Gazpacho and salmon fish cakes

Another fun week of cooking started today with students working on stock making, baking walnut bread, tartar sauce, Gazpacho and lovely salmon fish cakes and that was just lunch! Winter weather with wind and rain meant Beau only got half his regular walk and I picked half  the blackberries I needed before getting socked! 

Places to visit when not cooking - Carnac

Over 2,800 standing stones! Erected in around 4500 BC, the stones are lined up over 4 km and 40 hectares in Carnac.

The standing stones, megalithic tombs and long narrow rows cover an area of over four kilometres at Carnac. The tallest standing stone is 4 metres high. During the high season, the alignments can be reached on a guided visit only, whilst in winter they can be freely accessed. This is for preservation and conservation purposes. The alignments here were erected during the Neolithic period by communities that had settled in the area between 5000BC and 2000BC. These tribes lived in large houses made of wood and clay, and made a living from farming and agriculture. A great way to round off your visit to the stones is with a visit to the Museum of Prehistory! This Museum clearly and simply presents the information we have available that goes some way towards explaining how these monuments dating back several thousand years old came to be here today.

Sterling Power

How lucky for UK citizens at the moment with the pound so strong against the Euro! That means for only £730 one can get a full week's cooking course with great Michelin standard meals (lunch and dinner) with us every day! Accommodation will cost an additional £250 for six nights stay in a cosy gite or B&B. When you think of the course and the food and the accommodation all for under £1000 that has to be one of the best deals in Europe at present!!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/citybreaks/11816316/Pound-surge-gives-Britons-better-value-in-Europe.html

Stay in a lovely Villa in Kerrouet

Students have already seen some of the lovely properties available to stay in when they come to our cooking school. A link to a previous blog is given below: Here are some photos of a lovely villa only a few minutes walk from the cooking school:

: http://kerrouet.blogspot.ie/2010/10/where-do-our-students-stay-when-cooking.html,

First students from Spain and Italy

We recently had two lovely students from Spain and Italy. They came from two countries famous for their culinary heritage and were curious to investigate French cuisine. Was it all butter and cream?! 

Kerrouet Lunch

Today we had a simple lunch with a pizza  Provençal (lots of tomatoes and herbs (basel, sage, thyme) as well as garlic and a teaspoon of espelette pepper to give a gentle bite! 

For our main lunch course today we had chicken and mushroom salad with pancetta in a curry mayonnaise.

What our students are cooking this week

It's a busy time at French Dining School. We are cooking lunch and dinner every day for our first Spanish and Italian students! Here is a sample of what we are enjoying: 

Yesterday lunch included smoked duck breast with pear salad.

Dinner started with artichoke in a citrus sauce followed by chicken thighs stuffed with langoustine,nettle, créme fraiche potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes.

We finished with a lovely rasberry panna cotta: 

 

It's hard to beat salmon fish cakes especially on the patio!