When a food writer goes to cooking school in France for the first time, the lesson is clear: You just had to be there.
By JANET K. KEELER
Published August 13, 2003
[Times photos: Janet K. Keeler]
At Georgeanne Brennan’s cooking school, Le Jardin du Couvent in Aups, France, students grab an apron before heading into the farm-style kitchen.
From Travel: A feast for the senses
A homey Provencal haven lets students experience the region through its food.
The hallmark of Provencal cooking is fresh ingredients used in season. These red peppers and tomatoes will be stuffed into zucchini boats, then baked, by Americans on a cooking holiday in Aups, France.
Cookbook author and teacher Georgeanne Brennan offers aperitifs before dinner.
Glyneth Sakahara, left, and Wayne Miller, both of Northern California, strip basil leaves from the stems. Students cooked daily meals, dividing up chores and recipes.
In Provence, nearly every village has an outdoor market once, sometimes twice, a week where locals shop for produce, household items, flowers and clothes. At the Salernes market, like many others, shoppers find an array of olives.
Many herbs grow wild in the hills of Haute-Provence. In late June, thyme and summer savory are easy to find.
AUPS, France - The tomato and Roquefort tart couldn't have been simpler and why I needed to go to Provence to learn how to make it is open to debate.
The ingredients are readily available in Florida: frozen puff pastry, pungent Roquefort cheese, half-and-half and tomatoes. My own kitchen does have an oven and there's a rolling pin in the pantry.
Yet when I made the auspicious tart upon my return to the states, it wasn't as good as the one I ate under the stars at Le Jardin du Couvent (The Convent Garden) in this medieval village.
Initially, I pinned the difference on the quality of ingredients. Roquefort, after all, is a French cheese, and the frozen puff pastry over there is so much better than the thick Pepperidge Farm version. The French variety comes rolled thin with a backing of parchment paper; just open the container and push the contents into the baking dish. Tres easy.
Actually, I used gorgonzola at home because Roquefort is so expensive, but I did find tomatoes at the grocery store as flavorful as those in Provence (pronounced pro-VAHNS).
Still, there had to be something more than ingredients that made the stateside version fizzle. The ease or difficulty of preparation was the same on both sides of the Atlantic and should not affect the taste.
And then the answer came to me.
What was missing was the experience. I didn't make my tart in a kitchen that was foreign in both locale and equipment, with a group of people so interested in food they dissected that tart until there was nothing left to say about it.
Or any crumbs to eat.
Appropriately, the tomato and Roquefort tart had a certain je ne sais quoi.
Maybe what mine at home lacked was a special time and place, and the big laugh of Lynn from Los Gatos, Calif.; or the shopping suggestions from Judy of Santa Rosa, Calif. There was no way I could replicate the dappled sunlight flooding through a vine-draped window, or our collective amusement at the world's tiniest ice cube trays.
For one week in late June I joined six other Americans at cookbook author Georgeanne Brennan's Haute-Provence culinary school in hilly southeastern France. For 30 years, Brennan has been a part-time resident of Provence and a full-time student of its Mediterranean cuisine. Among her more than a dozen cookbooks are Savoring France for Williams-Sonoma and the award-winning Food and Flavors of Haute Provence (Chronicle Books, 1997).
When not in France, Brennan lives in Northern California, where she teaches cooking classes and occasionally writes for the San Francisco Chronicle. She has recently filmed a pilot for a PBS series on country-style French cooking and is waiting to hear if it will be picked up.
Brennan's Haute-Provence program is taken mostly by Californians whose interest is sparked by her classes there. Most students know how to cook already but are looking for an educational experience combined with travel.
The village of Aups, with narrow lanes and a picturesque square, is home to a restored 17th century convent of peachy plaster that Brennan rents for the school. The weeklong programs are offered in June, September and October.
The farm-style kitchen of Le Jardin de Couvent, Le Couvent for short, was bereft of the modern conveniences to which I am so attached at home.
Beyond a stove and standard-sized refrigerator, German coffeemaker and hand-held emulsion blender, there wasn't much. No Cuisinart, no toaster oven, no microwave, no garlic press; not even a car to go to the store in and no parking there anyway.
But we realized quickly that low-tech equipment - sharp knives, handmade pottery bowls, plus pots and pans - were adequate to make rabbit terrine, duck breast with lavender honey, chard and salmon tart and cherry clafouti (with stems and pits included, a practice that's all the rage in Paris, Brennan said).
One evening we got a lesson in making aioli, garlic-flavored mayonnaise, by hand. In a mortar and pestle. For about 30 minutes we took turns whipping oil, egg yolks and garlic until it finally became a creamy dressing. I lasted about a minute before my arm began to ache. The Cuisinart had made me a weakling.
If the heavily sauced dishes of classic French cooking are haute cuisine, the earthy, simple offerings of Provence are peasant food. Forget the hollandaise and bearnaise; bring on chicken pieces cooked forever in thyme, tomatoes, olives and red peppers.
Chicken Provencal, served with crusty baguette and a lightly dressed salad topped with a round of heated goat cheese, was our welcome-to-Aups dinner, the last one to be prepared for us. After night No. 1, we were the cooks. When the dishes were being washed that evening, several of us swiped what was left of the sauce with bread chunks.
Provencal cooking is all about fresh produce eaten in season. Artichokes and asparagus are enjoyed in spring; pumpkins in fall. In many ways, the cuisine is similar to Italian, with garlic and a panoply of olives prevalent in many dishes. Haute-Provence is not far from Italy and the Mediterranean climate - warm, dry days and cooler nights - doesn't stop at the border.
In late June, the outdoor markets are full of small violet artichokes still on the stem, flaming plump tomatoes and olive-studded sausages, plus cherries, peaches and Cavaillon melons, more delicate than cantaloupe (and named after the town where they are grown). Oh, and bundles of dried lavender for both cooking and decoration.
The raw-milk goat cheese awed us, for both its taste and the philosophical rift it represents between Europe and the United States. American law requires that cheese aged under 60 days must be made from pasteurized milk, and that unaged cheeses made from raw milk may not be imported. These restrictions, in place since the 1940s, are intended to prevent illnesses caused by bacteria that are otherwise killed in pasteurization.
And yet in many European countries, raw milk cheese is consumed daily. The thinking is that if it's so dangerous, why aren't the streets littered with bodies?
We worried not a whit about bacteria as we scarfed raw-milk goat cheese whenever offered. The younger the better, we said, as we cheered chevre just 2 days old. The sharp tang of the aged versions we knew from home was replaced by creamy subtleness that recalled very mild feta.
When we learned that Glyneth from Napa, Calif., had the acreage for a couple of goats, I hatched a plan that would have her up at dawn milking the goats and us buying her cheese, black-market style. Jail be damned; the cheese was that good.
We cooked with these ingredients, and many more, daily. The pattern of our days was: field trip in the morning, cooking class in the afternoon with the results served for dinner. We dined under the sycamore tree in the garden after, thankfully, the sweltering daytime temperatures dropped. Lucky us: It was the hottest June in Provence in 50 years.
Unbelievably, there was not a major kitchen disaster all week, though I worried that one of us would singe our eyebrows, or worse, lighting the burners of the gas stove.
The cherry clafouti, however, almost killed me. The recipe for the custardlike dessert called for three eggs but we only had two.
"Can you run down to the store and get more?" Brennan asked. Sure, it's 95 degrees outside and the last time I ran was from a third-grade bully, but I'll go. Down, as in downhill, I went to the village market, dreading the uphill part of my mission.
I tried to be French, speaking cheerily to the sales clerk who saw through my lousy accent and limited vocabulary. She pointed to the eggs. I grabbed a six-pack of Coca-Cola Light, too, and hoped there were a few mini-ice cubes left back at Le Couvent.
What a sight I must have been upon my return, all red-faced and puffing. Days later someone commented that I had looked like a goner.
Not a bad place to go, though.
Brennan was the perfect teacher for this group of foodies. Really, she was more of an un-teacher, letting us find our own ways through the markets and hanging back unless needed in the kitchen.
All seven of us knew how to cook; that was obvious from the first day. But we still had much to learn about cooking together. By our last cooking session, we were like family, reaching over each other for the sole measuring cup and barely saying "excuse me" when our bums bumped.
The evening menu was announced every afternoon and each of us volunteered for a recipe, buddying up for more difficult dishes. Dinners included aperitifs, appetizer, entree and side dishes, plus dessert and always lots of delicious local wine. We did not go hungry.
We were tentative at first, which explained why we left Faye from Philadelphia to tackle the stuffed leg of lamb alone. Poor thing. She was chopping, sauteing and stuffing for hours. It only took us minutes, though, to devour the delicious results.
I escaped duty on all the main dishes except a rabbit terrine that took three days to prepare and started with a dressed rabbit complete with head.
Poor Monsieur Pierre Lapin (Mr. Peter Rabbit), as he affectionately came to be known. Glyneth and I tackled him together, worried that the final result might be bland. More crushed juniper berries and cognac solved that.
Desserts and chopping were more my bag, though I can brag about my luscious walnut cream sauce lapped over the handmade gnocchi we made under the watchful eye of a village woman who spoke no English at all.
"The enemy of gnocchi is too much flour," Brennan translated.
The best dish we ate was duck breast glazed with lavender honey made by Northern Californians Wayne and Mary, longtime friends who had met in the Peace Corps some 25 years ago.
There was no bad dish, though I wouldn't try the rabbit terrine without moral support and the killer clafouti was overcooked by about five minutes. It should have been airy with sweet custard enveloping the cherries; instead it was dry and the edges were tough, with unsightly brown spots.
It didn't much matter, though. We plucked off the stems and spat out the pits like trendy Parisians.
