Q/ What is the philosophy of your cooking school?
Good quality ingredients, clean meticulous presentation,
hands on cooking. We did discuss what was the objective of the school, funny
enough the dialogue slowly evolved to what we didn’t want to do! We definitely didn’t
want to be teachers of a big class, we’re certain our students don’t want to
spend the whole time being told what to do. The idea is to build up people’s
confidence over 5 days in a structured manner.
Q/ How many courses do you run, how do the structure of the
programs differ?
We only offer the two courses in The Walnut Grove – the
Basic and the Advanced.
The Basic Course teaches you basic cooking skills, menu
planning and the core fundamentals in flavoring a dish (Maynard told us this is
the hardest to teach but its damn important to get this right or else
everything else goes out the window. It’s all about building up your confidence
in the kitchen and advance prep which comes in handy in dinner parties. The
dishes we prepare in the Advanced Course are completely different. The word advanced is not misleading. A lot of
our guests are semi professionals so we dive straight into the cooking on day
1. The format is the same as the Basic Course, but it is more hard-core. To
give you an idea, we make different types of bread everyday. We only cook for
the class on Saturday (as opposed to
Saturday and Sunday in the Basic course) and they have to come up with their
own dishes and presentation with little assistance from us on the last day…it
is the famous The Walnut Grove challenge!
We have provided more tailored courses for a group with a minimum
of 6 people, and accommodated specific requests say a course focused on pastry
work. We have offered bespoke courses in other parts of the world – so far in
Texas and Vancouver. It may surprise you
that the decision in whether to run a bespoke course is not purely financial
(we obviously need to cover our costs and have a decent amount of spending
money to make it worthwhile), we prefer the organizers had been through The Walnut
Grove experience so they know our ethos and we have a rapport with them.
Q/ Who is your audience? How much cooking experience do they
need to have?
Our audience change each year depending on the economical
state of the world! For this and last year, we had a lot of Australians and a
large percentage of North Americans and Brits. There are always surprises; I am
hosting a group of Lithuanians next week!
There is absolutely no need for any cooking experiences. The
beauty of the small group is we can have people where cooking is their 2nd
nature running alongside people with limited or no cooking experience at all. The
only prerequisite is an interest and love for food.
Q/ What does a typical day look like for both of you?
We start the Basic Course on Saturday, we work the hardest
that day to prepare for Saturday and Sunday as we cook and serve our students dinner.
You know the drill for the rest of the week! The cooking demonstration and
workshop starts at 10am sharp (Maynard means that, he gives you an evil eye if
you walk in late J)
and run till 1230pm everyday with a 10 minutes coffee break, and lunch starts
at around 1230pm. We come in when you are having breakfast to get some prep
work done and we get the chance to do more in the afternoon when everyone heads
off to a local excursion between 230-430pm. They return to the kitchen at 530pm
and we start prepping together for dinner which starts at 6pm and ends at
around 8pm. The schedule has been tried and tested for 12 years based on
feedback from our clients on what works best regarding the ratio of time cooking
in the kitchen, eating and doing something outside the Grove but nonetheless
still related to food.
Q/ What’s next for the school?
Keep it new, fresh, fun and enjoyable for all of you. We
constantly change the dishes to keep everyone challenged, refreshed and we are
pretty much on top of new culinary trends. We do plan to offer more bespoke
courses in other parts of the world, watch this space!
Q/ What was the biggest surprise for you in running the
School?
The French tax system?! The people of course, they make it
worthwhile…. Well at least the people you meet most weeks!
Find out more about The Walnut Grove
http://www.walnutgrovecookery.com/index.htm
The Walnut Grove
Le Hunaudiere
53400 Livre la Touche
Mayenne
France
Phone +33 (0) 2 43 98 50 02
