When I bought my first chickens at the Agen Market 18 months ago, it was an experiment in reclaiming the rural roots of Camont, a historic 18th-century Gascon farmhouse on two-and-a-half acres of fertile Garonne River Valley land.  I have called Camont home base for over 20 years. I’d come and go as the work and pleasure ed me, sometimes floating away on the big Barge for chartering for months then returning again for months of summer landlocked living. As my European Culinary Adventures tours took me and my guests far afield to taste other gastronomic destinations- Sicily, Tuscany, Burgundy, Provence, Champagne, and Spain, I would eagerly return to my Gascon Kitchen to reclaim my own cuisine and the local abundance of the surrounding Gascon countryside.

Eventually, the Captain in me swapped places with the Cook and Gardener in me and I moored the Julia Hoyt to the garden gate as a stationary souvenir of the adventures that had led me all over Europe at 5 miles an hour.  ‘What next?’ I mused. What could be as much fun, interesting, and unpredictable as the last 20 years afloat?  I looked around this fragrant memory of a farm and realized that it was simply making food that kept my interest. Not just cooking, teaching and writing about it ‘cuisine’, but growing, planting and now, tending the food we eat at Camont’s Gascon Kitchen.

Although I have tended a couple of vegetable and herb gardens for many years now, it was the addition of food animals (we don’t count Bacon the big dog, or Boudin the barn cat in this group) that flipped me from being a voyeuristic wannabee food producer, to re-establishing Camont’s roots as the sort of scrappy self-sufficient family enterprise that it was for nearly 300 years.   Starting with just 3 hens and a rooster, we soon become a happy family of a dozen hens, a very busy and proud rooster, 4 Rouen Clair ducks and a drake and the soon to arrive pair of lambs in the newly fenced pasture. Like many of you urban farmer neophytes, I, too, have been lured by the golden treasury of fresh eggs and wholesome meat as well as our own wonderful organic vegetables and fruit.  Quite frankly, and  in the words of an favorite ex-husband,  I could buy all of this good food from my near neighbors and for little money. What he didn’t get, and I was slow to explain, was the wily and invasive learning that takes place and the profound understanding that comes with watching something grow from seed or root or egg. Nourishing at many levels, the growing of food, even the most modest windowsill garden, teaches us of life from the first germ to sprout to the tossing of greens with a good vinaigrette for a summer salad. Nothing gets taken for granted again. As Dana McMahan found out on a recent writer’s residency, not one brussel sprout goes to waste. So when the super productive feathered working girls are churning out 8-10 eggs a day, here is what we do.

Omelette Catalane

So why did I get those chickens? To help teach my students, those brave and spunky cooks who make their way through the internet jungle to find this site, then brave the electronic media to write an email, then screw up the courage to buy a ticket, make a commitment and fly to a country that insists that you pay attention to what you eat every day, three times a day! It is grueling for many, a few wimp out along the way, but most revel in the French way of tasting, really tasting what this country, that could be described as a 260,000 square mile garden and the most visited country in the world (82 million people every year!), produces. Food. Very Good Food. It all starts with an egg.

Fortunately, I am surrounded by experts: farm families, housewives who still buy a dozen chickens to kill, pluck and cook, and of course, weekly markets full of artisan producers who grow and sell their food ly to you. Now we pass this hands-on learning to working interns, apprentice students and creative residents all through the year here at these varied and individualized programs.

The chicken experiment has been a success. Now the foundation of the Gascon Kitchen basse–cour or barnyard, students at the Gascon Kitchen at Camont learn that the investment in caring for the critters is reaped on their plates. The proof is in our golden yolked pudding… or in this case our Catalan Tortilla or Omelette Catalan.

BASIX Catalan Omelette made with fresh Spinach

1. After washing fresh spinach until grit-free, place wet leaves in saute pan, cover and wilt over high heat. About 3 to 5 minutes.
2. Break a dozen fresh eggs into a large bowl. whisk.
3. Sauté garlic and hot pepper in a half of cup of olive oil. remove when pieces when golden.
4. Soften one small sliced onion in the oil. do not brown. Remove from oil, leaving the now intensely perfumed oil in the pan.
5. Add wilted spinach and onions to the beaten eggs. Add salt, pepper and nutmeg. stir well.
6. Pour egg and spinach mixture into the hot pan and cook gently about 10 minutes. turn heat down until the mixture sets. then using a platter of pan lid, flip the omelet over and continue cooking on other side. Remove and serve warm or at room temperature as tapas.

More great photos by erika hildegarde johnson