Learning to live without Roellinger

We hear reports of doom and gloom from the resturant businesses of London and Dublin caught up in the crash of the world's financial markets. With vacant tables galore they would cast an envious eye at Les Maisons de Bricourt, Olivier Roellinger's 3 Michelin star restaurant in Cancale, Brittany which is fully booked up for lunch and dinner every day until the 15th of December when,very sadly for us, it will close. The restaurant would be fully booked up till St Patrick's Day 2009 and well beyond, so it is certainly not a lack of customers which are to blame for the closure. Running any restaurant is hard work and a 3 star Michelin restaurant even more so. While Mr Roellinger has decided to take a well earned rest we propose you give it a go cooking great food in your own home.
To help you we are running the following short courses at Kerrouet House which will enhance your cooking skills and give you a taste for some of the best food Brittany has to offer.

Sample Dinner Course

Brittany Escallops with Fleur de Sel de Guerande marinated with an orange and lime fructose

Grilled Red Mullet with toasted cauliflower puree and chive mousseline sauce

Quail with figs and apple

Gruyere cheese with selection of winter fruits

Almond and apple pie with poppy seed ice cream



Sample Lunch Course


Brittany Oysters with red onion and apple.

Salmon fish cakes with chives and tartar sauce

Selection of Cheese

Kerrouet Kitchen

Cooking Courses at Kerrouet House

Lunch day 1



Starter: Grilled scallop with rosemary on a Cauliflower purée
 
Main:  Caesar Salad the classic way
 
Cheese:  French cheese




Dinner day 1


Starter:  Moules Marinade

Main:  Chicken breast with tarragon, rosemary baked carrots,

slow roasted tomatoes and crispy potato pancakes

Cheese:  French cheeses

Dessert: Panna Cotta with fresh summer berries







Lunch day 2

Starter: Carpaccio of Salmon with  a pesto of basil 
Main:  Galettes a la Breton 
Cheese:  French cheeses


Dinner day 2


Starter: Duck salad with orange and apple
Main:  Oven baked fish with risotto
Cheese:  French cheeses
Dessert: Chocolate cake and fresh fruit coulis


Lunch day 3


Starter:  Green Pea soup with chives and fresh cream
Main:  Salmon fish cakes on a garden salad with dill dressing

Cheese:  French cheeses


Dinner day 3


Starter: Foie Gras terrine with green bean salad
Middle:  Grilled Langoustines with garlic butter
Main:  Slow roasted leg of Lamb and seasonal vegetables
  with a tomato and herb dressing
Cheese:  French cheeses
Dessert: Tiamisu

* Three day courses cost E750 per person inclusive of lunch and dinner.
Accommodation is available locally from E25 per night subject to availability.
Five day courses cost £950 per person including lunch and dinner.
Please check our website for further information.

 

www.frenchdiningschool.com

Who's Who at Kerrouet House

Poul Jensen has over 28 years in the restaurant business. He trained in one of the best French restaurants in Denmark (Gammel Aalbyhoj - Relais Gourmand - Tradition et Qualitie). He gained invaluable experience at some of the world's most esteemed restaurants including Longueville Manor (Jersey Channel Islands); Mietta's Restaurant of Melbourne (Australia) and the world renowned liner the QE2. In London Poul worked for Noble Rot (Mayfair) and The Walbrook Club (City of London) with Albert Roux.

Poul has also run his own restaurant in Denmark (Ebeltoft) for 8 years and gained widespread recognition for his cuisine. Poul has also worked in the wine industry with some of the best wine houses of France.

Niall O'Reilly has over 20 years in the entertainment and leisure industry. Niall worked for 14 years at the National Theatre (London) where he was responsible for security, safety and Licensing. Niall, a graduate of Economics, grew up along with a large family on a dairy farm in County Cavan, Ireland where he learned how to cook under the direction of his mother and grandmother. The farm was virtually self sufficient and nothing was wasted. Niall loves gardening and developing unusual hedgerow recipes. Rose hip jam and crab apple jelly are currently all the rage at Kerrouet House following a summer craze in making classic elderflower cordials!

Dorothy Crowscare has been looking after the gardens at Kerrouet House for the past three years. Her main role is to ensure that there are adequate supplies of organic herbs and vegetables available for the kitchen. She can always be found working in the garden and never happier than when surrounded by her flowers.

Onde Dragtoit has overseen works at Kerrouet House for the past four years. His main duties are to ensure the rising sun is properly greeted  each morning and that guests arrive with a smile on their faces! He is normally found facing east on the highest point of the property!

Ange Tomber looks after the dining room, library and winter lounge. Her main roles  are to ensure harmony and balance within the school. As someone who once excelled in catering excellence she is there to advise and remind guests that we all progress in life, sometimes up and sometimes down but the important thing is to always try your best, enjoy what you are doing and learn from experience.

Kerrouet House

Kerrouet House - was built in the 16th century as the home of the tax collector for the nearby Manor of Plessy and two other manor houses in the area. As a "royal" longere it fell into neglect during the French Revolution and was abandoned for many years. In recent times it had been home to a professor of Mathematics (Sorbonne) but unfortunately fell into a near derelict state in the 1990's. The house was discovered by Niall seven years ago on a holiday visit to Brittany. Despite the jungle of brambles, nettles and ivy surrounding the house, Niall immediately fell in love with the monastic stone entrances, grand fireplaces and royal chimney. Over the past few years Niall & Poul have worked hard to restore the property and now use the premises as both a beautiful home and a cooking school.

Kerrouet Village

The village of Kerrouet lies in the heart of The Mene - the beautiful rolling hills of Brittany which are so famous for walking and cycling holidays. Kerrouet is located 1 hour from Rennes with links to Eurostar in Paris and Charles de Gaulle Airport. Dinard Airport is a 40 minute drive with Ryanair links to London, East Midlands and Bristol. St Malo port and the wonderful seaside resorts of Val Andre are only an hour away.
Cancalle also nearby is world famous not only for it's oysters but also for Maisons de Bricourt - the 3 star Michelin restaurant run by Olivier Roellinger.

Cooking Courses

Five day courses run from Monday to Friday with introductory dinners on the Sunday evenings. The courses commence at 10am and run till after dinner (10pm) with a break following lunch (2pm - 6pm).

Kerrouet House

frenchcookingschool

http://www.jaxtr.com/nibblerdibbler

Myself and other cabbages

Just back from a fantastic week in Ireland. Ireland is always special for me but this week included preparing a celebratory dinner in honour of my Dad's 80th birthday; visiting Newgrange  - a 5000 year old megalithic passage tomb (older than the pyramids of Egypt!)  and getting a look into Francis Bacon's studio in the centre of Dublin.   

One of the pictures my father painted for me is of himself in his garden working on his cabbage patch. It is titled "myself and other cabbages" and so it was appropriate that we dressed the dining table with three hearty savoy cabbages each of which held two wonderful white candles! Cooking dinner for 20 persons is always a challenge but when it's done in someone else's kitchen, that does bring unique challenges. We spend all day searching the markets for saucepans large enough for our soups and stews but all went exceedingly well in the end! 

My Dad had been a dairy farmer and so we decided to prepare a basic Irish recipe of Cauliflower soup with the famous Cashel Blue cheese, followed by a Beef and Guinness stew served with creamed mashed potato and fresh chives.  A wonderful green pesto sauce was also served in honour of St Patrick's Day which was close at hand! The cheese board offered an opportunity to try the excellent range of local Cavan brands now available. Outstanding were of course O'Reilly's, a soft goat cheese and Boilie, a cow cheese from the Brodie Family who also offer a Corleggy, a stronger hard goats cheese; all three were simply delicious. Further afield we sampled Ardrahan - a semi soft wonderful washed rind cheese from the Burns Family of Co Cork; a Carrigaline hard cheese from O'Farrells also from Co Cork along with a Cahhil Cheaddar from Co Limerick. It is wonderful that Irish cheeses are now making a significant impact on the international market winning awards galore into the bargain. A birthday cake of immense proportions was then served after the candles were extinguished by the great octogenarian himself, who not to be outdone by his musical children and grandchildren, gave a redition of  numerous Irish Ballads including The Croppy Boy, Spansil Hill and The Mountains of Mourne - always a popular Ulster song from the  poet and musician Percy French (Inspector of Drains - Cavan Council 1881!) Needless to say it was a great night and thank you Michelle, Gabriel, Liam, Clare, Joan, Stephen, Lydia, Georgina, Verity, Dermott, Agnes, Joe, Ciaran, Trish, Stephen, Pat, Annamay, Oliver and Poul for making it all a night to remember!!

After all the festivities were over it was appropriate to retreat back 5000 years in time to Newgrange - the famous Irish Passage Tomb located along the beautiful River Boyne in County Meath. The tomb which was built around 3200 bc is well worth a visit particularly out of season when you get a chance to stand alone within the stone chamber and let your imagination run amock in megalithic proportions. Words fail today when we try to comprehend the enormity of the task facing those few thousand farmers. How they managed to design and build such a beautiful, harmonic and integral stone structure at a time long before the pyrimads and Stonehenge. To realise  that they knew how to get a sunbeam to pass down inside a stone chamber 19 metres long once a year for the solstice at sunrise is indeed mindblowing. Such a civilisation deserved to have all its cultural heritage preserved so that we could know more of their secrets.  The few quiet moments you stand inside their 5000 year old chamber you know that this humbling experience will remain with you always.

It's all very well to dwell in the past but one has to finally recognise that we live in the present and with a joyous relief we took the back road to Dublin only a few hours away. We arrived to find an empty parking space immediately opposite the entrance to the Hugh Lane Gallery so it was indeed our lucky day. The Francis Bacon Studio is situated at the rear of the gallery so you can also take the opportunity to explore all the other works on display as well as the beautiful interior of what was once a very beautiful home. We were struck by the number of Renoir's on display but took particular delight in Monet's picture titled Waterloo bridge (1900) a beautiful picture as well as an historical picture of London's South Bank before development of the South Bank Centre and National Theatre. Also in the permanent colection is a wonderful picture of the Young Breton Girl by Roderick O'Connor presented to the gallery in 1904 which for us now living in Brittany was an addditional surprise.  However the Francis Bacon Studio was for us the most extraordionary aspect of the collection. To move entirely his London  studio mews home and all its crazy mad and delightful contents to Dublin and resurrect them as they were positioned on his death for all to see is an amazing acomplishment.  Thank you John Edwards for this kind gift to Ireland and I hope all Irish citizens take the opportunity to visit the gallery and take a look inside the private home of  this most wonderful painter who enjoyed and required chaos in creativity and drew forth form from disorder. Wonderful mad rude character who anyone lucky enough to drink regularly at the Colony Rooms in London's Soho will well remember!!

Back home now to Brittany as we must get started on our cooking school menus!

Bye for now

Nibbler