Fete accomplis

Wella wella wella...

So, last night I had my first ever, ever French fete, at St Clar. We got there at around 7.30pm, and it was starting to get busy with the 2nd wave of festivities, as according to Vikki there was lots of activities at lunchtime when she went to suss the scene. There were about 10 stalls around the central square, selling food and wine, and then lots of tables and benches for the locals. Kuni chose well, with a kind of cassoulet base accompanied by a fried duck breast:

and the rest of us went a bit more basic: sausage and chips!

Needless to say, it was duck sausage, and very tasty. Loads of people were wandering around, and the music kicked off with a man who was 90 (in the shade) doing French renditions of famous songs, and occasional trumpet solos.

We had waffles with chocolate sauce for pudding, and ploughed through many, many bottles of wine and a few rounds of YMCA and the macarena, and midnight rolled around sharpish. It was top fun, and all 6 of us, plus Archie the cocker spaniel, piled into the car to go home rather worse for wear. The stars were out in force again (3rd least light-polluted spot in France), and we looked up, and had another glass or two of local wine before hitting the hay rather late.

Needless to say that I woke up (a) late and (b) feeling like hell. David - the legend - had helped prepare my food for the evenings challenge. I had to feed 4 others a decent meal based on what I'd learnt this week. Bernard popped round to say goodbye, and brought with him 2 types of foie gras for me to serve in the evening. You know what? It's not too challenging arranging a dinner party with 2 professional chefs, and 2 other very keen cooks helping you. It was hard to say goodbye to Vikki, and I could have spent hours catching up on the local gossip with her. Archie gave the extra-sad-eyes when I eventually left.

I set off for Gaillac with a heavy heart and a minging hangover, fueled by pain aux raisins, coffee, and a desire not to bugger up the tarte au citron in the passenger footwell. 3 hours of ridiculously beautiful scenery later, I pulled up at Chateau Morton, for the local wine festival with Iain, Yvonne, Gabi and Dianna.

Tactical snooze and back in the kitchen to get the chicken ballotine in, and to prep "rustic" potato. I remembered to warm the knife when slicing the foie gras (with Muscadet):

I got the 2-pepper sauce pouring technique sussed (not too high!):

And the chicken went down brilliantly, it's hard to carve without it falling apart but after I focussed on proper knife technique it was a winner (with Bergerac red, as advised by Bernard!):

After which the camera went away, but we had a lovely 12 month comte, and the tarte au citron which was a little cracked post-journey, but tasted absolutely lovely. David gave me 2 emtpy pastry cases, and tomorrow we shall be attempting a creme patissier with raspberries.

So. Final verdict: success! I had a cracking week at the Gascony cooking school, so if anyone fancies a proper break, plus learning a good skill, PLUS eating unbelievably well... and feeling part of the family, I definitely rate it.

La busy bee...

Final day of cookery school. Very sad, but also good to be hanging up the apron for a bit, it's been a busy week.

This morning started with breakfast of choice: pain aux raisons with coffee. Bien.

Then we started by rolling out and blind baking pastry cases for lemon tart. We then made a stuffing of pork, sage, and roughly a million other ingredients for the ballotine of chicken. Then the fun started: separating the chicken from it's skeleton. Not a simple process, and took about 40 minutes of precision knife work.

We had a chicken each to do, and then they had to be stuffed and rolled in the skin, and wrapped in foil: ready for baking. Then we whipped up the filling for 5 tarte au citron, and headed off to Bernard's for yet another 'light' lunch.

It all kicked off with the raspberry liqueur which I cannot remember the name of, plus a prune wrapped in duck breast. First course was a light and creamy chicken soup, with crusty bread, followed by 2 types of quiches: one was tomato, cheese and basil, and the other salmon and broccoli - both were beautiful.

David was bringing up our tarte au citron so we could test-drive our own cooking for dessert, so we were gearing up for that when...more lunch arrived! Roast pork with a mushroom sauce, and 3 types of vegetables. Eeek!

After that, the offer of cheese came. We declined, but the waitress came back a few minutes later to check (while really, really staring hard at me) that we really meant to say no... what the hell! Reputation is shot to pieces. Oh - and at this point the bottle of red wine had also started to get a dent. The lemon tart was ridiculously good, and I look forward to showing it off at Chateau Morton this weekend.

It's great being on holiday with fellow food lovers. I floated the idea that the new cupcake/macaron could be ... chocolate mousse. It could be flavoured so many different ways, and Bernard's recipe is second to none. Possible future career change on the cards. Philip pointed out at this point in the discussion that I should write in my notebook: "don't open - will end up hating mousse".

After lunch we did a tour of the castle in Gramont, which is absolutely beautiful, with some lovely gardens. After that, I went to Bernard's to de-vein the foie gras that I didn't have the stomach to do when feeling ropey on Monday. It's not easy, but quite relaxing, poking round a liver, ripping out veins. I have a feeling that after this week, my liver is not dissimilar. As Philip just pointed out out "even Bernard's foie gras looked like it was hit by a train afterwards" - it's not pretty.  Bernard has an art gallery in the basement of his restaurant, and I got to check out the latest exhibits being hung by the artists. Some terrible, some quite pretty.

Tonight is the St. Clar fete, so I'm dressed up and ready for action! I have been told that dinner will almost definitely be "duck and chips". Fabulous.

Tomorrow morning we have a sauce to strain, and then I pack the car and head to Gaillac to re-create a 4 course lunch for the Mortons and guests. I'll have to post photos and solicit feedback as to whether all this hard work was worth it. Now, back to my rosé.

No pressure

I'm about to debone a chicken.

...The more that stays the same.

Knackered.

So, so, the 'light' lunch today was as follow: arrive at Bernard's restaurant, which is closed on Wednesdays. Ignore the 'ferme merdredi' signs on the door, and get welcomed by Bernard with a raspberry-based aperatif, and some foie gras on bread. We'd watched him make this - it's raw, cured in salt, and formed into a sausage shape and left in the fridge for a few days - to allow it to be sliced into small discs when served. Very rich. Theeeen the charcuterie arrived. So I was expecting a couple of slices of something dried-meaty, but noooo. We had 5 pates, and a slice of smoked duck. The pates were hard to identify, so I named them according to appearance initially (cat sick, dog food etc), but soon they were explained to be lapin (bunny), duck liver (but without the force-feeding required to create classic foie gras), campagne (mushroomy), piquante (with local hot peppers), and then a traditional pressed goose terrine. So far, so full. Needless to say, at this point the wine had arrived. Next came goat's cheese (fried in a paper-thin pastry) and gesier salad. Gesier is the ...gizzards - aka oesophagus - and in this case it was duck and turkey combo. Very traditional, and very tasty. We finished with the lightest, most exquisite chocolate mousse. I am officially putting my name down as the futute Madame Bernard. That man can cook!

Then we headed to Condom, home of Dogtanian and the Muskehounds, or some-such. Impressive cathedral. Then we hit a 13 century hilltop fort town called Larressingle, and the church had windows which both Kuni and I were convinced were Chagall. Apparently Didier something-or-other did them, biggest plagiarist evs! On exiting Condom Philip noted that it's twinned with towns in both Spain and Germany, but not England...wasted opportunity there.

We swung via yet another castle on the way home for a swat-up on armagnac (according to 70s promotional video it's to be enjoyed "in moderation", which explains a lot...esp as apparently I tried 2 types and an eau de vie last night and did not entirely recall whole conversations this morning...), annnd an armagnac tasting. We test-drove a 12 and 30 year old. 30 was much nicer. On the way home we stopped at Le Romieu (or similar) - a village obsessed with cats due to some tale I heard under the influence of armagnac featuring (as all good tales do) famine, people eating cats, then incest, and then a plague. The cats won out in the end, and there's a statue to Angeline (the cat) in the main square. NFI. Very picturesque.

Got home in time to inhale a glass of wine before a tour of the wine museum (incredible), and then dinner chez Bernard with Philip, Kuni, David, Vikki and Sam - homemade saucisson (divine, I want to come on the charcuterie week), then soup, vegetable crumble (which I'd bet body-parts contained duck fat), magret du canard, and then cheese annnd then the crepes suzette with amazing sauce by David. We've been spoilt with 2 incredible chefs this week. The cheese was unbelievable. I'd told Bernard that comte (with accent on the e - this keyboard isn't French!) Is my all-time best cheese, so he asked if I prefer 3, 6, 12 or 18 month old. I said I wasn't sure if I knew the difference, so he'd got the 12 month in for me to try, and it was like angels dancing on my tongue. Aka: not bad at all.

Back in the kitchen by 9am, and I am totally exhausted (but very happy)! Need a holiday.

La plus ca change...

So last night a man stuck his head round the kitchen door to enquire (in German) where he could park his horse. This morning when I walked to the restaurant for the mornings lessons, I wasn't too surprised by the horse or the gyspy caravan. Not sure if I'd want to take 3 young kids on a holiday where you are restricted to about a 6km radius per day, but they seemed very content.

Today kicked off with crepes (base for the suzette tonight), mousse au chocolat, and then piping creme patissier into choux buns (profiterole-style), then shaping inside a cone with caramel to make a croquemboche. This is something I'm keen to try at home. I need to nick a traffic cone.

Then, if that wasn't enough, after tossing crepes with varying degrees of success, we made bechamel and learnt techniques for making vegetables taste nice (hint: substitute some of the butter in the bechamel with duck fat) - so all vegetarian friends can now enjoy their broccoli gratin. Plus instead of only topping with ementaler Bernard sometimes adds Roquefort to the bechamel: top tip.

We then made the suzette sauce - another tip: to keep it smooth you rub sugar cubes on the outside of the orange to infuse it with the oil rather than adding the zest to the caramel.

After heading back to the teaching kitchen we made the pastry base for the tart au citron, and a roue base for the mushroom soup for tomorrow. All that by midday. Right arm is feeling veeeery exercised, and I need a massage. I'm sure a glass of wine at Bernard's restaurant in 30 minutes over lunch will sort me out! Apparently he's rustling up charcuterie, a goat's cheese salad, and then this morning's mousse. F-a-b.

This afternoon: Condom and armagnac.

Oh - Bernard used a beautiful phrase earlier when adding a little lemon zest to his chocolate mousse. He was explaining the art of adding a slight signature twist to classics, and said that "people don't have to find the taste". The art of subtlety. Funny that he's allowed to mess with classics, but someone ELSE isn't allowed to put red wine into cassoulet...yep: I didn't get the Incredible Sulk nickname for nothing.

This little piggy had rosbif...

Woke up to a power failure. This was good and bad. Bad because I had no hair drier (and my mother told me that I'd get sick going out with wet air), and good because we got to cook outside. The cookery school have recently made a great decision to build a roof over one terrace, and put a long table under it - to seat about 20. It was made by David and Sam, and isn't entirely flat, but IS entirely rustic, sturdy and beautiful. Today it was the scene for sweet pastry. The pastry's a bitch to make, so the rolling sunflower fields and tumbling swallows took the edge off a bit. Then we hit the road.

We headed to Fleurance first. Vikki was on full mischievous form, and we were dispatched Apprentice-style with a bag of cents, French baskets, and a shopping list (in English). My mushrooms 'sauvage' worked well, and the French word for fennel isn't that different, despite "2 funnels" being on the list. Ubiquitous moutachiod (?) Pasty salesman, poodles, smokers, garlic salesman, plus the odd beret were out in full force.

Next, we headed to Lectoure for lunch. I had steak frites - asked for medium and got it English-v rare, which is what I wanted. Apparently all you need is a spot of reverse psychology, and meat is cooked perfectly here. The same rule didnlt apply last night at Bernards, when guests asked for 'well done'. There was definite huffiness. Anyhoo, I ate the pattern off the plate.

We came home, and went straight into the teaching kitchen for quite a sesh. First, we rolled and blind baked the sweet pastry (and made the apple and ground almond filling), and then we gutted and filleted plaice. A glass of rose took the edge off the sheer gutsiness of it all. We made a veloute sauce of the fish heads (divine - with cayenne pepper), plus rustled a thick, sticky red wine reduction, while watching the rain clouds gather.

Dinner was a salad of bacon lardons with poached eggs, with dressing we made yesterday, followed by plaice and veloute. Then we did a spot of comte/brie/roquefort, and puis: apple tart:

Y-u-m. Sitting out at the wooden table, with the lightening storm in the distance, test driving armagnac, and sharing stories was great fun. Kuniko was explaining her first experiences with cheese outside of the processed cheese of Japan, and she shared my total obsession with comte. Good girl!

It's hard to say much without slandering anyone - what goes and tour etc - but I've been really lucky with a top notch group of people. I thought people would be ..well..old and particular, but they've been young, and very up for giving things a go! David made his own distilled booze (from prunes) last year, and I'm not sure if I finished it off, or it finished me. Good stuff.

Big cooking day tomorrow. Loads of new recipes with Bernard in the pro kitchen. Then off to Condom. Srsly. I am rating Gascony Cooking School DESPITE rain, which is quite something...I'm almost starting to relax.

Day Two...fit of the vapours...

Well, what a day. It's amazing what you can pack into a day, plus manage 2 siestas.

Today was a bit derailed by freakish fainting feeling. It was all rather Victorian, and much time was passed fanning myself, and fighting claminess. I found the cure late in the day (red wine, foie gras and bread!).

Monday kicked off at 9am on one of the three sun-drenched terraces, with coffee and pain aux raisons. I'd hit the hay at around midnight, but some were up til gone 2, so it was a sedentary start. Then we hit the teaching kitchen, and learnt some knife skills. It was weird, as I know the techniques from a practical perspective from absorbing many cooking programmes and a course with Rick Stein, but it makes a BIG difference when you're angles and grip - and pressure - are being scrutinised constantly over time. We chopped: onions, garlic (from course to puree), peppers, mushroom, foie gras, duck breast, cheese...which was a fantastic preparation for a rather traditionally topped pizza. The foie gras with roquefort was very good.

We made a pithivier pastry - puff pastry ornately decorated, stuffed with sweetened ground almonds and almagnac. And my cooking partner (head-teacher- Philip) was on top form and did a cracking job making our pastry look artistic. Tasted marvelous too!

We made a salad dressing with 6 cloves of pureed garlic, 75% virgin olive oil, and 25%balsamic, with a bit of fresh pepper, and it was sublime.

Leftover puff-pastry parcels were made with burnt onions and a mix of cheeses - very effective leftovers. Almost as impressive as the duck fat scratchings: VERY tasty, if a little ostentatious!

Post-pizza midday snooze, and then we walked the 2 minutes to the pro kitchen, which was a lot less forgiving, and a lot more real! Bernard the head chef is my favourite type of French communicator.
He speaks beautifully in vaguely lewd sounding, calm French, which I understand perfectly....and I reply in English, which he understands to the letter. Bien!

Bernard started by making cassoulet.

This is one of my trademark meals, and it's an honour watching a master at work. One day he will crack, and try my method of adding a load of red wine to make it rich and sticky. I'm going to use the porktrotters to get more gelatine in my next batch. I'd like to say we both grew as human beings. I think his journey was "don't let that mouthy bint tell me - 3 generations of local chef - how to cook a regional speciality enjoyed as a national dish". Particular about their recipes, these Frenchies! It was a good one though.

We then made foie gras 4 ways. When I say "we", I was mostly to be found propped up on cold white tiles, sipping perrier and trying to stay conscious. Very poorly timed body-sabotage. Anyhoo - I couldn't de-vein the lobe of foie, but I watched! And learnt!

We then made a creme patisserie, which formed past of a creme brulee and a creme caramel (both sublime). Then home to nap.

As the sun started to fall, and the photographers hustled for the remainder of the atmospheric orange light, we descended back on Bernards for dinner. I'll post photos to do this justice, but if you can imagine a VERY rustic, French, shuttered restaurant, with a terrace overlooking a castle - sweeping vistas to the pyranees on a good day, and sunflower fields on bad...it's not a hardship. Aperatif (raspberry) with 2 types of marvelous quiche were hoovered, and puis, the main menu.

We started with a soup. Vegetable soup. Sounds 'meh', but the flavours were intense and light, and I dunked crusty Poilane and mopped that bad-boy up. Oh yes. That was with a local red. The the Gaillac vin doux appeared - which I love - and we had foie gras 3 ways (cuit, mi-cuit, and mi-cuit with pain d'epice).

Just in case that wasn't enough, out came cassoulet. And it was perfect. I make mine with red wine (and don't use cloves), but am totally rethinking my approach now. Big toulouse sausage. Big lump of confit canard, big glass of red wine, and hey presto: all the nausea and faintyness left the building. It's not a conventional cure, but I'm sold!

Then: creme brulee. Light as a feather with bitter burnt toffee...

Then hometime. Tomorrow starts with sweet pastry, and then a market trip...we're getting fish to cook for dinner with a veloute sauce, and then a sweet apple tart.

It's so quiet here (and no-one locks their doors) that when the roosters kick off in the farm below, it's reassuring.

My brass bed has high posts, and the bed linen is all ... Whatsit. Where it just blue and white - or in this case red and white - and features fine drawn outside nature scenes. Can't remember the name of it: annoying!

gnight
X

Day One...

I'm more zen now. After the whole Easyjet Ritual (featuring 'being charged £10 for being less than a kilo overweight' (bags, not me), plus uberhectic game of sardines to get onto plane), I arrived in Toulouse marginally frazzled, but up for ACTION.

Any whining I could have mustered as a result of left-hand-drive and 30 degree heat dissipated as I passed through knockout scenery. I've missed sunflower season... They now look like they're amassing to join a funeral - field upon field of muted colour and hung heads. But, glossing over that, the countryside is quite something. I bothered to lug proper camera over, so photos shall commence manana.

Arrived at Gramont in hire car. Moment of high drama in placid French idyll featured a reverse up a slope that Tour riders would baulk at, with accidental handbrake and clutch over-ride. Parking to the smell of cooking polystyrene missed the mark.

Over aperatif, I met Kate (kiwi), Nick (hubbie, manchester), Phil-head-teacher from Cambridge, and nice japanese lady, whose name I shall master. Plus owners Nikki and David...and their son Sam. Plus Bernard, his daughter, plus the neighbours, plus any other random that happened upon us. It's v v French!

Dinner - after great canapes and armagnac liqueur - was foie gras, pan fried with apple. Then duck with potato rosti. Apres: comte, roquefort and briemendous. Finishing with pain perdu....I'm in heartburn heaven!

 (the ubiquitous armagnac..)

Tomorrow starts with knife skills. With anticipated mild hangover, what could possibly go wrong?