War and beauty co-exist along the Normandy Coast

The Normandy Coast was never this holiday's objective.  It's simply the half-way point between an eight-hour ferry crossing and another seven hours' drive to Gascony.  But it's also a rich place, culturally and historically, demanding some attention as long as we were in the area.

Mont Saint-Michel topped my wish list in this part of the world, but two other places demanding investigation lay between the abbey and our return ferry at Caen:  Bayeux and the Normandy Landing Beaches.

The top draw in Bayeux is its famous tapestry, of course, but it's a bigger and more diverse town than
I'd expected.  There's a beautiful cathedral, a Normandy Landings museum, picturesque shopping and dining areas and winding streets that remind you of Bordeaux on a much smaller scale.  A well-maintained and signposted tourist car park gives convenient access to the centre of town.  Note, however, that the Normandy Landings museum is a bit of a hike from the cathedral and the Tapestry Museum, something they don't point out when they sell you a double-attraction ticket as if they're side-by-side.  After one wrong turn and about 20 minutes of hiking, we ran out of time before we ever found it.  We needed much more time than the 90 minutes we had to make both tickets work.

The tapestry, however, was worth the price of both museums.

Unlike Mont Saint-Michel, you'll find masterful crowd management here.  Of course, we got lucky and walked right in, skipping the amusement park style queuing lanes in the large hall outside the tapestry that hint at how the numbers grow.  But even if those lanes had been full, once you get into the gallery you see that everything's beautifully managed to move big groups through smoothly.

The tapestry winds in a giant "U" shape around a large, darkened gallery.  It hangs in an illuminated, glass-fronted case just below adult eye level, with railings in front to both separate you from the artefact and give you something to lean on as you peer in for details.  Your ticket comes with an audio guide which tells you the whole story of what you're looking at, from the ailing Edward the Confessor choosing William as his heir, to Harold pledging allegiance to the Norman then breaking his word, to the Battle of Hastings and William's final triumph ... with plenty of adventure along the way.  This is, of course, a piece of Medieval PR created to elevate "the bastard" who became King of England, so the tale is understandably one-sided.

It's a magnificent piece of storytelling.  Essentially a cartoon strip, with the key plot lines delivered by the audio guide you're clearly able to see the drama unfold.  It's also an extraordinary work of art.  The details brought out by the embroidery, through clever uses of colour or intricate stitching, are impressive.  Nuances of armour, architecture, flora and fauna all spring to life, delivering the 11th century in vivid detail.  One of the most interesting bits is the border, filled with animals, mythological beasts, heraldic symbols and other decorative elements, each a little masterpiece on its own.

Unlike most audio guides, you can't put this one on pause.  The story teller gives you enough time to appreciate details, but not to dawdle.  And there's no photography allowed (I've plundered the internet for the pictures here).  As a result, you find yourself in a respectful, single file of viewers, all moving silently at the same pace.  This ensures a fine experience and keeps the crowd moving.  I suppose, since it wasn't particularly crowded that morning, we could have gone around again.  But with a ferry to turn up for by 2pm, our time was limited.

There are only about 30 miles between Bayeux and the ferry port at Ouistreham, and if you take the coast road you'll drive through the heart of the Normandy invasion.  These 19th century holiday resorts and sleepy salt marshes were once code named Gold, Juno and Sword, and today they're a pilgrimage point for many thousands who remember, or are simply interested in, the world's largest seaborne invasion and its place in history.

The most interesting viewpoint, to my eyes, is to be found on the cliffs rising to the west of the little town of Arromanches-Les-Bains.  At first glance on a sunny day, it's hard to conceive of this idyllic spot as a place of war.  The charming little holiday resort with a fun fair and beach promenade at its heart nestles in a shallow valley between low coastal cliffs.  The beach here is a broad, golden swathe ideal for paddling; at least 150 metres lay exposed between town and surf when we looked down on it.

The hills on either side are covered with grasses and wildflowers, a coastal path follows the clifftop and there are spectacular views of cliffs and surf to the horizons.  It looks almost exactly like the Devon coast.  Which is no surprise, since that's what it was once attached to.

But it doesn't take long to see the evidence of the war.  The concrete bulk of a German battery stood behind us on the coast path, placed incongruously next to a modern holiday home.  Out in the glistening blue waters, bulky concrete breakwaters lie in a massive curve out from the beach.  These are the remains of the artificial harbour, built by the allies to create a deep water port where one logically could not exist.

The drive from here to the ferry at Ouistreham (WW2 location of Sword Beach and Pegasus Bridge) takes about 30 minutes as it meanders through a string of similar resort towns, all showing off late 19th- or early 20th-century architecture.  Obviously, much of this must have been destroyed, but it was rebuilt to recapture what was here.  Every hamlet decorates its public spaces with tank or artillery guns and there are small museums every few miles to explore the specifics of what happened on that particular stretch of beach.  We stopped briefly at the Juno Beach centre, a beautifully designed facility built by the Canadian government and opened in 2003.  Tourists browsed the names of the dead on a striking, modern memorial while across the grass-covered dunes the local wind-surfing club rode the waves.

That's the sense of this place in a nutshell:  the tragedy and gravity of war memorials co-existing with the holiday making of a modern beach resort.  The record of sacrifice co-existing with all these people taking joy from their everyday lives is rather fitting, really.

Our short drive was enough for me, but the military historian within my other half could have
lingered far longer.  I suspect any future trip to this region will get a bit more time here.  And I suspect that the Southwest of France will indeed see us again someday.  It was a perfect holiday in an idyllic region, beautifully balancing R&R, culture and fine food.

But now, it's time to head back to England and the "real world" for a while.  I might even need to get a proper job soon.

Crowds almost ruin Mont Saint-Michel; here's how to beat them

It's a sad irony of tourism: Our visits often kill the charm we seek.

I've written about his before.  Crowds made my last visit to Versailles more chore than pleasure.  Florence is getting ever harder to love as the tourist throng makes it resemble DisneyWorld at school holidays. Taormina is only bearable if you can stay after the cruise ship crowds depart.  Sadly, I can now add Mount Saint-Michel to my list of magnificent sites nearly destroyed by the shoulder-to-shoulder throng of people crowding in to see them.

The fortified abbey, spiralling upwards on a tiny island off the Normandy coast to a majestic pinnacle
of Gothic glory, is as magnificently beautiful as I expected.  But taking in that beauty requires hard work: an ability to queue patiently, to shuffle en masse, to ignore screaming children and sullen teenagers dragged along by adults ignoring them, and to use your imagination to screen out the masses to focus on the architecture and the story it tells.

That story goes back to the 8th century, but most of what you see today is high gothic.  Stout walls dotted with picturesque guard towers encircle the complex.  A narrow lane with crazily-leaning Medieval houses climbs steeply upwards.  Focus on the architecture, and the Medieval-style shop signs, while ignoring the occupants.  The way is lined with shops flogging low-quality tourist tat, and overpriced creperies with menus offering photos of the food with labels in six languages. Eventually the secular buildings fall away and the path turns back on itself to become an open, processional stair into the abbey complex.  Up and up you climb, pausing near the grand visitor's entrance gate to purchase tickets before you climb again, the equivalent of another four or five stories before you finally reach the church at the peak.  The views are, of course, spectacular.

Mont Saint-Michel's location is one of the things that makes it so memorable.  Its island stands in miles of tidal sands.  Moist, glistening and accessible at low tide, isolated at sea when the tide comes in (though a modern causeway now links it to the mainland).  The surrounding countryside is salt marsh, mostly given over to the sheep whose grazing here makes them particularly tasty.  Planners have done a fine job screening the car parks and the village of hotels on the mainland with a stand of trees, so the view outwards leaves the Mont in pastoral isolation.

You'll find nothing close to isolation on the island itself, however, though if you tour the abbey close to closing time things improve.  I spent the extra money on the audio tour, which I'd consider an essential factor in making sense of what is now, basically, an empty series of buildings.  Even the Mont, iconic symbol of French power (it never fell during the 100 Years' War), was stripped of its treasures and glory at the revolution.  It reached its nadir in the 19th century when it was a prison.  Today, a religious order has moved back in, but the church is an austere shell far more impressive from the outside.  The more striking sights come after, when the tourist route spirals you back down the Mont through the rest of the facilities that once made the abbey work.

The cloister is extraordinary.  Its double row of highly-ornamented gothic arches would be a star sight on its own, but pales before the stunning prospect of a massive window at one end, six stories above ground, taking in the sweeping view.  (Any Game of Thrones fan will immediately think of The Eyrie.)  The monks refectory has a sweeping grace that bestows a sense of peace, even when you're sharing it with scores of others.  The double fireplaces and majestic groin vaulting in the principle

guest hall make it clear just how prominent the visitors once were.  My favourite space was probably the last: the majestic knight's hall, entered from the top so you're at eye level with the fantastically-carved capitals of the forest of columns there.  It no doubt helped that it was approaching closing time and I had a few moments almost alone in this humbling space.

Suspecting the crowd problem, I'd followed the strategy that worked so well for me in Taormina and booked a hotel on the island.  This was a partial success.  It's indeed possible to reclaim some of the charm of the place if you're here after the abbey closes.  You can walk along windswept, romantic ramparts and, once the shutters come down, see the beauty beyond the tourist tat in the main street.  Sitting quietly as dusk falls, watching the shadows shift and the lights come up on the abbey above you is spectacular.

But there aren't many hotels on the island, and those that are charge according to their captive market.    Our room at La Croix Blanche was pleasant enough.  Well decorated and comfortable, if we leaned out one of our two windows we could see the abbey looming to the left and the estuary below to the right.  It was also oddly shaped (a long, very narrow rectangle), four flights up a treacherous spiral staircase and as expensive as a good hotel in London.  All inevitable, I suppose, for accommodation wedged into Medieval buildings inside one of the world's top tourist attractions.  Like each of the small handful of hotels on the island, La Croix Blanche has no real lobby or lounging space outside the bedrooms.  Clearly, the food and drink revenues made from passing tourists deserve all the floor space.

Trip Advisor made it clear, however, that dining was to be avoided at our hotel.  Its rotten reviews were matched by the write-ups on most of the dining spots here.  This is the kind of place where the assumption that they'll never see you again allows kitchens to turn out poor quality at high prices.  We looked in a lot of windows before settling on the restaurant at the Hotel du Guesclin, where the local lamb formed the centrepiece of a solid, if pricey, meal with a lovely view of dusk over the estuary.

Lingering on the island is a way to capture a bit of the magic that the crowds leech away.  But there is a way to have the experience without the crazy prices.  The village of hotels just across the causeway is next to the car parks and linked to the island by shuttle buses from 8 in the morning until 11:30 at night.  Plan your visit so you enter the abbey about two hours before it closes.  Linger, and make the most of the last hour in the building when the crowds thin out.  Stroll the ramparts before settling in to dinner at Guesclin, then take the shuttle back to a less expensive, more comfortable hotel on the mainland.  There, you'll have the benefit of the view of the entire complex from across the estuary, which is actually the most impressive of all.

In defence of foie gras: Gascon producers are a model of local, organic production

Foie gras is incendiary stuff.  It's illegal in California.  Banning it was a plank of the UK Green Party's election manifesto.  Protesters regularly gather outside of Fortnum & Mason in the Christmas holidays to protest its sale.  Small gourmet delis in the UK won't carry it for fear of protest action, and buying it from French import stores tends to involve covert visits to back rooms.

It's also, in my opinion, one of the finest things man has ever put on a plate.

So what's the big deal?  Opponents tend to have three issues with foie gras.  (1) Producing it requires the force feeding of ducks or geese, artificially enlarging their livers beyond what's naturally healthy.  (2) The force feeding is done by a process called "gavage", where someone must insert a tube down a bird's throat.  (3) During the gavage process, which usually lasts 10-12 days, the birds are kept in pens and have little ability to move.

I figured that, as long as I was in Gascony, I needed to dig into the production process for myself.  If I'm going to eat it, I should learn about how it's produced.  Gascony is, after all, the spiritual home of this delicacy.  France produces more than 70% of the world's supply, and almost 90% of that total comes from the Southwest.  It's on every menu in the region, and every tourist shop is stacked with jars of the stuff.

Here are some facts the protesters don't mention.  (And probably don't know.)  Foie gras was documented as far back as ancient Egypt, and may go back further.  It's an exaggeration of a natural process.  Migrating, wild ducks and geese naturally fatten up before flying to their winter homes, gorging themselves to build up fat reserves for the trip.  Humans realised that ducks killed and prepared just before this migration were delicious, and that their enlarged livers were particularly tasty.  Farmers decided to help the process along.  Force-feeding these ducks and geese, it turns out, is very easy because (1) they're greedy and (2) they have no gag reflex.  They're designed this way to allow them to consume whole fish at one go.  Together, it means that they don't mind the gavage tube, and don't find it painful.

We visited the foie gras farm of Martin Neuf, in the lush, rolling countryside just west of Condom.  Like most of the best producers, this is a small family farm where everything is done with personal attention.  They might be producing one of the world's most gourmet foods, but there are no airs and graces here.






When we pulled up in front of the farmhouse, a golden retriever loped out to greet us.  Eventually Aline Perotto emerged from the kitchen, apron and hairnet suggesting she was deep in the production process.  No English spoken here, but you'll get along well enough as she offers samples of their foie gras, washed down with little cups of their home-made Floc.  There's a little shop here displaying the full range of the farm's products; mostly foie gras but plenty of related goodies like duck rillettes and cassoulet, all in preserving jars ready for transport.

When we asked to see the ducks (after politely buying some stuff, of course), Mme. turned us over to her husband Gerard, who runs the back end of the operation.  We walked down a slope behind the house to see a large, fenced enclosure similar to what you'd find in a great zoo.  There was a lake with a little island in its centre, grassy verges, a few trees and copious feeding troughs.  The ducks ( a special hybrid called Mulard are most typically used) are beautiful beasts.  Much larger than the mallards probably in your head when you think "duck", you'd mistake these for geese.  The Perottos' flock have white bases, marked with black and brown patches.  They live in that enclosure for two to three months, wandering freely and allowed (encouraged) to eat all they can.

For the last 10 days of their lives, they move to the gavage barn, where they're put in cages and fed by hand twice a day.  At this point, their diet becomes pure corn.  The Perottos feed some just yellow corn, some just white, which produces two types of foie gras with subtly different flavours.  The farmer has to take each duck in his arms, twice a day, to feed him.  That's an animal he's raised since birth.  An animal upon whom the family finances are based.  And every farmer knows that stressed animals don't taste as good as relaxed ones.  I don't see any animal cruelty here; it would be contrary to instinct, quality and profits.  They grow the corn on their estate as well, and it's either Gerard or an assistant doing the feeding.  Once the ducks are slaughtered, Madame takes over in the kitchen.  If you like organic farming with completely local sourcing, this is a model.

Fact is, foie gras birds lead far better lives than intensively farmed poultry, which is the way the majority of reasonably-priced chicken gets to your table. 

Thanks to cooking school, of course, we weren't just buying foie gras.  We were cooking with it.  We spent an afternoon with Chef Bernard at Le Petit Feuillant uncovering the mysteries of how a duck's liver becomes the gourmet delicacy on Michelin-starred plates.

Everything starts with the basic livers.  Each duck has two lobes, one slightly bigger than the other, about the size of a large person's hand.  Preparation is actually quite simple; turns out this is one of those quality products that doesn't need much help to shine.

You can slice it and pan fry it immediately, usually serving it up with some sweet but sharp sauce.  This is the preparation I like the least, as I find it too fatty.  The more typical version, however, involves preservation.  You work through the lobes to remove two webs of veins from each.  Season, pack into a preserving jar, seal and cook in a bain marie for an hour.  In this time, some of the fat from the liver cooks out, forming a protective seal around the meat.  Those jars are then good for a couple of years and, once opened, the paste-like preserved meat can be used in a variety of preparations.  In Gascony, it's most common to find this simply served, either as a slice next to a salad
and some fruit compote, or spread on pieces of toast.

Foie gras mi cuit is becoming more fashionable in gourmet venues.  This version is literally "half cooked".  It's softer and more delicate, but doesn't have the longevity of the preserved version.  Bernard taught us to pack a pan half way with seasoned liver, add a layer of gingerbread, add the other half of the liver, then cook.  The resulting slices are elegant, delicious, and more complex due to their addition flavours.  For our third method, we worked the raw liver with a form until it was a smooth paste, then rolled it in a coating of salt.  In other variations we added pepper, or espalette (the distinctive regional take on paprika).  In this case, the salt cures the meat naturally so no cooking is required.  Just give it enough time in the 'fridge, and it's ready to spread on toast.

Of the three versions we prepared, my favourite was the mi cuit with the gingerbread.  I'm not sure that had anything to do with the difference in cooking, frankly.  It was just the revelation of gingerbread with foie gras.  I'll be trying that with the fully preserved stuff soon.

We put our new skills to the test in our holiday cottage kitchen during week two.  Having found raw, fresh livers in Auch and preserving jars at the local Carrefour, we decided to try to make our own.  I can't report on the result, as the jars needed to rest for at least 10 days before sampling.  They're now safely resting in a cool, dark place chez Bencard, waiting for the next special occasion.

While waiting for the bain marie to do it's work, I couldn't resist doing a few calculations.  We invested £61 in liver and preserving jars.  We ended up producing six 400-gram jars of foie gras, with a "street value" in Mayfair of more than £300.  The cost difference wasn't as extreme against the local producers, but I still would have paid more than double for Madame Perotto to do the work for me.  Beyond the cost savings, we're stocked up for holidays and dinner parties for the next two years.  Assuming this works, I suspect any future trip to Gascony will require a kitchen and a day of foie gras preparation.

Armagnac houses are the real star sights of Gascony

Last time I explained how the sights in Gascony can be a bit underwhelming when it comes to art, architecture and history.  This isn't the case, however, on the culinary front.  The area is justifiably famous for its food and drink, particularly for armagnac and foie gras, and you can have some great sightseeing experiences in their pursuit.

Let's start with the alcohol.

Armagnac is a type of brandy, supposedly the oldest kind to be produced in France.  While Cognac has greater awareness and market share, many who really know their stuff swear that the Gascon version is more sophisticated and complex.  To further complicate things, there are three areas of armagnac production within Gascony:  Bas, Tenerez and Haut.  General knowledge says Bas is the best, but two weeks in the region led us to suspect this had more to do with export trends than any definitive quality standard.  Like any wine, differences in grape variety, terroir and weather during the year of the harvest create subtle differences; every individual will have a favourite.  We did the majority of our tasting and buying in Tenerez, and all the houses described here fall into that classification.

Armagnac is inescapable in Gascony.  Every vineyard produces their own version, from sophisticated labels of great houses to humble operations flogging their home-made stuff out of roadside barns.  Those vines don't just make brandy, of course.  The region produces vast amounts of red, white and rose.  I'd classify most of it as cheap and cheerful table wine ... perfectly respectable, reasonably priced, but not worth the effort to transport.  We liked the whites best. 

Most vineyards also produce floc, a wine fortified with armagnac.  It's somewhat like port, but slightly less sweet, a bit less alcoholic and with a wider variety of flavour profiles.  I loved the floc, and wasn't so keen about the armagnac.  Until the chatelaine of a historic chateau gave me a taste of something almost as old as me.

Casually interested need not apply
It takes a persistent tourist to get the most out of Chateau du Busca Maniban.  Though they advertise regular opening hours and tastings, when we arrived there was no sign of life.  We pulled the bell, crunched around on the gravel, and were about to give up when a woman finally poked her head out to state there were no tours in English that day.  We said we'd get by with French.  She looked skeptical.  It was only when we started making comments that showed we were properly interested (was this during the time of Louis XIII?  They have furniture like that at the Chateau de Gramont.) that she started to warm up.  By the end of the tour, we were having a jolly time.

Busca Maniban is a grand remnant of the 17th century, built by a family who'd established their fame as lawyers and politicians in Toulouse.  The tour takes in the impressive triple-height entry hall with its grand staircase and neoclassical columns, the gallery around the top and an impressive drawing room.  The decor here reminds the visitor of how close the aristocracy of Gascony would have been.  Maniban had the names of his friends and colleagues etched in the cornice around the top of the room; after 10 days in the region we spotted links to many of the other places we'd visited.

Back downstairs, we walked down a roughly-paved hallway that was once an exterior road to discover the Medieval kitchens, a left-over from an older house.  After a wander out to the formal gardens to check out the elegant facade of the "L"-shaped manor, our guide handed us over to the owner of the place for our tasting.

Madame de Ferron is the current scion of the family that bought the place from the Manibans in 1803. She is the embodiment of old school, no compromise, high quality production.  Elsewhere in Gascony, armagnac houses are following trends towards sweeter, blended aperitifs, releasing cheaper armagnacs destined for cocktails or re-vamping their estates to cater to bus tours.  Mme. describes such things with a scorn worthy of Louis XVI regarding rioting peasants.  Woe be to anyone his doesn't gently swirl his snifter of her proffered nectar for at least two minutes before raising it to your lips.  My husband's 90 seconds earned a stern rebuke, but ... accompanied by worthy questions about her production methods ... did at least establish him as a willing acolyte.  (The swirling in gently-cupped hand warms the armagnac and allows some of the alcohol to rise off the surface, removing the harsh burn and bringing out the subtle undertones.)  I couldn't call her welcoming or inclusive, but if you want to take armagnac seriously, her polite grandeur and grave direction give an unparalleled experience.  The tasting here was our best in both quality of brandy and general education.

As with wine, every year is different.  Mme de Ferron knows each vintage as if they were her children.  Which, effectively, they are ... since she has complete control over the cellars and only two other people (the lady who gave us the tour and the family winemaker) are involved in modern production.  She gives an extremely personal tasting, understanding the flavour profile you prefer and matching accordingly.  We tried a '79 and an '86, distinctly different from each other but clearly on the sweeter range, with the older clearly resembling the prunes for which the region is also famous.  As you can imagine, the resolute tradition and personal attention comes with a price tag, with 1990s vintages starting in the €50s and the '70s pushing towards €100.  This is special occasion stuff.

Rapier-like innovation
The Chateau de Monluc is everything Mme de Ferron was sniffy about, but that's no reason to avoid
it.  In fact, if you're looking for a more casual, tourist-friendly introduction, this is the place to go.

Monluc has diversified into a full range of wines plus ... shock, horror! ... cocktail-friendly aperitifs.  Their Pousse Rapiere, a sweet but powerful liqueur blended from armagnac, orange and top secret flavourings, is mixed with dry, sparkling wine to create the region's definitive pre-prandial drink.  They also produce a green apple and armagnac liqueur called Manzanac that any American will immediately describe as a highly-alcoholic, liquid Jolly Rancher.  It's jolly good.  Monluc may be straying from lofty traditions, their armagnac may not be of quite the same complexity, but I know who I'd invest in for future business growth.

Like Busca Maniban, the winery and distillery is based in an aristocratic chateau.  In fact, Monluc is one of the names the Manibans carved into the cornice of their drawing room.  Clearly, the aristocracy stuck together then.    The house isn't as grand here, and you don't get to see as much of it, but the tour is cheerfully led and the history is fascinating.  The vineyards and the village of St. Puy date back to the Romans, the house to a 10th century castle.  Looming over it all is the figure of Blaise de Monluc.  The 16th century lord of the manor was a respected military man who helped Marie de Medici re-establish royal authority after the assassination of Henry IV, was promoted to marshal of France and retired here in his old age to write the military manual that became the French equivalent of Sun Tzu's Art of War.  But most importantly for current branding, he's the man who introduced the rapier from Northern Italy into the French fighting forces, inspiring today's company logo and the name of the best-selling liqueur.

A tour here includes the cellars, where another family member introduced an innovation to the wine-making business as significant as the rapier to warfare.  It was here, according to our tour guide, that the great rotating cages that replaced riddling racks were invented, speeding up the production of sparkling wine and making it affordable. 

The gardens here are peaceful, daisy-dappled and have great views.  The tasting offers something for everyone.  It's buyer beware in the shop, however.  The Pousse Rapiere, which has the greatest tourist appeal, was €21 here at the source ... and €18 in the Carrefour supermarket.

The American choice
If you come from the other side of the pond, you may opt for the Chateau de Cassaigne as your

favourite in this trio of grand armagnac houses.  This historic pile started out as the summer palace of the bishops of nearby Condom in the 13th century, reaping all the architectural benefits of ecclesiastical funding.  Come the revolution, the historic stewards of the place bought it from the state.  That family has been here ever since, but was devastated and impoverished by WWII.  Local legend tells of some American soldiers based here after liberation, who took a fancy to the ornate but dilapidated aviary in the gardens and offered to buy it.  That provided the seed money to revive the armagnac business which restored the family fortunes.  I have delightful visions of a rusty old pergola at the back of some yard in Iowa, its owners totally unaware of its aristocratic French pedigree.

Today, Cassaigne offers a small museum that explains the process for making armagnac and a peak at the impressive medieval kitchens.  There's a tasting room with picturesque, but knee-achingly low, stools made from gnarled old grape vines.  Here they'll instruct you in the fine art of tasting: swirl and warm, swirl and warm; use your tongue to move the first bit around your whole mouth to sensitise your taste buds to the alcohol; go for a proper taste from sip two.)  The shop offers a range of armagnac-based products, including jams and fruits preserved in the stuff. 

If you have the time, wandering around all three places paints a wonderfully complete picture.  Not only will you gain an appreciation for this little-known, sophisticated brandy, but you'll tap into the history of the great houses of Gascony and understand how their families interacted.  This, more than most of the spots listed in the guidebooks, is the sightseeing treasure of Gascony.

Gascon sites rely on subtle charms

Regular readers of this blog will know that I categorise holidays in one of two ways:  Cultural or Beach.  The first kind, and the one I write about here most, usually starts in a world heritage city and seeks out the kinds of "must sees" that have been inspiring me since the history and art history classes of my youth.  The other is dedicated to pure R&R and, for me, that's always meant powdery sand and rolling surf.  Every so often beach and culture combine, as in Barcelona or Oman, but generally I like my seasides to be culture-free, so there's no call to go sightseeing and I can concentrate on tanning and snorkelling.

Gascony didn't fit either category, thus confused the hell out of me.

While we had some good weather, and a pool (with very cold water) the second week, it definitely wasn't a beach holiday.  And though there's lots of history, there are few really noteworthy sights.  This posed a tricky problem for the relentless sightseeing genes that drive my holiday DNA.  Stacks of tourist brochures and guidebook entries citing ancient Romans, the 100 Years' War and Renaissance Chateaux didn't allow me to just kick back by the pool and read a good book.  Yet when we arrived at the day's sightseeing objective, I was often disappointed.

One of my best days was a quiet, solitary walk from our rental cottage to the nearest village, Vopillon.  The two miles in between roll across wheat fields bordered with poppies and rambling wild roses.  The skies were vivid blue, I could see for miles over the rolling landscape, and only two or three cars passed in the 40 minutes it took me to cover the distance.  Vopillon itself is no more than a handful of houses with a tiny Romanesque church at its edge.  (Picture above.)  Turns out it's the only remaining bit of what was once a much bigger church, anchoring an expansive abbey, all destroyed during the French Revolution.  A local benefactor rebuilt the church in the '60s.  There's a simple beauty in its austerity and a few Medieval wall paintings revealed in the arch of a doorway.  It made for a lovely morning of  quiet reflection, but was certainly wasn't anything to write home about.  Or to fuel much of a blog entry!

This does, however, bring up the perplexing option that there might be another kind of holiday.  One where you simply hang out in a lovely place, take long walks, and occasionally wander out to see stuff that's interesting but not particularly significant.  It's given me food for thought.

Star Sights
In the mean time, if you're a cultural sightseer who's heading to Gascony and wants to hit the best stuff, here are my picks in order of preference.

La Romieu
Though there's not much left of the monastery that gave this village its name, the picturesque setting it creates, a fine restaurant and a blockbuster garden come together to make this THE "don't miss" spot of the trip.

The village was in the right place at the right time in the early 14th century, benefitting from a location on the pilgrimage route to Campostella, the move of the papacy to nearby Avignon and a powerful cardinal who decided to take advantage of both.  He funded an enormous church, monastery and palace here.  Now all that's left is part of the original church, a ruined cloister and a tower from what was the palace.  The remaining towers, both ecclesiastic and palatial, loom impressively over architecture that's now too small for them.  A village of picture-perfect stone houses decorated with colourful shutters and flowering climbers clusters in their shadow.  It's a striking architectural ensemble, best enjoyed as the backdrop to a leisurely lunch on the tiny village square at the excellent L'Etape d'Angeline.

Le Collegial Saint Pierre de la Romieu is worth the price of admission, however, purely for the medieval wall paintings in its sacristy.  I have never seen their like, either for completeness,  decorative detail or colour scheme.  The black-faced angels arching above the windows are particularly interesting, but why they were so painted has been lost to history.

Buy a combination ticket to get into the Jardins de Coursiana, a short drive away.  I certainly didn't expect to find one of the best English gardens I've ever encountered deep in the French countryside.  This place is like a series of magnificent Chelsea show gardens, with waves of colour as great drifts of perennials bloom at once.  Other times may not be so magnificent, but this particularly warm, mid-May visit delighted with cascades of roses, wisteria and clematis.  The iris were particularly striking, with varieties and colours I've never seen before, of a size nearly double the British average.  There's a gracious herb garden set in formal terraces stepping down to a lake, and it's all designed to take advantage of the view of the towers and village across the fields.

Auch Cathedral Windows
A large town to the south of Gascony and an important provincial capital just before the revolution,

Auch is a pleasant place in which to have a ramble.  The tour books will point you to the monumental staircase linking the lower and upper town, with a statue of home boy d'Artagnan half way up and the stately Tour d'Armagnac looming over it.  But you've seen staircases and towers before; you've never seen Renaissance stained glass like the windows in the cathedral.  In fact, you might not have ever seen Renaissance stained glass.  Most cathedrals either have the original Medieval stuff, or more modern (Victorian or later) replacements.

These are the pinnacle of the glassmaker's art, their luminous jewel tones brought to life with painted details.  Every face is distinct and full of emotion; you sense that you're looking at the residents of Auch, circa 1600.  Architectural backgrounds and Renaissance design details (the neo-classical creatures, putti and curlicues known as "grotesquerie") give every window a depth of detail that means you'll want to leave plenty of time to take it all in.

Seviac Roman Villa
Gaul was a stable, peaceful province for most of the Roman Empire.  Seviac benefitted from that; it is a fascinating site due to its continuous occupation.  The ruins here reflect hundreds of years of domestic evolution.  Sadly, we don't know who lived here.  The place was only discovered by a local farmer late in the last century, and there's no written evidence about it.  The sprawling floorpan and the impressive mosaics have to speak for themselves.  Afficionados of Roman villas in warmer climes will be interested in the hallways separating living rooms from the central courtyard; a nod to the colder winters.  The mosaics are mostly geometric; interesting to see a decorative scheme across a whole residence.  And the private bath complex here is both rare and particularly impressive.  Visit in May, and you'll also have the benefit of impressive iris gardens ringing the site.

Labastide d'Armagnac
This village on the western edge of the region hangs its hat on the Armagnac trade and advertises a museum to the stuff.  There wasn't much evidence of that when we rolled through the sleepy village.  What's far more impressive for culture seekers is the legend that this is the source for Paris' Place des Vosges, inspiring a young Henry IV when he visited.  Labastide's heart is a hugely picturesque square, with arcades for promenading and gracious, half-timbered houses above.  It is indeed reminiscent of that most gracious of civic spaces in the capital, though far more humble.  It won't take you long to wander around, but it's worth stopping here for lunch.  Dine at one of the restaurants in the square and drink in the stunning architecture.  Unlike the Place des Voges, this is well off the beaten tourist track; we saw fewer people in our visit than you would find in a single cafe off the Parisian descendant.

Chateau de Gramont
I wouldn't go much out of the way for this, but if you're in the immediate area it's worth a look in.  Its differentiator, at least when we were there, is the private tour.  You're so far off the beaten track that the property manager answers the doorbell and shows you around herself, which gives you a marvellous feeling of exclusivity.  The original Medieval castle had a Renaissance wing built on; both were derelict by the '60s.  The manager will explain how a French couple bought the place and restored it, eventually giving it to the nation.  The owner's cat is still here and is likely to follow you around.  The restoration includes furniture and tapestries appropriate to the building.  Not original, of course, but gives you a good idea of what the place might have been like.

The disappointments
We didn't go to Gascony for cultural masterpieces; our expectations were modest.  Even so, there were a few outings that were real disappointments.  Here's what fell furthest short of the promise of guidebooks and brochures.

From my advanced research, I thought Laressingle would be one of the highlights of the trip.  It's trumpeted as a "pocket-sized Carcassonne, a perfect fortified village".  Yes. it's a fortified collection of buildings, providing a few photo opps from the outside.  Inside, however, there are a few cheesy shops, a cafe, a restored, mostly-featureless chapel and the ruined hulk of a small castle.  The museum of siege engines outside, again heavily advertised, is a ramshackle, weed-strewn enclosure with a few bad exhibits and dressing up opportunities.  The whole place isn't worth more than a 5-minute drive by.

Henry IV is France's great Renaissance king, progenitor of such masterpieces as Paris' Place des Vosges and the Pont Neuf.  So hearing that there was a Henry IV chateau in Nerac was very exciting.  Sadly, no guidebook I saw mentions that today's chateau is one truncated side of what was once a quadrangle, and there's almost nothing in it.  The managers make a noble attempt to bring things to life with a series of displays in the empty rooms, but they're just big posters and you can learn as much about Henry IV from Wikipedia.  As with so much of what we saw this trip, the outside was better than the interior, and the way to enjoy it best is to dine at an outdoor cafe beneath it.  In this case, L'Escadron Volant.

Condom is supposed to be a beautiful town, packed with interesting buildings and loads of charm.  Maybe we hit it at a bad moment.  (Admittedly, there'd been a big festival the weekend before and they were still struggling to clean up the rubbish.)  But we struggled to see the appeal.  An average cathedral surrounded by empty, charmless streets, nothing enticing further exploration.  The most interesting thing we encountered was a larger-than-lifesized statue of the four musketeers, placed here by a Russian film production.  This was the least impressive of any of the Gascon towns we visited.

Of course, the main things that drew us to Gascony were food and drink.  There's plenty of sightseeing specifically dedicated to that.  Next:  Armagnac and foie gras.

Like many of its wines, Bordeaux would have been better with a bit more time

Bordeaux has been a savvy commercial centre since Roman times.  It's a river town with an
enormous port on a wide, slow bend in the Garonne.  This Mississippi-like river snakes through Southern France, providing a watery highway linking Toulouse, Bordeaux and the Atlantic.  The Bordelais have exploited their geography by becoming pragmatic brokers and traders.  Their most famous export, of course, being wine.

This commercial heritage is reflected in an efficient tourism office, one of the best I've ever experienced for offering agendas and sorting details.  We gave them a simple mission: "We're here for a day and a half, we'd like to get an introduction to the region, but we're most interested in tasting and buying wine."  I suspect that penultimate word triggered an increased level of attention.

Of course, our first visit to Bordeaux undoubtably deserved more than 12 hours of sightseeing, and the logic of the map said we should have stopped here ... the 2/3rds point between the Normandy Coast and Gascony ... en route.  Instead, logistics forced us to squeeze it in to the two nights between the end of cooking school and the beginning of our week-long cottage rental.

The tourism office has a dedicated wine desk, unsurprisingly in what's arguably the world's largest production area for fine wines.  We quickly ended up here, where the desk manager sorted a tasting for us that afternoon, and an all-day tour the next day that would cover the city highlights before heading out to the august wine region of St. Emilion.

There are a bewildering number of places to taste wine in Bordeaux, of course, but most are introductions to the region that give a similar overview.  Compare and contrast the left and right banks, end with a Sauternes.  We'd done an excellent starter course with Berry Brothers in November (covered here), so wanted something more specific.  We were looking for interesting wines from smaller producers that didn't export much; reasonably-priced jewels we could lay down and reveal with a story at a dinner party in a few years' time.  The tourist board sent us to The Wine Corner, a small shop in a street running north from the cathedral which, we were assured, did highly personalised tastings and specialised in smaller vineyards.

Appearances deceive
Our first few minutes weren't promising.  The shop wasn't much bigger than a galley kitchen, we had to wait for other customers to clear out even though we'd made an appointment and the girl serving us was no local, but a Russian.  But all was not what it seemed.  Experts from all over the world come to this oenological Mecca to hone their skills.  She knew her stuff.  The shop front was the tip of an iceberg; when you wind down some circular stone stairs you find yourself in a warren of 18th century cellars with a cozy tasting alcove furnished with two plushly upholstered bar stools.  Our Russian spent time upstairs diagnosing our tastes and talking through possibilities.  After identifying the four we wanted to try, it was downstairs to the cellar, where she put the wines in a sensible order and walked us through the tasting notes and cellaring potential of each.

We'd opted for an organised tour the next day based on two warnings you always hear about Bordeaux.  First:  It's a huge area, and if you don't know where you're going you can spend hours driving aimlessly amongst the vines.  Second:  Few vineyards are open to walk up trade; you have to arrange tastings in advance.  There was a third tip we heard repeatedly:  Go to St. Emilion.  And so we were off, on a 25-seater mini-coach, for a short city tour followed by lunch at a St. Emilion vineyard, a drive around the AOC and a wander in the eponymous town.

The city tour was an excellent idea.  Bordeaux is not your typical provincial wine town like Beaune, Greve-in-Chianti or Napa.  It's France's 6th-largest city, with history, additional industry and government (it's the regional capital) to add to the wine.  The city centre is walkable, in theory, but the bus covered everything faster, with commentary.  The mostly 18th-century riverfront is gorgeous; the Place de la Borse and its fellows as palatial as Versailles, but built to celebrate commerce rather than monarchy.  The Alee de Tourny is a gracious rectangular space of the same period that called Piazza Navona to mind.  In fact, there's block after block of magnificent 18th century architecture that makes it clear this place was dripping with money while Paris' poor were storming the Bastille.  It's no wonder that the Girondin movement, a counter to the lead revolutionary party, was based here.  They lost, but they're commemorated in a stunning memorial column.

Other eras pop in to mix things up.  There are two city gates Eleanor of Aquitane would recognise, and though the cathedral where she contracted her marriage to Louis of France has seen several makeovers since her time, it's still resolutely gothic.  As are a whole string of impressive churches across town.  The Romans exert their presence with the ghostly remains of an amphitheater.  There's even a modern district similar to Paris' La Defense, and a Richard Rodgers-designed courthouse with funky inverted towers that mimic the Medieval tower next door.  Getting a feel for the place in a morning, or even a day, was a bit laughable.  Turns out Bordeaux has 362 official monuments historiques ... only Paris has more.  But the bus made a valiant attempt and left us with the understanding that there's plenty to see here before you even start to think about wine.

Then it was off to St. Emilion, the 30 minutes of highway driving before we saw a vineyard validating the warning about how big this place is.  The next surprise:  it's quite flat.  Every wine district I've toured relies on steep slopes, and I've accepted the general rule of thumb that the good stuff comes from high up, while the vines in the valleys yield the cheap table wine.  That's definitely not the case here, where some of the world's most expensive wines are grown in flat fields or gently rolling hills.

Our winery tour took place at Chateau Grand Corbin-Despagne, a grand cru in the northern part of the district close to the border with the equally-famous Pomerol.  The tour was standard:  start in the vineyard to discuss growth and harvest, into the room with the fermenting tanks to go over the making, finish with the barrels to talk about ageing.  The regional difference seems to be an obsessive degree of quality control.  From regular pruning of each vine to control exactly how much sun each bunch of grapes gets, to sorting the fruit grape by grape, to minutely varying the temperature of the fermenting vats as needed to moving the wines through different barrels, this is a high-intensity wine making process.  You can certainly understand why something so labour-intensive demands such a high price.  Although a sceptical voice inside of me was thinking, surely you can produce equally nice wines in other regions without all the faffing about?

The class of '85

Perhaps, but doubtless not with this sophistication and ability to age.  Over a buffet lunch we tasted four different wines, going all the way back to their 1985.  That one was a tour-de-force of complexity, giving entirely different experiences from first taste to finish and showing off why good, old wines are so treasured.  And so expensive!  These days they produce both a showcase wine and a secondary and we actually preferred the junior partner, bringing a case home to age.  It's classic Bordeaux, with light tannins, red fruits, earth and even a hint of liquorice that should mellow and deepen with laying down.

Our postprandial drive wound us through St. Emilion's extensive vineyards, dotted with historic chateaux, humble farmhouses and the mid-sized producers between them.  There's plenty of gorgeous architecture to marvel at, the landscape has enough variety to be constantly interesting, and the tour guide was a treasure trove of historical titbits about what happened, where.  One thing was certain: the whole region is doing very, very well.  Our Russian wine tasting hostess and the Chinese ads we saw for wine tours made it clear that the international super-rich are pouring in here, buying expensive labels to prove sophistication.

The top-end wineries are responding to the trend, building lavish additions, investing in their operations and producing ever more complex wines to justify the escalating prices.  Our guide, however, told us a salutary tale.  The super-rich she's been exposed to aren't interested in the nuances of taste, or the complexities of food matching.  They're ticking an acquisition box that validates their wealth.  She's had people say to her, "I've already bought and drank a €300 bottle.  Why should I buy another?  They all taste the same."  I fear that by escalating prices to take advantage of a current trend, the wine makers of Bordeaux may have a problem when the high rollers drift to the next "must have".

Our final stop was the town of St. Emilion itself, which ended the day on a sour note.  I suspect this is one of these places like Taormina or San Gimignano that transforms back into a picturesque stage set at night, after the group tours leave.  But in the middle of the day, with every street body-to-body with tourists, it's horrible.  The Medieval ruins, stately towers and giddily-angled streets fade beneath the braying hordes.  Few seem to have any interest in what's around them.  They're eating ice cream, browsing through tacky, wine-themed gift shops or stopping to block traffic as they debate where to go next.  In a square at the heart of town, a busker "entertains" in a voice so irritating we thought he must be asking for money to stop. We found the whole place charmless and irritating, and were happy to have so little time there.

Fortunately, there was one redeeming feature.  The monolithic church is worth pushing past the crowds to see.  A local nobleman returned from the first crusade so impressed by the church of the Holy Sepulchre that he decided to create his own version in St. Emilion, hewing a Romanesque church out of the living rock to house the bones of the monk who gave name to the place.  It's an other-worldly, subterranean wonder, unlike anything I've ever seen.  It's more like a Game of Thrones set than a recognisable piece of European history, even with the modern incursion of the metal struts necessary on some of the columns to keep the whole thing from collapsing.  And, best of all, access is limited and only by ticketed, guided tour.  Meaning it's the only place in St. Emilion where you can find space to breathe, while being with people who appreciate their surroundings.

We packed an enormous amount into a day and a half, found plenty to enjoy and bought several cases of treasure for the wine fridges.  But, bottom line, we like Burgundy more.  From the sightseeing to the vineyards to the style of wine, the other famous wine region touches our heart a bit more.  Bordeaux, doubtlessly, deserves more time to prove us wrong.  But we had to go.  A cottage back in the sleepy Gascon countryside was calling.

Five key considerations when hunting for a residential cooking school

I stumbled on the Gascon Cookery School without a lot of research, encouraged to book by circumstance and a positive review in Country Life magazine.  I quickly realised that there are many variables that determine the quality of a cooking school, and a lot of research I probably should have done.

Turns out that in this case, I didn't need to.  I got lucky.  The school and its team met and exceeded our expectations.  Now I have the experience to do a much more considered evaluation of residential cooking schools, should we ever do another.  Here are the lines of questioning I'd follow to make sure any experience was as good as the one we just had.

Confirm that you like the terroir, and that the school honours it.
Seems obvious, but worth saying:  Don't go away to a foreign cooking school unless you really love the cuisine, because you're going to be completely immersed in it.  Any proper culinary experience should be sunk into the place it's based, sourcing locally, exposing you to local producers, drawing the food and wine from local traditions.  In a cuisine more foreign to us, it might be appropriate to learn the basics of a national cuisine (Moroccan, Thai) in one place.  But France and Italy are highly regional, and if you're considering either of those places you want to exploit that.  Had fondue or Fish Provencal been on the menu, I would have been suspicious.  Of course, that did mean a week of duck,  goat's cheese, garlic, pastry and vast quantities of rose.  Abstemious vegetarians would have been horrified.

Ask for agenda specifics.
Many cooking schools provide only sketchy outlines.  I now realise just how different schools could be.  Our days started at a civilised 9 and usually ended at 6, but every moment in between was packed.  It wasn't unusual to work on six or eight dishes a day.  This might have been too rapid a pace for some.  Others might have wanted more.  Try to get a specific agenda.  Ask what recipes you're doing and how long you'll be spending in the kitchen.  How much free time will you have?  What's the balance of sightseeing to cooking and is that sightseeing related to the food?

What are the facilities like?

We loved the dual-centre aspect of our Gascon course, going between restaurant facilities and a home-style kitchen.  The latter had been carefully designed to accommodate students, however, with plenty of room for each of us to have our own workspace.  Other cooking schools have complete workspace/stovetop/oven set-ups for each student.  I think that would have been overkill for our small group, and we learned from each other by all working at the same counter.  There's no right or wrong here, but there could be a lot of variables and it's worth asking.  Note that for very tall people, counter height can be an issue, especially if you're bending over one for six hours straight. If standing for long stretches is an issue, ask about stools.

Teacher-to-student balance.
Obviously, the better the ratio, the more attention you'll get.  But this isn't just about numbers.  It's worth asking how much the teacher demonstrates v. how much you actually produce.  How hands-on are the instructors as far as evaluating your individual style and coaching you, specifically?  Assuming you're in a foreign country, what are the instructor's native languages?  You're probably going to want to get into significant detail, and you want to be able to do that in a language you share.  Check out TripAdvisor, which is probably better at giving a clue on this kind of thing than a school's marketing material.  Personalities are important to making a course work, and you want to try to get a sense of what the people running it are actually like.

What other types of people?
Speaking of personalities ... the other people on the course are the big, intangible factor you can't control.  It's definitely a risk factor for this kind of holiday.  You're going to be thrown together with people you've never met, to spend almost every waking minute with them for days.  We were lucky to have a fun, generally homogenous group.  Yet one with enough variety in age, sex and life experience to make things interesting.  I have a friend who went to a similarly formatted course in which her other students ... two much older people, somewhat unfriendly, with no interest in socialising ... cast a cloud over the whole thing.  Our host told stories of hard drinking, hard partying groups with more interest in the unlimited wine than in the nuances of pastry prep.  Had people like that been in the same class as us, it would have been tough going.  It's hard to predict, but you can certainly ask questions about average ages, where people tend to come from, what people's interest levels are, etc., to at least try to end up on a course with classmates of similar outlook.

Cooking school top tips to use in your own kitchen

The lasting value of any cooking school comes from the tips and techniques you pick up while there. Every recipe you could desire is free; just an internet search away.  Getting tips from experts and specific coaching on how your cooking style could be better, however, is a rare and wonderful thing.

Here's an overview of the top things we took away from our days in the kitchen with David and Bernard.

Knives and knife skills are at the heart of all cooking.  Get better at these, and everything else will improve.  I make the common mistake of extending my index finger along the top of the knife, rather than wrapping it securely around the handle.  It slows me down and limits my control.  I'm working on that.  And on the technique of holding whatever I'm cutting with a half-clenched fist, bent-in fingers anchoring the food and protruding knuckles forming a safety guard.  David spotted these issues early on, and corrected me each time I slipped into my old ways, which helped enormously.

Keep your knife steel ready and sharpen up your edges before each cooking session.  Ours lived in a drawer, only used when things started to feel dull.  Wrong!  This simple habit ensures that your blades are always in top shape.

Dread dicing onions because they make you cry?  It's because you're crunching rather than gliding.  Onions release their eye-watering chemical when you bruise their skin.  Which you'll do if you bang or crunch your knife down on them.  Forget that scene in Julie and Julia.  A smooth, gentle glide through the vegetable with a very sharp knife doesn't bruise anything, thus will keep your eyes clear.

When boning out meat, let gravity do half the work for you.  Hold the bone so the meat is falling down and away, then use your knife in swift, small cuts to assist the natural process of the unsupported flesh falling away from the bone.

Stocks are the flavour backbone of so many dishes, and this course confirmed something I already do.  Keep bags in your freezer for scraps and bones.  I always have one for poultry, but need to start one for fish and another for beef.  When the bag fills up, take it out and make stock.  In general, it's always better to buy your meat on the bone.  Not only is it better value for money, but everything you cut off goes into your stock, which then becomes your sauce.

Use kitchen roll (paper towel) to absorb fats from the top of cooling stocks.  I generally put the stock in the fridge and skim the chilled fats off the top, but this inevitably includes stock in the fat.  Fold the paper into a cartouche to cover the surface of your container, and dab.  The rising fat naturally latches on to the paper, leaving you with clear broth.

All those dire warnings about touching pastry as little as possible can be ignored.  David had us treating our shortcrust like bread, kneading it until the glutens formed and the dough felt stretchy.  The result was the crispest pastry I've ever made.

Of course, it also could have been because of this top tip:  When starting out the pastry by cutting your butter and flour together, take lumps between your fingers and raise your hand into the air as you  work the ingredients into crumbs, letting them fall back into the bowl from a height.  This ads air and makes your crumbs finer.

Keep an old wire sieve around for steaming large veg.  Invert it, squash it into the appropriate shape, pop it in a pan of simmering water and put your veg on top.  Particularly ideal for artichoke.

Keep a mix of good quality sea salt and pepper, rough ground, mixed in a container for constant and easy access.  You almost always use the two together in recipes, so why keep going for two separate containers?

Use only light brown sugar on the top of your creme brûlée.  White will never crystallise properly to form the crunchy top you want, and you'll spend much more time on the attempt, warming the cream.  below that's supposed to be cold and dense.  Dark brown, on the other hand, will burn too easily.

Gingerbread isn't just for Christmas.  Play around with using it as a sweet and spicy counterpoint for savoury dishes.  We learned that it's an excellent accompaniment for foie gras.  More surprising was Bernard's technique for warming goat's cheese to put atop salads.  Place your goat's cheese on a thin slice of gingerbread.  Wrap like a parcel in bric pastry.  (This is a North African sheet pastry similar to phyllo.  In the UK, carried by Waitrose or available for order online.  You can use phyllo as an alternative.)  Fry in a pan to crisp the pastry and melt the cheese.  The gingerbread is hardly noticeable as a separate element, but provides a subtle flavour punch that really kicks this basic up a notch.

Finally ... every cooking programme points this out, but most people ignore it.  Read the recipe first, then do your mise en place.  That is, your set up ... measure your ingredients, put everything out and ready for use.  Even under supervision, in an advanced course, a fair few preparations went to the bin because someone had mis-read a step, or mis-measured an ingredient.  Prepare properly for smooth results.

The Gascony Cookery School: I can't imagine residential cooking schools get better than this

I've done a lot of one-day cooking courses, and found something to love about each one.  But this holiday had a new edge: a residential course.  Four intensive days of cooking with a bit of gastronomic sightseeing, deep in the heart of one of France's most famous regions for cuisine.

It was fabulous.   So great, in fact, I'm a bit worried about what will happen if we try another.  No stories I've heard from people who've done cooking-centred holidays seem to be quite as fabulous as the experience we've just had.

The Gascony Cookery School combines the expert attention of two professional chefs with a stunning location and a delectable repertoire of dishes.  Add a week of lovely weather, a pleasant combination of fellow students, and evenings of free-flowing local wines, and you start to imagine the magic.  And, of course, we ate like princes on the gourmet fare we'd created earlier each day.

Given our experience, we'd signed up to the advanced course.  The highlights for me started with plenty of work on butchery skills, including top tips on knife care, boning out a delicate quail, taking apart an entire duck (head and feet still on), tunnel boning that bird's thighs and legs and boning out lamb noisettes.  Stuffing was a revelation.  After working with that quail we wrapped its boneless body around a ball of stuffing, creating what looked like a complete bird for roasting but would deliver effortless, boneless slices to the diner.  (See the photo below.)  Given what a pain quail usually is to eat, this is a blockbuster dish.  We did another stuffing for the duck legs, and yet another for duck neck.  On the latter, the duck skin essentially becomes a crispy crackling casing for a version of pork sausage.

Duck, in fact, was the most memorable meat of the course.  Not a surprise here in the home of foie gras, where a whole industry devoted to the birds' enlarged livers produces massive, unctuously-rich breasts, thighs and legs as a bi-product.  We spent a morning producing foie gras ourselves, from traditional preserving to more modern, gourmet approaches.  (This was a customised touch for us, since it's a feature of the basic course we hadn't attended.)  We treated breasts for air-dried

preservation, making a kind of duck prosciutto that's common in Gascony but rarely seen outside of it.  And is, as you'd imagine, delicious. 

We made confit duck legs after rendering the fat from all the skin scraps and extra parts we trimmed off while breaking down the bird.  When you're paying £3 for a small jar of duck fat, the confit process (simmering meat in its own fat to preserve it) seems outrageously expensive.  When you see how much fat comes off one of these ducks, you realise it's the most simple, organic form of preservation imaginable.  The more I cook, the more I find buying parts only rather than whole birds a huge waste.  You can work miracles with the carcass, scraps and offcuts.  

Pastry work came next on my appreciation list, giving me a new confidence with pate brisee (basic shortcrust pastry for pies and tarts) and a comfort with frangipane that will no doubt make it a regular on our dinner party menus.  On another day, I came to a full understanding of exactly why my Christmas croquembouche was a disaster, and how I can do it again without worry. The course also de-mystified savoury mousses, my experience with a tasty prawn version encouraging me to explore the whole genre more.

I walked away with a sheaf of recipes, but they aren't really the point of an experience like this.  I probably had directions for most of this stuff in the cookbooks already in our kitchen.  It's the tips and techniques that ultimately differentiate a school like this, and I got plenty ... from correcting my knife grip to getting more air into my pastry.  So many, in fact, that I'll devote the next entry to the top tips from the programme.

I have no doubt the quality of both instruction and recipes, plus overall enjoyment, was down to the trio running things.  I suspect I got very lucky on my first try.  I doubt many residential cooking programmes have teams as competent, dedicated and interesting as this.

A winning Anglo-French team
English proprietors David and Vicky Chance moved to Gramont in 2002, and it's easy to see what drew them.  The village is a tiny rural idyll ideally suited to tourism, clinging to a lofty hilltop with views on clear days all the way to the distant Pyrenees.  Fewer than 20 permanent residents live in the string of historic properties that radiate out from the Renaissance chateau at its heart, but holiday lets and cooking school classes can easily double that number.  I worried that the locals might resent the incomers, but it was quite the opposite.

On the first night, we were invited to a barbecue at the pint-sized town hall, thrown open to allow one of the residents to show all his neighbours and friends his photos from his recent trip to the Grand Canyon.  We didn't stay for dinner (David was cooking for us), but that welcoming insight into country village life was charming and, I suspect, not unusual.

Gramont's heart is comprised of a trio of buildings:  the chateau, the Romanesque church facing it and a restaurant called Le Petit Feuillant between the two.  The restaurant, which is also home to an extraordinary little museum on the history of local wine and Armagnac production, is a second anchor to the cooking school.  The Chances renovated a group of old farm buildings in the shadow of the Chateau, little more than a 100-yard stroll from the Petit Feuillant.  As they became close to the owner, Bernard Corbiere, they started to think those renovated rooms could become more than the standard gite or chambre d'hôte accommodation provided by most of the Brits who restore properties here.  David also had a history in restaurants, and the Chances ran a catering company back in the UK.

The rest is history.  And, given the accolades the place is getting in the international press, a very impressive history too.

Cooking alternates between Bernard in his restaurant and David in his impressive farmhouse kitchen, where a large, marble-topped island can accommodate up to eight students at once.  (We had six.)  Vicky is an omnipresent "back of house", keeping everything running and stepping to the fore on market day to lead tours of the local towns.  The three make a formidable team, and the variety of interaction adds to both the education and the overall enjoyment.  You will get more from Bernard, however, if you can follow some basic French as, unsurprisingly, he's far more animated when he can swing into his native tongue.  Had the nuns told me that I'd be using my French to understand the nuances of gourmet cuisine in later years, I might have studied harder.

 One of the points of any cooking school, of course, is that you get to taste what you make, and the dining alternates locations, too.   Most lunches and some dinners were in the picturesque Petit Feuillant, which is clearly a "destination restaurant" for many ... tourist and local alike ... who'll drive some distance across this rural landscape for Bernard's food.  (He's famous for his award-winning garlic soup, and does a mean cassoulet.)  Happy hour started every night by about 6pm on David and Vicky's loggia; essentially a roofed, outdoor dining room running the length of the main house with jaw-dropping views over the countryside.  Al fresco dinners here, sometimes including other British expats who drop in to sample students' efforts (and then reciprocate with a tour of their restored mill house later in the course) are a perfect way to end a day.

Not for the faint hearted
This is a serious agenda that works students hard.  We were exhausted and much in need of those happy hour drinks.  Every dinner included amazement at how much we produced in just one day, and most people turned in by 10 pm.  I sense that many other residential culinary courses pad out the cooking with lots of sightseeing and breaks by a pool.  Our agenda did feature two outings ... one day to a local market, another dedicated to local wine and Armagnac ... but neither made any concession to the prime objective of cooking.  We were in the kitchen before and after the sightseeing.  There's even a bit of deadline pressure, as at least one meal is produced by the team restaurant-style, David organising you into an assembly line to produce elegant, fine-dining style plates at a rapid pace.  Getting a large table served more or less at the same time, with food still piping hot and the presentation of each identical is an art.  Thankfully, on other nights the team plated and served what we'd made, as we slumped in relief.

Both Bencards were keen to get up to our elbows in duck carcasses, of course.  But there's an option for partners who don't want to cook (offered at a cheaper rate).  They dine with the rest of the students and come on the outings, with free time while we're cooking.  We had one such husband on our course, and he turned out to be a brilliant addition.  With no insight into the production, he gave us valuable commentary on the dishes.  The course price is £1,230 per person, which includes all of the instruction, the outings, accommodation in beautifully restored rooms done up in French country style, all the food and free flowing wine and libations throughout.

For both the basic and advanced course, you usually arrive on a Sunday and depart Friday morning.  It's advertised as a six day course, but the first and last days are only dining and arrivals or departures; cooking school is just the four middle days.  When I originally considered the course, four days seemed a bit short.  With this level of immersion, however, it was plenty.  Frankly, I'm not sure my brain could have taken in much more, and I certainly couldn't have kept eating at that pace.

If there's any drawback to cooking school in Gascony, it's the richness of the cuisine.  We were making and consuming dishes that most of us would consider to be special occasion food.  For every lunch and dinner.

It is a glutton's fantasy, but by day four you start to edge towards too much of a good thing.  (Anyone who uses the words "too rich" more than twice a year may want to consider a different cuisine.)  David, Vicky and Bernard wisely know when to pull the plug.

And, of course, by ending such a potent, concentrated experience just a bit sooner than you might want, the Gramont team wisely leaves you hungry for more.  I have my greedy eyes on their charcuterie course.  Or, better yet, if you can get six people together, David will customise a week just for you.  Who's in?

Here's why foodies need to wake up to Gascony

People greeted the announcement that I was off to Gascony for a fortnight with polite puzzlement.

Many had some sense that it was a southern bit of France that was not Provence.  Foodies knew it as the home of foie gras and Armagnac.  Literary fans recognised the home province of d'Artagnan, history buffs the lands of the great Eleanor of Aquitaine.  But nobody I spoke to had ever been here, and even those who could call those headline facts to mind knew little more.

An article in Conde Nast Traveler magazine (read it here) had triggered my curiosity two years ago.  The author had compared Gascony to Tuscany, writing with giddy enthusiasm that the French province was far better.  I wanted to investigate this travesty.  And, given that my husband wasn't keen on the Italian heartland, but is a Francophile who frequently worships at the twin altars of duck and Armagnac, I knew Gascony would be a popular choice.  When we stumbled upon an article about   a cooking school in the region while researching destinations for the husband's big birthday year, it seemed a sign to take some action.

Sitting here on the patio of our gite (holiday cottage) between the ancient towns of Condom and Montreal, eight holiday days behind me and seven stretching ahead, I understand where the Traveler writer was coming from.  The similarities between this place and the Tuscany I know so well are clear ... perhaps one of the reasons I feel more at ease here than in any other part of France I've visited.

Both places share the heritage of the Roman empire, most notably with established roads between towns and a long history of wine making.  In the Middle Ages, both suffered through brutal conflicts (Guelphs v Ghibillines in Italy, English v French in Gascony) that drove their people into fortified hilltop towns. Civil war is hell, but at least the Medieval version left an impressive architectural legacy.  Both were mostly left out of industrial revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries, preserving

a highly agricultural, village-based way of life.  That also meant gruelling poverty in both places until very recently, when increases in tourism, food and wine export, and expats restoring old properties have changed the financial base.

The landscape of both places shares sensuously undulating hills, often criss-crossed by vineyards.  Ancient fortified villages sit on hilltops, their venerable church steeples providing navigation points.  Lines of tall, thin trees border the roads, though Tuscany's cypresses give way to poplars and oaks in Gascony.  The Tuscan hills are higher, its woods thicker.  Gascony is a gentler place and, in this verdant month of May, seems a richer, greener one.  Extremes of temperature rule out olive production here, so Gascon vineyards alternate with fields of grain.  Wildflowers dot the verges and wild roses climb through hedges.

The cultural edge, admittedly, must go to Tuscany.  There's plenty of history in Gascony.  Picturesque towns, intimate chateaux, charming little churches.  But few blockbuster sights, and no masterpieces.  If you want a cultural holiday, you're still off to Italy.  If you want to relax, drink in the whole scene and do a little gentle tourism, Gascony's for you.

The pace of life is similar in both places, with the world still coming to a halt for two hours in the middle of the day.  Tourists be damned, we're closing up and going home for lunch.  Because in both places, food and drink are sacred. Both cuisines spring from the frugality of a peasant tradition that exploits beans and stale bread, both start many dishes with the comfortable base of onion and garlic, and both have a thriving truffle industry (though we've yet to bump into the latter in Gascony).  Both stick to local produce and traditions and, by embracing that concept of terroir, it's in gastronomy that the regions differ most.

The duck rules here in Gascony, followed closely by the goose and the pig.  (In Tuscany, beef and wild boar are the celebratory meats.)  Gascony supports neither olives or, surprisingly, dairy herds, so the typical cooking medium is neither olive oil or butter.  It's duck fat.  We pay £3 for a little jar at home; you'll get 1 kilo blocks here for less.  We learned why when we broke down one of the region's famous foie gras ducks.  With up to an inch of fatty skin all over their bodies, the rendered scraps from one duck will keep a kitchen going for a while. And, it turns out, the saturated fats in duck are better for you than either olive oil or butter.  Gascon ducks are bigger and more succulent than any other duck you've had, because they're all corn-fed, gluttonous by-products of foie gras creation.

Something of which I'll write more in a later entry.

This is, admittedly, a heavier cuisine.  There's more of a pastry tradition here, while the Tuscans will default to fruit, ices or gelato in a natural response to their hotter climate.  Potatoes take the place of pasta.  Both regions produce a wide range of wines to wash all that food down with, but here Gascony may have the edge on variety.  Tuscany offers an abundance of reds with some average whites in the minority; Gascony is heavier on whites, and produces lots of roses and reds.

We haven't found any exceptional local bottles yet but, of course, Gascony is a satellite of the ancient regional capital of Bordeaux.  Thus the cheap immediately local shares shelf space with world-beating almost-locals.  But Gascony really edges ahead on the other alcoholic drinks.  Beyond wine, Tuscany offers Vin Santo and Limoncello.  Gascony can give you the sweet stuff in a wine called Floc, three regions of Armagnac production and a variety of Armagnac-based liqueurs.  One of the latter, called Pousse Rapiere, is my favourite discovery of the trip thus far.

On one very important front, Gascony is surging far ahead.  It is, quite simply, easier.  Holidays in Italy always balance delights of food and culture with hard work.  The roads are always in poor repair, processes always seem a bit inefficient and our Italian holiday rentals have been charming but a bit worse-for-wear.  Perhaps we've simply gotten lucky here, but Gascony seems to have moved past all those problems.  Roads are in great shape, signage is clear.  Grocery stores are sparkling models of convenience.  Both places we've stayed are models of renovation, retaining historic elements like beams and stonework while giving us modern, spotlessly clean, comfortably furnished interiors.

In short, the Traveler writer was right.  Gascony is one of the best kept secrets in Europe, especially for gastronomes.  In future entries I'll explain why.