What would you rather dunk in your drink…? Digestives vs. Rillettes
Last week was ‘biscuit week’ on The Great British Bake Off, co-incidentally one of the few shows I still watched while en France. By way of introduction to the biscuit baking challenge, talk inevitably turned to the age old tradition of dunking biscuits in tea (I’m on my 3rd cup tonight already).
As a nation of tea drinkers, you’d be forgiven for thinking that we must be the most enthusiastic dunkers in existence. But anyone who’s spent enough time in France will probably realise that the French are quirkier and more eccentric in this respect than we will ever be.
For a start, the French will routinely start the day by serving coffee or hot chocolate in a bowl, specifically designed to make dunking their breakfast into it that much easier. Drinking coffee from a bowl first thing in the morning is definitely one of the reasons that I fell in love with France.
Ordering an extra large latte to have in at Costa and drink from an enormous cup with handles on either side is just not the same. Unless perhaps you’re French, desperately missing home and all out of better ideas.
Anyway, there’s more… as I discovered from talking to a French friend who bakes bread for a living. Because apparently a tartine with confiture for breakfast isn’t to everyone’s taste. Some of us prefer savoury to sweet. And by that I mean, plunging butter and rillettes on bread into coffee!!
Just imagine the things you’d have floating around in there! I’ve tried oysters and escargots – even frogs’ legs – but draw the line (for now) at rillettes in coffee. Maybe I’m missing out. Would you try it? Which combinations do you recommend? Share them below.
Eleanor of Angleterre 