One More Croissant for the Road

by Felicity Cloake

  After a quick picnic, and just as a sulphurous wind begins to whip up from the cabbage fields, we ride to our rendezvous with destiny in nearby Meistratzheim. Le Pic turns out to be a collection of large sheds up a bumpy farm track, and despite their fancy advertising material, the place is all but deserted. I have a very bad feeling as I wait for the lady in the office to finish her phone call. Gemma, meanwhile, is examining miniature bottles of local whisky in the little shop, which means at least it won’t be a wasted trip if I have got the wrong end of the stick, but no, by some miracle she’s expecting us. There might be some more people, she says, but they weren’t sure if they’d make it in time, so let’s start without them.

  Let me tell you, if you want to give your French an intensive workout, I’d highly recommend a one-on-one tour of a choucroute factory: we spend an hour and a half in conversation about cabbage. I can thus inform you that 70 per cent of French choucroute comes from Alsace, and Le Pic alone produces 5,000 tonnes a year, an amount that calls for twice that weight in cabbage.

  Not any old cabbage either: white cabbage, both for taste and appearance, finely sliced into 15cm filaments, and then salted and left to ferment in storage tanks outside – how long depends very much on the season. An August cabbage, she tells us, is a very different beast from a November one, and of course (of course!) as the temperature drops in the storage tanks, the fermentation slows down, too. Once it’s judged ready, it may then be cooked for sale or packed raw, either to be eaten as a salad or prepared at home. ‘Here in Alsace, we sell more raw, because we all have our own recipes. In the rest of France, it’s the opposite.’ There’s a brief, pitying pause, possibly as she prays for their enlightenment in the ways of the cabbage.

  As we set off on a tour of the processing plant, I spy a poster featuring two small pink children wearing nothing but cabbage leaf hats, celebrating the start of the new choucroute season with the tagline ‘C’est trop chou!’ (It’s too sweet!) Is the arrival of Choucroute Nouvelle as eagerly anticipated as, say, Beaujolais Nouveau in Burgundy? I ask our guide. Madame considers the question surprisingly seriously. Yes. Yes, it is.

  There’s not much going on in the factory at the moment, she says apologetically, as we stand watching a young man in a hairnet stuff tub after tub with fermented cabbage. Between seasons, you know. In a few months’ time, all this will be go-go-go. (I imagine cabbages being mercilessly dispatched under bright lights to the rhythm of thumping teutonic dance music.) We wander back to the shop, where she excuses herself to prepare the dégustation, included in the price of the tour.

  Gemma, who has manfully been holding the conversational fort while I’ve been scribbling down notes, lets out a long and mournful sigh. I try not to catch her eye as the first sample arrives: a generous dollop of sauerkraut cooked in Riesling, as yellow as straw and very much like the stuff I had for dinner last night. This is followed by the paler, crunchier raw kind, which is apparently great rinsed and mixed with crème fraîche and horseradish, and then, the pièce de résistance, a choucroute pasta bake packed with salty bacon and stringy cheese that I could very definitely get used to on the basis that everything tastes good with melted cheese on top.

  At this point, right at the end of the tour, when we’ve absorbed over an hour’s worth of cabbage chat, the other group bursts in, all apologies and excuses about traffic – here, in the middle of nowhere. I can almost smell the long lunch coming off them.

  Madame, after reassuring them that she can repeat the tour for them, no problem – HA! TAKE THAT, SUCKERS! I think – says the pasta, which I’m trying hard to finish before the interlopers get to it, is her kids’ favourite, too. Personally, she likes to sandwich the choucroute in layers with slices of cured pig fat, and then bake it in a torte with a lard pastry. ‘Oh yes, lard pastry is the best with choucroute,’ someone pipes up from the back. There’s a general murmur of agreement. ‘God, I love France,’ I sigh, slightly more loudly than I mean to, and everyone except Gemma claps delightedly.

  Sadly (for me at least), Le Pic’s choucroute only comes in Alsatian family-sized packs, so we have to content ourselves with a jar of spiced choucroute jam (ideal apparently with foie gras or game, should we find any of that in our picnics over the next few days) and a whisky miniature for the road, before taking our leave of our new friends, who wave us off with many expressions of good luck as they embark upon their tour.

  To be fair, we are heading straight for the last mountains between here and the Americas, but they don’t look too bad from here. And if they are, well, we’ve always got the whisky.

  Km: 71.3

  Croissants: 1 (8.5/10), plus a 10/10 banana and Marmite sandwich in the Strasbourg apartment

  High: The choucroute factory, obviously

  Low: Being dissed by a cat

  *Not me.

  STAGE 17

  Meistratzheim to Nancy

  Quiche Lorraine

  You think you know quiche. You don’t know quiche Lorraine. This much-abused Grand Est speciality, generally served warm as part of a proper meal, rather than cold from a picnic hamper, contains no onions and definitely no cheese and should never see the inside of a chiller cabinet; won’t somebody think of the pastry!

  Stocking up on strong liquor rather than fermented cabbage proves to have been a wise move: having covered a mere 27.6km en route to the choucroute factory in Meistratzheim, there’s still a fair way to go on Gemma’s first day in the saddle, and shadowy mountains loom on the horizon. Having looked at the map, it’s clear (to slightly bastardise the well-known children’s story) that we can’t go over them, we can’t go under them, so we’ll have to go through them.

  On any other day Obernai, a charmingly Germanic market town with a cobbled square of brightly painted houses corseted in timber, would merit a cake stop, but even with the Alps (okay, a single col) under my belt, the Vosges range looks like it means business – and almost as soon as we wobble through the turreted 14th-century gatehouse in nearby Boersch, the road begins to climb.

  Having passed from cabbage fields to vineyards, we now exchange farmland for forest, deep shade and dappled sunshine, lush ferns and mountain meadows. It’s some of the most beautiful countryside I’ve come across thus far, and, despite the heat, Gemma’s always on my back wheel, meaning that my considerable pride allows no slowing down, even in the picturesque little villages huddled in rare areas of flat ground. The fact that we don’t yet have a bed for the night pushes my legs round all the faster, and after a grand descent into Schirmeck, I decide to ring the nearest campsite in neighbouring Rothau. Yes, they have space. No rush, no problem!

  We do rush, though, mainly because we’re both pretty thirsty – and once Gemma has assembled her laughably flimsy sleeping arrangement, which boasts pegs like a gerbil’s toothpick and is apparently designed for mountain climbers (apt), she disappears and comes back with two bottles of beer and some saucisson, which is kind of her, given that I’ve just made her spend the day at a cabbage-fermenting factory. We sit on the damp grass, fielding curious glances from passers-by (mostly elderly Dutch and German couples who seem to have moved in for the summer if their elaborate set-ups, complete with dustbins, hanging baskets and washing lines are anything to go by), and glug contentedly until – ‘I hate to be the bearer of bad news,’ I say finally, shrugging on the now familiar mantle of Prophet of Doom, ‘but we should probably go and find something to eat.’

  The village, curiously enough, is not badly supplied with options – ever the classy ladies, we choose the bar with several leathery men smoking outside, a no-nonsense hybrid of a pub and a caff, with bright lighting and not even the smallest attempt at what is known as decor. Nevertheless it serves up a zinger of an Alsatian dinner: flammekueche, or tarte flambée, a kind of thin, flaky pizza topped with crème fraîche, slow-cooked onions and (of course) lardons, and an ice-cream kugelhopf, which has definitely come from the same catering catalogue as th
ose sorbet-filled orange shells beloved of old-school Indian restaurants and is just as delicious. Jumpers on against the sudden mountain chill that’s descended along with the sun, we retire to our tiny tents happy.

  The next morning, I find Gemma in the shower block, taking a picture of an endearing little laminated poster reassuring English-speakers about the nearby Strasbourg–Saint-Dié line: ‘Don’t be afraid,’ it soothes, ‘it’s a small railway, just for small train passenger’. The cleaner is watching her suspiciously. I yank her away, just in time for us both to enjoy a five-minute interaction with a very genial old German who seems to share the British view that anyone can understand any language if one speaks it slowly enough. Try as I might, I’m unable to shoehorn my only words of German, Schwarzwälder kirschtorte, into his monologue, though frankly the relevance of Black Forest gâteau is anyone’s guess.

  He has another go while we’re packing up, and this time through the art of mime manages to convey the information that our tents are very small, which, after almost a month spent squeezing in and out of it, is reassuring to have independently confirmed.

  When I come back from filling our bottles, I find Gemma touchingly engaged in duct-taping a small figurine of Wonder Woman onto my handlebars as a mascot. She quickly proves her worth, too: our route this morning rapidly climbs 300 metres, after which it’s downhill all day – but the way up to the Col du Hantz (363 metres) is a sweaty one. The thick forests stifle any breeze, and, anxious not to show myself up in front of Gemma, a woman who’s sailed most of the way around the world and once ran six marathons in almost as many months, I push the pace, figuring she has one pannier and a tent the size of a sausage roll, so it’s only fair, even if her bike probably weighs as much as she does. I catch Wonder Woman’s beady blue eye as I rise out of the saddle to accelerate. She looks disapproving.

  Again, the countryside is a treat, hills and all – the villages surrounded by meadows with mesmerisingly neat tessellated stacks of firewood in every well-tended garden. After a strong and sugary coffee in a beer garden in Belval, the road winds on, flatter now, through villages in varying degrees of picturesque, landing us around French lunchtime in Moyenmoutier, which seems to be home to a vast abbey, yet very little in the way of sustenance. With the clock pushing half-past twelve, however, time is of the essence, and we do a smash and grab in a middling boulangerie: my first quiche Lorraine, and a pretzel the colour of a competition-ready bodybuilder, which we eat by the side of the road in a picnic area plagued by wasps. The quiche is fine, the pretzel so saline I have to down the accompanying Orangina slightly more quickly than is ideal for my digestion.

  Somewhere around the Forêt de Mondon, we pass the first thrilling sign for homemade ‘Eau de Vie: Mirabelle, Poire, Kirsch’, which allows me to spend the next 50 or so kilometres boring Gemma with stories about some old neighbours who hailed from just this part of the world, and would ceremonially present my parents with a bottle of homemade plum brandy each Christmas, usually in an old Perrier bottle labelled ‘Mirabelle de Lorraine 1984’ or similar in place of the skull and crossbones which would have been more apt. She listens with commendable patience, before cutting to the chase: ‘Do you or do you not have these people’s address?’ I regret I do not, I say, and fall silent.

  Skirting the great forests to the north, we pass from Meurthe-et-Moselle to the Vosges and back again as the land flattens out into the wide agrarian plains that are to accompany me all the way into Paris. Notable points of interest include a place called the Auberge of the Hard-Boiled Eggs, named, apparently, because these were all Napoléon’s aide-de-camp could find when he ransacked the kitchen for supplies (or ‘went in in search of nourishment’ as the Tourist Office glosses it), and which also served as a command post for the future Maréchal Foch, Supreme Allied Commander during the early months of the Great War. There is no sign of any eggs as we pass through, just a group of men in vests standing around a barbecue, on which lies a lamb so small it prompts philosophical consideration of the point at which a foetus becomes fair game for dinner.

  We also smash through Baccarat, a town which has given its name to a thousand gaudy chandeliers, and then along straight roads fringed with corn and sunflowers – finally out! I note with pleasure – to Lunéville, possessed of a firmly shuttered factory daubed with angry graffiti proclaiming it a workers’ graveyard. There’s apparently a rather fine chateau here, too, if the signs are to be believed, but we don’t see it.

  Mid-afternoon, we roll into Dombasle-sur-Meurthe, an even more unremarkable town, were it not the home of the Confrérie de la Quiche Lorraine, which hosts a regular festival devoted to the world’s best custard tart (and yes, I mean that – Portugal can come fight me if it wants) though sadly the next such gathering isn’t scheduled until June 2019. I’ve had no luck contacting the Brotherhood’s grand master either, but, after our success with the choucroute, I’m assuming Dombasle will boast a museum to baking tins or, at the very least, a quiche-shaped sign I can get a photo next to – yet the place is mysteriously shy about its culinary heritage.

  Indeed, everyone I find seems to be more interested in the continuing national Fête de la Musique (like Black Friday, it seems to spread over the entire weekend) at the Salle des Sports, and the only bakery in the centre is still firmly shuttered at 4 p.m., so we repair to the charmingly ill-named Bar le Moderne for a whistle-wetter.

  In the dim interior, while Madame pours our beers, a man propped up by the bar is thrilled by my accent. ‘AMERICAN!’ he says joyfully. Reluctantly I admit the less exciting truth, before seizing the opportunity to find out if Dombasle is indeed the capital of quiche Lorraine. The assembled company agree it is, though not with a great deal of conviction, but my new friend shakes his head into his red wine: ‘No, no, you won’t find it here.’ I wait expectantly as he pauses, whether to collect his thoughts or simply remind himself to keep breathing is unclear.

  ‘It’s a winter thing,’ he says with some finality. ‘Now, is that your husband out there?’ (As I say to Gemma later, it really is impossible to see her clearly through the door – even sober.) Of course, he’s delighted when I say that no, she’s not – ‘ALORS, VOTRE FEMME?!’

  ‘I’ll bring your drinks out,’ says Madame quickly. ‘You’ll be able to find a quiche in Nancy, I promise you.’ (It is true, it seems, from further quizzing, that quiche Lorraine is seen as a cold-weather dish, rather than a picnic classic, served as a family dinner rather than on a rug on the grass. Who knew?)

  We’re only halfway down our pints (proper measures in this part of the world at least) when my new friend appears again to smoke a Winston over us, tell us the British are mad, absolutely mad to leave the EU, say some politically incorrect stuff, and then invite me to come and have dinner with him – don’t worry, my wife will cook! We have seven children, there’s always lots of food. Then we’ll go and watch some fireworks for the feast of St John!

  I try to imagine his wife’s reaction as he stumbles in dragging two nonplussed British women and their bikes. We have to be in Nancy this evening, I say, it’s very kind, but we really can’t. He stops, thinks again, hard, before responding – ‘Are you American?’

  As he staggers off, he calls back over his shoulder, ‘Be careful, drinking and cycling, the police will get you.’

  ‘Is that a set of car keys in his hand?’ murmurs Gemma.

  Despite an initial lack of quiche, Nancy proves a lovely place, with steep cobbled streets and a vast pedestrianised central square lined with elegant 18th-century buildings in shades of creamy stone. In the middle stands a statue of Stanislas, King of Poland, Grand Duke of Lithuania, count of the Holy Roman Empire and, pertinently, Duke of Lorraine. Though we don’t pay much attention to him at first, keen as we are to sit down and have a drink, having scrubbed ourselves clean of bike oil in the first blissful hotel power shower I’ve had for days, old Stanislas is to follow us across eastern France. I discover later th
at the chateau we couldn’t find in Lunéville belonged to him, after he was chased out of Eastern Europe by a rival monarch and had to content himself with this relatively minor dukedom instead, which, after his death in 1766, was subsumed into the Kingdom of France.

  The place that bears his name, celebrating the scientific and philanthropic work he threw himself into in later life, is filled in midsummer with cafés serving drinks at extortionate prices that are only somewhat mitigated by the miserly portions of free pretzels. Nevertheless, it proves a very civilised start and end to an evening low on quiche but rich in free-poured Mirabelle – ‘But of course we have it, Madame, we are in Lorraine’ – cured meat and yet more veal sweetbreads. They really are remarkably popular for a cut that tastes of so very little. Seriously, if you want a low-risk way to show off how adventurous an eater you are, order ris de veau, and take your own chilli sauce.

  PAUSE-CAFÉ – The French Menu/Carte

  Though I sometimes struggle to remember basic ‘this’, ‘that’ and ‘the other’, thanks to years of greed, I’d modestly say my menu* French was a solid 9/10. But even I learnt some stuff on this trip. Here are five things which popped up again and again until I’d got the hang of them:

  Ris de veau/d’agneau – not a dish of rice and veal or lamb, as I first assumed, but the thymus glands, or pancreas, of said animals. If you haven’t had sweetbreads before, they’re pretty innocuous little things, I promise: soft and without much flavour of their own, they’re what I’d class as starter offal.

  Steak à cheval – a (beef) steak with a fried egg on top. Steak de cheval, or chevaline, is the real equine deal, though I only saw it in the supermarket on my travels, as, apart from in the North, it’s the kind of thing one’s granny would cook at home rather than something you’d go out for. That said, if you see it, and can put Thelwell out of your mind, try it. It’s a quite inoffensive lean meat with a slight iron-tinged sweetness.