By Katy Read • katy.read@startribune.com
Preparing a traditional French jambonette is no simple task, as Rich Demers can attest – even if you were taught how at the world's most famous cooking school.
"You take a whole leg of a chicken, thigh and leg attached, and you surgically extract most of the bone from it — which is a fun process," said Demers, a retired Minneapolis resident. "Then you stuff the leg with, it's almost like a pork sausage mix, then you cook it up with this elaborate sauce, and you serve it with these elaborate side dishes that are themselves a major undertaking."
Demers and his wife, Lois, learned the procedure when visiting Paris about eight years ago. Looking for activities that would immerse them in local culture, they discovered they would be welcome to attend a class at the celebrated Paris-based, century-old Cordon Bleu school (www.cordonbleu.edu/lcb-paris/en), whose alumni include Julia Child and Mario Batali.
The retired Minneapolis couple — Demers was a computer programmer, his wife a high-school special education teacher — wound up in a classroom amid the school's regular students, watching a French-speaking instructor demonstrate (with the help of a translator) the jambonette technique.
"Lois took notes like crazy and I took as many pictures as I could," Demers said. After returning home, they made the dish themselves.
"The chef did the whole thing within a two or three hour period. It took us a whole day," he said. "But you try stuff, you know, because it's fun."
If this matches your idea of fun, you're in luck. Culinary tourism, which can include learning to prepare fine foods as well as eating fine foods and visiting places where fine foods are grown or produced, is becoming an established segment of the tourism industry. It provides a combination of cultural education and social interaction and entertainment — a way to make your gâteau from scratch and eat it, too.
