Came across this rather cool van at the weekend and had to cross and take pictures

No honestly I’m not struggling for things to post I just found it rather cool

They would appear to be a pretty big company as well http://www.wickedcampers.com/ looking back I really should have checked what was on the other side but it didn’t actually occur to me at the time.

• 1 Tin chickpeas.
• Breadcrumbs ( I used 1/3 to 1/2 a Baguette made into breadcrumbs roughly)
• 1 (or 2) grated carrot(s) (large)
• 5 (decent sized) shallots chopped .. nice milder flavour you could use a red onion as well
• 2 Eggs
• Corriander
• Ground Cumin
• Extras you’ll need … lemon juice

1. Make your breadcrumbs first then blend the chickpeas and mix in the breadcrumbs and the shallots.
2. Add your grated carrots .
3. Add some lemon juice ( used the bottle kind and a few shakes of the bottle)
4. 2 tea spoons Cumin (ground)
5. Add some corriander ( used a fresh frozen one)
6. Add in the 2 beaten eggs
7. Mixed it all with hands (obviously it’s no longer in the blender)
8. Make it into balls golf size or a bit bigger and flatten a bit.

9. Throw them into the fridge for 30 minutes
10. Then bake for 30 minutes around 200C

Nice and simple not that time consuming either (mainly have to wait for them) … and costs about 1.50 – 2 euro to make six next time will do double and freeze some I think

The first time I wandered by this place my mind screams oh god the signage

But surprise surprise this is a rather excellent place to have lunch. It’s on the same square as my previous post on La Table Venitienne believe it or not right beside it the terrace is practically joined.

Today saw us there for the lunch time special Plat du Jour (dish of the day) and the lunch time menu.

I immediately saw the Plat du Jour and thought to myself god I miss Spain and the cooking. The plat du jour was a “Spanish” Gratin for the love of god they knew I was coming. Next thing I know we’re being given 2 glasses of Sangria on the house which seems to be a Friday special but given it’s the 13th of July the day before Bastille day a lot of people will be taking a long weekend. (PS: They normally give a free glass on Fridays for those interested.)

Struggling through the sangria we both waited for our food. Val chose to go with the Full Menu and I chose just to go with the Plat du Jour. The Full Menu comes with a lovely choice of salads from a salad bar and there’s quite a bit to choose from. It always comes with a half bottle of house wine ( Red / Rose ), a desert and a coffee. That one comes to the price of €12.50 (which is reminiscent of spanish menu del dia prices)

My plat du jour came and I have to say it was lovely (I’ll be trying to cook something similar shortly and hopefully not failing too badly) The table wine was … table wine perfectly nice.

I rarely have deserts and I opted out of having the Menu special ( which is a grilled meat of some kind or the plat du jour ) BUT Val doesn’t really drink and well she tends not to go near the coffee so it was all MINE!!!

All in all I loved it. Extremely friendly staff … the location as on the previous post was rather excellent and I thoroughly enjoyed myself no doubt the sangria helped but .. SHUSH)

All in all I’ll be back seriously at the price the quantity of food and the staff you’d be mad not to. Doesn’t hurt it’s only 5 minutes walk away from our place.

Roll on Bastille Day

Ok it’s probably not that quick truth be told. It is however rather tasty (It’s also not exactly what you’ll get in a restaurant I am well aware)

For this you really need three things you may not have lying around the house. I know up until a few years ago I didn’t have them.

• Harissa What now? It’s a hot chilli paste from North Africa ( Think Morocco ) and includes  bird’s eye chili peppers, serrano peppers and other hot chillis and spices such as garlic paste, coriander, red chili powder, caraway as well as some vegetable or olive oil (that’s from Wikipedia my knowledge isn’t that extensive)
• Merguez – It’s a spicy mutton or beef sausage you find in North Africa once again. No idea if you can get it in Ireland. I’ve heard tell you can but French friends in the past didn’t have much luck.
• Cous Cous now I have to admit up until a few years ago I’d never tried or really heard of cous cous. Now I can’t get enough of it I LOVE it

Other ingredients you’ll need (well I did) … 3 or 4 large shallots ( or an medium onion ) 1 red pepper 1 yellow pepper (in this case I actually had half a red and a green pepper though the yellow pepper would have been better) 2 or 3 carrots .. 3 or 4 medium tomatoes.

So onto the method assuming you’ve got the above ingredients

1: Take your merguez … prick them with a fork or a knife a few times and put them in a into a frying pan with a good dash of water… cover with a lid. And let them cook away … I’m a bit of a picky bastard and I hate fatty bits on meat so I’ll leave them 20 minutes or so and get rid of all the juices.

2: Start chopping up your veg in the mean time. I chopped the shallots into rings … Peppers into rough bits (make sure to get rid of the inner seeds generally will just slice around the stem bit and pull all the inners out. Julienne the carrots as well ( cut them into strips a bit like a chip only smaller as they’ll take a while to cook ) roughly chop the tomatoe as well.

3: Check on your Merguez which should have a load of gunk out of them at this stage. I’d advise draining it all off.maybe transfer them and chop them into 1 – 2 cm bite size pieces. Throw your some chopped garlic into your empty frying pan. Add your shallots .. and the rest of the veg (tomatoe last) Mix in 1cm of Harissa paste. This will really depend on how spicy you like it. Cover all this and cook for 10 -15 minutes depending on your carrots and how soft you want them.

A few minutes before it’s all cooked throw on your cous cous (this is a case of reading the packaging in this case a layer of boiling water in a pot (kill the head) add a layer of cous cous … cover for 5 minutes and throw in a knob of butter … mix it all with a fork  so you fluff it up a bit.

Serve and sprinkle some corriander over it all. Hey presto NOM away. This goes extremely nicely with a nice rose. (I live in the perfect region for this)

Enjoy.

All in all 8 / 10 the merguez was a bit fatty in places ( I’ve bought other merguez since which wasn’t like this ) and I could have added a bit more harissa paste to make it a bit spicer still people could eat this which you’ve always to be careful with so you could just add a bit of chilli oil at the end for taste.

Well not french as such but today is the Anniversary of my marrying Valérie-Anne

We had two weddings one on the 7th (civil) and one on the 14th (Church) with all our friends and a big party afterwards.

Four years later I’m finding myself living in Nantes and with lots of things going on.

It was a rather small affair but as it turned out it was the seventh wedding of the year with just seven people present (the main get together was the next week) and it all took place on the seventh of the seventh 2007 in Landudec

Ended up going for a lovely meal afterwards … am I french now ?

One of the biggest shocks to the system when moving from Madrid to Nantes was the cost of going out for a meal. Of course I was probably a bit spoiled living in Lavapies in Madrid being able to get a 3 course meal with a coffee and a bottle of wine for 8 or 9 quid. So this week as Cabin Fever kicks into over drive (yes I’m going slightly insane working / living in the home / office all the time) I’ve decided that I’m going to try getting out for lunch a bit more. First up is La Table Vénitienne which is on 1 Place Catinat 44000 Nantes.

I opted for the lunch time special which comes to €13.50 and comes with your main ( any pizza / pasta ), Desert of the day and a Coffee.

It being a bit of a warm day I opted against my usual Spag Bol and went with a Pizza … cheeze, chorizo and an Egg ( something you generally just don’t get in Ireland ). The pizza was cooked in a wood oven at least I think so the base was thing and had that slight burnt wood taste to it.

While it’s not much to look at it was rather tasty I ordered a glass of house red and at 2.40 and a good sized glass it was rather nice as well.

Val ended up having a chicken with Tomato and Olive dish with a side of spinach which she said was rather tasty.

Desert for me was a compot of apple (stewed apple) nice even if a little too sweet and the coffee was nice as well.

The restaurant is on a little square with a roundabout that doesn’t get a huge amount of traffic thankfully so the sun and the company made it a lovely lunch

All in all 6/10 it’s nice food for lunch … a nice little square and a nice way to spend your lunch hour in the sun and with good company.

This is a recipe that I used make for myself when I was in my teens and I really love it. It may not look like much at the end but god it’s nice and very filling.

You’re going to need Vegetables. In general I’ll use a veg mix as it’s just a lot handier and there’s generally one in the freezer.
Mangetout / Peppers / Onion / Mushroom really anything you think will work well (I didn’t mention Bean Sprouts with the recent outbreaks).

The mix one I used below has some Brocolli in it.

You’ll need Rice (used a non starchy / sticky kind), Soya Sauce and an Egg or two depending on how much you’re making.

If you don’t have any rice throw it on first as actually making the stir fry takes about 10 minutes in total.

Start by frying your veg in a little bit of olive oil.

It’s a frozen mix so you want to make sure it’s fully heated up. Add some Soya Sauce

Add in some rice ( I’ll generally have some left over rice from a meal the night before I always make extra)

Mix it all and heat up the rice. Depending on the rice if it’s starchy it may stick to the pan. Add in some more soya sauce.

Add in your beaten egg and mix it all fairly lively

And serve.

It’s quick .. it’s filling it may not look like much but I love it. I tried with a bit of Lea & Perrins sauce here but you really want a Rich Soya Sauce for it’s extra savoury / salty flavour

So if you’re on this page you’re no doubt seeing the new logo for the site. I personally think it’s rather shiny but that might just be me. The original logo I’d created for Brittany Beers was made up of a rather bubbly font with a slight curving and used pretty much the same colours as this logo with I guess the white and black inverted as the white was originally used as a stoke. The theme I’m using came with a default logo.

You can see the two main colours not a million miles away from the new logo.

First up I copied this logo style. I mean it fits with the theme so why not.

Uses a similar font (wasn’t too pushed about having it exactly the same). Now I basically knew this would work with the theme as it’s the default logo and goes well with the various colour styles that are present.

It doesn’t however appeal to me. There’s nothing I can associate with brittany and well the Beers bit just doesn’t stand out for me. Onto the next iteration.

My original logo (if you could call it that) had a bit more fun to it but it’s now very dated to me and doesn’t exactly fit a travel / food blog anymore. It’s by far too comic but at the time it fit the way the site was going with South Park Characters and other strange creatures.

I opted to use one of the Futura fonts and to replace the Beers with a similar beer gradient as on the original logo.

Definitely coming along nicely ( at least for me ) however apart from the white and black (shadow) it doesn’t strike me as exactly breton just yet.

White and Black you ask? Well the Breton Flag is called the Gwenn Ha Du (Breton for White and Black) you can see it below.

I have to admit I love their reasoning for why it is so. The shapes top left are the original symbols of the Duchy of Brittany and are the Ermine (representing the fur of the stoat) (I’m unsure why there are 11 on the flag)
The 9 stripes represent the 9 areas of Brittany that were made of up 5 French speaking and 4 Breton speaking ( hence 5 and 4 stripes ). French speaking regions were Dol, Nantes, Rennes, Saint-Malo and Saint-Brieuc with the Breton speaking regions being Trégor, Léon, Cornouaille and Vannes. It was created in 1923 but represents 100′s of years of history it was designed by Morvan Marchal who said he was inspired by the the US and Greek flags)

I played with a few ideas. The original theme logo had replaced a Y with the Triangular shape and left things up to your imagination to create the rest of the Y. So what the hell the Ermine looks quite like an A so I ended up replacing that. I played with Variations of Black and White for the Brittany part as well as you can see

It is and it isn’t working for me. It’s getting overly complicated and well Brittany is only an 8 letter word so having the 5 / 4 black and white stripes doesn’t really work. It’s also getting tricky to read. REVERSE … REVERSE

Simplifying things down and I end up with something I’m happy with. ( Rare for me when working on personal projects )

The A representation isn’t quite there for me so final tweakage and hey presto we’ve got the final logo (for now at any rate until I decide to tweak it again)

This is an extremely quick one to prepare BUT it takes a while to cook

You’re going to need a few ingredients

1. 1 Large Onion ( 2 Medium)
2. 5 or 6 large tomatoes
3. 2 – 3 Cod Filets ( I’ve used frozen here )
4. Rice
5. Herbs to taste … Basil some Sea Salt and olive oil

Steps:

1. Start pre-heating your oven to 200ish Degrees C
2. Chop up all your onion and place it into a oven read dish
3. Place your cod filets on top spread out if possible
4. Sprinkle some Basil onto the Cod
5. Slice your tomatoes and layer on top of the Cod
6. More basil and pour some olive oil over the whole thing
7. Cover with tinfoil (I try to wrap it so it’s semi tight around the handles of the disk) and place into the oven for 30 ish minutes
8. About 15 minutes in throw on your rice. (depending on how long your rice takes)
9. with 5 – 10 minutes left of cooking time for your fish remove the tin foil so we start to boil off some of the juices.

And remove from the oven and serve. Very simple … VERY tasty Cod with onion, tomato and rice. Add more fresh basil if you’d like and serve

Mental note use better serving dish next time

Don’t worry this isn’t a post telling you how to make baked beans on toast

One of the things you’ll find when you live outside of your home country is you miss certain things. Whether it’s how easy it is to get fresh milk or you’re just dying for that cup of Barry’s Tea there’ll be something you miss. For me it’s the Full Irish Breakfast with Beans. In Brittany you’ll find a lot of stores cater heavily to the english market. It’s a bit like the Irish supermarkets that have a polish section in them. There’s a demand so they provide it. I always find it a bit ridiculous the Brits coming over to France and buying all the same things they’d buy at home. Except of course for the wine

Anyways most cities have an Comptoir Irlandais ( Irish Counter ) and you’ll be able to pick up lots of the comforts of home at in general a heavily inflated price. So if like me you don’t want to spend a fortune on things (2 or 3 quid for a tin of beans) you’ll find that Carrefour do a very nice white beans in tomatoe sauce which I’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between it and a tin of Heinz.

Haricots blancs a la sauce tomate (White beans in tomatoe sauce) €1.09 ( at the local Carrefour express )

Failing to find that the first time I went looking I found a tin of white beans and added in a half jar of Pasta sauce. Gives a lovely taste as well a lot less sugary than your standard baked beans.