Christmas kitchen tips from Rigaud chef Steve Carss

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Twitt

Red-onion-jamWill you be busy in the kitchen this Christmas? I’m super envious of chef’s lucky family who are sitting down to Steve’s Christmas lunch this year. I was chatting to him about what he’s cooking (goose is on the cards) and about what might make life easier for everyone in my kitchen. He laughs at my total lack of culinary prowess so taking pity on my family he’s provided this recipe for his most excellent Chicken Liver Parfait. He absolutely assures me that this is a fail-safe, dead cert winner and that even I can expect a result.

One thing I have worked out for myself is that the onion jam is pretty handy to have around. It’s a great addition to a cheese board or the cold cuts on Boxing day, or add it to freshly chopped tomato and maybe a handful of basil and it makes a truly delicious bruschetta topping. Pop a spoonful on a square of puff pastry with a slice of goat’s cheese and you have a melting little tart and if you’re considering a little foie gras over the festive season then this is the perfect topping…

Chicken liver parfait, with red onion jam and toasted brioche

“Fantastic starter for Christmas day, I always make this at home for Christmas, it’s easy, you can make it in advance and everybody loves it” Steve Carss

For the parfait

500 g Chicken livers

300 g Hot melted butter

100 ml White wine

100 ml Madeira

200 ml Port

100 g Shallots finely chopped

Thyme

1 Garlic clove

2 Eggs

2 Egg yolks

2 tsp salt

1 tsp cracked black pepper

You need a buttered terrine and also a bain-marie that will fit into your oven. Set your oven to 140C.

Sweat the chopped shallots, thyme and garlic for three to five minutes, then add the wine, Madeira and port. Reduce this to a jam like consistency.

Separately melt butter then add the butter, the wine and shallot reduction, along with the livers, the eggs and the salt to a blender and blitz it up, to emulsify. Pour into greased terrine and cook in bain-marie for about 45 mins turning half way through cooking. It’s cooked when it reaches 65C, or when you tilt the terrine, the parfait should remain in place but bulge slightly. Leave the terrine to cool then chill in fridge for at least four hours. It tastes better if it’s been left to mature for a day.

Serve with a slice of warm, toasted brioche and the onion jam.

For the jam

500g Red onions finely sliced

40g Sunflower oil

50g Soft brown sugar

100ml Red wine

80ml Red wine Vinegar

1 tsp Salt

1 tsp Fresh cracked Black pepper

Heat oil in a pan thick based pan, add the onions and sugar and cook over a high heat for 7 -10 minutes until the onions are soft and caramelised.

Add the red wine and red wine vinegar and simmer for 20 – 30 minutes until reduced and quite thick. Season with salt and pepper (yes, you really need that much seasoning)

Sterilise your jars in the oven at 160C for around 15 minutes then once they have cooled add the hot jam to jars and pop the lid on. This will keep for up to 18 months although you’ll probably get through this quantity before the Christmas tree is packed away.

The inaugural Bread & Wine weekend

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Twitt

montage

The inaugural Bread and Wine weekends took place this autumn and were a considered a complete success. As predicted it took chef Steve Carss no time at all to find his demonstration patter and within 30 minutes of arriving at the chateau we had guests making their own bread.

Our first group was a full house of twelve guests, consisting of the fabulous @Markboltonphoto and his assorted entourage of Bristol mates, alongside our lovely returning American clients Grace and Larry, who had been on a previous wine course at Rigaud.

Proceedings kicked off with a couple of glasses of fizz in the lounge before course leader, Peter Tucker, brought the group through to the kitchen where we had twelve work stations complete with brand new mixing bowls, water, flour, yeast and Rigaud branded aprons laid out and ready to go. It was one of those very proud moments for the chateau team.

Steve introduced his ‘slap & tickle’ method of needing dough whilst Peter answered their questions such as “what is Yeast?” It didn’t take long before the badly behaved boy guests were slapping backsides with flour covered hands but we did eventually get to the stage where the chefs were happy and we could all retire to bar for a quick tasting of white wines from South West France. If nothing else this week gave us an excuse to drink non-Bordeaux wines.

The Friday was a crisp but sunny and rather ‘lifestyle magazine’ perfect for lunch in the vegetable garden with home made pizzas cooked in the newly installed bread oven.

Chateau Villemaurine in St. Emilion was the venue for the afternoon tour and tasting before returning to Rigaud and meeting up with Paddy O’Flynn, (www.TheWineBuff.com) with his mate Pierre, who quite by chance happened to be the owner/winemaker of Chateau Petit Fombrauge, one of the wines chosen for the exceptional gourmet dinner that night.

Guests drank into the wee small hours so it was a slower start to proceedings on the Saturday when chef introduced the mystical concept of “the mother”, a living, breathing and reproducing yeast that needs feeding every day. Two starters were used, one which is thirty years old and provided by our baker, Phillipe and one that Steve had been working on for just a month based on figs and grapes from the gardens. If you want to know about this you’ll have to book on to the next course.

The afternoon involved a trip to Sauterne where it was ‘Portes Ouvertes’ (open doors). This is the dream ticket of French tasting tours – the opportunity to rock up, take a quick look at the chai, taste the produce and move on to the next place. We took in four chateaux in total including 1er Grand Cru Classé   Chateau Guiraud. Many purchases were made and shared over dinner, along with some delicious Hospices de Beaune Burgundy wines.

We’re planning to repeat the weekend again, perhaps in April, depending upon uptake. Get in touch if you fancy a relaxed weekend which includes a spot of bread making, a walk in the vegetable garden, maybe a massage, a trip to a couple of chateaux some really delicious food and perhaps a little too much wine, if indeed that is possible?!

Transatlantic Wedding Planning Adds Glamour

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Twitt

OK, so I’m going to admit it. American guests can be a little more demanding than the average Rigaud client and the NY crowd don’t always understand the limitations of our rural French community. So when we took a booking from a Brooklyn bride with roots in the fashion and photography industries it was not without stress that we get things absolutely right.

The bride and groom both come from high profile, creative backgrounds and have a very clear idea of how things should look. The flower brief referenced our all time favourite flower blog, the Brooklyn based Saipua. This inspirational blog comes from hottest flower shop in the hippest city on the planet, so being asked to deliver what they do was no walk in Central Park. From the images here you can see that Hayley came through the scared “Help!” phase and did us proud!

There were some crazy moments over the weekend.  The temperatures were into the 30’s, causing the suited groom to wilt a little so we popped him into the walk in fridge for ten minutes to relax and “chill”.  When the bride made her stunning appearance, thirty five minutes behind schedule, the heavens opened and the wedding party were forced to take shelter in the chateau, but this gave her the ten minutes of calm that she needed before floating down the aisle to the notes of the Kora, an African Harp, which was a first for the Rigaud lawns.

Chefs Steve Carss and new to the team, Rupert Craddock, produced an incredible meal which included the sweetest baby Charantais carrots and beetroots from the Chateau vegetable gardens. They topped the home grown strawberries on the white chocolate mousse with vibrant blue borage flowers and the effect was pure “dessert by Anthropologie”. I was so proud!

The weather was kind for the rest of the day until it was time for the fireworks at which point the chateau was engulfed in one of those dramatic electric storms when the rain falls in sheets and the ground rumbles with the vibration of the thunder. Thankfully our pyro technician had the forethought to wrap all the gunpowder in polythene ahead of the night to while the guests stood under the new bar cover so the grounds were spectacularly illuminated by lightening and “feu d’artifice” at the same time.

The bride and groom were delighted by the drama of it all. They loved, loved, loved that the rain forced guests to stay within the safety of the barn walls and dance the night away.

It was an intimidating booking and not without it’s moments of stress but when the very lovely bride left on Monday morning her comment to me was “Anna, thank you, for everything, it’s all been absolutely perfect” and that was high praise indeed!

 

“A Week in the Chateau Life” – Our own book in print

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Twitt

Late last year, once the client bookings had started to thin we gathered around our kitchen table and together we created a book. The wonders of the internet that make such a thing possible!

It took six of us about ten days from start to finish, with drawings by Marcelle the housekeeper, diagrams from Eric the groundsman, photography from Steve the chef (alongside the work of the very excellent Mark Bolton), IT support from the Badger and layout by Hayley, the chateau stylist.

It’s not a commercial production – none of us is a publishing professional – but in it’s own way I guess it conveys the very spirit of Rigaud. We’re a one off sort of a place with a can do attitude. We can do almost anything, including our own coffee table book.

We don’t expect to sell hard copies since the short run makes it cost prohibitive but you can preview it for free or buy a download to your iPad for just 1.49€, which is, in the words of the Badger “Cheap as Chips!”. You can preview it on the Blurb site here http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/3043054

Of course all this vanity publishing provides cause for celebration and hence we’re planning to launch of the book, next week, here at the chateau. Feel free to come along if you’re in the area. (Tuesday 12th June 2012, 7pm till 9pm.) We’re celebrating with a glass or two of our home-made elderflower Kir, which provides a clue to the follow up book in the pipeline. You’ll have to wait and see what develops there.

Focus on our house white – Chateau Bauduc

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Twitt

We’ve been serving Chateau Bauduc Sauvignon Blanc at Rigaud for several years now and in 2012 it will be our standard house white for party bookings and weddings. We’re in good company with this choice – the same wine has been a house white at Gordon Ramsay (for the past ten years), at Rick Stein’s various restaurants and at the Hotel du Vin establishments.

I love the post on the Bauduc blog in which wine writer Jancis Robinson rates the Bauduc 2009 which retails in the UK at £8.95 more highly than the slightly more expensive Chateau Mouton Rothschild blanc 2009, selling at £70 and only half a point behind the wildly extravagant Chateau Haut Brion blanc 2009 for which you will pay in the region of £750. This makes a Chateau Rigaud wedding look like rather good value when you consider how much of the Bauduc blanc is consumed by guests as part of our package!

Oz Clark also had complimentary comments

“The whites ought to fly off the shelf because they are absolutely the right wine for 2011: the zeitgeist of white wine drinking – the Bauduc Whites hit it bang in the middle”

Oz Clarke, March 2011

If you’re getting married at Rigaud, or you’re attending a wedding or a party here and you get a taste for the Bauduc white then you’ll be delighted to hear that you can buy online, direct from the chateau and expect delivery within three to five days. It would be like having a bit of Rigaud delivered to the door, albeit in fact a bit of Bauduc. But I think you get the drift. www.bauduc.com

The Great Night Market Controversy

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Twitt

The Marché Nocturne season is now in full swing and the Rigaud team supported our local village last night, cue mass hangover this morning. It’s a phenomenon that’s really caught on in the past couple of years, hence the hedgerows are filled with posters advertising the dates and villages for the next few weeks.

The idea is a little like a French take on a pop up restaurant. Village squares are filled with communal trestle tables and the people gather to picnic together, sitting under strings of coloured lights to the strains of an accordion player. Villagers gather together a meal from a range of local suppliers, drink copious quantities of wines, and usually follow it all up with dancing. Great night out for all concerned, N’est pas?

On offer last night were Arcachon oysters, melons grown down by the river, some really delicious escargot cooked in butter, parsley and garlic, a charcuterie producer with some great terrines and pates in jars (we chose the goose), Mr. Banier, the butcher from Castillon with his sarment BBQ, the goat cheese producer from Pessac and of course the local baker since no French meal would be complete without a French stick.

You don’t really need to take your own gear but we like to do things properly so we arrive with our own china, wine glasses, steak knives and even a large antique china platter. Chef, Steve, knocked up a few canapés which went down well with the oysters and the rosé and Mr. Banier happily filled with a very rare steak and chips for eight of us.

The whole thing is utterly charming and incredible value since it’s possible to eat well for 10 euros, buy your wines at cellar door prices and enjoy the spectacular sights of local councillors strutting their stuff on the dance floor.

The controversy in my mind is how this sits with the local restaurant owners. The restaurateurs pay rates and taxes on their premises and keep them open throughout the year in the hope that they will make the bulk of their money over the summer evenings when we’re all tempted to eat out on a more regular basis. Suddenly they are now competing with the night markets for clientele that would previously have been theirs.

To make things worse, they’re competing against their own suppliers, the very businesses that they, the restaurants, support all year long. The butcher, the cheese maker, the baker are all taking free stands on a weekend evening to sell directly to the people who would otherwise have taken a table in a restaurant that night. It doesn’t seem quite right to me.

The night markets are definitely delivering what their audience want – the atmosphere is fabulous and now we’re in the height of the season it’s possible to attend a different night market within twenty minutes of the chateau, from Thursday to Sunday every week. But I do worry for the local restaurants. It must be quite disheartening to find yourself undercut by your cheese supplier and facing empty tables over the summer weekends.

The pressure was on for our French-Irish love match

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Twitt

There was a degree of pressure on the team for the first wedding of the season. The groom is responsible for events, including plenty of high spend weddings, at a leading Irish Country House Hotel and a French man to boot. Xavier clearly “knows his onions” when it comes to wedding planning, banquet delivery and the standards of service to expect. His beautiful bride, Bronagh, manages special events and entertainments for a leading Blue Chip. Between them they’ve planned a few parties and managed a few budgets!

Bronagh was clear about what she wanted from the start which was a bohemian feel, with plenty of colour, a relaxed atmosphere but enough sophistication to satisfy the French side of the family. I think Rigaud was the perfect choice of venue to pull this off and that Hayley, fresh back from her course with McQueen’s, scored maximum points with the flowers, which had a definite meadow feel about them.

The use of coloured ribbons was repeated through the day, with a stunning display in the honeysuckle arch which guests walk through to reach the ceremony and a further curtain of ribbons at the entrance to the barn. Multi coloured heavy satin ribbons wrapped the napkins at the dinner table and all of the shades were picked up in the flowers in shades of orange, red, pink, yellow, green and purple. They were clever not to use blue, which would have been too tricky to match with florals.

For this to look as good as it did you have to be brave and go all out for the big mix with a genuine abundance of cut flowers. It’s not a cheap solution but I have a feeling that Bronagh perfected a look here which will be repeated throughout the year. Boho chic, effortless style, bravo!

 

Mark Bolton Photography Hero

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Twitt

We recently entertained garden and interiors photographer Mark Bolton and his very lovely family, who joined an April House Party here at Rigaud. The weather was great and Mark captured lots of images which will form the basis of a new Chateau Rigaud coffee table book. The team really enjoyed having an official photographer in residence and it was perfect timing before the wedding season began so I think we’ll try and make an annual event of it. It’s a long term project to have a self published glossy hardback which tells the Rigaud story, with a few recipes plus housekeeping and gardening tips thrown in.These are some pictures he took of the Tower Suite which is the room we recommend for brides. The light is fantastic for make up and the view from the window is over the lawns where the ceremony takes place. I think he captures the atmosphere of the room really well. More shots to follow later this week..

Middle aged birds are far more fun

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Twitt

Last week we “changed” the chickens. Our rather fat and confident old hens were boxed up and taken back to the shop they came from and five chic young chicks arrived in their place. The old, or as I prefer to say the “more mature” hens, had become birds of a certain age and their productivity levels had fallen. In fact none of them had laid an egg for several months, despite a return to warmer weather here. I realise the vegetarians won’t like this but it was time for the Poule to arrive au Pot.

The problem with the situation is that the new ladies have proved to be interminably boring. There’s no raucous greeting as you approach the hen house, they don’t brush flirtatiously against your legs in the hope of another scrap, and gone are the knowing, head on one side, glances as they try and attract your attention from the weeding…. They just hover in a nervous teenaged group, whispering to one another. No confidence, no conversation, no fun at all.

I’m wondering if there’s a message here for the middle aged sisterhood?

Refit complete and open for business

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Twitt

It’s been a tense winter refit….Due in the main part to me not getting “The Van” here on time. I did get a bit bored with hearing that we couldn’t do such and such because the materials needed were “on the van”.

When it finally arrived it contained a complete professional kitchen, two sofa’s, eight elegant arm chairs, a roll top bath, 150 litres of designer paint, (one of which had burst open), eleven sheets of stainless steel, a massive 8 cubic metre walk in fridge (flat packed of course), a pair of hand stitched curtains with a four metre drop and two pairs of shoes for the Badger….

Work is now finally complete and the new look chateau has been inaugurated by our No.1 Client who described it as “simply stunning” and their corporate week here as “flawless”… That’s partly why she’s our No.1!

So what have we done exactly?

The new professional kitchen has a spectator gallery for future cookery demonstrations and gourmet house party weekends. Pull up a bar stool and watch the chef in action. We’re planning a series of food and wine weekends and gastro events – see here for more news of these later in the year.

“The Stable” is a purpose designed nursery space, equipped with toys, games, art materials and of course nannies! Plus a dining table for children’s high tea. We’ve always had a great nursery and brilliant childcare at Rigaud but now it’s located downstairs and behind a stable door. The noise will be greatly reduced and no need for the teeny tinies to climb up and down the stairs.

The “New Room” is the imaginative name for our brand new and superior grade bedroom, with roll top bath and walk in shower. It’s another stunner bringing the total number of bedrooms to nine, plus a dorm.

The Gallery has been transformed from the aesthetician’s hell that was Buzz Lightyear meets Simba from The Lion King via the My Little Pony Dream Castle, into the now tranquil space for contemplation. Painted a serene Prussian Blue, with low suspended pendant drum lights it’s going to make an impressive catwalk for this season’s brides.

I know what you’re thinking, if you’ve read this far…. Where are the pictures? We want to see all this sophistication and glamour you speak of! Well patience is a virtue and all WILL be revealed in the near future. We’re just organising a for couple of professional photographers to shoot the chateau in the next couple of months, watch this space for the results!