One More Croissant for the Road: Felicity Cloake

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Such a simple dish, but such a delicious one, with the added theatre of the shelling operation, of which I never tire. I like to use Norman cider and drink the rest with it, but you can use a dry white wine if you prefer. Chunks of baguette or (or preferably and) hot, salty fries to mop up the liquid are, however, mandatory.

Such a shame because the title is clever, and the idea for the book is good, and there are a few brief funny parts.

Most of the ingredients for this bistro classic are readily available, although you may have to go to a greengrocer’s for a frisée lettuce. (Other bitter leaves, such as chicory, or the traditional dandelion greens, would also work well. At a pinch, you could use a crunchy mixed salad.) Leave out the lardons if you would prefer to keep it vegetarian– fry a finely chopped shallot at that stage instead, to flavour the vinaigrette. At university, free at last to choose for myself, I too rebelled, scorning the creme brulee on offer at the local branch of Pierre Victoire in favour of a Japanese restaurant called Edamame, where I saved up for weeks to nibble bright-green soya beans straight from the pod. Needless to say, this – and the raw fish that followed – blew my tiny mind, just as the accompanying wasabi blew my sinuses. French food felt beige and bland in comparison. Familiarity breeds contempt, however unfair that may be. Remove the stalks from the cherries, but don’t bother to stone them unless you are feeling very energetic. Put them in the base of the dish – they should cover it in a single layer. Eat any extra cherries. it on Facebook Watch and then to Hulu, which we just recently got. A lot has happened in those 8 years and the whole last

This dish is the star turn of Gascon cuisine, an apologetically rich gratin of beans and animal fat, studded with various meats and served hotter than the southern sun. The great food writer Richard Olney called it “a voluptuous monument to rustic tradition”. It was the pesto I noticed first, a sludgy green interloper in the door of the fridge at home, the vanguard of an Italian invasion that would eventually see the Naked Chef cosy up to Keith Floyd on the kitchen bookshelf, and the butter dish on the dinner table replaced by extra virgin olive oil (which, my dad’s anxious face suggested, was expensive stuff, not to be wasted on teenagers). She also squeezes in some brilliantly cheesy tourist attractions, mostly food-related, such as Mercier champagne cellars (complete with tourist train) and the cookie cutter collection in the Museum of Alsatian Life.Whisk together the eggs, caster sugar and salt, then whisk in the flour until smooth, followed by the cream and milk. Finally, stir in the vanilla and rum or brandy. A land of glorious landscapes, and even more glorious food, France is a place built for cycling and for eating, too – a country large enough to give any journey an epic quality, but with a bakery on every corner. Here, you can go from beach to mountain, Atlantic to Mediterranean, polder to Pyrenees, and taste the difference every time you stop for lunch. If you make it to lunch, that is... The rider crouched on top in a rictus of pain has slowed to a gravity-defying crawl when, from somewhere nearby, the whine of a nasal engine breaks through her ragged breathing. A battered van appears behind her, the customary cigarette dangling from its driver’s-side window… as he passes, she casually reaches down for some water, smiling broadly in the manner of someone having almost too much fun. `No sweat,’ she says jauntily to his retreating exhaust pipe. `Pas de probleme, monsieur.’ A land of glorious landscapes, and even more glorious food, France is a place built for cycling and for eating, too – a country large enough to give any journey an epic quality, but with a bakery on every corner. One of the chief pleasures of cycling, apart from the thrill of freedom it gives you, is stopping for lunch, so ravenous you inhale the bread basket before they’ve even had time to bring over your beer. And France is a country whose roads, so straight and smooth and quiet, seem designed for cycling, and whose hearty provincial cooking, whether that’s Moules Frites or Boeuf Bourguignon, makes the perfect fuel for it. To be hungry in France is to be fortunate indeed. I am home again now and happily reunited with my collection of chilli oils. Fortunately for my further education, though, I am not the only one with a renewed appetite for French flavours: Olive magazine tipped new-wave French as a trend to watch in 2019, a prediction borne out by restaurant openings including Flamboree!, an Alsatian tarte flambée joint on Old Street in east London; Bob Bob Cité, which serves up steak tartare and snails in parsley butter a mile away in Leadenhall; and La Guingette, a little piece of Paris in Bristol. Bistrotheque, in Bethnal Green, east London, is due to open a Manchester outpost later this summer.

Grease a deep roasting dish about 25 x 20cm (10in x 8in) wide with butter and sprinkle with the demerara sugar. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/gas mark 4. unknown to me and I new the basic story. This fleshes out what I knew, but leaves out some key aspects: tangentially-related-to-Mormonism to leave women out of their documentary. I'd also be interested in what has As with everyone else, "Once More With Feeling," was a lot of fun. I think if you want to watch a show that takes place in SoCalThe nation’s `taster in chief’ cycles 2,300 km across France in search of the definitive versions of classic French dishes. A green bike drunkenly weaves its way up a cratered hill in the late-morning sun, the gears grinding painfully, like a pepper mill running on empty. I read this on a kindle and there wasn’t any photos or map in the book so I hope there is when it’s printed as they are desperately needed for a book such as this. It’s visual and the writing draws you along on that bike alongside her, but without the aches and pains she must have had on such a long journey. The countryside they travel through, the places the visit! Oh, I could wax lyrical about this for years. The author comes across as your friend, your ideal travel companion and breathes fresh air into the usual travelogue and guides. In fact this book is many things – a diary, an autobiography, a cook book and travel guide all in one. But those six weeks pedalling around l’Hexagone made it clear that I wasn’t that familiar with French cuisine after all. For one thing, it took a while to re-adjust my palate – so thoroughly acclimatised to hot sauce and kimchi, anchovies and miso – to the quieter, subtler pleasures of the provincial restaurant menu, characterised from Brittany to Burgundy by fish in white sauce with stewed green beans (I don’t think I even tasted garlic on my trip – I mean really tasted it – until I reached Marseille). Part travelogue, part food memoir, all love letter to France, One More Croissant for the Road follows 'the nation's taster in chief' Felicity Cloake's very own Tour de France, cycling 2,300km across France in search of culinary perfection; from Tarte Tatin to Cassoulet via Poule au Pot, and Tartiflette. Each of the 21 'stages' concludes with Felicity putting this new found knowledge to good use in a fresh and definitive recipe for each dish - the culmination of her rigorous and thorough investigative work on behalf of all of our taste buds.

The parts of each chapter touching on food are so poorly explained, and don’t involve the reader at all. Very dry descriptions.The poor quality and brief descriptions of French towns don’t spark the imagination, and are missing great chunks that you would expect in a travel book. It doesn’t make me want to travel to France - and I already love France! Pour on top of the cherries, carefully put into the hot oven and bake for 50 to 65 minutes until firm on top with a slight wobble in the middle. Whether you are an avid cyclist, a Francophile, a greedy gut, or simply an appreciator of impeccable writing - this book will get you hooked' - YOTAM OTTOLENGHI A land of glorious landscapes, and even more glorious food, France is a place built for cycling and for eating, too - a country large enough to give any journey an epic quality, but with a bakery on every corner. Here, you can go from beach to mountain, Atlantic to Mediterranean, polder to Pyrenees, and taste the difference every time you stop for lunch. If you make it to lunch, that is… Sadly the author fails to hit the mark when it comes to any level of quality travel writing, or food writing. Neither area is well handled.