50. Plats favoris des Français, recette du kouign-amann, verbe manquer

Here is, with my apologies for the delay, the rest of the class activities we did during the Summer 2021 online class.

I. Grammar: the verb "manquer"

I couldn't very well end the Summer session without at least one grammar lesson! A student asked me about the verb "manquer", so I seized this opportunity to take a deep dive into the various meanings and constructions of this weird French verb. 

Here's the lesson and exercises (+answers). 

If you want more examples and explanations, here are a few resources I found:

• https://french.kwiziq.com/revision/grammar/manquer-de-thing-to-miss-lack-something
• https://www.frenchtoday.com/blog/french-grammar/i-miss-you-in-french/
• https://www.lawlessfrench.com/grammar/manquer-lesson/  

(Note: this last webpage is pretty good, but be careful, there's one mistake! The author translates "manquer de + verb" into "to fail to do something". Not quite! It actually means "to almost do something". It's close, but it's not the same thing... On the other hand, the negative form is correct. "Ne manque pas de" does mean "don't fail to".)

II. Favorite French Foods

Of course, we couldn't stay too long before coming back to the topic of food... In this video created by EasyFrench, French people in Paris talk about their favorite French recipes. The video comes with French and English subtitles.

We took the topic one step further with this exercise. You need to match the name of each dish cited in the video with its picture and its region of origin.

III. The Kouign-Amann Recipe

We then zoomed in on a French region, Brittany, with one of its most well-known cakes: the kouign-amann.

First, on our way to Brittany, we did some sightweeing with this video in English, which gives a quick overview of the region.

We began to learn about the kouign-amann cake and its history with a short text: Le Kouign-Amann, Spécialité de Bretagne (from Kwiziq).

We then took a closer look at the recipe with a video by the Youtube cooking channel Ptitchef.com:

You'll notice that the video has a list of ingredients in French, but no audio narration... which is a great opportunity to try and write the recipe ourselves!

To work towards this goal, I created this exercise sheet. (Note: the linked document includes the answer key and a written recipe sample.)

I hope some of you will be adventurous enough to give this recipe a try... despite the high butter and sugar content. Personally, I'm looking forward to give it a try over the Winter Holidays. Bon appétit! 😋