French Food: Crêpes and Tartes by Maya Corrigan

Savory crêpe (galette) and cider 

Instead of experimenting with recipes at home during June, I spent more than half of the month in France, enjoying meals prepared by others. Today I’m sharing pictures from the trip and links to recipes similar for dishes similar to those we ate in Normandy and Brittany. 

My husband Mike and I took an ocean cruise visiting ports on France’s Atlantic coast. Traveling by land, our daughter Nora joined us in four cities. 

In addition to hosting the Olympics this summer, France has been celebrating the 80th anniversary of D-Day. The gratitude of the French for their liberation was obvious in the cities we visited: Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Brest, St. Malo, Bayeux, and Honfleur. The flags of the Allied countries whose troops assaulted Nazi strongholds on D-Day were flying, not just on government buildings, but also along the streets. Some shops displayed the flags of Canada, the UK, and the US, and others had placards with “Thank You” on them. 

On the beaches where the battles raged, the French have erected monuments and tend cemeteries in memory of those who fought to free them. Parisians have a reputation for being curt with those who don’t speak their language, but visitors receive a warm welcome in Normandy and Brittany. Whenever we paused to check a map or looked even slightly befuddled, people stopped and asked in English if they could help us find our way.

Now for the food!

Crêpes and Cider

Restaurants in Normandy serve lunch between noon to 2 pm only, but crêperies are open from morning to evening. Along with the thin pancakes we call crêpes, French crêperies also offer a savory version. This type of the pancake, made from buckwheat flour, is called a galette. It's served with the cheese, meat, vegetable fillings of your choice. The galettes we ate were huge. When folded in two, they covered half of an oversize dinner plate. 

For details about making pancakes with buckwheat, look at two recipes on this site. Our guest, Ann Claire, recently shared a recipe for a French galette and Leslie Budewitz made buckwheat crepes with a savory and a sweet filling.

The photo from our crêperie meal shows another specialty of the region, hard cider, served in a large coffee cup. Once I tasted French cidre, I became addicted and ordered it with every lunch I ate.     

Fish

Along the coast of France, fish is always on the menu. Mike’s culinary goal in Normandy was a shellfish platter like the one he ate four decades ago in Mont St-Michel. The crab atop his platter was gigantic compared to the blue crab we get from the Chesapeake Bay, but not as meaty. Nora ordered a more modest shellfish plate, while I enjoyed a delicious sea bass filet and didn’t have to contend with shells.

Dessert

We saw tarte Tatin on two restaurant menus and ordered it both times. Our first one was more like a standard fruit tart with slightly cooked apple slices on a pie crust. The second restaurant’s tarte was closer to the classic French dessert. The apples were caramelized and served on a base of puff pastry. 

Check out my recipe for a five-ingredient tarte Tatin. That dessert plays a role in The Tell-Tale Tarte, my 4th Five-Ingredient Mystery,  

My birthday fell on the last night of our cruise. To celebrate we ate delicious lobster dinners in the ship’s specialty restaurant. Then the waiter surprised us placing a 6-inch-square layered birthday cake in front of me. It was yummy with a whipped cream icing, but we could only finish a third of it. Sadly, I couldn't pack the leftover cake, and I don’t have the recipe for it. Still, it was the perfect end to a wonderful trip.

 

Have you ever tried making regional dishes from places where you’ve traveled?

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Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mystery series. It features a young cafe manager and her young-at-heart grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Each book has five suspects, five clues, and Granddad’s five-ingredient recipes. Maya has taught college courses in writing, literature, and detective fiction. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.

Visit her website for book news, mystery history and trivia, and easy recipes. Sign up for her newsletter there. She gives away a free book to one subscriber each time she sends out a newsletter. Follow her on Facebook.

A PARFAIT CRIME: Five-Ingredient Mystery #9

Set in a quaint Chesapeake Bay town, the latest novel in Maya Corrigan’s Five-Ingredient Mysteries brings back café manager Val Deniston and her recipe columnist grandfather – a sleuthing duo that shares a house, a love of food and cooking, and a knack for catching killers.

At the site of a fatal blaze, Val’s boyfriend, a firefighter trainee, is shocked to learn the victim is known to him, a woman named Jane who belonged to the local Agatha Christie book club—and was rehearsing alongside Val’s grandfather for an upcoming Christie play being staged for charity. Just as shocking are the skeletal remains of a man found in Jane’s freezer. Who is he and who put him on ice?

After Val is chosen to replace Jane in the play, the cast gathers at Granddad’s house to get to work—and enjoy his five-ingredient parfaits—but all anyone can focus on is the bizarre real-life mystery. When it’s revealed that Jane’s death was due to something other than smoke inhalation, Val and Granddad retrace the victim’s final days. As they dig into her past life, their inquiry leads them to a fancy new spa in town—where they discover that Jane wasn’t the only one who had a skeleton in the cooler.

Read an excerpt and see where to buy A Parfait Crime.  

Praise for A Parfait Crime

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