Jamie and Scott Go Francing: Day 6

Thursday, 22 May 2008

Today turned out to be a very interesting day. One of the reasons we chose this B&B is to take cooking lessons with Christian Caille, who is a Cordon Bleu trained chef. We started with another basic breakfast of bread and coffee before piling into Christian’s VW West Falia and heading into the unknown. We picked up picnic supplies at a Champion, and we were ready to go pick mussels!

We got on well with Christian, who very much reminded us of a French version of Jamie’s dad – a little disorganized with white hair and beard. We eventually made it to Pointe Minard on the Emerald Coast and managed to find a rather steep path down the cliff to the rocks below. We spent an hour or so prying mussels and oysters off the rocks (Jamie eating more oysters than collecting), managing to fill a fairly large basket.

We climbed back up to the top and enjoyed our picnic lunch of bread, cheese, pate, and carrot salad before heading back to St Caradec for dinner and our cooking lesson.

I started by dicing shallots and chopping parsley and peeling boiled potatoes with Christian while Jamie got a tour of the garden from Christiana. We ate the oysters from the shell as a first course, and then got stuck into a demonstration on cooking mussels which actually turned out to be fairly easy. We ate those with the potatoes that we had fried up and then moved on to the salad and cheese, finally followed by a demonstration of Crepes Suzettes. The whole night we spent chatting with Christian and Christiana. We ended the evening with a magical glass of 40 year old calvados – it tasted like heaven in a glass – best beverage I’ve ever had.

Tomorrow is a drive along the Pink Granite Coast then another meal with Christian and Christiana.

Pictures from Day 6: