Cook'n With Class in Uzes, France

Four friends and I took a cooking lesson in the south of France with Chef Eric Fradeau. He runs a cooking school called Cook'n with Class. He founded the school in Paris and now has a branch in Uzes, in Languedoc.  Eric is French, studied with Alain Ducasse in Paris, ran restaurants for high end hotels around the world, and settled down in the small city of Uzes, about 1-1/2 hours from Avignon.  His Paris school has 6 chefs plus staff.  In the Uzes school, Eric is the only chef, plus 2 staff. The class is all about cooking local and healthy.  

With absolutely no menu planned, his only guidance was whatever looks best and interesting that day, limited by whatever allergies we have.

First stop: Friday market in Saint Quentin la Poterie, a small hamlet near Uzes.  

On market day, three rows of stalls are filled with providers of every type of food.  One lady owns only 4 cows but has a stall where she sells milk and sometimes, yogurt.  We headed to the fish stall at the end of the market to anchor the menu around the main course, and then worked our way back through the other vendors, filling in. The style of cooking is Provençal, but that label is often assumed to be limited to tomatoes and olives. So not true.

As we strolled by the items displayed for sale, Eric devised the menu:

Hors d'oeuvres platter of a spread (purchased from the fish stand) of ground salted cod bacala, mixed with mashed potatoes and milk; a dried tomato spread; and garlic basil mixture we got in the market - and crusty bread to slather it all on.

4 types of fresh sliced tomatoes with black olive oil and sea salt, cracked pepper.

Zucchini flowers stuffed with day old goat cheese mixed with garlic, scallions, black olives, milk, table salt and an egg to bind it (I'm going to jump out of order here and say that I adore zucchini blossoms and these were the absolute best because they were not fried like the Italian preparation) 

Zucchini Blossoms in the Market (Before)

(After) Zucchini Blossoms, Stuffed, Ready to go in the Oven 

laid on top of a salad of mixed greens, chestnut-fed pig smoked ham (that's a mouthful - and it was delicious), halved fig, and 2 Italian purple basil leaves.

Zucchini Blossoms all done - in the Salad

Sea bass fish roasted over herbs and greens and served over julienned caramelized fennel with roasted vegetable sauce of tomato, red pepper, garlic, scallions.

Before the Oven

Fish, Plated...didn't look like this for very long as soon as we got to it

After the fish course, there was a cheese course consisting of 2 types of goat cheeses, each paired with a jam to match. The new goat cheese had a dab of rose petal jelly (which is hand made in a nearby convent and sold on market day by the only nun from the convent who is allowed to speak from the otherwise silent order). The week-old goat cheese was paired with fig jam.

Apricot tart with chocolate mousse on the side. 

To do the cooking, Eric drove us in his van back to his school where he has a very comfortable, well equipped teaching kitchen.  He is a fantastic teacher, gives everyone hands-on tasks, and is an all-around positive guy. He was even nice when I left a sizable chunk of fish stuck on the carcass while I tried my hand at filleting.  I believed his smiled "it's fine" was genuine.

It was a fun, interesting and delicious experience. I highly recommend a class with Chef Eric.

Eric and his terrific wife Yetunde

Appropriate Chandelier, n'est-ce pas?