This cake is an easy one. You don’t need to bake it or to have an oven or a microwave. And it is also perfect for those who can’t have milk or dairy products… or for gluten allergies (chestnuts are gluten free).




Ingredients for 6 people

200g chestnuts (2/3)
100g dark chocolate (1/3)
1 tablespoon of sugar

4 hours in the fridge

Now that you know the difference between conkers and chestnuts (post last week), let’s prepare the cake.

Peel the chestnuts, look at this website if you don't know how to peel them.

Mash the cooked chestnuts.



Then melt chocolate with some water. Mix the chestnuts with chocolate.



Add the sugar and if it is too watery, add dry crushed biscuits. Is has to be thick. Then pour into the buttered cake tin and leave it in the fridge for 4 hours.

Read it in French : Recette sans cuisson d'un gâteau aux châtaignes et au chocolat

As I live near by a canal, I do often walk on the banks and in autumn it is time for harvesting chestnuts, the one edible. Make sure you’re not bringing home conkers, that won’t do for my nice chocolate chesnuts recipe (next post).



Even though they can be both called chestnuts, they are not the same.



1 - Conkers
The fruit of the conker tree (or horse-chestnut) is alone in its capsule, it is bigger, round and has a beige scar. The fruit of the conker tree is not edible, even for animals. It can be used for medicinal goals. or some other things...



2 - Chestnuts
The sweet chestnut is not alone in its capsule, they are two or three. The fruit has a pear shape and a small tuft The bur is very prickly. When green, it is not ripe enough. Wait till it’s brownish to eat them.



The Romans brought the chestnuts back in Europe from Asia Minor. It was nice for the empty stomachs during the hard winter time. It was then food for poor people. It was not considered as a good flour because it is no good to make bread as it does not rise.

Time have changed. Now in Ardeche it has an AOC (French Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée equivalent Protected Geographic Indication) and is quite nice for people who suffer from gluten allergy.

Once you picked them, read my next post to make my chocolate chestnut cake.



Read it in French : Chataignes ou marrons : quels fruits pour un gâteau ?

Green tomatoes left, what can I cook with them ? a nice chutney, a French recipe !!!



Ingredients for a small pot :
200 g of tomatoes (green and some redish)
1 tablespoon of honey
4 tablespoons of vinegar
Pepper
Ginger powder
2 tablespoons of Rum


Recipe :
Slice the tomatoes in small pieces, add rum and let macerate for an hour.

Put the sugar,honey, vinegar, pepper and ginger into a large pan. Bring to simmering point and simmer for almost an hour. It has to be thick and caramelized.
Eat it with strong tasty cheese such as roquefort or dry goat cheese. Or with poultry or foie gras. Pot them and sterilized them.




Read it in French : Recette maison de confit de tomates vertes et rouges

When I was walking on the seafront at La Baule, I saw a sign that attracts my attention : war cemetery. War cemeteries are quite usual in Normandy or at Verdun but here in La Baule, a place of watersports and leisure…
So I went to see it. And it is not an American but a British cemetery from the second World War.

It is hidden in a housing estate close to La Baule aerodrom. But it is part of another town la Baule Escoublac.

You may not know that we are no more in Brittany (administrative region) . In fact we are in the historical Brittany, that means the one that used to be the Duchy of Brittany. Loire Atlantique (which is the name of the department where La Baule is) does not belong anymore to Brittany but Pays de Loire. Explanation : During WWII, in 1941, Pétain (the leader of the occupied France at that time) decided to reorganise French regions for economic and strategic reasons. He wanted the department Loire Atlantique to be part of the Pays de Loire. The Loire flows to Nantes (capital of Loire Atlantique), but Nantes has been capital of the Duchy of Brittany… Anyway, the decision took effect in 1955, much later. But till now some Bretonese want it back...

Let’s go back to our cemetery. British people take care of it. More than 300 soldiers are buried there, most of them quite young. They died in 1940 and 1942 and a sign explains both in French and in English what happened to those combatants.



Why 1940 ? France lost the war and British troops are hurrying to Saint Nazaire, a port on the French Atlantic coast for the evacuation. Several ships are there, one of them is The Lancastria.
The requisitionned cruise liner is overloaded (survivors talk about 6 to 9000 passengers) and is sunk by the Luftwaffe (German Airforce). Probably between 4 to 7000 people died. It occured the day of the French capitulation (17th of june 1940) and Winston Churchill decided not to talk about it, he didn’t want to demoralize more his citizens. It is probably the worst British maritime disaster of all time.
In 1942, Saint Nazaire is a German naval base for submarines. The British wanted to destroy the only dry lock capable of repairing battleships. The soldiers, who rendered unusable the lock till the end of the war, were Commandos from UK, but also New Zealand,



Australia, from occupied countries such as Poland…



Operation Chariot was successful.

All the pictures of the graves.



Read it in French : Cimetières de guerre de la seconde guerre mondiale en Bretagne

Wedding anniversary, 40’s birthday, your lover is 50 and you want it to be unforgettable... Birthdays are an occasion for giving an original present : a fly over Brittany just for yourself !!!. My friend did it in September, it is just great...




They (my friend and his lover) did it at Dinard Airport, but you can do it in many breton aerodromes. Pilots do it for nothing because they need to fly n hours to keep their licence to go on flying. They fly you around for your pleasure and for their licence. Dinard Airport has for exemple four pilots doing it.

At Dinard Airport, the pilot was waiting for them. They went into the plane




– you can be three plus the pilot – and they began their take off. Once in the air they had to choose to fly East or West, that is Cap Fréhel (east) or Mont Saint Michel (west).
My friends wanted to fly over the coast, they choosed west, they flew over the sea and Chausey island. The pilot explained to them the landscape while driving his plane as if it were a car .
They saw Cancale and its oysters beds.



Saint Malo



and they finished the trip with Rance estuary.



The weather was really nice, it was wonderful…

And what do you do if it rains !!! Don’t worry and be happy !!! It is known worldwide that Brittany like Great Britain has an humid climate. So, the pilots look at the weather forecast and call you when it is no good to fly…
You’re conquered ???? Well, the fly lasts half an hour and it costs 100 €.
Good trip.



Read it in French : la Bretagne vue d'avion : rendez vous à l'aéroport de Dinard

If you have some time after your visit of La Roche aux Fées you should try a bend to taste a really nice bread. On the way back to Essé, you’ll see a sign for le Theil (D99). Follow it till you see a sign for Fagots et Froment ( Le Rozay 35150 Essé - 02 99 47 04 26). That’s the name of the farm where you can buy bread.



The farm is a biological farm. Arriving on the parking place, you’ll see the bundle of sticks used to warm the oven.



Inside, you’ll see big baskets full of bread and you’ll hear the oven crackling.

The farm has an old tradition of making bread. Till some years ago, in Brittany every farm has had its own oven and was doing its own bread. In this farm, the children are just continuing tradition and making bread not only for the farm but to sell it on markets, in shops…

Bundle of sticks are outside the farm waiting to be burnt. Do you know the story of the sticks in Brittany ? It has a connection with the breton countryside and specially the hedges of trees. Well, to understand the strange look of the trees, you have to know a bit of the peasant history. The peasant when he rented the farm, could not use the trees. He was just allowed to cut the branches and that makes the strange look of the hedges. But after years, the trees then were no good for woodwork.



Bread is done with bio flour, produced on the farm. The farmers are trying to cultivate old types of wheat that were cultivated for centuries. They do that because scientists have noticed that the « old » wheat has an easily digestible gluten.
Most of the wheat is produced in the farm, it is milled in the farm, the bread dough is hand knead and then cooked in the oven, with wood from the surroundings… Culture to cooking, most of the bread is produced in one place : you want sustainable development. Here you are !!!



Well the only trouble is that they are one kilo stick… well it is not a real problem because it is a really nice bread and not expensive ( 4 € for one kilo, that makes the baguette at 80cts). You can choose a white flour bread or a wholemeal flour one.
It is open every day except sundays, from 10 am to 6 pm and saturdays from 10 to 12. You can find them in several markets from Nantes to Saint Malo. Have a look at their website to discover the closest selling point .

You can also buy bio meat produced by the son. Boxes from 6 to 12 kilos at 12 € for the beef and 14 for the veal. The 6 kilo boxes are small you can easily fit them in your freezer.

Leaving the place, if you’re driving direction le Theil, stop at the chapel Notre Dame de Beauvais (leaving the village, direction Sainte Colombe).



Notre Dame de Beauvais or Notre Dame de la Charité has a nice architecture and is full of commemorative plaques, nice stained-glass windows. It used to be a place of pilgrimage. On the porch an epitaph with 100 days of indulgence



shows that the chapel was a place for remission of punishment. Facing the porch, a calvary is carved with a Virgin (XVth century).




You can finish your day jumping back to neolitic time : direction Sainte Colombe. At "Le Haut Bois" hamlet, look for the menhir de Rumfort. The fairies let it fall when they were building la Roche aux Fées.

Read it in French : Visite au pays de la Roche aux Fées (suite) : déguster du pain paysan bio en Bretagne