One More Croissant for the Road

by Felicity Cloake

  Cervelle de canut – a Lyonnaise speciality that translates terrifyingly as ‘silk-weaver’s brain’, it’s actually a creamy cheese spread seasoned with chopped herbs, shallots, oil and vinegar.

  Sauce chien – often served with accras de morue salt cod fritters from the French Caribbean, dog sauce, to my relief, turns out to be a mildly spiced onion, pepper and herb salsa.

  Topinambours – okay, I only came across these once, but I loved saying the word so much I’ve included it here so you can enjoy it, too. It means Jerusalem artichoke. You’re welcome.

  *Note that ‘menu’ in France only refers to a set menu or formule of a certain number of courses for a fixed price, ‘le menu à €15’ for example. The actual list is called la carte, so don’t be surprised if a request for ‘le menu des vins’ is met with blank incomprehension.

  Stanislas’s square has a curious air of expectation as we pass back through at 10.30 p.m., with people sitting on the ground in front of the Hôtel de Ville, which is in utter darkness. I ask a group of teenagers placidly smoking weed under the Duke’s disapproving bronze nose what’s going on. ‘Son et lumière,’ they reply. Ah, the sound and light shows beloved of French municipal authorities: always worth waiting for. We lower ourselves onto the floor expectantly.

  It’s a corker of the genre: kicked off by Stanislas himself with the lines, ‘From childhood I have always been afraid of the dark … So, all my life I have never ceased to search for light … All the lights,’ it’s a riot of trippy strobes and crazy projections of the Age of Enlightenment. (‘Descartes!’ shouts Gemma joyously at one point, in the manner of someone who’s spotted Mr Punch approaching with his stick.) The buildings shimmer with colour, the square fills with rousing music, and by the time we’re done, I feel like we’ve all been smoking dope.

  Having failed to find a restaurant serving quiche the night before, much rests on breakfast – though, it being Sunday, the winner of the Best Quiche Award in the last bi-annual competition is firmly shuttered. Nevertheless, I get a nice little deep-filled number, bronzed nutmeg brown on top, creamy soft within, at the sweet little Maison Cadici bakery in the old town, as well as a torte Lorraine, a flaky disc filled with pork marinated in Riesling, and a tiny almond flour sponge known as a visitandine, which Madame is insistent I also try – ‘Ça c’est typiquement Nancy’. (Gemma gives me a hard look as I stagger out laden with bags – what can I say? A French patisserie is to me what the Harrods shoe department was to Imelda Marcos.)

  Having packed Eddy with baked goods, we creak out of town on a road that rapidly warms up to 7 per cent. Strangely heavy Sunday traffic and a full complement of traffic lights don’t make progress any easier – though, somewhat surprisingly, an old man at a bus stop shaking his stick and bellowing ‘ALLEZ, LES FILLES!’ does.

  Once we’ve hauled ourselves out of Nancy, with its ski-slope roads and kindly pensioners, our route runs alongside the A31 motorway, and is consequently rather gruesomely rich in roadkill; I swear to God I see a beaver at one point or, at least, an ex-beaver. It’s fast but bumpy, as if the authorities have decided to abandon it to rustics on tractors – if you can’t run with the big boys on the autoroute, then you’d better at least have big tyres.

  Coming fast down a hill, I see Wonder Woman’s torso vault off towards the clouds and manage to stop in time to tenderly wedge her back on – Kinder clearly doesn’t test its toys in high-speed situations. During this delicate operation I come face to face with two grim-looking, heavily stubbled men trudging up the side of the road. They look exactly like murderers, possibly of wildlife, possibly of women in Lycra, but as they fail to return my squeaked ‘Bonjour!’ we’re not sticking around long enough to find out – after a month in France, such egregious rudeness is enough to convince me they must be up to no good.

  We leave the thunder of the autoroute behind at Gondreville, where we cross the wide, placid Moselle on a bridge decorated with two teenagers snogging in the drizzle, and find ourselves on a low road lined with poplars and then a grassy dyke on one side, separating us from La Moselle Canalisée. It almost feels like I’m back in the polders of Normandy, the only thing on the horizon a long, low, flat-topped hill – yet suddenly, we’re pedalling into Toul, a quiet place with a startlingly grand medieval cathedral. The church springs from nowhere – no brown tourist signs, no handsome surrounding square, just a municipal car park, a deserted office du tourisme … and a café advertising quiche Lorraine, fait maison. It seems God has just guided us in using an enormous pointy Gothic church as bait.

  In the circumstances, it feels rude not to at least go into His House to say thank you. The empty nave offers lots of soaring perpendiculars unencumbered by humans for scale, and a desiccated velvet-bound foot of surprising length in a glitzy glass case, which is claimed to be that of Saint Mansuy, the first bishop of Toul in the 4th century, who, judging by his bunions, walked all the way here from his native Ireland. The lovely cloistered gardens are similarly, almost sinisterly quiet. In fact, it all feels exactly like we’ve wandered into an M. R. James spinechiller.

  Across the road, and back in the 21st century, the café at least boasts one occupant: the proprietor, a youngish man reading the paper, who leaps up to prepare our orders, breathing heavily with concentration as he does so. My quiche is served blisteringly hot, possibly straight from the microwave, but it’s definitely homemade, and there’s even a postcard for sale with the recipe on the front. It’s not quite as good as the quiche fridge magnet I’d hoped for, but I buy one anyway.

  Quiche Lorraine

  Several weeks later, I get a response from Evelyne, the Grand Maistre de la Confrérie de la Quiche Lorraine, who has been, of all places, in London, thanking me for my interest in her native quiche and wondering whether I managed to find one, and where. She’s kind enough to share the Official One and Only Approved Recipe, which seems to hang on one vital point: ‘the authentic quiche Lorraine contains only three ingredients: bacon, eggs and thick crème fraîche’ – and never, ever cheese.

  That bacon must be good-quality smoked stuff (ideally from the charcuterie, Evelyne says somewhat optimistically), and the eggs and cream would, in a perfect world, come from local producers. Black pepper is encouraged, nutmeg permitted and the pastry must be shortcrust. (Originally, I learn, it would have been housed in bread dough, but times have changed.)

  I’m interested that Evelyne does not blind bake the pastry; indeed, the authentic versions do appear to sport a rather doughy bottom – a bit of squidge, is, apparently, desirable. Personally, I’d still let it cool before eating, though.

  Butter and flour, to line the tin

  200g good smoked streaky bacon, thick cut

  4 medium eggs

  120g full-fat crème fraîche

  Nutmeg, to grate

  For the pastry (or 300g bought shortcrust, if you don’t fear Evelyne’s wrath)

  200g plain flour

  100g cold butter

  A pinch of salt

  Put the flour for the pastry into a large bowl and grate in the butter. Add a pinch of salt, then rub in the butter until well coated with flour. Sprinkle 1½ tablespoons of cold water over the top, then bring together into a dough, adding a little more water if necessary. Alternatively, put the flour, grated butter and salt into a food processor and whiz until you have rough crumbs, then add cold water as above.

  Grease a deep 22cm tin with butter and coat with flour (add a spoonful to the tin, then tilt it to coat the inside, tipping away any excess). Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface to about 5mm thick and use to line the tin. Prick the base all over with a fork, then put in the fridge to rest for at least 30 minutes.

  Preheat the oven to 220°C/200°C fan/gas 7, putting a baking sheet in there to warm up. Cut the bacon into chunky strips. Beat together the eggs in a large jug, then whisk in the crème fraîche and season lightly with salt, pepper and a lit
tle nutmeg.

  Trim the sides of the pastry, then scatter the bacon over the base. Pour in the egg and crème fraîche mixture, and push down any floating bacon. Put on the hot baking sheet and bake for 25 minutes. Allow to cool a little before serving.

  Km: 127.9

  Croissants: 0 (Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance, as they say in the Army)

  High: The son et lumière in Nancy

  Low: Dombasle-sur-Meurthe, a culinary capital crying out for a quiche museum

  STAGE 18

  Toul to Bar-le-Duc

  Madeleines

  Briefly mentioned by French novelist Marcel Proust in his magnum opus À la recherche du temps perdu, these rather plain little shell-shaped sponges have since become an international shorthand for the power of memory, even among those of us who have never even been tempted to tackle the books themselves. Whether you agree that it’s the greatest work in literary history or not, however, the cakes are indisputably delicious.

  We’re firmly in big-sky country now: sprawling farms, villages strung out along the road rather than huddled round a church and everywhere shining green, thanks to the last six weeks of rain. For a while there are just a few distant hills on the horizon, and then, startlingly, as we turn towards Troussey, I spot what appear to be the White Cliffs of Dover looming to the north, which eventually resolve themselves into a somewhat anticlimactic gigantic quarry: a sign we’ve now left the Vosges mountains behind and are entering the chalky plains of Champagne, home to some of the world’s most expensive grapes.

  Gemma’s getting twitchy: England are playing Panama this afternoon, and as we pull into Commercy, AKA madeleine central, she slows to a crawl to peer into a bar screening the match – to, it must be said, a distinct lack of interest from the drinkers within. Twenty-five minutes into the game, it’s already 2–0 to England, so I nobly give Gemma dispensation to go and watch while I brave the madeleine-themed tourist trap of a bakery on the other side of the square, packed like a sardine tin on a Sunday afternoon. Perhaps they’re all fleeing the football.

  The shelves of À la Cloche Lorraine are laden with prettily packaged boxes of cakes, tied with red string, alongside tins of butter biscuits – it seems La Cloche is owned by the St Michel group whose biscuit factory I passed on my way to Mont-Saint-Michel almost exactly a month ago. While I have nothing against big business, the queue is huge, so I drag Gemma away from her match and we head to the rather less picturesque La Boîte à Madeleines instead, which, despite being located in a light industrial estate on the outskirts of town, proves a much more satisfying experience. A window into the kitchen offers a view of workers beavering busily away; they produce 10,000 cakes every single day, and every so often, someone pops out with a tray warm from the oven for the punters to try.

  A screen suspended from the ceiling flashes the ingredients that go into every thousand: 10kg flour, 7kg butter, 5kg sugar, 700g honey, 520g baking powder, 200g lemon juice, 160g Breton sea salt – and somewhat less obviously, 1kg of sorbitol, a sugar substitute often used by diabetics, and 800g trimoline, an inverted sugar syrup that creates a softer, longer-lasting final product, something I will have cause to be thankful for in a few days’ time. (Eggs aren’t listed for some reason, though I see some go in on the video.) The woman in charge of explaining the process stresses the importance of a blisteringly hot oven in achieving the correct degree of browning; take them slightly darker than you might think is desirable, she says, and then eat them up quick. It’s true, even theirs don’t taste as good once they’ve been packaged up for sale as they do hot from the tray in the gift shop.

  Brown Butter Madeleines

  Here’s my recipe, with browned butter and granulated sugar to give it a little extra crunch. Chilling the mixture will help give the cakes that characteristic bump: and don’t worry if you only have one madeleine tin (metal ones are best); you can bake them in consecutive batches. Try to make them as soon as possible before eating, though; they lose that lovely crisp edge pretty quickly.

  Makes about 20

  140g butter, plus a little extra

  125g plain flour, plus a little extra

  1 tsp baking powder

  ¼ tsp fine salt

  2 medium eggs

  90g granulated sugar

  2 tsp runny honey

  40ml milk

  Melt the butter in a light-coloured pan (so you can see it changing colour more clearly) and simmer until golden brown. Pour into a heatproof bowl and leave to cool to room temperature.

  Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. In a separate, larger bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar and honey until voluminous, then gradually whisk in the dry ingredients, followed by the melted butter and the milk. Cover and chill for at least 2 hours for best results, though you can bake immediately if necessary.

  Grease your madeleine mould well, then lightly dust with flour, tipping out any excess. Put this in the fridge too.

  Preheat the oven to 220°C/200°C fan/gas 7. Put a scant teaspoon of batter into each mould (it will be thick – don’t worry too much about this, as it will spread as it bakes) and bake for about 8–10 minutes until dark golden; you’ll need to keep an eye on them towards the end. Cool on a wire rack.

  Retiring to a corner to discreetly stuff my mouth with free samples, I find myself staring into the handsome face of our old friend Duke Stanislas, who, according to a rather romantic cartoon on the wall, is responsible for the madeleine’s success. When his pastry chef fell ill before a grand party, it claims, a buxom maid stepped in to save the day, and the Duke, depicted as a d’Artagnan-like figure with a rakish feather in his extravagantly floppy hat, was so impressed by her cakes, or perhaps by Madeleine herself, with her low-cut dress and big blue eyes, that he named them after her – and a legend was born.

  Legend or fable, they’re best known in connection with ‘the episode of the madeleine’ in Marcel Proust’s epic novel sequence, published between 1913 and 1927, and apparently inspired by the flood of memories prompted by one of these ‘squat, plump little cakes’. ‘No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate,’ he writes in the first volume, ‘than a shudder ran through me.’ A recently discovered early draft suggests that the original trigger was actually honey on toast. Fortunately for Commercy, if not for bees, Marcel changed it.

  Having eaten our fill of the freebies (it’s not like they don’t have enough to go round) and shuddered obediently with delight, we retire to the café for a shandy but are quickly driven out by a table of pensioners, one of whom has irresponsibly been given a microphone, singing hymns as a lone child in their care cringes with shame. I’d like to help you, I think, but instead I’m just going to make a swift exit via the gift shop.

  It looks like being a hot run up to the town of Bar-le-Duc, a mere 45km away, so we buy a bottle of Mirabelle eau de vie as well as a big bag of madeleines pimped with booze-soaked plums on the way out. How pleased I am to be carrying the extra weight when we run, almost immediately, into the first real climb since the Vosges: a leg trembler that isn’t improved by a group of gormless ramblers who, on seeing us grind slowly into view, stand bewildered in the middle of the road, before deliberately moving into my path as I swerve to avoid them. I can only hope my ‘BONJOUR messieurs-dames’, delivered with all the menace of an aggressive British ‘sorry’, proves sufficiently galling to make up for the little speed they’ve robbed me of.

  At the top, the road dwindles to little more than a single lane through the trees, dropping and climbing with gay abandon, and it’s bloody good fun, despite bidding a sad and final farewell to the top half of Wonder Woman on one particularly thrilling descent. Leaving the woods behind, we ascend a long, slow hill up to what looks like a shady copse, but turns out to be an enormous pile of manure buzzing with flies, one of which manages to bite me through my jersey, only to be slain by a helpful hand almost knoc
king me off my bike from behind: Gemma proving her worth yet again.

  Bar-le-Duc, picked solely for its campsite, feels surprisingly large – we approach through an industrial estate pitted with potholes, overlooked by some grim-looking tower blocks straight out of a Mike Leigh film, making the campsite even more of a welcome surprise, located as it is in the garden of what can only be described as an urban chateau or, at the very least, a turreted townhouse. Obviously the view of its lovely pointy towers is completely blocked by Dutch campervans, but it’s still a grand spot to enjoy some torte Lorraine once I’ve spoken to Madame by phone (‘I’m on the lake at the moment,’ she says airily, as I imagine a stately galleon – ‘You can pay me tomorrow morning’).

  Bar-le-Duc’s sole gastronomic claim to fame appears to be as the home of what the Telegraph describes as a ‘highly regarded preparation of jelly originally composed of select whole seeded currants’, whose USP is that the seeds are removed, one by one, with a goose quill. Gemma is fairly beside herself with excitement on learning that the paper has designated this jelly as one of the 50 foods one should try ‘before you die’, but sadly, it’ll have to go on the retirement bucket list, as our 16 hours here prove an entirely currant-free zone.

  The best restaurants don’t look far away, if one doesn’t take gradient into account; they’re all in the older ville haute, which hangs, rather beautifully, over the new bit we’ve just ridden through, much like Edinburgh’s Old Town, but with added sun. Having sweated our way up there, admiring the way the honey-coloured stone houses perch above the valley like a Tuscan hill village, it transpires that none of them are open on a Sunday, so we pedal morosely along the handsome main street, grudgingly admiring the Renaissance facades, each waiting for the other one to crack and suggest doubling back to the McDonald’s we passed earlier.