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 month Martin recounts their first proper holiday since they set up business in France - A Fortnight in Italy

When we moved to France and therefore onto the Continent of Europe I imagined that we would be popping into the car every weekend we had free and tripping down the road to Italy, or Germany or Switzerland.

I mean all we had to do was drive, no ferries, no planes, no baggage restrictions, and furthermore we could carry back just what we wanted, the wines, oils and vinegars without fear of confiscation.

Things never work out as planned and after the bones of seven years in France we find that other than tours within the Hezagone to other spots in the South from Marseilles to Bayonne the only other continental country we have visited (and this is hardly a major voyage as we can see the Pyrenees, the border effectually, from our terrace) was to make several trips to Spain.

This was to all change this Autumn however as we decided that we now had worked hard enough to have a proper grown up holiday, one that started on a Friday evening and finished on a Sunday two weeks later, and Italy (about five hours to the border) was the country we decided to visit.

This was not our first time to go to Italy. We had taken the children to Tuscany in the nineties and had a most memorable tour of the Parma area with Euro-Toques in ’06, so we knew how good it could be.

This time we decided to spend a week exploring the Lunigiana which is the most northerly part of Tuscany (and the most rural) and the second week in Fiesole (see “Room with a View”) a village perched above and overlooking Florence.

In Lunigiana the place we had to visit was the Fortezza de Brunella in Aulla. (See picture above) This castle had been owned by the Waterfield family for whom we had worked in Kent many years before and had been the subject of a marvellous autobiography A Tuscan Childhood by Kinta Beevor, an aunt of my ex-boss Michael Waterfield. Michael himself had brought up to date his Great-Great-Aunt Janet Ross’s seminal work on Italian vegetable cookery: Leaves from a Tuscan Kitchen- still in print after 114 years!

Our best meal of the fortnight happened without doubt when we were en route between Aulla and Florence. There, in Montecatini Alto, we ate in a restaurant recommended by Michelin, Ristorante La Torre, a beautiful old room perched on the side of a mountain over the town of Montecatini.

Sile had Fettunata Porcini, delicious buttery Ceps on toasted Ciabatta, to start while I fulfilled a lifetime ambition and ate Lardo, paper thin cured slices of, yes, Pork fat, which had been cured in marble vats from nearby Carrera and literally melted on my tongue ( a French family dining near us were both amazed and envious!).

Delicious as this was, Sile's Secondi of a Crespelini stuffed with Ricotta and Spinach and scattered with shaved white truffles got the prize for Best Course, beating my superb Tagliatelli of Porcini with Cream. Total cost of this feast? : €59, a bargain for such quality.

Our week in Florence was to be a total culture immersion but to speak truly after the first few days we were suffering from overload, so we decided to head north of Fiesole, avoiding the Florence traffic, and see where the road would take us.

First stop was Scarperia, a little gem of a town with a strong tradition of making knives and with an impressive knife museum. It was 12 when we left there so we just decided to head north through the Apennines, through some spectacular roads, and stop wherever lunch time brought us.

This happened in a one horse town called Firenzuola which seemed uniquely involved in the production of Pietra Serena, a building stone, and was as modern as a new pin having been bombed out in 1945. The only eatery was a not madly inviting hotel, but, beggars and choosers that we were we went in.

Three faults were immediately evident, the place was cold, God knows how, it was quite mild outside.There was a loud couple with a dog in one corner and the lady of the house had a small child dogging her every step whom it was evident we were meant to ogle. (We did) The food however wasn't bad at all.

Garlicky bruschetta of Tomato, and Tortellini filled with potato, sauced with ragu Bolognaise (just a few miles up the road). The table next to us filled up with a business meeting of four men and women. The elder (in his forties) was a regular and greeted with much joy by the patronne with cries of Michele!

As we finished we asked Madame for the bill, and she, looking slightly wounded at us not taking coffee or desserts, arrived back shortly with two slices of a strudel type cake for us. As she passed the table she asked Michele to tell her how to say "Complimentary" to us.

"Tell them it is on the House" he said. And yes, we could hear a faint touch of Ireland in his English! “Where are you from? “he immediately asked us. His delight when we said Ireland was palpable. "My Mother was born in Ireland,” he said. "What on Earth brings you to Firenzuola"?

I wish I could say that we then ended up chewing the fat and exchanging stories for an hour but he was after all at a meeting! As we passed out though I dropped him a card for Le Presbytere, he looked delighted, I hope we may see him again and hear his story.
 

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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