A Year at the Chateau

by Dick Strawbridge

  The kitchen was coming together but it was still a long way off being ready to use. It is amazing how much work has to be done to move from the skeleton of a kitchen to a fully functional, decorated and beautiful room. There were several days of work left finding all our kitchen utensils and putting up shelves and hooks and organising the room to make it work for us, but that had to be left as we had many other projects in other areas of the château all maturing in parallel that needed attention.

  With September looming, the château was actually really quiet. We all had our own tasks to attend to and you could feel the focus and see the hard graft everyone was putting in. We had not got over the hump yet, but with only ten weeks until our wedding I personally could not think too hard about what was ahead as it made my head hurt. Steve was methodically plastering all the rooms, which meant the next step for me was painting the walls and stripping the doors and window frames.

  With the decision made to concentrate on the ground floor for the wedding, it was my mission to have the woodwork finished. Of course, my original plan had been to strip, prime and then repaint all the doors and window frames, but good wood paint is very expensive and also cracks and chips over time. There will always be some maintenance needed. When I started work, I quickly discovered that I actually love the look of a stripped door. The Bagliones had clearly painted over the château doors many times, but when the paint was stripped back it revealed a really interesting, natural pattern that looked stunning (in fact, I’ve been asked many times how we achieved the look!). This really suited Dick and me as it saved both time and money, and in my opinion it looks great.

  August had been hot and sticky but, after months of not actually seeing progress, in a single month we had lots of work coming to fruition in lots of different areas of the château. In addition to squeezing in a hen party and a shopping trip we had reached the stage where some decoration of the château had started. Holes had been knocked through walls, bats braved and the honeymoon suite was finally a suite, complete with the wallpaper museum turret room. We had a service kitchen and a wonderful main kitchen. They were all rooms that had both functionality and style, though we did not underestimate how much more work was still required to bring them up to what would pass as ‘completed’.

  With two kitchens, we should really have made more of the opportunity the seasonal produce afforded us that first August but we were working lots more than we were cooking. That said, we did squeeze in a few delicious dinners with our locally-sourced produce. Most salad, fruit and vegetables were readily available by this time and we were spoilt for choice.

  Figs are sold by the tray in August and we would cut a cross in them and squeeze them open, arrange them on a small baking tray, sprinkle them with walnuts and crumble amazingly salty Roquefort cheese all over, then a drizzle of honey and bake them for 15 minutes. While they were in the oven, it was a matter of pulling together the rest of a meal. As life was busy, we would always try to have a fridge full of tasty morsels so we could dip in and quickly fill platters that allowed us to eat at leisure.

  As well as lots of salad with different dressings and cheeses, we would marinade olives, chillies, garlic cloves and sundried tomatoes in herby oils with orange zest. The charcuterie tempts you every time you go into a shop in France. The cured saucisson and the smoked cured pork fillets and duck breasts are not cheap but go a long way. And to accompany a pot of ice-cold cornichons we would often knock up some of our own sweet pickles.

  SUMMER-SWEET PICKLED VEGGIES

  Ingredients

  Seasonal vegetables (peppers, carrots, fennel, cucumber, cauliflower, red onions, radishes, courgettes, salsify, broccoli) – the more colourful the better

  Vinegar

  Sugar

  Water

  Aromatic spices (optional)

  Method

  Start by finely slicing your seasonal vegetables. If in doubt, try using a potato peeler to give you long thin pieces.

  Meanwhile, in a pan, bring a mix of ⅓ vinegar, ⅓ sugar and ⅓ water to the boil. Feel free to add any aromatic spices that take your fancy.

  Once simmering, take it off the heat and add all your vegetables and stir them around.

  Leave the vegetables to cool in the pickle or, if you prefer, fish them out after five minutes. It is really up to you to decide how long you wish to keep your veg in the pickling liquor. As you could eat all these vegetables raw, this process doesn’t need to be long, but leaving them in the liquid until it cools gives a different texture and allows you to store them in the fridge in the liquid.

  * * *

  * A cabine de toilette is basically a room with a jug and a basin in it.

  chapter nine

  SEPTEMBER

  The start of September reminds you that there are only a few weeks of summer left. You can usually feel the heat slowly leaving, prompting you to get ready for the autumn and winter ahead. In our first September at the château, it felt like summer was definitely holding on. We had very little rain and the temperatures were warm. Fresh produce was in abundance as this is the traditional start of harvesting and laying down stores for the winter. The sweetcorn around us was being harvested and a trip to the supermarket showed a wonderful array of apples and pears. Interestingly, some of them looked far from perfect but they were more expensive than the ‘perfect’ normal fruits.

  Apples can be thought of as being very ordinary but it is amazing how the flavour varies. In France, there is still a market for russet apples, which appear to be no longer as popular back in the UK as the rough texture of their skin puts off people who are used to smooth, shiny, perfectly skinned fruit. This russeting is caused by cork cells developing in the skin tissue and does not affect the flavour or the eating quality of the apple. It does however mean the skin is more permeable to water and this can account for apples being slightly drier and sweeter. They will also not store as well as the fruit tends to shrivel. They are therefore only available for a relatively short season and this limited availability is prized and probably explains why they hold their price.

  September also sees the end of the summer squash season – that’s the soft-skinned squashes like courgettes and pattypan – and the tougher winter squashes that can all be stored start to come to maturity. I’ve grown them several times and love the fact that they will keep in a cool dry place for months, indeed all the way through winter. I was delighted and a little confused at the selection that met me in our local supermarket. It was normal for us to see a whole area that had been covered in lettuce and salads. Yes, there is a chill cabinet of clean bagged leaves but over the summer there had also been a large unit that was intermittently misted with cool water containing lots of different, real lettuces (the ones you have to clean!) and endives, bunches of watercress, radishes and other things that look like they have just come out of the ground. However, now the salad space had been compressed into a quarter of its usual size and alongside it was a display of squashes that were beautiful in their colours, shapes and sizes. I only recognised about half of them, which made me want to buy everything I couldn’t identify. I was only a little reserved and bought a fair number that we simply cut into pieces, removed the seeds, drizzled with olive oil, seasoned well and slow-roasted to concentrate the flavours. An hour at 160ºC is all it takes. They were lovely hot or cold and it was fair to say we enjoyed them all. They are really good with a sprinkling of the toasted seeds with soy sauce and chopped chillies that we nibble with our aperitifs. Squashes are hearty food and if they are stored properly can last for months and are a great standby to have in.

  From the moment the swallows arrive in early spring they are a constant presence here at the château. The outbuildings have panes of glass missing and holes in the doors, allowing the swallows to make free with the accommodation we have offered them. They are the symbol of summer as much as our first cuckoo of the year heralds spring. It is lovely to see their season progress. By summer, the young fledglings have to learn to scoop u
p drinks from the moat, which involves flying and dipping in their lower beak. The first couple of times you see them trying they are so near to disaster it makes you flinch, but by the time they have to leave us they are accomplished aeronautical acrobats, swooping and diving and catching the little flying insects that may otherwise want to bite us! It is amazing to think that they will be visiting us every year all the way from South Africa, so we cannot begrudge them somewhere to build their muddy little nests, even if they do leave piles of crap below them. With a bit of luck, some swallows can live up to sixteen years, so those raised during our first year could keep coming back and be here when Arthur becomes an adult …

  Every year in September there is a day when all the local swallows congregate and fly around the moat, swooping down to take a drink. We have seen dozens of them diving at a time, but it only lasts for a couple of hours and then, at some unseen signal, they all disappear in a matter of moments, not to be seen again until the following spring. It’s spectacular to watch but quite a sad moment as it marks the end of summer.

  By nature, I am a very clean and tidy person. However, living with a constant building haze, and the natural disorganisation that comes from the continuous moving of items when you’re in that zone, is all part of the fun – you just have to embrace the chaos. But once through that phase, I was excited that organisation and the big scrub was within my grasp. Dick and I had decided that the outside area just had to slip off our to-do list for now. It was so much work and, to be honest, we could not make a dent in the time frame. I did sign up to this but the sandy ground was niggling me … it was continuously being brought into the house on people’s shoes and until it was covered that was going to carry on happening.

  Dick was not impressed by my worry and said if I wanted to sort it, then I should do it. I noticed Jacques and Isabelle had very neat grey gravel outside their house, so when we were at their house I asked where they had purchased it from. Within a couple of days I had visited the gravel merchants. The space outside the château was thousands of square metres so I signed up for 75 tons of the gravel. At €20 a ton it was going to cost us but I thought it was a bargain.

  With just two months until the wedding we knew we had to start sorting out the party itself. Somehow the guest list had grown to just over 200 people and they were all going to need wining and dining. There was a sommelier in the next village so we decided to go and find the perfect local wines for our weekend celebration. Even with our limited French we thought we made it clear that we wanted local wines, but that message seemed to be very difficult to get across as we were given wines from all over France, and even some Italian and Spanish wines. Our definition of local was much closer to home. We were thinking no further than the boundaries of our region, the Pays de la Loire, to try to minimise food and wine miles. We purchased a number of bottles to sample, purely for research purposes, of course. They were all easy to drink. Some we liked more than others but we still didn’t feel that we had addressed our desire to try to source truly local wines.

  It was during a trip to a supermarket in Laval that we hit the mother lode. Browsing through the Pays de la Loire region in the wine section, we found an amazing selection of sparkling wines from Saumur, which is just an hour and a half south of us. Using our well-trusted technique for wine selection, we made our choices and took them home to try. I am old enough, and have drunk enough wine, to have a fairly wide understanding about the different wine regions, but for us it’s more about liking what we like rather than searching for named châteaus. I tend to make a decision based on the region and, depending on the occasion, I will either go for a good cru or a reasonably priced bottle from an AOC I know and like. Angela, on the other hand, will look at the bottle or label and see what she thinks looks the best. We both have similar success rates, so we don’t dismiss each other’s choices, but with a decision as important as our wedding wine we took several options home to try.

  Our final decision was based on taste but the bottles and labels were also lovely, which negates any wine snobbery in our house. We found several excellent sparkling whites from the Ackerman vineyard, one of which even came in magnums, so we immediately ordered those. They also had an amazing sparkling red, a ‘Royale Rouge’, that was far too easy to drink, so we added that to our list. Whites from the Loire are easy to find, as are rosé wines. In both cases, the samples we took were similar in taste and quality and were very drinkable, so we went for the prettiest bottles, which was a white from Touraine and a rosé from Anjou. The reds were more of a challenge, but we found a pleasant Chinon. Our region does not do the heavier wines you find further south, so we thought we’d celebrate that rather than ignore it.

  Tasting wines can be quite taxing. We could not finish each bottle we sampled, so instead we had to leave what was left or give it away. We were just too busy to drink a couple of bottles of wine a night – even a couple of glasses would send us to sleep at the same time as the children. Luckily, we had some friends coming to stay that were happy to help us.

  Next on our list of long-lead items was the music for the big party. As well as dancing, we had decided we wanted to ensure the entertainment was very French. Now, that probably conjures up different things for different people. Maybe some Edith Piaf or André Claveau? Nope. For us it had to be a bunch of middle-aged blokes with accordions and keyboards.

  I didn’t know exactly what I wanted but I had a picture of a classic French band playing on the landing of our stairs. I wanted something so authentic that there was no mistaking what it was trying to be. Music that makes you tap your feet, move your body and feel elated … Basically, I was after a local and reasonably priced Georges Brassens. The search was not easy. I even put the feelers out to my French friends Alex and Marie, who live in Montpellier – they know everything and everyone. My search turned up lots of very good bands, but for me they were all missing the authentique Frenchness.

  One afternoon, I was on the way to La Poste when I saw a poster on a lamp post for a tea dance. Firstly, a tea dance in our small village was very exciting – even though I knew we were so time poor we could not go – but, secondly, and more importantly, there was mention of a live band. Emilio Corfa was the singer of a five-piece band and they were the perfect combination of authentique and cheesy. I contacted them and Emilio came to the château. He was a true gentleman and he’d brought along a CD with a number of English covers he wanted to suggest. His enthusiasm in telling me did a great Gloria Estafan cover won me over, even though I then spent the rest of meeting explaining to him I wanted classic French music that would get people dancing. My theory: a great beat to music no one knows is better than any potentially bad covers. We couldn’t afford the whole band at nearly €3,000 so we went for the three-piece: Emilio on the accordion plus two other band members, one on the keyboard and one on the saxophone.

  With alcohol and music ticked off the list, I had a very positive ‘whatever state the château is in, our wedding is going to happen’ moment.

  We were always open for visitors but there were a few simple rules: they had to be prepared to get stuck in; catering during the day is usually smash and grab; and when it came to making a brew, ask around and see who else wants one …

  Johnny had been on the National Geographic survival series with me and had stayed in contact, so when his wife Nadine had business in Paris, it seemed logical that they would pop down and see us for a couple of days. Johnny and Nadine had met and fallen in love on the American soap Days of Our Lives. They were playing opposite each other and after falling in love on screen realised that they were actually meant for each other in real life as well. As well as being a Hollywood actor, Nadine ran her own fashion company, and Johnny presented a very successful DIY series, so when they said they were coming we immediately produced a to-do list for them.

  With just two months until our wedding, a lot of our effort was going into decorating and cosmetic tasks, so I envisaged them helping finish off one or two of t
he rooms. But Angela had other ideas and sprang on me that the room that was to be the children’s playroom was not sufficiently playful … It’s a simple fact of life that when you are up to your ass in alligators it’s not the right time to build a helter-skelter, however Angela was fretting that the children had been neglected in our work on the château. My first thought was to buy them some colouring books and maybe some new crayons but I was hardly going to get away with that. I’d never have dreamt up the idea of a helter-skelter in a month of Sundays but with Johnny coming to stay somehow I was convinced it was a reasonable thing to do.

  Angela knocked up a simple sketch and I came up with a very rudimentary plan and then bought the plywood and four-by-two wood for the frame. The longest plywood I could buy was 2.5m so that was to be the length of the sides. I made them such that it was possible to get two pieces out of a single sheet. By making the construction an octagon, four pieces would make main body and a couple more for the slide would ensure that I had kept the price as low as possible. But I grew to hate that bloody thing.

  When Johnny and Nadine arrived, I instantly loved the pair of them. We had spoken often via Dick when they were filming together and they were full of energy and had a passion for life. We gave them a quick guided tour. Both were charmed by the history and elegance of what they saw, despite the fact it was a work in progress. Even though they had just flown in from Los Angeles, both wanted to get stuck in. And we didn’t ever look a gift horse in the month, so we issued them with coveralls and off they went. Nadine was straight up a mobile scaffolding tower painting the playroom walls with white emulsion and Johnny and Dick were marking up sheets of plywood for the helter-skelter. From what I could gather, the plan had evolved a bit – Dick and Johnny were discussing complex angles and downward forces. Nadine kept popping up and down refreshing her paint tray and adding more to the ceiling and walls. Most of the time she was smiling and shaking her head as our men debated how to build the thing of beauty that the children would eventually play on. I thought the best thing I could do was keep a low profile and intermittently provide mugs of tea.