Hotel Saint-Roch travel guide

At the foot of the Puy Saint Vincent slopes, meet Jean-Louis Giraud, head chef of the Hotel Saint-Roch, and a devotee of local gastronomy. On the menu: "donkeys' ears", "cornets" and "graguette"…

Traditionally, regional cuisine used local ingredients, grown in gardens or picked wild in the mountains or on the edge of the road. Potatoes, leeks and cabbage for instance. Pigs were reared for meat, and cows provided the milk for country cheeses like the tomme. Donkeys' ears" (wild spinach), nettles and cornets, little bell flowers which grow high up the mountains, were freely available for the picking." These ingredients naturally figure on Jean-Louis Giraud's menu, in his revised low-fat recipe for bacon stew and his thin pastry potato pie for instance; his graguette (salt pork hotpot with potatoes and leeks) is enhanced by the Tallard truffle, and his sausages are made to order by the local pork butcher, with specially large pieces of meat. Served cold, it is also delicious as an aperitif. "Local cooking already has a Mediterranean influence" he reminds us, and rather than serving the eternal tartiflette (which by the way hails from the Savoy Alps, not here!), Jean-Louis Girard prefers wild spinach gratin, nettle soup and mountain mushrooms like the morel and the Saint George. Adding spice to his argument, he recalls village life in the old days: "The villagers would gather around the communal bread oven, waiting for the big pies they put in after the bread was finished to bake golden brown. On feast days they would bake a special terrine with the hares the hunters had brought back."

Hotel Saint-Roch travel guide by EU-Latitude is this text outdated?

Latest Reviews for Hotel Saint-Roch

Be the first to write a review:

 You are currently not logged in. Login or register to write a review.