An American in Amondans

For 30 days this spring (2000) I lived and worked at the Château d’Amondans in France. I had previously spent a week at the château as part of a cooking tour/class and had returned for dinner a few months later. This time I came to spend some extended time in the kitchen and to develop a web site for the facility.

Each day, I sent an email to my wife describing how I had spent the day, what I had learned, how I was feeling, etc. These emails became a journal. The following is an edited version of that journal. The text was pared down to reflect mostly my food experience.

During the editing process, I sometimes found topics that I wanted to expand upon. These expansions are denoted by square brackets. The château is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays so there generally will be no text for those days. Note: Clicking on the small pictures will bring up one or more larger pictures related to the day being described.

Thursday, April 27th:

Well I’m here. I only made one wrong turn in Besançon. The drive took just over two hours from the Basel Airport. When I arrived, Frédéric Médigue [the chef] was in front of the château instructing a painter repainting the main gates, so my welcome was immediate.

My room in the château is spacious. There’s a sink in the room and a shower across the hall. I haven’ t found the toilet, yet. The room overlooks the garden, so I hope I won’t hear the church bell too much. [On a previous visit the church bell was right outside my window and I never was able to sleep through the ringing. It rings every half hour from six in the morning until ten at night, but the church hasn’t been used in years for regular worship! This portion of the third floor of the château is a holdover from when it was used as a cooking school. Except for mine, all the rooms are filled with bunk beds. There’re four toilets to choose from, but only one doesn’t require squatting.]

Ah, those simple French lunches — a salmon-crab terrine with herbs, roast leg of lamb with roasted potatoes, choice of cheeses, warm strawberries with lemon sorbet, fresh breads, two wines, and homemade chocolates. Yes — the simple life! [For the first day, I was invited to eat with the chef and his family. In all there were six of us at each meal: Frédéric, his wife Pascale, and their family.]

I had a simple dinner of langoustines and asparagus in a sauce made of asparagus juice and butter. This was followed by some sole with a simple sauce and plain macaroni, and then raspberry sorbet for dessert.

Friday, April 28th:

It has been a long day. I woke up at 3:30 this morning and decided to get out of bed at 5:30. Spent the time until 9:30 working on the web site. The next 4 hours I was in the kitchen: peeling and dicing [very finely] 1-1/2 pounds of mushrooms, removing 5 pounds of shell fish from their shells [the meat is “unscrewed” from the shell with a needle], cleaning an equal amount of clams, coating 100 of the miniature eclairs with chocolate fondant, and filling another 50 with cream. Later I helped wrap 120 rissoles with brik (it’s like big triangular blocks of head cheese covered in phyllo dough). It was then deep fried. Oh, I also peeled and removed the germ from some garlic. In between, I worked some more on the web site, had some wine with Frédéric and Papu [the chef’s father-in-law], and stood around and watched.

The staff meals are a real contrast to restaurant meals. The staff eats very fast. I’m one of the slow ones! We had a choucroute with smoked pork and sausages for lunch and a tough steak (flap meat) with baked tomato and onion fondue for dinner.

Saturday, April 29th:

I spent part of the day doing prep in the kitchen and part doing web design. My kitchen “thrill” today was peeling peas. It’s sort of like peeling fava beans, only smaller. Plus there was more of them. Your hands get all sticky from the starch, too. [Peeling a quart of peas takes almost two hours. I’d never seen peeled peas before, but they look a pretty green and taste very nice. The process is quite simple: the peas are blanched briefly and then cooled. A small nick is made in the skin with a knife — a bird’s beak knife worked well — and the skin comes off by squeezing the pea slightly.]

Also peeled a few quarts of shallots and “peeled” about 80 asparagus tips. It’s different from the way that I peel the asparagus at home — only the immature leaves are removed — one at a time with a small knife.

I watched the dinner service tonight — it was pretty hectic — sort of controlled pandemonium. [As I observed the kitchen during hectic times over the coming month, I came to view the action like a ballet with twelve dancers performing different patterns that blend into one dance.]

The tent was reserved for a party of 120, but only 80 people showed up. Pascale was livid. At least the sponsor has offered to pay for the full reservation.

Dinner service was completed about 11:30pm and the staff drank some champagne to wind down and to celebrate Roland Stofeth, one of the young line chefs, winning the regional level of a major French cooking contest.

Frédéric and Pascale have been really nice to me. Frédéric has shown me lots of things in the kitchen — I hope I can remember some of them when I go home.

Sunday, April 30th:

The château is closed Sunday nights. Frédéric invited me to join the family for dinner at their house. Frédéric made a simple meal — after the pâté (the château’s own pâté de maison) and before the fresh strawberry sorbet liberated from the restaurant freezer. He lined the bottom of individual au gratin dishes — large ones — with thick slices of bread — actually the rolls left over from lunch. He then doused these liberally with white wine (a Côtes du Jura, the local chardonnay). The bread was then covered with a quarter inch thick layer of comté cheese. These were baked in a 400 °F oven until hot and bubbling. A well was made in the center of each dish with a spoon and an egg broken into the well. The dish was returned to the oven until the whites were set. It tasted fantastic — comfort food à la manière d’Amondans!

Monday, May 1st:

Monday was May Day — a national holiday in socialist France. It was also the end of a 3-day weekend. Reservations were light up until the morning, but lunch service was decent, if not overwhelming. There were no reservations for dinner at one o’clock that afternoon so Frédéric and Pascale decided to close for dinner. A couple of calls for tables came late in the day, but they were turned away.

Unlike Sunday, the luncheon diners didn’t spend all afternoon on the terrace relaxing in the sun and drinking champagne — which requires attention from at least one waiter — usually Pascal Brillard, the head waiter and the person responsible for all the flower arrangements around the château — and Frédéric, who has to visit with the clientele.

There wasn’t much for me to do in the kitchen this morning. My extra pair of hands takes experience away from the students. [While I was in Amondans, the staff consisted of six fulltime workers, including the sous chef, Taïchi Megukami, and six students from Japan. The students are graduates of a culinary academy in Osaka and come to France for five months of practical experience. The students don’t seem to have much knowledge other than knife skills when they arrive. They divide their time between cuisine (the kitchen), the dessert preparation, and service — spending one week in each area before moving to the next.] I did get to seed a few quarts of tomatoes and I learned how to bone a lamb foreleg. Unfortunately, the lambs are butchered differently in the U.S. because this makes a nice boneless roast. It looks like a large chicken leg before it is boned and the boning is similar.

I had dinner with the family again last night — pan-fried langoustines, a simple cheese risotto, and store-bought ice cream bars for dessert! They’re called “Bounty.” They’re made by Mars — the same people that make Peter-Paul Mounds, and they’re the same idea — chocolate covered coconut ice cream. Yum!

Wednesday, May 3rd:

The telephone lines were knocked out by lightning late this afternoon, and, this being France, one has no idea when service will return.

I went shopping with Frédéric this afternoon. There’s a chain of stores in France called Metro that specializes in supplies for restaurants. It’s a French warehouse store specializing in food and supplies! We loaded up three large carts — all-in-all about a thousand dollars’ worth of groceries and supplies. It filled the back of Frédéric’s pick-up truck all the way to the top of the camper shell. [The image of the French chef arising early to go to the public market every morning is mainly for the cameras. Of the three chefs I’ve spent time with, only one went to the market regularly — which in his case was every other week. Most supplies are either delivered or bought from large wholesalers.]

I just drove back from Ornans where I had dinner. The restaurant was a pleasant little place called Restaurant Le Courbet. I finally had some asparagus — a nice salad of warm green and white asparagus with fava beans and tomato confit; then a small steak with a red wine sauce, nice mixed vegetables, and a potato pancake. I finished with a chocolate tart for dessert.

The weather was clear when I drove over, about a 20-minute drive, but it was quite foggy — especially in Amondans which is located at the top of the plateau — when I drove home. The fog was as bad as any I had ever seen in San Francisco.

Thursday, May 4th:

The second night without phone service. Pascale, especially, is climbing the walls. The telephone lines to the Château are functioning, but the switcher inside is burned out. A service man was here before noon and said he had to go back to the office for a part. He never returned. Sound familiar?

Today’s tasks included peeling 60 langoustines. It was sort of like cleaning shrimp, but with thicker, sharper shells. Another pot of peas met their fate at my hands. I also helped to pick the meat out of a tote full of crab bodies.

Dinner service tonight was pretty quiet. On Saturday, there will be two large parties simultaneously, and Sunday lunch is sold out, too.

I guess Frédéric is feeling sorry for me — I’m now back eating all my meals with the family.

Friday, May 5th:

Well, the company responsible for fixing the internal phone system — when contacted by Frédéric at noon — said that they had been trying to call but there was no answer! Of course, that was because they had not fixed the phone, but they didn’t see it that way. They were trying to call to let him know that the earliest anyone would be out would be Tuesday, and maybe not then. Needless to say, Frédéric was not happy. He called France Telecom — which is now a private company — and they sent someone out in two hours, and the system is mostly fixed. [By the time I left 22 days later, they had not come to complete the repairs.]

I was with Frédéric this morning buying plants in Besançon so I didn’t get into the kitchen until 5 o’clock in the afternoon — turned some carrots, broke and beat some eggs, peeled some mushrooms, de-germed some garlic, peeled some asparagus — nothing too out of the ordinary.

Tomorrow is a big day — one party of 50 and one of 70. I’m having to move into the gîte down the road for the night because they need my room in the château. When I move back in on Sunday I’ll be in the annex instead of the château. It’s closer to the church bell, but the bathroom and shower is not down at the end of the hall like it is now.

Had a couple of slices of kidneys for dinner — they were overcooked a bit — but the sauce was great.

Saturday, May 6th:

Actually it’s one o’clock Sunday morning. The desserts have just been served to the two banquets. The dinner service started at 8:30. The parties here go on until three, four, or five in the morning. Poor Frédéric and Pascale have to stay around for it. And the wedding group — the party of 70 — is having a fancy breakfast in the morning. Plus the restaurant is full for lunch tomorrow.

It has been a good day. I peeled a pot of potatoes — it had to happen sooner or later. I was involved in the dinner service tonight. It started when one of the students forgot to juice the asparagus for the soup. I jumped in and did it under fire. It was great to be involved, mostly in plating, until the end of the service. Also had to speed peel some mushrooms when someone screwed up and put too many in each bowl — so they ran out.

Earlier, I helped Frédéric build a church! He did most of the work. I played consulting engineer (I can do the math) and grooved all the profiteroles so they would stick to the corners better. Frédéric did 95% of the work.

Sunday, May 7th:

Today started like most days as I’ve developed some form of a routine. I wake up about 7 o’clock, shower, and go into the kitchen for my morning café express. There’s no one else stirring at this time other than Papu, who’s out walking the chef’s dogs. If there was dinner service the night before, there usually is a plate or two of mignardises (petits fours) laying around. One or two macaroons is always a nice accompaniment to my coffee.

Today was two small banquets — 14 people and 18 people. There wasn’t much for me to do, so I just watched — from nine until after five. (The French take forever to eat.) The meals are supposed to start at one in the afternoon and it’s past two by the time they are through with their aperitifs and the first course is served.

Monday, May 8th:

I had a good morning of preparing the mise en place. All the usual peeling and cutting. I even got to “turn” some zucchinis. I also prepared some artichoke hearts. It always seems so extravagant to throw so much artichoke away. Lunch service was good and there’s no dinner service because of the holiday. One table stayed until 6:30 — that’s a long lunch.

Thursday, May 11th:

Today was a kitchen day. This weekend is the big anniversary celebration so there has been a lot to do in larger than normal quantities. I started the day taking apart frogs — or at least their legs. They arrive on ice as a pair of legs attached to the back without the ribs. They are already skinned. My job was to cut off the feet and then separate the upper leg from the lower leg (at the knee?). The upper leg (thigh?) is then cut from the pelvis. The upper legs go into one tub, the lower into another, and the back and feet into a third. There was a total of 44 pounds to prepare. I then vacuum packed the legs. The feet and backs went into a soup pot. The vacuum-packed legs were poached in the bags.

I forgot what I worked on next, but I finished the afternoon participating in making 44 pounds of seafood sausage. Taïchi, the sous chef, had already made the filling, but he had never stuffed sausage before. [Stuffing sausage is one area I have experience with.] There really wasn’t an appropriate device for stuffing the sausage so I suggested cutting the spout off a large metal funnel. This was done and the piece was inserted into a pastry bag. The hog casing was placed on the new metal tip and the pastry bag was used for pushing the filling into the casing. I’m glad Taïchi did the pushing because it took a lot of force. I did the guiding and the tying off.

You’d never guess what we had for dinner tonight. Give Up? Frog legs! Actually there were eight of us at the “Chef’s” table. Frédéric prepared the whole legs by dusting them with flour, salt, and pepper, frying them in butter, and finishing them with vermouth and parsley. We each chowed down on a plateful using our fingers — sort of like fried chicken in the U.S. It must be tradition. The rest of the meal was nice — kidneys!

While we were eating it started to rain, thunder, and rain some more. 250-year-old buildings sure leak a lot!

Friday, May 12th:

Well, the anniversary celebration is in full swing. They’re actually billing it as the 4th anniversary of the restaurant. [I had been told before that it was the 250th anniversary of the château.] There is one visiting chef — a retired gentleman by the name of Louis Outhier — and a restaurant from Paris sent one of their pastry chefs to help and to learn how to make bread. The other chefs sent recipes so each course is by a different Michelin 3-star chef — although I think Frédéric is adding his own spin to each of the recipes.

Outhier seems very nice — he doesn’t speak much English and he smokes like a chimney. His hands shake a bit and I think he still dreams of being in the middle of things. He’s spending a lot of time in the kitchen to both the joy and consternation of the staff. He was cutting something for his dish and took the tip of his finger nail off. I think he was a bit embarrassed, but he has persevered. His cooking is in the modern style using lots of ingredients, many in minute quantities. The essence of his dish has remained the same, but the recipe has been different at the three different times it was prepared today. The dish is a breast of “strangulated” duck with an “oriental” sauce and mixed vegetables: carrots, white asparagus, cucumber, and daikon — all julienned. These are sautéed in sunflower oil with salt and finished with two drops of soy sauce! The garnish for the vegetables is wild rice. He started off using Uncle Ben’s mix of wild and white rice, but Frédéric convinced him to use wild rice by itself. It’s only a few grains for decoration. There are also four lime slices for decoration. The sauce is a mixture of duck stock, vinegar, sesame seeds, Malibu (a rum and coconut liquor), vodka, Thai spices (a mixture of Frédéric’s), ginger, mint, and honey. [Strangulated ducks are killed by strangulation rather than electric shock. They are not bled so butchering is a very messy business. The breast meat is much redder than ordinary ducks, but they turned out to be a bit tough.]

One of the dishes is a seafood sausage — remember yesterday. I had some for dinner last night. It was very good. It’s served with an acidity sauce made of puréed shallots, very thin and crisp fried onions, and chives. I’m hoping to get the recipe, although I can’t get some of the varieties of seafood in California. Also, the original recipe was enough for 200 servings so I need to reduce it by 100!

The visiting pastry chef let me help her — she doesn’t know any better — so I got to mix some batters for little galettes that decorate her dish — a tartar of shrimp and langoustines. She works at a three-star restaurant in Paris called Pierre Gagnaire —possibly the most expensive restaurant in France. This single entrée sells there for 420 FRF (about $60). Besides the seafood that has been marinated in passion fruit juice — with the seeds (yuk!) — there are slivers of green apple, slices of raw artichoke, and a creamy topping with fifty thousand ingredients. I turned the artichokes for the dish and wound up with my fingers stained black!

The day’s activities included boning a bunch of the cooked frog legs and pulling the pin bones from 6 large salmon filets.

Saturday, May 13th:

Tonight is the big night of the anniversary dinners. All small tables — two to six people — but a total of about sixty guests. The fur is really flying down in the kitchen. Frédéric is more frustrated than normal because the staff is not performing to the level of perfection he wants. I think he also wants everything to be better than normal because Louis Outhier is here — and little bit in the way.

Had a great dinner tonight — tartare de bœuf avec pommes frites et salade verte — Louis made the tartar. It was creamier than we normally see in the U.S. Instead of raw egg yolks by themselves, he made an aïoli. Unfortunately, I missed most of the preparation. [Two days later I was able to get the recipe from him.]

Sunday, May 14th:

Today was an unusual Sunday because there was dinner service (due to the anniversary). My routine lately has been to work in the kitchen from 9:15 until the staff breaks for lunch. When they are done I go back to work on the web site until lunch service starts. Sometimes the family eats before the service and sometimes, as today, Frédéric and I sat down to eat at about three o’clock. (There has not been much work for me during the actual meal service because of the extra hands, but towards the end today, the kitchen was almost empty so I participated in the plating. I stand around out of the way until I see something I can do.) I come back to the kitchen about 5:30 to try and help with the final evening mise en place, but often there is not much to do. Unless I am taking pictures, like last night, I’m not sticking around the kitchen much in the evening. Thus, most of the work I do is in the early part of the day.

I cheerfully do even the most menial, tedious tasks so the cooks now apologize before they give me these tasks to do. They’re letting me do other things, also. I’m even joking with them in my pidgin French, and they’re replying in their pidgin English.

Monday, May 15th:

It has been a relatively quiet day for me today. I wound up not going to bed last night (this morning) until two. I went downstairs in the Château when I got done programming just after midnight to see if anyone was around — only Frédéric, Pascale, and Louis Outhier. They invited me to have a drink, but I wasn’t in the mood for wine so I finished Frédéric’s XO cognac. Unfortunately, I barely got two short drinks out of it. There’s not a lot of cognac consumed here. Anyway, we wound up talking about the internet, etc. Frédéric is really fascinated by it.

Thursday, May 18th:

I did spend the entire morning cleaning casseron (baby cuttlefish). They’re full of ink so things get really messy — really fast — especially when you’re cleaning two full cases. You start by removing the cuttle bone — it looks just like what they give parakeets! Since the buggers have been iced really well, your hands burn and turn red from the cold. Then you stick your thumb inside the body and pull out the tentacles and the guts. The tentacles are cut just in front of the beak (like with squid). Then the skin is pulled off the hood. Finally, everything gets soaked and washed, and washed, and washed. Not the most pleasant of jobs. My hands smelled like casseron the rest of the day.

Everyone (except me — I like it cool and damp) is talking about the weather. It was sunny and close to 90 °F on Tuesday. Today it was raining and 50 °F.

Friday, May 19th:

Today was a foie gras class so I spent the day with a dozen middle-aged, well-dressed women who didn’t speak English. The class included lunch in the dining room. There was also a couple here from Nagano for a week. He speaks a little English. He’s a freelance writer and she’s a Japanese cooking teacher. They joined the class, also. I learned a foie gras ravioli recipe that I’m anxious to try. The other two recipes were not as exciting.

Frédéric was on the war path in the kitchen tonight with the cooks again. They’re getting sloppy with their preparation. He’s really upset. Tomorrow and Sunday are big days, so we’ll see what happens.

Saturday, May 20th:

The two banquets tonight went off without any major mishaps. In some ways banquets are easier than regular dinner service because of the mass production, i.e., assembly line, aspect of it.

I peeled 12 pounds of garlic today. It was fresh garlic rather than the dried type we normally get. It peels easier, but it’s almost as sticky. My hands still have the smell. (But that’s better than when they smelled like the baby cuttlefish for a day!) There is really a lot of waste. Only about one pound of peeled garlic was produced.

I also tried my hand at making tomato roses — not the large ones like I make at home but small ones about quarter of an inch high. I went through about eight tomatoes for one usable rose. Luckily, Roland made 63 to my two. Maybe with a sharp knife and a bushel of tomatoes I can learn how.

Sunday, May 21st:

Well, I finally got the opportunity to cook today — I boiled some water!

The luncheon banquet for 117 guests today went off without mishap! At the same time there were about 35 guests in the main dining room. I was busy from start to finish, but I couldn’t tell you everything that I did. The one thing I did a lot of for the main course was to clean the drips and splashes on each plate before the servers picked them up. It has to be done fast so you don’t hold a table up, but if you miss something Pascale is there to point it out. Everything is plated one table at a time so that’s usually either 10 or 12 plates at once. The dish was called Agneau de Bellac Rôti à la Broche Purée d’Ail Nouveau.

The restaurant was closed this evening so I went to Ornans for a pizza.

Monday, May 22nd:

Another foie gras class and big lunch today. I ate, for the first time, Confit de Foie Gras à la Cuiller — definitely a recipe I have to try. [The foie gras is slow cooked for about 4 hours until the internal temperature reaches about 127 °F. It’s then chilled. The foie gras will last in the refrigerator for 4 to 6 months. A large spoon is used to carve a quenelle-shaped piece of foie gras for serving.]

Thursday, May 25th:

Thursday was a quiet day. No reservations for lunch or dinner. Two people walked in for lunch.

I peeled and cut a few vegetables today to make a vegetable stock — garlic, onions, carrots, and shallots. You know those big pots that take two people to move? Yep. One-third full of thinly sliced vegetables. It took a while, but my hands smell nice.

Friday, May 26th:

I did some peeling and dicing this morning, but my time here is winding down. After dinner service tonight, Frédéric brought out a magnum of champagne and the staff toasted my farewell. The pastry chef prepared a petit gâteau moëlleux for me. [He wasn’t aware of my many failed attempts to make this same dessert at home!]

Saturday, May 27th:

I spent the morning packing and making a couple of corrections to the web site. After lunch, I waved goodbye to the château and started my drive to Paris. It was difficult to leave — all the people were very nice to me. I really enjoyed the time I spent with Frédéric and Pascale. But it’s best not to wear out one’s welcome…