An Irish Chef in France

Euro-Toques chef Martin Dwyer, much missed in Ireland since he and his wife Sile sold their eponymous restaurant in Waterford and moved to France. They now live in the Languedoc, where they take guests - and feed them very well. This was their first Christmas in France...

Even though we have been living full time out here for four or five years and spending a lot of time here before that, this turned out to be the first time we have spent Christmas out here, not just that but we persuaded the full family, daughters, sons in and out of law and the totally precious grandsons to come here for the holiday also.

Even though we haven’t been here for Christmas itself we have been here for the pre-Christmas shopping season for long enough to observe the gradual Americanisation of Christmas. The shops and department stores are piped with exactly the sort of music you would hear in Ireland, “Jingle Bells”, “Santa Claus is coming to town” etc.

However one thing which the French and I thoroughly agree on, is that Christmas is really about food. Their principal meal of Christmas is held on Christmas eve - traditionally after midnight mass and is a real shell fish affair, oysters, mussels prawns and lobsters finished off with the traditional Thirteen Desserts (not quite as intimidating as it sounds as many of the desserts are just different pieces of preserved fruits).

Being keen to keep a foot in both camps I decided to take the Irish solution to this problem and do a fish dinner on Christmas Eve and the full Irish, roast stuffed turkey, sprouts, cranberries and all the trimmings on Christmas day.

As we had decided to close the chambre d’hote for December we had more than enough time to get the house ready and to decorate it to within an inch of its life, and I also had time to cook shell and freeze some prawns and lobsters for the Christmas Eve feast and to order both a goose and a turkey from my butcher for the Day itself (the Turkey for Christmas day, the Goose for a few days after- a greedy Irishman’s solution to choice of Christmas fowl).

On the 23rd we had to collect both our Christmas turkey and goose from the butchers and our family from the airport in Carcassonne. So at 7.30 (this is France) down I headed:

The shop was en fete pour La Noel, where previously lurked the pork chops and lambs liver now were Ballotines and Galantines, Boned stuffed Pheasant, Pates en Croute, Foie Gras of every variety, Bouchees de La Reine, beautiful salads in Renaissance colours, and proudly Monsieur Boutonnière showed me this year’s speciality, tiny éclairs stuffed with Pate de Foi Gras.

I had to back my car to the door then to collect the boxes and when I got back to the shop they were all at the door ready to pack me into the car, and while other traffic waited patiently, hugs, handshakes and kisses were exchanged with cries of Bonnes Fetes and Joyeux Noel. I was beginning to feel a lot like Christmas in France!

Then we went to the airport in Carcassonne to collect our six visitors for the Christmas - we had hired an extra car for the occasion. Now Carcassonne airport is very small and the area next to the luggage turntable is immediately accessible to the outside - covered with warnings about how NO WAY one is allowed access.

But as always the minute the first person passes through we all crowd in to greet the arrivals. We can then see them through a window queuing up at the immigration counter. As soon as our lot rounded the corner we spotted them, they were holding the two small lads aloft and they spotted us, I could see (but not hear) them shrieking our names. Síle took one look at me "Don't you dare cry" she hissed. I tried hard not to.

And then they were through and Fionn the four year old leaped up on me and hugged.

My eye was caught by a French man just next to us staring unashamedly, a beatific beam on his face and his eyes full of tears.

It was a great Christmas.

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Martin Dwyer started cooking professionally over 40 years ago in the legendary “Snaffles Restaurant” in Dublin. After a time in a Relais Chateau in Anjou and in “The Wife of Bath” in Kent he opened his own much acclaimed restaurant, “Dwyers”, in Waterford in 1989. In 2004 he sold this and moved south to France where he and his wife Síle bought and restored an old presbytery in a village in the Languedoc. They now run Le Presbytère as a French style Chambre d’Hôte. Martin however is far too passionate about food to give up cooking so they now enjoy serving dinner to their customers on the terrace of Le Presbytère on warm summer evenings. Martin runs occasional cookery courses in Le Presbytère and Síle’s brother Colm does week long Nature Strolls discovering the Flora and Fauna of the Languedoc.

Le Presbytère can be seen at: www.lepresbytere.net;
email: martin@lepresbytere.net