One great
thing about France is you can drive around, stop in any number of small
towns, from the Jura to Normandy, and check out regional specialties.
People often come to Paris and ask about where they can get a good
cassoulet, or bouillabaisse, and they look positively crestfallen when
I tell them they really need to go to Gascony or Marseille,
respectively, if they want to get the real deal. Some dishes are so
specialized, though, that even the locals might not have heard of them,
as was the case when we were trying to find Kig ha
farz in Brittany, and no one I asked about it, even knew
what it was.
People
were looking at me like I was speaking in some crazy language, which
the Breton language
might sound like to someone (especially when spoken with an American
accent), but when I finally found someone who did know what it was, she
said that we had to go to another part of Brittany to get it.
 Although
I have a Kig ha
farz recipe on my site, I did come across another one in a
book of Breton recipes I picked up while there. I know people in
Brittany have a sweet tooth, as evident by all the Kouign
amanns in every bakery, and even at roadside stands, but
their recipe called for 3/4 cup/150g of sugar, which seems a lot for a
dumpling that gets paired with meat and vegetables. (My recipe has 1
tablespoon.)
The book,
however, inspired me to make the recipe for baked rice pudding that was
in it. It was titled Riz
au lait au four de la voisine which referenced a
time when les femmes brought
their rice pudding to the local baker, which they would cook using the
residual heat of the ovens, once they were done baking their loaves of
bread for the day.
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