Short Travel: Loire Valley

In the tiny french village of Gizeux in the Loire Valley, Yarra Valley chef Richard Hauptmann is on a mission: to buy a six-month-old dressed pig. He’s up earlier than usual, even earlier than his six Australian students who are here to learn how to butcher and prepare this handsome beast in a nose-to-tail session.

He’s successful and once back in the kitchen, he puts the carcass onto the stainless steel workbench, removes his jaunty beret, dons his apron and, with eager students around, gets straight into it. Along with half-a-dozen new friends, I’m on an eight-day culinary tour, Yarra Valley @ Loire Valley, hosted by Richard and his partner, Lisa O’Connor. We’re based on the La Briche property, 40 minutes from the city of Tours.

On our first day we help bone, slice, chop, dice and prepare various pork cuts for classic French dishes such as cassoulet (casserole) and choucroute (sauerkraut served with pork). We also learn how to make boudins blancs (white pork sausages) with local expert Anita Goussé, whose secret recipe is closely guarded, and tasty smallgoods such as rillettes (meat pounded to a smooth paste), fromage de tête (pig’s head terrine) and pâté en croute (pâté baked in pastry), which are planned for the week’s lunches and picnic fare.

Richard has more than 25 years experience in some of Melbourne’s top restaurants, followed by restaurants at the Chateau Yering and the Healesville Hotel in the Yarra Valley, and has also gained a reputation in recent years for his innovative Porcine Pursuits: all-day hands-on workshops turning rare breed Large Black pigs into cold cuts. Lisa is well known for her award-winning Jam Lady Jam and Handmade in Healesville products that sell nationally and are served in restaurants, hotels and produce stores as far afield as Singapore and Dubai.

Each September, the talented pair swap their base in the Yarra Valley for a few weeks in the Loire Valley and invite eight food lovers to join them. Having lived at La Briche over 20 years ago, Lisa was welcomed back by its owners, who assist during the culinary week with logistics and offer their considerable knowledge of the area.

It’s a comfortable one-hour train ride from Paris to the station at Saint Pierre des Corps in Tours, where Richard and Lisa meet guests and transfer them through the château-dotted countryside. Our corner of the property has its own chapel with stained glass windows, thriving vegetable garden and gentle woodlands that are carpeted with tiny pink and white wild cyclamen plants.

Accommodation is comfortable and rustic with shared bathrooms, and is just metres from the spacious kitchen and welcoming dining room, which is the heart of the complex. Here guests gather to enjoy breakfast at a large communal table seated on church pews, and share dinners after drinks and canapés by a warming country hearth.

Richard’s comprehensive culinary program teaches techniques used to prepare confit de canard (duck confit), coq au vin (chicken casserole cooked in wine) and lapin aux pruneaux (rabbit with prunes), plus classic regional desserts such as the almond-filled Pithivier puff pastry tart, the popular upside-down apple tarte Tatin and the magnificent gâteau nougat de Tours (Tours nougat cake).

One day we stock up on fresh produce at the nearby Langeais market, sampling handmade nougat and local cheeses as we go, and later visit adjacent Château de Langeais, where Anne de Bretagne married the King of France in 1491 and which now houses an impressive collection of tapestries.

A visit to Château de Villandry is highly anticipated and as we arrive at this world-famous potager (kitchen garden), threatening clouds part and the sun spotlights plump produce and perfect blooms growing in arguably the most magnificent vegetable garden in the world. We later enjoy a tasting of local regional Vouvray wines made from chenin blanc grapes and picnic on our homemade gourmet treats.

Another morning we set off for the Tours indoor market where Lisa has organised an indulgent oyster tasting with a specialist from Cancale, Brittany’s oyster capital, which produces some 15,000 tonnes of oysters a year. It’s said that King Louis XIV requested Cancale oysters be sent to him in Versailles daily, while Napoleon Bonaparte also relished the briny, flat molluscs. Richard checks out other seafood stalls and buys langoustines, mussels, scallops and prawns for a “seafood extravaganza” dinner that night.

While there’s something happening all the time, there’s no obligation to don an apron, but nobody wants to miss out, either. In between cooking, we pluck damson plums from hedgerows to make jam and flavour gin, forage for Blond des Flandres snails in the surrounding woodlands and pick ears of corn, sun-ripened tomatoes and more from the on-site garden. Local regional wines from Vouvray, Bourgueil and Chinon flow generously throughout the week, plus wines from the owner’s own private cellar.

Like all good hosts, they keep the best for last: a farewell dinner in the chapel with a surprise menu of our plump snails cooked with girolles (chanterelles) for entrée, followed by succulent local Charolais côte de boeuf (beef rib steak) with potato gratin and the most delicious, buttery tarte Tatin with cinnamon ice-cream for dessert. It’s a fitting finale to a week of classic French flavours, and we’ve been made to feel quite a part of the small community during our stay – a lovely bonus, n’est-ce pas?

The writer travelled courtesy of Yarra Valley @ Loire Valley and International Rail.

Photography Tricia Welsh.

As seen in Feast magazine, August 2014, Issue 34. For more recipes and articles, pick up a copy of this month's Feast magazine or check out our great subscriptions offers here.