Cooking Class with Ronald

On Wednesday morning, a group of us headed to Aix to meet our private chef, Ronald, who gave us a tour of the daily market. We selected rather a lot of cheeses for our meal that evening, as well as all the produce needed for the recipes we were planning to make.

Our menu:
Swiss chard and cheese souffle
Filet de Boeuf Roti with Roquefort Sauce
Potatoes au Gratin
Tomatoes Provencale
Assortment of Cheese - Cheese Platter
Tarte au Citron Meringue - Lemon Meringue Tart

Ronald arrived at the house around 3:30pm and started his prep work. A little later, a small group of us put on aprons and clustered around the kitchen to watch and assist the meal prep.

The first thing we made was the pastry for the tart - the KitchenAid was indispensable for this. We worked our way through making the souffle, potatoes, and the roquefort sauce for the beef. I succesfully used the mandolin on the potatoes without slicing my fingers, which was a notable achievement! We finished up with the beef itself - a massive 2.8 kg whole fillet that Ronald procured from the farmer and trimmed in the kitchen.

We ate around 8 pm, seated on the terrace at a lovely table that Ronald had set for us. He served us course after course, including a beautiful presentation of all the cheeses we had picked out - it was a lovely experience. I'd highly recommend it - now I have to go home and find four hours to make the full meal ;)