Forget any preconceptions about French food being pretentious. You can learn all there is to know about Dordogne cuisine at a down-to-earth English-language school of gastronomy
AS MORNING ROUTINES go, this is hard to beat: waking in a cloud of soft linen and throwing back French shutters to reveal an 18th-century courtyard. Across the freshly cut grass, the melody of a busy kitchen and the thick smell of warming brioche signals breakfast. A table is set with biscuit-brown striped linen and Limoges porcelain - signs that you are in the Dordogne, a heaven-on-earthly region of southwest France.
Wendely Harvey is weighing up the day's options for her guests, who are tucking into organic fig yoghurt, the plumpest peaches in all of France, hand-churned butter and home-made jams and jellies. Harvey and her English husband, Robert Cave-Rogers, call this "school", but school was never as seductive or as leisurely as this.
La Combe en Perigord is their contribution to the French paradox. It is the only English-language cooking school in the Dordogne, the cradle of French gastronomy.
Ducks, foie gras, truffles, walnuts and hazelnuts are all raised here and shipped to the world's best dining tables. When the French newspaper Le Figaro asked its readers "Where is the best place to eat in France?" they nominated the Dordogne.
Still, 80 per cent of visitors to English-language cooking schools in France head to Normandy or Provence. Harvey and Cave-Rogers had a smarter idea. Intent on opening their own school, they went right to the heart of gastronomy and a romantic, emerald green valley called Les Eyzies.
They opened La Combe, a French manor house set in 12 hectares of garden beside the river Vézère in 1999. It immediately attracted world-class chefs from the US and, from Australia, Stephanie Alexander, Maggie Beer and Damien Pignolet.
The couple now enjoy an international reputation as celebrated hosts, whose week-long cooking programmes immerse just eight guests in their bucolic lifestyle and an upbeat series of exacting Perigord experiences (the Dordogne is also known as the Perigord).
They tiptoe in half-light through vast chalk caves where champignons de Paris grow; dine at the top-end Michelin-starred Le Vieux Logis in Tremolat, and then drop down a notch one evening to dine at the family table in a rustic farmhouse. Of course, this is a sublime experience since the farmers' wives here are considered the true custodians of authentic regional cooking.
There's a morning at one of the best outdoor markets in France, in Renaissance Sarlat, trips uphill (to chateaux) and underground (to exemplary cellars). And from time to time, they ignore food to embrace landmarks, like the 18th-century manor gardens at Eyrignac, an outstanding French garden, which is the winner of the exalted Grand Prix de Jardins de France award.
Harvey and Cave-Rogers' Perigord is a crammed itinerary of regional gems - many known only to insiders. When it comes time for getting the knives out back at La Combe, the visiting chef sets the teaching menu, but the theme is classic, southwest French cooking.
On a typical day, breakfast comes to a halt when Cave-Rogers steers guests to two cars ("This is a house party, we treat everyone as a friend," he says) and he and Harvey drive to a local farm to see a "decoupage", when the liver is removed from a fattened duck.
Cave-Rogers has already picked up the plump bird and Madame Bosquet is waiting, gleaming knives laid out like a surgeon's, in her farmhouse kitchen. "Only the males are used for foie gras," she tells the class. "They fatten faster." She weighs the bird (6.5kg) and pares away legs and breasts, revealing the liver - the object of everyone's desire (well, the French, at least).
She lifts out the enormous, butter-coloured prize and weighs it. "It's 600 grams, the duck is 16 weeks old and has spent 16 days fattening
on grain." Everyone is mightily impressed. Lesson over, she goes back to tend her rabbits and ducks, passing the "foie" (liver) to students for later duties (sliced, sautéed, it is served with a little salad).
Cave-Rogers has another private visit up his sleeve before lunch, to the last working water-driven walnut pressing mill in France - the Ferme de Vielcroze at Castelnaud. The same family has owned this mill for more than 100 years and the younger generation continues to press oil in the steamy but fragrant rooms, just as their parents and grandparents did. "It's organic," says Madame, offering tastings and a little cooking tip: "best drizzled on grilled fish."
Lunch is slated for 1pm in a formal French garden under a trellised canopy of lime trees at La Petit Cabine in Tremolat. The restaurant has one Michelin star and the lunch style is tapas. Twelve tiny but exquisite courses later, students have discussed every dish, snapped pictures and made notes.
"Let's meet the chef," says Cave-Rogers, who has contacts other diners here only dream of. His guests form a tiny conga line to the kitchen to talk to Vincent Arnauld. They have all fallen for the French linen on the dining tables and, sensing a desire to shop, Cave-Rogers adjusts the itinerary to take them to a tiny hamlet with a bountiful selection of typical Perigord table linens.
The culinary couple enjoys a formidable provenance, which explains their search for excellence. Harvey has lived for most of her life in the US, a former editorial director for Time-Life who went on to commission hundreds of cookbooks, including the award-winning, 43-volume Williams-Sonoma Kitchen Library and Lifestyle series. Cave-Rogers, a lawyer, spent 10 years with two world-class hotels, the Mandarin Hong Kong and the Oriental Bangkok.
No surprise then that they restored La Combe with exacting attention to detail. The four large guest apartments occupy a former 18th-century stone barn. Each has its own entrance to the courtyard. They are furnished with large comfy beds, oodles of cushions, cane chairs, antique tables and pretty rugs. The detail does not stop there: bottled water and fresh roses beside your bed, waffle-cotton robes, fluffy towels and carefully chosen magazines. The bathrooms are pure 21st century.
High above the dining terrace, a beautiful swimming pool overlooks a kitchen garden with 20 different herbs (no pesticides here) waiting for the students' scissors. Cooking workshops take place in the afternoon, in the vast country kitchen: stone walls, a beamed ceiling, terracotta tiled floor and a square, central table (large enough for two on each side; students are paired off for lessons).
There are wire baskets laden with the day's ingredients: farm eggs, tomatoes on the vine, fresh garlic bulbs - whatever is seasonal. Iron cooking pots of every imaginable size hang on the walls and a vast armoire holds wine glasses.
Cave-Rogers pours a glass of his chosen house white for guests unpacking the market haul (artichokes, broad beans, asparagus). "Casanova Des Conti, white Bergerac," he says. "Next door to Bordeaux."
In a week, guests will cook four three-course meals: spring pea soup with minted crème fraîche, herb-crusted lamb with truffled mashed potatoes, coq au vin, cassoulet, duck breasts, onion confit and some heavenly chocolate desserts served with Armagnac ice-cream. The chef hands out recipes and La Combe aprons, and guides them through preparations. All the ingredients are regional and sourced locally.
The cooking is relaxed but concentrated. "This is my third visit to La Combe," says American Cappy Fener, an accomplished home cook who is brushing mushrooms (never wash is the rule). "The French still have the reputation," she says. "And Wendely and Robert do one of the nicest things imaginable, they bring people together around food. They have the patience of saints, even when a student sets more than the cognac on fire."
The main house is not only for dining, but relaxing - a challenge if you choose to swim, play golf, canoe or cycle on the bikes provided. A vast stone fireplace is the focus of the drawing room, which is furnished with deep sofas, a library of 300 cookbooks and even more CDs.
This room comes alive in the evening when the cooking preparations are complete, guests have changed and the staff arrive to serve dinner (entrée, main course, dessert and cheese).
Cave-Rogers offers aperitifs (violet kir, perhaps?) and takes care of choosing wine from the cellar. It's convivial, with questions fired at the couple: "What's the correct way to cut a cantal?" ("Never cut the nose off the cheese, social death.")
The subjects range across etiquette, how to choose a ripe melon, to matching wines, to foie gras. By 10pm, guests who aren't ready to call it a day play board games (culinary, of course) by the fire or watch DVDs (early Julia Child, the famous American cook who taught the US to hold back the ketchup). It prompts howls of laughter.
"Some guests don't know a frying pan from a saucepan," says Harvey. "But it becomes an even playing field very quickly, the snobbish don't fit in." Both she and her husband have oodles of relaxed charm, and this creates a mood that transports their guests to feel they are the favourite at an upper-crust country house party. And they are. They simply leave a little wiser. "Knowing more than they ever dreamt about food," says Fener. "I look back and I'm amazed at what I've learnt. I just keep coming back for the friendship and the learning."
La Combe en Perigord is 560km from Paris, with regional airports at Bordeaux (144km), Bergerac and Perigeux (both 40km). The high-speed train from Paris is the best choice, taking two hours 20 minutes to Angoulème, where guests are collected. Cooking schools take place from April to November, but you can also opt for 'La Vie En Perigord' and live the life but skip the cooking classes. By arrangement they also welcome guests for 'Unprogrammed Perigord'. For prices (all inclusive) and the 2008 guest chef schedule, see www.lacombe-perigord.com. (Tel 0033-553-351761) E-mail: info@lacombe-perigord.com.