Galette de Roi

My favourite French tradition, and I make no apologies for writing about it every year !.
The Galette des Rois (Kings cake) is an absolutely delicious cake of puff pastry stuffed with frangipane, where only refined almond powder is used.

Inside of the Galette is placed a small ‘feve’, the prize, which usually is a small ceramic figurine.

The tradition.
1.Gather family and friends around a table.
2.The youngest person then crawls under the table.
3.The oldest (or the most honest !!) person then acts as distributor.
4.The distributor then cuts the galette into slices and the person under the table nominates who should be served each slice.
5.The person who finds the ‘feve’ is the King / Queen and wears the crown and must chose his or her king or queen !!

Although traditionally this cake is eaten on 6th January, I usually start eating them as soon as they appear in the boulangeries, usually from Boxing day!!..

However, this year I couldn’t wait and started craving for this lovely cake of light pastry with its buttery almond centre in early December. I asked Marie Louise if she knew how to make Galette de Rois.

‘Bien sur’, she replied and gave me the recipe. ‘You are organised, she said, we don’t make these until January’.

‘I’m going to make it this afternoon, I replied.

‘You are bizarre’, she tutted, and muttered something about the strange ways of the English.

Well, the Galette de Rois turned out very very well and I have made one every week for the past 5 weeks !!..

Snow and sea !..

Our snow is beginning to thaw and Saturday morning we were all in desperate need for a long walk. So we left the roaring fire and decided to go to the sea !. Unsurprisingly, at it was only minus 2 degrees, we were the only ones on the beach. We had a great walk, but it was very cold, even the rock pools were frozen !. I think I may even prefer the sea during the winter months.

On the way back home the clocks struck twelve.. so we found a very unassuming restaurant. It is a simple restaurant, but we are finding, in these difficult economic times that the simpler the restaurant the better the food. Mark and I both opted for the set menu. We helped ourselves to a cold buffet for a starter which included, prawns, pate, cold meats, couscous, potato salads, tuna salad and much much more… For my main course, I had roast pork stuffed with ham and apricots and Mark had skate. Then a huge tray of desserts arrived, the crème brulee mousse caught my eye.

‘Is it good ?’, I asked.

‘No one has died yet from eating it !, the owner joked.

It was delicious !.

This set menu was just 10 euros each and it included a quarter bottle of wine each !.

Iona and Joe were happy with their 6 euro children’s menu of ham and chips followed by ice cream.

Absolutely brilliant. We will definitely return.

If any of you are visiting this part of Brittany I would recommend this small restaurant (L`Escale aux Saveurs at Ambon) for a simple lunch that won’t break the bank !.

Lost Blogs !

Yesterday evening our website was erased from the World Wide Web !

Mark was up most of the night and has just managed to restore the majority of our site.. the only casualty has been my blogs which have all been deleted !!.

I am using the 'blogger' site to post my blogs until the 'Gallic Grapevine' on our website, www.frenchgites.com is restored.