It takes courage for the English to teach the art of Gallic cookery in France. William Gadsby Peet talks to chef Heather Hayes about swapping Windsor for the Canal du Midi
It’s the dream, isn’t it? A fantasy to indulge aloud after a glass or two of shimmering Chardonnay. ”Let’s blow this popsicle stand and just go live in the South of France,” you muse, your mind full of sunlit gastronomic dreams.
For most of us, that’s where it ends. Dawn brings reality, a hangover and the steady beat of rain upon window, the great French escape indefinitely and inevitably postponed. Not so, however, for former Windsor residents Heather and David Hayes, who are currently experiencing the joie de vivre that springs from running their own cookery school on the stunning Canal du Midi.
“We actually left Windsor so that David could take up an engineering post with the Australian military in Canberra,” explains Heather with striking bonhomie. “I decided to have a complete change of career, leaving event management behind at 50 to qualify as a chef.
“It was a delight: no more corporate nonsense and a fabulous opportunity to immerse myself in learning how to cook. It’s an activity I’ve loved since I was young, and fresh inspiration came from my tutor, who doubled as my yoga teacher by night and had a very holistic approach to cooking.”
With David’s work down under complete, the couple spent several years travelling around the world as, in their own words, “middle aged season-aires”, working as Olympic Torch Relay Ambassadors in 2012, holiday reps in Majorca and Turkey, and chalet chefs and hosts in the French Alps. When they fortuitously stumbled upon Millepetit, a former wine domaine near Carcassonne where the old stables were for sale, the cookery school dream was born.
Heather and David
“We’d been looking for somewhere to rent beside the Canal du Midi,” says Heather. “But once we’d spotted this place, we bought it in five days and then waited out the winter before starting on a renovation. We finished just in time for the spring of 2015 – despite two floods from the vineyards and our English builders walking off the job – and ran our first class in April of that year with a Canadian author, Bill Hurst, and his wonderful family.”
Looking to impress your friends? Add a dollop of French flair to your cooking with Heather's very own recipe for Tomato tarte tatins with goat's cheese sorbet
Since then things have gone from strength to strength, with a steady stream of customers discovering the school through word of mouth, plus the fillip of a TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence. Classes are for groups of no more than eight.
A typical day not only features lessons in cooking several classic French dishes, but a tour of the area with information on its history, as well as several well earned glasses of the local rosé. It all culminates in a three-course meal on a sun-drenched patio by the canal, as tired pupils enjoy the fruit of their labours in the kitchen, each dish matched to a local vintage by a Master of Languedoc Wines.
It is a master of fish, however, who has done most to put the area on the culinary tourist map.
“We like watching the video of Rick Stein’s travels along the Canal. We always giggle at the shot of our neighbour’s kids pulling faces as he cruises past Millepetit,” says Heather laughing.
Meanwhile, if the prospect of a sojourn in the Sud de la France seems as distant as Carcassonne itself, fear not: Cooking by the Canal du Midi could soon be coming to a more northern river bank near you.
“We see our expat life drawing to a close in a few years’ time, and once that happens we’ll return to our Windsor home near Peascod Street. We’ll use that as a base for travels in the UK, but we’ll also look at the potential for a cooking school for locals and visitors to the town. ‘Cooking by the Castle’, perhaps! One idea we had was to organize classes aimed specifically at the older generation.”
Good thinking. After all, the old folks in the castle always seem to be having people round.
- Classes at Cooking by the Canal du Midi cost £110 for a day. For more information visit canaldumidicooking.com or call 0033 65163 2904
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