• Home
  • Recipes
    • Vegan
    • Raw
    • Salad
    • Soup
    • Treats
    • Smoothies & Juices
      • My Awesome Smoothie Book
      • Favourite Products
      • Smoothie & Juice Recipes
      • Juicing Articles
  • Happiness
  • Adventures
  • Work with Me
smarterfitter

Food Diary

French Cooking – Veggie Style

May 4, 2010 · By Monica Shaw

The view from my room in Chateau Ventenac

I’m in France this week for Rachel Demuth‘s Flavours of the Mediterranean Cooking Course at Chateau Ventenac, a 19th century stone castle overlooking the Canal du Midi. Throughout the week I’ll be learning to cook, eat and drink like the locals, while blogging about it as I go. So tune in for a week of stories, recipes and even some French freebies – souvenirs from my week devoted to food.

I arrived yesterday at Beziers airport where I first met Julia, the Chateau’s owner, a wonderful women with a like-minded approach to life and business. She splits her time between England and France, where she runs the Chateau as a retreat house for creative people, not her words but that’s how I see it. In addition to cooking, Julia also runs retreats focussed on poetry, creative writing and “making life changes”, a six-day getaway designed to help you figure out what’s working and not working in your life and make changes for the better (sounds like the theme of Orchard Cottage!).

Bed-puting

Of course, this week is all about the food, and when we arrived at the Chateau, our first stop was the kitchen: a mammoth room whose most prominent feature was a central island bursting with fresh tomatoes, asparagus, broad beans and peas. The Chateau itself is impressive on its own, but when I saw my room I could really appreciate this place as the “escape” that it’s meant to be. My room is massive, with beautiful wooden floors, high ceilings, a comfy bed and a spacious bathroom with a giant sink and a huge freestanding bathtub with a welcoming high output of very hot water.

My room also features an impressive view of the gardens and the Canal du Midi. Though at the moment, the sky is pouring down with rain and the weather is forecast to be windy and rainy all week long. So much for Southern France’s famed sunshine. But what better reason to curl up inside next to a warm oven and a glass of rose?

The magic of puff pastry

That’s exactly what we did last night, though we were more or less curled up around a table rather than the oven. Rachel’s staff did all the cooking while the rest of us got to know each other over wine and snacks. Unlike the last course I did at Rachel’s cookery school in Bath, all of the students here are vegetarians: one from Spain who currently lives in Porsmouth, another from India who currently lives in Houston, and a mother-daughter duo from London. How wonderful it is to be in a room with a bunch of fellow food-obsessed vegetarians!

If dinner was any indication of what the rest of the week has in store, then it’s going to be a very good week indeed. Here’s a rundown of the meal. Now, I have to dash, for I’m running dangerously close to missing breakfast, and I don’t want to miss a bite.

Starter: Goat’s cheese salad with fresh asparagus, broad beans and peas, with leaves and a tarragon dressing.

Fresh goats cheese with broad beans, peas and tarragon

Main: Puff pastry, three ways. Each was brushed with parsley pesto, then topped with either fresh tomato, roasted aubergine and pine nuts, or roasted red pepper, zucchini and olives. Delicious and surprisingly light.

The magic of puff pastry

And some lentil salad and mixed leaves on the side…

Dinner

Dessert: An insanely rich prune and hazelnut chocolate pudding with strawberries and creme fraiche.

Extraordinarily rich chocolate and prune pudding

About Monica Shaw

Veg lover, dog owner, hill walker, wild camper, avocado addict, nerd. I write about how to be awesome through a "smarter fitter" approach to eating, drinking, living and working.
Learn More →

Share

Share
Tweet
Email
Pin
Comment
Previous
Next

Comments Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe Rating




  1. Alison says

    May 4, 2010 at 6:17 pm

    I’m drooling, over the food and the room, what an incredible opportunity.

    Reply
  2. Sagan says

    May 4, 2010 at 10:52 pm

    Wow. That all just looks amazing. How exciting!

    Reply
  3. Tim Harding says

    May 5, 2010 at 6:27 am

    This looks like astonishingly good food and an amazing setting. Looking forward to the next update. What did you eat yesterday? How’s the writing going?

    Reply
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Search





Instagram

Instagram did not return a 200.

Follow Me!

About

  • About
  • Work with Monica
  • Contact
  • Smarter Fitter Smoothies

Follow Me

  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Search

Subscribe

Buy my book

Smoothie eBook

Copyright 2023 smarterfitter