What to eat in Hauts-de-France

Sitting on the golden beach of Calais, eating from a bag of delicious hot chips, I realize it’s a shame so many travelers skip this northernmost region of France on their way south. But if you stop for a while, you’ll be rewarded with culinary delights.

Hauts-de-France – which stretches from Calais to the outskirts of Paris – is famous for its excellent French fries, sold from mobile trailers and stalls called friteries. But there is also plenty of seafood, samphire and many other sea vegetables, as well as a wide range of cheeses, macarons and whipped cream, to name just a few notable specialties.

From Calais, I follow the hilly coastal road northwest to Boulogne-sur-Mer. As France’s largest fishing port, it doesn’t have the bucolic charm of the fishing villages of Brittany or Corsica, but it’s fascinating to see a place that processes over 300,000 tonnes of fish and shellfish every year. Away from the old town, with its immaculately preserved medieval citadel and impressive street art murals, the fishing quarter is lined with brine-scented warehouses and a huge wholesale market, La Criée, over which the seagulls caw.

I miss seeing La Criée in full swing. It’s busiest in the early hours of the morning, when the fishing boats return with their catch. When I arrive at Le Chatillon for lunch, it’s quiet, and the restaurant’s regulars, the fishermen, have long since left after their post-shift meal, which most people still eat at breakfast. The dining room is decorated like the deck of a ship, complete with porthole-shaped mirrors on the walls. I order turbot, tender and light, served with the region’s ubiquitous french fries, which are both crispy and delightfully fatty and soft.

In Le Crotoy, 72 kilometres further south on the coast where the Somme flows into the sea, a different product is on the menu. The seaweed samphire, or salicorne in French, grows in abundance on the banks of the river, but so do other plants I’ve never heard of – sea vegetables that are just as tasty. I meet local forager Reinette Michon, known as a “pecheuse à pied” because she fishes on foot. As a child, she learned to find cockles, worms for bait and various sea vegetables. Now in her 60s, she is president of the Samphire Collectors’ Association, which issues licences to the few dozen people who are allowed to collect the plant here during the summer months. Many, like Reinette, sell it to restaurants and fishmongers.

Our tour begins at the Phare du Hourdel, a lighthouse on the opposite side of the estuary from Le Crotoy. She outfits me with huge wellies from her sand-spattered van and soon I’m following her down from the quay, trudging through the ankle-deep muddy sand and climbing up the opposite grassy bank as a strong breeze ruffles my hair. Soon we’re kneeling beside a feathery plant Reinette calls le pompon, which she cuts off with her knife and places in a large bucket. “This one is like samphire,” she says. “It’s lighter and finer and really tasty when you toss it in butter and add it to new potatoes.” Next comes l’obione, a large, almond-shaped sheet. “This one you can use like nori for sushi,” Reinette says. “You dry it in the oven for an hour and it gets crispy.”

I ask her how these plants became part of the local diet. “The poor have always eaten them, but in the 1960s and 1970s the Dutch came to the coast to collect them, as they were very fond of these plants. The extra demand meant that licenses were needed to ensure the plants were protected,” she says. The last haul on our collecting mission is the sea aster, also known as les oreilles de cochon – pig’s ears. Reinette shows me how to measure the leaves on the palm of my hand – if they fit inside, they’re worth picking, but if they’re longer, they become fibrous. She suggests frying them like spinach with crushed garlic, stirring in some crème fraîche and serving them as a side dish, perhaps with a pork chop.

When we return to her van, Reinette gives me a bag full of collected plants to use in cooking later. But first, I have the chance to taste them at the Auberge de la Marine, where chef Pascal Lefebvre incorporates them into his dishes.

A starter of tiny cockles in a light broth, garnished with crunchy samphire, is followed by tasty new potatoes from the Bay of Somme, perfectly seasoned to complement the salt marsh lamb.

Some 72 kilometres inland, the Somme flows through the city of Amiens, where it winds its way around a 380-hectare network of islands called Les Hortillonnages. The canals that run between them are popular destinations, either on a guided cruise or in a kayak rented from a waterfront outlet. This allows you to paddle around the islands at your leisure, disembarking here and there to explore the sculpture trails and admire the “floating” gardens, which are at their most beautiful in summer.

I take a detour into town to pick up a box of macarons from chocolatier and pastry chef Jean Trogneux. Made from fine Valencia almond slivers, egg whites and almond oil, the Amiens macarons are very different from their colourful Parisian counterparts made famous by makers like Pierre Hermé and Ladurée. In fact, their dense texture and moistness make them more like coconut macaroons, and they’re made to a recipe that’s been passed down in the Trogneux family for six generations.

The tempting shop – the windows are stacked with ribbon-wrapped boxes and jewel-like confectionery – stands on the same site as the original house, built in 1872 and razed to the ground in World War II. Here I meet the current boss, Jean-Baptiste Trogneux. He tells me how macarons first came to France. “We think they were made in Italy as a byproduct of macaroni, which uses egg yolks,” he says. “Then Catherine de Medici is said to have brought them to France in the 16th century, and they were adopted in various forms across the country – there must be about 20 different varieties.” As I peel off the macarons’ gold wrapping and bite into one, I find they are sweet but not too sweet, and so I can’t resist a second one.

Another town in the region known for its sweet specialty is Chantilly, another 90 minutes’ drive inland, closer to Paris. The town’s eponymous whipped and sweetened cream is served throughout France on crepes, apple tarts, chocolate mousse and many other desserts. It is believed to have been made famous by the 18th-century Italian chef Procopio Cutó, who may have come to the elegant Chateau de Chantilly as a guest chef. In any case, the area was famous for its Montmorency cherries, which are a perfect topping for the cream. My visit to the chateau, now a sprawling historic property with numerous turrets, a moat and a museum, ends in a small hamlet on the grounds, where I am served a plate of plump raspberries and homemade cream. Here, the whipped cream is made with raw cream, which must be served within a few hours of production and has a slightly sour note – the perfect complement to the sour raspberries.

Later in town, I visit L’Atelier de la Chantilly, where owner Bertrand Alaime teaches visitors how to whip their own cream. With my whisk in hand, he pours in a carton of 35% fat cream—in the UK, that would be equal parts cream and double cream—and soon my arms are getting a proper workout. When the cream starts to thicken, we add caster and icing sugar and vanilla powder and keep whisking until the whisk can stand up in the bowl on its own. Then Bertrand hands me a spoon and I take a bite. Silky and rich, better than any whipped cream I’ve ever tasted, so good I wish I could lick every last crumb from the bowl. Better yet, he gives me two large pots to take home, which I eat with mirabelles for the next few meals. They are a tangible reminder of the unexpected culinary delights I discovered in the Hauts-de-France. From chips to fish, from samphire to cockles, from macaroons to cream: there is every reason to cross the Channel and linger a while.