Chef Gabriel Gaté has just come back from France where he travelled 7,500 kilometres filming the 7th consecutive year of Taste Le Tour. If you haven’t seen it before, or if you are looking forward to seeing it again this year, Taste Le Tour is a gastronomic tour that follows the route of the Tour De France.
For the first time the popular French chef visits every one of the regions of this year’s amazing race, which begins in the Vendée region on the Atlantic coast and continues through the regions of Brittany, Normandy, the Loire Valley, Limousin, Auvergne, Albigeois, Toulousin, Pyréneens, Languedoc Roussillon, the north of Provence, the Alps, Piemont in Italy and the Dauphiné before finishing in Paris. In each episode Gabriel or another French chef prepares a delicious regional dish.
I was really honoured today to speak with Gabriel Gaté about the latest 7th series. “Taste Le Tour was originally an idea of mine” he told me, “that I took to SBS. We made a pilot and they agreed” to do the show. Chef continued, how every year “we have been to France with the beautiful images, with the countryside of Chateaus” and how he wanted to share the tastes of France, the real taste of the food.
But let me start at the end, not the beginning, of the conversation, when he (Chef) said to me “It’s good to blush”. Yes I was blushing, telling Chef Gabriel Gaté how his early cookbooks (he has now published twenty) and his cookery shows fostered the beginning of my love of French food.
In our half hour he told me of the show’s visit to the vineyards, and so we talked about Armagnac, where they filmed a family that has for six or seven generations has grown the grapes and made the brandy. Although I have a leaning towards Armagnac, I asked about the “bigger world image” of Cognac, which as Gabriel explained is quite different, has a different distillation and ageing process, and for which the differences in wood effect the final flavour. I can’t wait for this episode.
And then to food when we excitedly discussed the French way of life. Both countries, Australia and France, are good countries, he said. Though, the markets of France, Gaté believes to be the best in the world. In the last twenty years he believes that French produce and restaurants have improved even further on what they were. He believes that French food still moves forward.
The show is brimming with artisan producers. I was enticed by the descriptions of artisan nougat, made in the traditional way from lavender honey, in a big copper pan. Enticed by mouthwatering visions of ham and charcuterie, where Chef tells me the producers choose the right pig, that has eaten the right food, and is just the right size. We chatted about the traditional Cantal raw milk cheese of the mountains that is made the way it has been for the last thousand, if not two thousand, years. It’s aged in three different ways: young, well matured and aged. I was salivating. If you love good food, I know you’ll be salivating too when watching this not to be missed series.
Gabriel Gaté’s Blueberry and Cherry Coup recipe Verrine de Myrtilles et Cerises
Could not grab feed.
July 02 2011 at 12:30 pm
Rebecca, great interview with Gabriel .. love this time of the year, both the Taste Le Tour and Tour de France. It becomes my obsession for the next three weeks