On Monday I attended a dream cookery course: a Blanc Vite Spring cookery course at Raymond Blanc Cookery School in the famous Manoir aux Quat’Saisons.
This was my Christmas present. One could tell… a Christmas present… in April??? but seriously matching dates and childcare arrangements can be a challenge as most of you will know :-)
Anyway this was an amazing treat and I appreciated every minute of it!
On the Spring menu, you could find dishes such as: cauliflower soup with coriander oil, salad of squid and chickpeas, steak “Maman Blanc”, strawberry mousse… twelve dishes in total all amazingly tasty but healthy and with an average preparation time of 15 minutes!
The “Maman Blanc” steak made me feel right back at home. This is something I used to enjoy every week as a child and adult alike… Yummmm. It reminded me to add this to our regular meals nowadays :-)
Poached eggs with asparagus and spinach, the only dish I managed to take a picture of before it was half eaten, the reason why: it was the first dish… soooo good!
What more could you ask for? Well there was more actually… all of this was taught by amazing chefs, the two main teachers being: Mark Peregrine (head of the school) and Michael John, and we even had a nutrition expert, Natalia Traxel, by our side.
Plus I got to meet some great fellow foodies!
You can find pretty much all the amazing recipes they teach in the course in the book Blanc Vite, by Raymond Blanc*
So to share with you part of my experience I thought I would take you through a little virtual visit of Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, its cookery school, its gardens and its kitchen…
Cookery school – The art of food presentation
Garden– Where different varieties are being grown for the test kitchen (here spinach)
Garden – Two pigs hunting in the mushroom valley… yum yummmm
Kitchen – You never have too many pans I guess… (apologies for the fuzziness of the picture, I took it whilst walking…ummhhh)
Kitchen – Spotless and so organised
The end – Croque-Maman over the moon!
Leave A Comment