Chateau de la Barbee

Tea at the chateau is an essential.

We went off to the Loire near La Mans for a lovely overnight on Tuesday.

For 2 days at Chateau de la Barbée

The family residence of Xavier et Mary (former Vogue model) Pochez.

Dinner time in front of the fire

With candle light and only Loire vallée wines bien sur

Mary plans to start cooking classes including a stay au chateau. Miam

Her velouté de fenouilie will be always on the menu I hope.

Richard's divine room. Bear wanted to swap but he wasn't having it.

So atmospheric.
 

At lunch the next day we pitched in and made foie gras en papillote
 

I'll be making this chez moi very soon.
 

The perfect accompaniment - an excellent Chinon red.
 

At last the wild boar with cranberry sauce and wild mushrooms, cepes. No, we did not shoot it.

To finish a Bourdelais tarte of poached pears.

Post-lunch the obligatory march around the property though we didn't make it to all 1,200 acres...

Our hosts relaxing by the moat.

 

Bear wanted to stay on at the chateau. It suits him but he was easily persuaded to settle for a jar of home-made fig and orange confiteur. Me too. I hope Mary opens her cooking classes soon. I love being a student.

Cooking in Paris with Charlotte Puckette

On Sunday I got to sit in on professional chef and caterer Charlotte Puckette's cooking class in her lovely townhouse in the 7th. First Richard escorted us through  the Grenelle marché to pick up a few essential ingredients.

Charlotte is all about essential ingredients particularly French ingredients. She spent two years at le Cordon Bleu training and working and then went on to cater soirées at many embassies and still does Fashion Week twice a year.

Naturally being the secret spy I am I poked around and took pictures of all the stuff on the shelves.

Hmmm...Pugot Olive oil. I remember seeing this at the Omnivore Food Festival. Balsamic from supermarché Franprix!? Not what I expected to see. More than in any other cooking class the Ritz, Lenotre etc. I learned from Charlotte details on the differences between French and American products. For instance the best US butters have 80% fat while French butter has 82%. That's 2% more water in US high-end butters and it can change dramatically how things taste. Charlotte has been researching basic French ingredients since she got here some 20+ years ago. She knows things most French chefs haven't bothered to find out. They don't need to. They grew up with excellent products. I get completely confused at the supermarché, clueless how to choose between butters, creams. Now I get it!

We made dessert first, a chocolate fondant gateau.

And you don't have to spend a fortune using fancy Valrhona to get a glorious cake thanks to Charlotte's tests of various chocolate brands.

Miam Miam

We made Roquefort soufflés next.

Lots of helpful secrets to getting the souffles to rise up nicely.

Charlotte's Paris kitchen is sheer heaven in any country.

How to crack and separate eggs using just your hands. I practiced Audrey's method from 'Sabrina'. "1-2-3 Crack!"

Shredding Brussels sprouts to go with toasted hazelnuts and pomegranate.

Cranberries and raspberries cooking over a simple caramel sauce Charlotte whipped together with no thermometers or stress

Voila! This is called a 'gastrique'

To go with and contrast the roasted duck breast (magret). Duck is everywhere in France and well worth getting the hang of. The best roasting ducks are raised for foie gras. Ducks shot as game - are too skinny. The breasts were pan-seared first in case you were wondering before going into the oven. Everything; duck, potatoes, soufflés and cake cooked happily together in a 350 oven.

Charlotte shows us how to cut against the grain.

Duck and other game must be eaten rare or it becomes tough. Who knew?

Did we have our mache salade and soufflés before or after the duck? Qui sait, but it all tasted perfect.

The wine was a cote de Rhone white.

This was my first taste of créme fraiche

Like sour cream but much better and goes divinely with the deep chocolate fondant. Ideally chocolate cake tastes better the next day - the flavors intensify. But no one was waiting to find out.

I found Charlotte's creme fraiche selling at Franprix for a song. Yay.

Plus she mentioned that the Leader-Price (a low-end brand) olive oil is surprisingly excellent.

I'm subletting from a cookbook author and she has the same brand on her kitchen shelf.

"Names, Sweetie Darling, names, names, names!"

It makes such a difference when you know what to buy in Paris and why. Usually I get baffled and leave the store with zero.  Now I Know thanks to Charlotte Puckette. Big Merci Charlotte!

Do check out Charlotte's stories on French butter and chickens. A real eye-opener.

And consider taking her French cooking class while visiting.

Yesterday Bear went to the Loire vallée to learn how to cook wild boar. 

More on that to come.

Marrons Glacés 101

I can't say I loved marrons glacés at the 1st bite. They take a bit of getting used to if you didn't grow up eating them every Noël as the French do.

Though I've always loved the plain old roasted chestnut - one of the best things about winter as far as I'm concerned along with the holidays and Bergdorf's windows.

The best place to learn about marron glacé is in Georges' candy classroom at Le Bonbon au Palais. In France marrons come from the Ardeche in the south. i'd been waiting anxiously for their arrival at LBAP and last week enfin...voila!

They are picked much like olives by shaking the branches so the nuts fall into netting on the ground. By the way, If you live in France you can watch a whole host of educational programs on FR2 on your iPad. There's plenty of rubbish too like US daytime soaps, all of it will help your French enormement, "je te promis!"

Le Bonbon au Palais carries two kinds of marron glacé and natch Georges says his are the best. Certainment le prix will not make you run from the shop tearing out your hair. And you can buy just one at a time. Many shops insist you buy a whole box at some outrageous price so this is a real plus.

These are called, 'bouche rouge' I suppose because of their dark color. They should look glossy and the sugar should not have cyrstalized.

There are also the marrons from Turin, Italy.

Why are all the best foods like caramels, butterscotch and marrons burnt sienna color?

The inside should have a lovely syropy look to it. These babies can take up to 36 hours to soak up the sugar and vanilla in copper pots/au chaudron. Plus they are quite fragile and must be wrapped individually in gauze before soaking or they will fall apart, hence their high prices.

If they weigh 20 ounces or more they are referred to as 'chaitaigne'. Under 20 ounces they are marrons.

These are 'Brissures' from Naples. Litterally broken bites you can buy for much less but of excellent quality and perfect to garnish ice cream or use in cakes.

I found professor Rachel Hope Cleves just surfing the net and was impressed with her post on Cream Puffs Through the Ages. Who better to share my chocolate Salon bounty of marron glacé for a tasting?

Rachel is in Paris on sabbatical with her family for a year, so she brought to the tasting table another 5 marrons plus very astute 9-year old Maia, 11-year old Eli and her husband Tim, a terrific cook.

We were all novices in the marron arena and we may have bitten off more than we could chew attempting to get FIVE bites out of each one...hmm. Still it forced us to slooow down, taste and think about what we were tasting. No gobbling allowed. We checked for aroma, mouth feel, texture and came up with descriptions like: creamy, granular, chestnuty(?), too surgary, plump and so on.

Altogether it was great fun

And we recorded copious notes.

Professor Rachel has the most legible notes. Mine are hopeless.

Eli's notes have yet to be deciphered...

I'm still a big fan of the plain old roasted chestnuts you buy outside of Galeries Laffayette..

And for a mere 2€

For 4€ you can get the same chestnuts and get trampled by crowds at the Champs-Elysees Christmas marché. One way or the other do try a marron glacé this holiday season. You will be delighted.

Je te promis!