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An Irish Chef in France

Euro-Toques chef Martin Dwyer, is 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 extols the virtues of an heroic piece of low-tech kitchen equipment - his Passe-Légumes

When I started to cook first, in my sister’s kitchen in the very early seventies, this machine , which we called the Mouli after the people who had made it, was an essential kitchen tool. It predates and held the place of a liquidiser and a food processor and did most of the jobs that these machines would later usurp.

And so, as these electric machines came into my kitchen my mouli got used less and less, it always held one function, all potatoes for mashed potatoes in Dwyers Restaurant were pushed through the mouli, I have a horror of lumpy mash and none was served in my establishment unless passed by this man, or his tougher brother the sieve.

When I moved out to France first I was keeping two kitchens going and it took a while for the heavier equipment to follow me out. It was then that I noticed the machine on the left in my local Super U, coming in at around €20 it was considerably cheaper than the electric boys.

It was then that I began to realise all the things my Passe-Légumes (to give it its proper French name) could do that my liquidiser couldn't.

Take tomato sauce. How much easier it is just to push the cooked tomatoes through the Mouli that to go through the tedious process of skinning and de-seeding? Tomatoes pushed through a Mouli just leave a neat and virtually dry pile of skins and seeds on top of the blade.

Then I began to realise the many other jobs which my old friend excelled in: The Passe-Légumes made totally string-less and smooth as velvet celery soup, it could produce both blackberry and raspberry jam totally without those annoying pips which stick relentlessly in your teeth.

On the savoury line this man was still a winner. Chicken Liver Parfait, passed through the Mouli’s finest blade had a smooth unctuousness that neither the processor nor the liquidiser could deliver.

However it was during the Autumn in the Languedoc when my Mouli had his finest hour.

In the late Autumn there is a great harvest of quinces on the hedgerows around the village and I had taken to making up a large quantity of Quince Paste from these. This paste is very commonly made here and sold in the marked as Cotignac, it is exactly the same as the Spanish and Portuguese Membrillo and its chief use (for me at any rate) is on the cheese board where it particularly good with goat’s cheese and the local sheep’s cheese which is the well known Roquefort.

My original recipe called for peeling the quinces for this (a thankless task as quinces are far tougher to peel than apples) then core them, then put the peels and cores in a muslin bag to boil up with the fruit until it softens.

It was the second time I was starting this labour when I had the idea of getting my Mouli to do the job for me. All I had to do was to quarter the quinces, boil till soft and then pass through the Mouli. Job time nearly halved.

You may be wondering why there are two Pass Legumes in the picture? The answer is simple. Over time the machine does get a bit worn, the grating blades do lose their edge, and so yesterday I went and bought a new model, exactly the same as the last and for just over €20 still, nine years later. Not a bad investment for nine years of use.

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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