Strawberries from the Plougastel farmers market
According to the wildly popular wikipedia (which had an interesting article in yesterdays Wall Street Journal), the strawberry is "an accessory fruit; that is, the fleshy part is derived not from the ovaries (which are the "seeds", actually achenes) but from the peg at the bottom of the hypanthium that held the ovaries." Who knew? And certainly more than I needed to know to make a humble strawberry tarte. But I digress...
As I mentioned last week in my Ode to a Sea Bass, I spent a few months cooking on a lobster boat turned restaurant in Brittany. The town of Brest is a military port that was completely leveled in WW2 and immediately rebuilt so everything is gray and square and built with gray square cinder blocks so we were always on the search for the quintessential Breton fishing village or equally charming outpost.
Plougastel-Daoulas information center
With one week left in my stay before moving to Paris, I hopped the town bus to Plougastel-Daoulas, the strawberry capital of Brittany, and France for that matter. We whizzed by Ma Petite Folie (the lobster boat), La Plage du Moulin-Blanc (the beach of the white windmill - though no windmill to be found), crossed the Pont d'Iroise to the Presqu'ile Plougastel (the Plougastel peninsula) which is known to be one of the most scenic in France with spectacular views. This tiny peninsula is dotted with churches and... strawberry fields.