A View from the Buttes Chaumont

   The skyline photo at the top shows the Sacre Coeur cathedral in Montmartre as it appears from my 4th-floor dining room window. To be honest, I only see this if I lean at a very dangerous angle from my tiny balcony. And yet I know it is there, like the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame and the Louvre, and the wonderful food markets in the streets below. The knowledge that I am in Paris and that all its beauty and bounty are outside my window centers everything about my life here.  Especially the food. I am, above all, a passionate cook and teacher. The food is what brought me to Paris, twenty years ago. And it’s what keeps me here.

    My window on French cooking may be based in Paris, but I have spent many years in the countryside. In Burgundy, I taught at my alma mater Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne at the Chateau du Fey with Anne Willan. I am rather a specialist when it comes to cooking at chateaux. I’ve had the good fortune to supervise the catering at the Chateau de Jozerand in the Auvergne, for the Countess Joy de Rohan-Chabot in the Auvergne. I also cook and teach at Chateau de la Bourdaisiere in the Loire, for Prince Louis-Albert de Broglie.

    On these pages you’ll find more about my current activities, classes and writing projects. My interests demand constant experimentation in the kitchen, and I promise to share some of the recipes I’m devising. I am not as organized in my office (that is, the part of my dining table strewn with books, scraps of paper and my laptop) as I am in my kitchen (don’t ask), but I try to draft recipes before I forget what my scribbles mean.

    My energies and enthusiasm these days are focused on teaching at the new cooking school at Chateau de la Bourdaisiere, where emphasis on the seasons and sustainable agriculture show yet again why French cuisine continues to be valid. Organic, seasonal food has always been the standard here.  Meanwhile, my longterm goal of finishing my own first book, Cooking for Joy, about my experiences at a thousand year old castle in the Auvergne, seems about to be realized.

    My blog will feature personal recipes, and my hard-headed, classical outlook on both the delights and the outrages to be found in cooking today. My driving philosophy has always been that cooking should bring joy to others. My hope is that this is another tool that can help achieve that goal.

    Please check back soon, and often!