One More Croissant for the Road
The nation’s ‘taster in chief’ cycles 3,500km across France in search of the definitive versions of classic French dishes.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.One More Croissant for the Road sees ‘the nation’s taster in chief’ Felicity Cloake embark on the trip of a lifetime, cycling 3,500km across France in search of the definitive versions of classic French dishes. Felicity has long established herself as an absolute authority on everything that is important about food. This lively and charming account of her search for the ultimate Quiche Lorraine, la meilleure Tarte Tatin and a Cassoulet par excellence, culminates in a triumphant two-wheeled tour of Paris’s boulangeries in pursuit of France’s finest croissant. Accompanied by charming line illustrations, each chapter concludes with Felicity putting this new-found knowledge to good use in a new ‘perfect’ recipe for each dish, the conclusion of her rigorous and thorough investigative work on behalf of all our taste buds.Felicity Cloake is the author of the Guardian’s long-running weekly column, How to Cook the Perfect…as well as having been the New Statesman’s food columnist since 2011 and the author of four books with Fig Tree. She was named Cookery Journalists of the Year at the 2016 Fortnum & Mason awards, and won the Cookery Journalist of the Year and New Media trophies at the 2011 Guild of Food Writers awards.
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Mudlark
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First published by Mudlark 2019
FIRST EDITION
Text © Felicity Cloake 2019
Illustrations and cover illustration © Sara Mulvanny/Agency Rush 2019
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Felicity Cloake asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780008304935
Ebook Edition: June 2019 ISBN: 9780008304942
Version: 2019-04-30
For my sausage-scoffing, plonk-sinking peloton – with whom the glass was always half full
Contents
1 Cover
2 Title Page
3 Copyright
4 Dedication
5 Contents
6 Prologue
7 STAGE 1: The Grand Départ, London to Cherbourg
8 STAGE 2: Cherbourg to Avranches
9 STAGE 3: Avranches to Dol-de-Bretagne
10 STAGE 4: Dol-de-Bretagne to Saint-Malo
11 STAGE 5: Saint-Malo to Redon
12 STAGE 6: A Stage in Two Parts: Redon to Tours, Paris to Lamotte-Beuvron
13 STAGE 7: Limoges (Circuit)
14 STAGE 8: Limoges to Bayonne
15 STAGE 9: Bayonne to Pau
16 STAGE 10: Pau to Carcassonne
17 STAGE 11: Marseille
18 STAGE 12: Marseille to Nice
19 STAGE 13: The Col de Joux Plane
20 STAGE 14: Lyon
21 STAGE 15: Chalon-sur-Saône to Dijon
22 STAGE 16: Strasbourg to Meistratzheim
23 STAGE 17: Meistratzheim to Nancy
24 STAGE 18: Toul to Bar-le-Duc
25 STAGE 19: Bar-le-Duc to Reims
26 STAGE 20: Reims to Bondy
27 STAGE 21: Bondy to Paris
28 Vital Statistics
29 Acknowledgements
30 Praise for One More Croissant for the Road
31 About the Publisher
LandmarksCoverFrontmatterStart of ContentBackmatter
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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. 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, and shakily she rears out of the saddle, grubby legs pumping in a surprising turn of speed. 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 problème, monsieur.’
The van disappears round the next hairpin. Abruptly our heroine dismounts, allowing the heavily laden bike to crash into a pile of brambles, describing an arc of chain grease across her bruised shins en route. Grumpily slapping away a thirsty horsefly, she reaches into the handlebar bag and pulls out a half-eaten croissant.
After peeling off a baby slug and flicking it expertly onto her own shoes, she sinks her teeth into the desiccated pastry, and squints at the map on her phone. Only another 40km to go before lunch.
In the distance, there’s a rumble of thunder.
It’s not like I wasn’t warned. I’d witnessed the danger of turning a hobby into a job first-hand at a magazine publisher I’d once worked for, who regularly offered a bonus for anyone willing to give up their weekend to help with photoshoots for some of their more niche titles. No one ever did it twice.
