Breton Food

I used to read this fantasy series called Redwall by an Englishman named Brian Jacques. One of the things I loved about this series—other than that all the characters were heavily-anthropomorphized woodland creatures like mice, squirrels, stoats, and weasels—was the descriptions of food. Every chapter or so there would be a feast with a groaning table full of cheeses of every description, flower-scented creams, fluffy white and wheat breads, vegetables in elaborate stews, and sixteen different kinds of beverage including golden ales, brown ales, frothy dark ales, jugs of creamy milk, icy water, and anything else you could imagine drinking. Jacques was effortless at describing the sheer richness of the food—and every feast was different.

Breton food is like that. One day MJ and I took a walk in the fields and took a feast we got from the supermarket and the boulangerie: fresh-baked round bread, a little wheel of camembert, two different kinds of prosciutto, duck pate, butter for the bread, apricots and nectarines. It was like a picnic from Redwall and there was easily enough for the next day, too.

Other days I ate galettes filled with rocquefort cheese and drowned in liquor, galettes with sausage and melted goat cheese, galettes with scallops in wine sauce. I had oysters and crabs and escargot with a spicy-sweet onion sauce. I ate the most delicious moules frites I’ve ever had—way better than anything I had in Belgium. And the desserts! I am of course an enormous fan of the humble chocolate crepe, or the crepe with lemon and sugar. But I also had pain au chocolat, croissants, elaborate dessert crepes with crème fraiche and raspberry sauce and melted dark chocolate sauce, far Breton, different types of distinctive Breton cakes and pastries and cookies. I’m getting hungry again just thinking about it.

So yeah, the food was like the overwrought, elaborate feasts in a fantasy novel. And, sadly enough, I have to go back there to eat that way again—unless I can dramatically improve my cooking skills.