Cooking with Daniele...Again

Last summer the Husband found the most delightful chef offering cooking classes in the Perigord region of France. I raved about it here and decided our girls' trip to France wouldn't be complete without another class from Daniele. I wanted someone to understand how truly delightful Daniele is and how much I enjoy spending time with her--so I brought my sister along.

We arrived to La Borderie (the property she owns that has been in her family for about 150 years) late afternoon. We hoped to join Daniele earlier but couldn't tear ourselves away from the market and the grocery store...French grocery stores are terribly addicting :) Ingredients that are considered "gourmet" here in the US are just run-of-the-mill over there; making things like almond flour, vanilla beans, and fennel salt affordable and easily attainable.

Anyway, on to the class...we ended up cooking from about 6 p.m. until 11. We prepared our meal in the true French fashion--slowly and carefully--making sure we enjoyed every step. At the end we sat down and ate our meal together, savoring all our hard work. I requested we make poultry for this class as I wanted to be able to recreate our meal in the US (last year's duck magret was delicious, but where do you find a cut like that here in SLC?). Together we made chicken breasts stuffed with chevre, chives & shallots, an orange tart, tomato & shrimp risotto, and steamed vegetables with an aioli. Everything was simply made, but very, very good.

If you asked my sister, "What was your favorite part of your trip to France?", she'd reply it was this cooking class with Daniele. Moi aussi.
























Sauteeing the shrimp in a cast iron pan over an open fire in Daniele's kitchen. This woman doesn't waste anything--check out her pretty orange peels from the oranges we used in the tart. Also fun to {try and} use was her vintage French scale complete with tiny little weights.


























Signs of Spring crept up that week...lovely, lovely. Daniele recently planted 200 Truffle trees all by herself and is planning on selling off shares. How fun is that? During our dinner prepartion we took a little break to walk out and admire her hard work.
















Our simple breakfast the next morning before taking off to explore Paris (about a 5 hour drive away) and one of our pages of notes.

Her website is being redesigned in the next month or so, but if you want to read a little more about Daniele, go here. I told her that next time I'd love her foodie tour of Paris. She even knows the owner of Poilane--my new favorite bakery in Paris.