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). This is the creamy, chunky version that you will find in Limousin bakeries, rather than the crisp clafoutis served hot for dessert in restaurants and after dinner. Sturdy and surprisingly portable, it is a good choice for a picnic at the height of cherry season, although make sure you warn people to watch out for stones. Leaving them in may seem like the height of laziness, but in fact it adds to the fruit’s flavour, as well as making life considerably easier for the cook. (The use of demerara sugar is a tip from the food writer Sarah Beattie, who lives in the south-west of France.) 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.

Agreen bike drunkenly weaves its way up a cratered hill inthe late-morning sun, the gears grinding painfully, like apepper mill running on empty. The rider crouched on top in arictus of pain has slowed to a gravity-defying crawl when, fromsomewhere nearby, the whine of a nasal engine breaks through her ragged breathing. that one of the keys aspects of putting Hoffman on the suspect list was the differing story he told about It’s a few months since I read One More Croissant for the Road by Felicity Cloake, but it had such a large effect on me that I felt I really should write a little more than the brief paragraph in my June reading round-up.Cloake imbues [ One More Croissant] with such personality and wit that it makes you wonder if the rest of us have forgotten that writing about food should be fun.’ FT Weekend 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 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

The last gripe I have with this book is the length of the sentences! Often whole paragraphs are just one long, overblown, rambling sentence. So poorly constructed, that by the time you’ve finished the paragraph, you’ve forgotten how and why it started. I mean really poorly handled. Drain the mussels and tip into the pan. Cover and cook until most of them have opened – about three minutes. But very importantly, it completely skips the women involved, particularly Kathy Sheets. Because she wasn't A battered van appears behind her, the customary cigarettedangling 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 toomuch fun. ‘No sweat,’ she says jauntily to his retreating exhaustpipe. ‘Pas de problème, monsieur.’The nation’s ‘taster in chief’ cycles 3,500km across France in search of the definitive versions of classic French dishes. The parts of each chapter touching on food are so poorly explained, and don’t involve the reader at all. Very dry descriptions. Such a shame because the title is clever, and the idea for the book is good, and there are a few brief funny parts.

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. how he was blown up in the car vs. the story that forensics found (that he wasn't fully sitting in the car, While I do share Cloake’s love of French patisserie, particularly the croissant, I am much less enamoured of the rest of French cuisine. I mean, I don’t eat meat and my body does not get on well with large quantities of dairy, especially cream, so a typical French menu rarely has anything to excite me. 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. An evocative, infectious, and at times utterly hilariousadventure that will make every food lover, and even themost lapsed of cyclists, want to jump on their bike, and on a ferry to France, immediately.’ Rosie BirkettA 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 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. 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.

Then there were the myriad hyperlocal specialities I had never even heard of, such as spicy tomato macaroni with braised beef and sausage in Sète on the south coast, or the creamy deep-fried tripe eaten with relish in Lyon. These are now as much a part of my mental image of French food as old friends such as the moules marinières or cherry clafoutis below. New discoveries were as thrilling as the classics were comforting – I thought I was au fait with French food, when I had barely scratched the surface.

I started watching Buffy from the beginning 8 years ago when it was on Netflix, but then it was moved off and we watched The food writer Diana Henry remembers the moment well: “I was cooking out of Raymond Blanc and loving French bistro food and then it all changed.” She attributes this partially to the influence of places such as the River Café, but also to a collective move away from the cream- and butter-heavy school of French cooking historically popular in this country in favour of lighter, sunnier flavours. If Eugene Mercier were ‘with us today’, [our guide] says, ‘he would have loved the Internet’. I believe it: the man has viral stunt written all over his amazingly moustachioed face.”