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Cooking Tour of Provence: Our Culinary Activities
What We'll Be Doing in Provence
For our Fall 2006 Cooking Tour of Provence, we'll be visiting a variety of food- and wine-related establishments, getting in-depth lessons from
established experts and gaining unique perspective on the French food experience.
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Baking
We'll visit a French boulangerie, or bakery, to get a hands-on bread baking lesson. At right, guests of our May 2006 trip work with
their own bread dough at the boulangerie in the village of Le Thor. The baker,
Bruno, was our spontaneous guest for dinner that evening.
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Clockwise from bottom right: The bread has been shaped into loaves and rests in a couche, a burlap-like cloth, before baking;
batter for tuiles (cookies named after the roof tiles that their shapes resemble) being spooned onto a pan; the finished tuiles
("tweels"), stacked, look just like roof tiles; Bruno pulls the bread from the 8-foot-long oven with a peel.
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Chocolate-Making
We'll visit the laboratory of famous French chocolatier Joel Durand
to receive a hands-on chocolate-making lesson. At right, guests
of our May 2006 trip work with chocolate during the session. Clockwise from top left: the chocolate-coating machine which Durand uses
to make truffles; all good chocolate ganache starts with quality cream; pouring the warm, herb-infused cream slowly into the
chocolate; Joel Durand himself demonstrates chopping the blocks of chocolate.
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Here students pipe chocolate out in preparation for making it into chocolate truffles. Each student's work was labeled with
their name so that the chocolates we each took home were those we ourselves had made.
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Clockwise from top left: After carefully and thoroughly whisking cream mixture and chocolate together, the result is a thick,
delicious chocolate ganache (top right). Then we temper more chocolate (bottom right) and coat each daub of ganache in this; the
end result are chocolates with a crisp outer shell and a soft inner filling (bottom left). The acetate sheet covering the finished
chocolates has letters made of cocoa powder to indicate the filling of each chocolate; R signifies rosemary.
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Goat Cheese
Our visit to a small goat cheese farm will change not only your understanding of cheese but also your definition of "small farm."
Located up in the hills only about ten minutes' drive from our estate, this extremely small community—just a handful of people—makes amazing
cheese from about three dozen goats. The farm, the goat barn, and the cheesemakers' home are built right into caves in the mountainside. In the
background of the photo at right, you can see the rock overhang; this juts out along the length of the farm (the photo is taken from beneath it, as
well).
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Clockwise from top left: In the barn, the goats line up to be milked. Each knows her own stall; their faces peek out at us, very
friendly. Bottom right, the milking machine hooked up to the goat's udder; each goat takes just a few minutes to milk. Bottom left,
the milk being poured from the milking machine's container into a bucket to take to the cheese room.
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Clockwise from bottom left: The cheesemaker scoops set goat's milk into the cheese molds, which have holes in them to allow the
whey to run out and the cheeses to solidify. Top left, a closeup; top and bottom right, the finished goat cheese ready for our
tasting. We tasted cheeses of varying ages and compared them in flavor and texture: cheeses made just one day before, three days
before, one week, two weeks, one month, and three months before. The differences are amazing.
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Winery
Our visit to a local winemaker is not about glitz and glamour and doesn't much resemble winery tours in Napa. Instead, we will
visit a small working cave, or winery, and meet the winemaker who is also the grower. Casual, down-to-earth, and fun, Paul Vendran
is extremely knowledgeable about grapes and wine, and is happy to help us along as he shows us around the vineyards.
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Chateauneuf-du-Pape and the wine regions nearby are famous for the large rocks (from pebbles to boulders, but mostly the size of
cobblestones) that fill their vineyards. These rocks soak up the heat of the sun and reflect it back at the vines, one of the
distinct elements of the local terroir.
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Back to the main Cooking Tour of Provence page.
To Make Your Reservation or Learn More
Ready to join us? Or have some questions? Please give us a call at 206.284.8687 or
email us.
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