Posted by Admin in News on September 6, 2021
French House Party Carcassonne has the perfect quick-fix answer to all this. Raise a cheer because TWO six-day residential courses are on the horizon over the next month.
From 24 September our celebrated Gourmet Explorer cookery course will whet a few appetites – and as well as that on we simply can’t wait until 2 October when the first Creative Writing course in two years will take place. Hurrah for freedom!
There have been a couple of exciting tweaks in tutor line-ups for both courses (see details below) but the biggest new factor is that to ensure safety for everyone, in accordance with the law in France we will need all-comers to have proof of their doubly-vaccinated status. (For returners to the UK, we will help you with any PCR arrangements which are needed.)
Here are the facts:
Jean-Marc Boyer
Gregory Legros
Leading the culinary team is our regular super-chef Jean-Marc Boyer, owner of the Michelin* Le Puits de Tresor in Lastours. It is now 12 years since the inspirational Jean-Marc began teaching at FHP (he’s had his Michelin star for even longer than that) – and he will no doubt be working his usual magic this month with guests whose desire is to raise their cookery skills to a higher plane.
Joining him will be another local star, Gregory Legros. Greg is a world-class chef whose career has taken him to the kitchens of some of the most prestigious hotels and restaurants in the world. This year he returned from the five-star hotel in Oman where he was head patisserie chef; prior to that, he spent years in the same role at the impressive Sandy Lane Hotel in Barbados.
Now he’s back in the Languedoc with his wife and family and aside from his teaching role training other professional chefs in the region, his own separate enterprise is creating magnificent cakes to order.
Along with outings to restaurants and other food and wine production visits, guests on this course are guaranteed an amazing six days of using and learning about the region’s delicacies from French House Party’s masters of the culinary arts.
All-inclusive Gourmet Explorer price: £1390 pp (single occupancy supplement £200; non-participant sharing participant’s room £200 reduction). Click/tap here to enquire or book!
Whether you’re new to writing or an established author, whether you’re a poet or a prose-writer, this course offers the chance to write, play, experiment and share your work under the guidance of an experienced writer and creative writing mentor.
Creating character, atmosphere and coherent structures; studying plot, pace, dialogue, imagery, the power and economy of language – these are topics which will be explored.
Rosie Garland is the talented tutor for this course. Rosie writes poetry, long and short fiction and sings with post-punk band The March Violets.
Her work appears in The Guardian and elsewhere. Her latest poetry collection ‘What Girls do the Dark’ is shortlisted for the Polari Prize 2021. She has long experience of running workshops – notably with the Arvon Foundation – and is a creative writing mentor with The Ruppin Agency.
She’s written three novels: The Palace of Curiosities, Vixen, and The Night Brother, which the Times described as “a delight… with shades of Angela Carter.”
For more impressive information about Rosie, consult her website: www.rosiegarland.com
Rosie Garland
NB. Our regular Creative Writing tutor Sarah Hymas will be back with The French House Party from 11 June, 2022
All-inclusive Creative Writing course price: £995 pp (single occupancy supplement £60; non-participant sharing participant’s room £150 reduction). Click/tap here to enquire or book!
Posted by Admin in News on April 27, 2018
This is a tiny movie but the shrimps sautéed in whisky and cream are giants!
Posted by Admin in News on July 1, 2017
From 1st July 2017, you can make a payment for tickets, bookings, deposits etc. with your card directly on our website. Click or tap here to visit our payments page!
Posted by Admin in News on July 25, 2016
We also have places left on Dean’s legendary French House Party summer songwriting course (now running for 7 years), and have some crazy last summer discounts!
To book tickets or to learn songwriting under Dean’s tutelage you can contact us on twitter, call us, email us or fill in our booking enquiry form.
But be quick, Dean’s course and Summer concert in southern France are less than a week away!
A native of Carcassonne, Jean-Marc Boyer earned his reputation as one of France’s dynamic young chefs. He is much feted in his homeland with awards – among them a Michelin Star in 2007 – and receives glowing reviews in numerous publications and restaurant guides as well as international acclaim from high-profile chefs who have long recognised his talent. He also makes regular appearances on television, most recently featuring in an hour-long programme on the top French Channel TF1. He has worked on an annual as visiting guest celebrity chef for top gastronomic restaurants in Japan, China, Shanghai, New York and Norway.
Having trained in Paris, Jean-Marc spent more than 20 years in the capital city, working with some of the country’s greatest chefs at Michelin-starred restaurants, including 12 years at the 3* Ambrosie under Bernard Pacaund and finally at the Ritz. Returning to the Languedoc, he now enthusiastically produces fine local cuisine at his restaurant Le Puits de Tresor in the ancient Cathar town of Lastours. Jean-Marc is passionate about his work and sees himself as an artisan, talking of creating dishes spontaneously and instinctively, using the local and seasonal produce grown and reared in the area. He sums up his philosophy in three words: ‘Quality, authenticity and rigour’
Originally from Gers, Rémi Touja grew up amongst vineyards, cereal crops and farm poultry. It was therefore natural that his parents would pass on the value of quality products and the pleasure of cooking with them.
With this culinary background, he perfected his art at the hotel school of Auch, before working for numerous Michelin-starred restaurants across the length and breadth of France where he developed his taste for excellence.
In 2013, his passion and creativity led him to become French Dessert Champion, winning the much sought-after Sucre d’Or national patisserie championship prize for pastry chefs and in 2016 he realised his entrepreneurial dream by opening what has become a most renowned patisserie shop in Carcassonne.
‘When I imagine patisserie, I do everything I can to create emotion, pleasure and new sensations, and for that we must continually innovate. An explosion of different flavors in the mouth one after the other together with a joyful melée of textures!’
Chef-Tutor Laurent Jeannin modestly claims to be something of a whizz when it comes to sauces.
Laurent greatly impressed recent cookery course participants with his culinary flair, enthusiasm and warmth of approach – as a quick look at our Trip Advisor page illustrates. Could that be because he was born in France’s ‘capital of gastronomy’ Lyon, where his culinary education and training came from a number of Michelin-Star chefs? Then again, maybe the later experience of running his own restaurants or of being Head Chef in Vienna, Cannes, Florida and North Carolina gave him valuable insight into making the sort of food which draws rounds of applause.
In Autumn 2016 Laurent joined our own regular Michelin-Star chef Jean Marc Boyer to co-teach the French House Party Gourmet Explorer and Cuisine in Brief courses and he delighted our guests with his talent, good humour and wizardry with sauces. Again and again, guests booking with us have declared that French sauces are high on their list of learning ‘wants’, so Laurent’s specialist sauces went down a treat: the fabulous coffee sauce with guinea fowl and the out-of-this-world grapes-enhanced sauce he served with quail were to die for. Laurent joined our top team of chefs and is now a regular, specialising in classic French recipes.
