Weekend Breakfast-at-Camont. Asparagus & HAM
It begins here, with two good ingredients. Ham- Eric Ospital’s Ibaiona brand from the Basque Country. Asparagus- local, just picked and carried to the market so fresh it snaps. This week, my Kitchen Godmother, Vétou Pompele, came by for weekend breakfast (a decidedly not French event) and asked me what I would make for her. I grabbed a copy of my first cookbook that chronicled my early days sailing on the Julia Hoyt and said, “Your... Read More
Wednesday @ Welbeck- the French Charcuterie Connection
A man of many hats, my good friend Dominique Chapolard is a farmer, butcher, charcutier and market vendor. Yet beneath his belles moustaches and easy smile lies The Teacher. He is the best kind of teacher- passionate, skilled, open, and giving. He cares. This week at the School of Artisan Food, Dominique trades his signature beret for a white butcher’s trilby. Guiding our diploma butchery students through an introduction to the French Pig... Read More
Six weeks of artisan Butchery & Charcuterie begins… meat the crew!
Meat Greg. Meat Matt. Today, they begin 6 weeks of boning, trimming, cutting, cooking, salting, curing, smoking, ageing, selling… Follow along as the learn the whole pig while working and living at Ferme Baradieu in the Cochon Cottage. As the first two students to stay in the cottage, they begin a new cycle of teaching and learning in the extended Kitchen at Camont. Bienvenue! Day one: boning XL hams from a sow for a special paté... Read More
Sweet Pie and other ideas from Camont
Tell me about pie and one person springs to mind. Kate McDermott. The Art of the Pie. From a flour dusted apron to her sunny blue chapeau, Kate is my inspiration for all things round and sweet. When we met last year in Seattle for the first time, to bake side by side our American/Franco versions of apple pie, the Sisters of the Pie was born. Our wonderful pie- lovin’ filmmaker Luuvu captured the movement here. Sisters of the Pie from by.luuvu... Read More
What’s red & white all over? Butcher Shops in Gascony.
In the tiny Market town of Lavardac, where I go to the Wednesday Market and park down the a little road by the river, I pass this small, tidy as a pin, one-window-wide butcher shop. I call it the Meat Museum. The old scale in window on the ice box, the red and white striped awning, the yellow posters rallying the troops for bingo and angainst the new LGV- Ligne Grande Vitesse, the bottles of very good, very local wine to go with a cote de boeuf; all... Read More
