When we are not sightseeing we are hunting down markets. One stop, this week, was Cancale. Here, in days long past, Louis XIV regularly sent his minions to collect these delicious Cancale oysters from the sea to serve at his dining table at Versailles.
We parked just above the harbour, where at low tide, the oyster beds spread out in long strands across the sea floor. At this high tide, the locals had had enough of tourists parking in front of their sea view and moved us on, so when next we saw oysters next it was at a cafe in St Malo.
Bretagne is all about seafood: to such an extent we traipsed off to Paimpol to the fish market on Tuesday and bought up these gnarly old spider crabs that had been swimming together happily only this morning.
We bought them and took them home where we anguished about killing them mercifully but after a glass of fortifying wine we had them immersed in salted water without any pain. We hope.
The shelling and dressing took a team of four nearly an hour. Not easy.
But the flavour -- fine filaments of fresh crab on crostini drizzled with lemon -- was worth the effort.
Thank you, sea gods.
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| Stone ladies of Cancale, washing the oyster catch |
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| Cancale oysters - fit for a king |
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| Spider crabs in Lannion market |
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| Dressed spider crabs for dinner |
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