks of tall rhododendrons in full flower and, very soon, behind iron railings and a placid lake, hit the bullseye: a real-life chateau, all pointy turrets and grim stone. I insist on stopping to get a picture, and promptly fall off my bike, as I yet again fail to remember that I have 25kg strapped onto the back wheel.
It’s all bucolic as hell: Normandy is a soft, lush landscape of culinary riches – salt-marsh lamb, seafood, dairy, and dry cider. In fact, in terms of raw ingredients, it’s not a million miles away from the milder regions of our own South-West. More than one source I consult mentions the ‘gargantuan appetites’ of the heartily sized locals, which may be attributing too long a reach to Vikings who settled here in the 10th century, but if I lived in this land of Camembert and Calvados, I’d probably blame my corpulence on genetics, too.
The sun finally comes out as we bowl along hedge-fringed country lanes, attracting barking dogs to their gates like Pied Pipers with pockets full of sausages. I’m particularly taken with one tiny Yorkshire terrier whose warning sign declares it to be ‘en psychoanalyse’. At one o’clock precisely, we hit Bricquebec, a prosperous town with a 12th-century castle that feels like it ought to be full of restaurants, but oddly enough isn’t, with the exception of a forbidding medieval cellar with definite pretensions to grandeur that don’t quite feel appropriate to our clothing or general odour. Mindful of the five weeks of dining out ahead of me, I push for a picnic, but Matt is a man who likes to eat properly, and he tells me so, albeit in such incredibly diplomatic language that it takes me a while to get the hint.
Needless to say, he wins and we end up at a bar that sells pizzas and smells promisingly of toasting Emmental. Thin and crisp, they come laden with unapologetically French toppings. I choose one with Camembert, potatoes, smoked ham and cream, which arrives with a glossy egg yolk goggling at me from the centre. Throw in a