Over the last couple of days we have had colder and rainy weather in Chamonix and snow down to around 2500m, with about a meter of fresh fallen on top of some earlier snow from the week before reports were that it might be worth the effort of a ski.

The girls

So the 5 of us headed up Grands Montets on the first cable car much to the amusement of the other occupants of the cable car who clearly thought we had lost the plot with our skis in hand.  We climbed the steps to the top viewing platform and climbed over the railing to head down something called the Bellevedere Cable which is a narrow ridge on the summit of the Grands Montets.  You have a steep first slope to ski which was nerve racking having not made a turn since the end of April and with a little apprehension of how stable the snow might be and how crevassed the glacier is, we set off.

The first pitch of ohh lovely new fresh snow

 The first pitch went without incident, but with 20 beautiful powder turns on a steep 35 degree slope, the legs were burning at the bottom!  We then skied down past the rognan, a large rock in the glacier, to the lower ridge line.  This was about as far as we dared go knowing the snow would give way to rock and an increased walk back to the lift.

We then put on our skins and began the walk back to the top and the lift to the bottom, no easy ski back to the lift at this time of year.  As they say you have to earn your turns!  After just over 1hr we were back standing under the bergschrund and it was skis off and a short climb around the side back to the bottom of the steps.  Climbing the steps back up to the cable car made the legs ache even more but it was great to be back up in the high mountains and well worth the early start for a cheeky August ski.

The Alpine Cookery Course is the leading chalet host training course for ski season workers.  We teach you everything you need to know to successfully run a ski chalet, cook delicious, nutritious meals with minimum hassle & maximise your time on the slopes.

www.thealpinecookerycourse.com  ‖ info@thealpinecookerycourse.com

Even though it’s high summer, with some colder rainy weather in Chamonix this week I quite fancied a nice roast dinner one night, so here’s my recipe for roast pork and all the trimmings.

Roast Loin of Pork with Roast Potatoes and Apricot and Hazelnut Stuffing.

Stuffing serves 2

• 100g of bread to make into breadcrumbs
• 50g of dried apricots
• 4 to 5 whole hazelnuts
• Sprig of fresh rosemary
• 4 or 5 fresh basil leaves
• 1 clove of garlic
• Salt & pepper
• 1 medium egg beaten

Place all the ingredients except the egg, into a magi mix and blend until everything is made into breadcrumbs.  Don’t mix it so much its really fine. 

Beat the egg in a glass and pour in half of it to the breadcrumb mixture and mix it well.  Add more egg if necessary, you are looking for a slightly sticky consistency but not soggy.  Then shape the mixture into balls around the size of a large golf ball.  Place them on a plate until you are ready to cook them in the oven.

apricot and hazelnut stuffing

I have roasted a piece of pork loin, it’s quite a lean cut of pork and nice and easy to roast.  Place the meat in a roasting tin and grate over some fresh pepper and sprinkle with salt and rub in a little vegetable or sunflower oil into the meat.  Place it into a pre-heated over at 180 C and cook for the right amount of time according to the weight of the meat; this should be 20mins per Lbs and 20 mins extra. 

About halfway through the cooking time I added 3 or 4 whole garlic cloves with their skins on, a sprig of fresh rosemary and half an onion.  All these ingredients help flavour the meat and the onion will make the meat juices taste good for gravy later on. 

Once cooked allow the meat to rest for 10 – 15 mins before carving and serving.

I am serving my roast with roasted potatoes, which I have par-boiled first before adding them to the roasting tin, basting them in some of the meat juices and allowing them to cook for around 1hr.  At the same time as adding the potatoes to the roasting dish you want to add the stuffing balls.

I am also serving fresh peas which I found the in the supermarket the other day, it’s nice to buy them in their pods and shell them yourself, along with carrots and some home grown courgettes.

Fresh peas and homegrown courgettes

        Potatoes and roaster garlic                                                                                                                                                                          

The Alpine Cookery Course is the leading chalet host training course for ski season workers.  We teach you everything you need to know to successfully run a ski chalet, cook delicious, nutritious meals with minimum hassle & maximise your time on the slopes.

www.thealpinecookerycourse.com  ‖ info@thealpinecookerycourse.com

A veiw that is hard to beat?

All these great activities are enjoyed by our students on the courses each year, there is enough free time during the week to walk, run, bike and much more while you are on the course.

There are also many great things to do and see around the town of Chamonix, there is the Adventure Film Festival from the 20^th – 22^nd August, that showcases many small but inspirational film makers and  their stories and travels around the globe.

There will be a summer version of the Nissan Outdoor Games from the 14^th July in Chamonix, this is an amazing few days were teams of 5 have one week to shoot, edit and present a 5 minute film showcasing their different sporting disciplines: Mountain Biking, Mountaineering, Kayaking, Paragliding, BASE-jumping and wingsuit flying.  The winning team will be chosen by a panel of judges including the skiing legend Glen Plake.

The outdoor swimming pool has just re-opened at the sports centre after a full refurbishment, you can enjoy a lovely dip in the water of the Olympic sized pool to cool off.

With many more events taking place all the way through the summer and autumn, Chamonix really is a great place for your chalet cookery course.  Not only is it conveniently located just a 1hr drive from Geneva airports, it’s at the foot of Mont Blanc, Western Europe’s highest mountain and enjoys staggering views of the mountains.  It’s a busy vibrant town with lots of great shopping, bars, cafe’s and sports facilities.  Do you need any more good reasons to book your place on our course in October?

The Alpine Cookery Course is the leading chalet host training course for ski season workers.  We teach you everything you need to know to successfully run a ski chalet, cook delicious, nutritious meals with minimum hassle & maximise your time on the slopes.

www.thealpinecookerycourse.com  ‖ info@thealpinecookerycourse.com

Recruitment for the 2010/11 winter season has started in ernest now and all our course participants are applying for jobs and asking questions on how to write the best 6 day menu plan to go with their job applications.
 
Anyone applying for a job as a chalet chef, host or assistant will need to supply at least a 6 day menu plan with their application.  It doesn’t need to be a daunting task and by following some basic rules you can have one nailed in no time at all.
 
Get prepared either with a large piece of paper and pen or you laptop or PC and begin with writing out days 1 – 6, usually its best to start with Saturday as this is generally termed the start of your week or change over day, your week ends on Friday and its only 6 days as you have 1 day off mid week (typically Wednesday) when you do not need to prepare breakfast or dinner.  You will however need to leave breakfast laid out for your guests to help themselves to and a cake for tea.
 
Once you are set with this along with the recipes you intend to use you need to compile them into daily menus. 
Starting with breakfast you need to provide a regular continental breakfast each day along with 1 hot option - begin your meny plan by writing out your breakfast options on all your days, on Wednesday your day off it will be just a continental breakfast. 
 
You should have: tea, coffee, orange juice, fresh bread, croissants, pain au chocolate, jam, butter, sugar, cereal, milk and yoghurt.
 
The hot option you provide each day does not need to be on the scale of a full English breakfast but you can use the components of this dish each day to create smaller hot dishes e.g. scrambled eggs on toast; fried egg and bacon; mushrooms on toast; sausages and tomatoes and eggy bread/French toast.  You may also have to serve porridge each day, it used to be very traditional but it is less so now.  You could also consider adding pancakes to your menu if your a dab hand at making them and a fruit salad or fruit plate is a nice, healthy touch a few times a week. 
 
Now that is breakfast sorted, its time to hit the cakes & biscuits for tea, yum yum!  Some people love chocolate but you can only have 1 or 2 chocolaty things in one week – repetition is an important point overall (or lack of repetition) of the same flavour or type of food whether its chocolate, carrots, chicken or eggs!  So back to cake!  Choose a selection of cakes and biscuits type things with a selection of flavours e.g. chocolate chop cookies, carrot cake, flapjacks, lemon drizzle cake etc.  Its a good idea to serve a biscuit like flapjacks on your day off as they will keep well in an airtight container.
 
On to the main evening meal, we always suggest you start with the main course first and specifically the meat you will serve, this forms the basis of your meal and you build the rest of the dinner around this dish.  So for example you are going to serve a breast of chicken, what are you going to do with it?  Pan fry it, grill it, casserole it, cook it in the oven, stuff it, pour a sauce over it?  If you have a recipe you have cooked lots before and know well then use it; I have a chicken recipe I have cooked for many years where you wrap the breast in a slice of parma ham and fry or seal the meat until it goes a nice golden colour before finishing the cooking in the oven; its served with a tomato and orange sauce. 
 
Once the meat is chosen you can then select your starch (potatoes, rice, pasta etc) and vegetables to compliment the dish.  They should provide an array of colour, texture and flavour; make sure you avoid too much red e.g. tomato and orange sauce with carrots and sweet potatoes or making a meal white.  I always try to imagine what it would look like on the plate when you serve it, this might help you visualise the meal.  I would serve my chicken breast with roasted potato wedges and sauteed mange tout and courgettes. 
 
You can now move either way to the starter or dessert, personally I prefer to get the starter done next.  Make sure your starter compliments the main meal, does not over power it in flavour or use any of the same main ingredients as the main course.  You could choose a pea and mint soup for instance. 
 
Now to the dessert – similar rules apply as for the tea & cakes, not too much chocolate or one type of pudding.  Another important rule is you should not have 3 hot dishes in 1 meal so as I have a soup for the starter I need to have a cold dessert.  I would also choose a pudding based on colour and texture so having had a green, soft soup, a red & green main course, I would go for a dessert with some crunchy texture somewhere and maybe of the chocolate or lemon variety e.g. Chocolate tart with homemade sweet pastry served with passion fruit mascarpone cream.
 
Vegetarian options need to be placed in for all main courses and where necessary for startes too.  Its important to use as many ingredients from your main dish in your veggi option; this prevents you from having to prepare and cook many more things.
 
Its important to make the meal sound appetising as well as describing the main ingredients in it, it will only stand out from the rest if it reads well and makes the meal sound yummy.  If you read this menu what does it make you think?
 
Pea and mint soup
 
Chicken with tomato sauce, chips and courgettes/mange tout
 
Chocolate tart
 
Now read this menu and see what you think:
 
Pea and mint soup served with a fresh bread roll and butter
 
Pan fried breast of chicken wrapped in Parma ham served with a tomato and orange sauce, roasted potato wedges and sautéed courgettes and mange tout
 
Chocolate tart with homemade sweet pastry served with passion fruit mascarpone cream
 
I know which one sounds more appetising, hopefully this makes the point clear on how important it is to write your menu in a descriptive fashion. 
 
Once all your days are filled in check, check and re-check it for spelling and punctuation and ask 1 or 2 people to read it too.  Check you have not repeated anything too often, a good way to do this is to read all the starters, mains and desserts across day by day. 
 
Its critical you know how to cook and have cooked every dish you put on your menu plan before you go for an interview, countless people have been caught out by putting some elaborate dish on the menu because it sounds good but have no idea how its made.  When you are at an interview you will asked questions on your menu plan so its important you know who to cook the dishes, have tasted them and also how you would serve them.
 
On our courses we cover this in more detail and give you a detailed 6 day menu plan to get you started, to book your place on out course just visit our website www.thealpinecookerycourse.com

The Alpine Cookery Course is the leading chalet host training course for ski season workers.  We teach you everything you need to know to successfully run a ski chalet, cook delicious, nutritious meals with minimum hassle & maximise your time on the slopes.

www.thealpinecookerycourse.com  ‖ info@thealpinecookerycourse.com

How many of you have sore feet because of poor fitting ski boots?

I suspect that the answer from many people, holiday makers or seasonaires, is Yes.  The cause of this is generally boots that are too big or too small or the wrong shape for your feet. 

So what do you do?  Well you could just throw them in the bin or keep visiting the ski rental shop until you find a pair that are vaguely comfy and put up with them for the rest of your holiday or season.  In the long term this is not the ideal solution to the problem, investing in your own boots maybe costly but also well worth it and will probably pay itself back within 1 season if you ski 2 or 3 times a year.

If you own a pair of boots but find they give you pain, maybe on the bottom or side of your foot, have become too big so you are cranking up the buckles to keep your foot still and giving yourself cramp or pins and needles.  Then you need to visit a good boot fitting shop to get some help.

Most resorts will have a shop that offers some kind of specialist boot fitting service some are better than others but they can help to relive some of the discomfort and sort out a solution to some of the problems.

A common solution to many boot problems is to have a footbed made for you.  A footbed is a moulded insole that matches the shape of the bottom of your foot, this will prevent your foot slipping around in the bottom of the boot, take up some space if your boot is feeling too big.  It can alleviate pain around your foot by stabilising it in the boots, stopping it moving around.   These usually cost from about 80 Euros for a pair and they are certainly worth the investment as the first step towards boot comfort.

Many people think a precise fit means uncomfortable but that does not have to be the case, you can have a well fitting ski boot that is a pleasure to ski in all day; don’t confuse comfort and fit as they can come hand in hand.

If you are planning on buying new ski boots then find a good boot fitting shop like ‘Sole’ in Chamonix.  Anyone that knows their stuff will do a proper “fitting” that should take at least 1 – 2hrs and they will in effect choose the boot for you.  They look at you foot and lower leg shape as well as asking what kind of skiing you do and select a couple of boots for you to try on to see how they feel.  Once the best boot has been chosen then generally they will heat the liner of the boot and possibly the shell; before putting your feet back into them to mould the liner to your foot and lower leg shape.

The next 15 minutes or so is usually spent pacing the floor of the shop with hot feet until the boot and liner cool down and have settled in shape.  The next step is to ski in the boot and see how it feels.  If you buy boots in resort this is obviously much easier to do unless you have a dry slope close by in the UK!  If you suffer any further pain or discomfort then you need to return to the shop and they should be able to sort this out with some wizzardy and trickery! 

Everything from lumps and bumps, high instep, flat footed, poor alignment and more can be dealt with by a boot fitter.  If you are going to be doing a ski season and want to buy some kit before you go to resort then I recommend buying boots over skis.  A good pair of boots can make the world of difference to your skiing and you will certainly get your money’s worth across the season.

Sole Boot Lab and Pro Shop

The Alpine Cookery Course is the leading chalet host training course for ski season workers.  We teach you everything you need to know to successfully run a ski chalet, cook delicious, nutritious meals with minimum hassle & maximise your time on the slopes.

www.thealpinecookerycourse.com  ‖ info@thealpinecookerycourse.com

Join the Discount Revolution

Get your privilege alps card

What is it?
A handy credit card sized fold out card packed full of discounts for shops, bars, restaurants and outdoor activities for those living and working in the resort of Chamonix. 

How does it work?
Pick up your card from one of the on-the-ground distributors in Chamonix or online via their site http://www.privilegealps.com/ or pop into their office in Chamonix.   It costs just 10 Euros and has up to 100 Euros of available discounts.
1 Privilege Alps card = 1 discount per person per transaction.

Get your card HERE to take advantage of the great offers on every Privilege Alps card.

The Alpine Cookery Course is the leading chalet host training course for ski season workers.  We teach you everything you need to know to successfully run a ski chalet, cook delicious, nutritious meals with minimum hassle & maximise your time on the slopes.

www.thealpinecookerycourse.com  ‖ info@thealpinecookerycourse.com

Photo courtesy of Tom Greenall  www.idriskis.com

Since the start of the 2009/2010 ski season I have been out enjoying the snow.  So far we have had a pretty good amount of snow across the Alps inter-dispersed with some very cold weather before Christmas as well as some warmer days too.

In Chamonix we now have excellent snow after a big snowfall on Monday on 4^th Jan, we got approximately 40cm of beautiful cold fresh powder and the skiing all this week was amazing.  I managed to sneak out of the office for a few hours on Wednesday to do my first run down the Vallee Blanche of the ski season.

I joined some friends and we headed up the Aiguille Midi cable car to the summit at 3842m, the sun was out, very little wind and great snow conditions.  We decided on the Envers du Plan route down the glacier, which is a spectacular route but this time we had to make the route down as it had yet to be skiing.

Negotiating the crevasses and overhanging seracs was interesting to say the least, its intimidating heading down a route such as this with no prior knowledge if your route will suddenly be barred by an un-crossable crevasses.  It certainly tests your navigation and terrain reading skills!

Fortunately my good friend Stuart MacDonald was with us, who is a IFMGA Mountain Guide, so is very capable at the route finding.  The snow was fantastic, at least half a meter of beautiful cold powder snow, lots of face shots and fresh tracks were had.

If you want to ski the Vallee Blanche then you need to be a good skier with some off piste experience and its essential you have a Mountain Guide with you.  To book one check out http://www.mountaintracks.co.uk/winter

Photo courtesy of Tom Greenall  www.idriskis.com

I have also enjoyed some great skiing on New Year’s day on the Glacier du Toule in Italy, some tree skiing at Le Tour and some steep skiing with my friend Roger Knox on the Brevent ski area in Chamonix.  We skied the ENSA couloirs last Sunday which is a 45-50 degree couloirs on the south face of Brevent, with the view of Mont Blanc in front of you and the town of Chamonix 2500m straight below you.  It’s an exciting ski for sure especially when you get in powder snow all the way down.

The weather forecast is good for next week, some sunshine but with the air temperature staying cold which will mean the snow will stay good.  I am sure Emma will update you with her skiing antics in Verbier since Christmas when she can.

Don't look down, ENSA Couloirs

The Alpine Cookery Course is the leading chalet host training course for ski season workers.  We teach you everything you need to know to successfully run a ski chalet, cook delicious, nutritious meals with minimum hassle & maximise your time on the slopes.

www.thealpinecookerycourse.com  ‖ info@thealpinecookerycourse.com

Well me neither. Actually I can but it did take me years of practise to get it right, even after watching colleagues demoing it at cookery courses. I do remember being taught a method at cookery collage involving a large pan of hot water a splash of vinegar and a whirlpool! Fortunately egg poaching day had no bearing on the pass or fail as mine turned in a soggy scrambled, stringy mess.

After many attempts of poach an egg I finally got it sussed out – the temperature of the water is the most essential point to get right – hot, steaming water but not boiling or even simmering, when you can see a few little bubbles just forming on the bottomof the pan, that’s the right temperature. Then have an egg at room temperature, not straight from the fridge, make a small whirlpool in the centre of your saucepan and crack the egg into it.

Hopefully the lightly swirling water will assist to keep the egg white together ish. Now you need to wait and keep an eye on the water temperature, if it starts to look like it might boil, take the pan off the heat and the water is more than hot enough to keep the egg cooking. Try to resist the temptation to poke or agitate the egg as you can so easily cause the yolk to break.

You know when it is cooked as all the white should go white and no longer be a clear/opaque colour. Using a slotted spoon or spatula, gently lift the egg off the bottom of the pan and remove it from the water onto a plate, dry it slightly with kitchen roll and its ready to serve.

To make your life even easier you can invest in a Poach Pod, this is a silicon pod that you crack your egg into, then place the pod into a pan of very lightly simmering water. Father Christmas gave me 2 this year and they are absolute genius and work a treat, especially if you are trying to do more than 1 egg at a time. The egg cooks perfectly in the pod and they are really easy to remove by running a spoon around the side and you can just pop it out.

Try them out, you can buy them in any good cook shop like http://www.lakeland.co.uk/and they cost around £4.99 each. Here’s what they look like:

The Alpine Cookery Course is the leading chalet host training course for ski season workers.  We teach you everything you need to know to successfully run a ski chalet, cook delicious, nutritious meals with minimum hassle & maximise your time on the slopes.

www.thealpinecookerycourse.com  ‖ info@thealpinecookerycourse.com

Winter has arrived in the Alps and there is good snow in all the resorts, lifts are open and people are out skiing and having fun. Most people starting their seasons will be arriving in their resort or on their training week, eagerly learning their way around the resort and their chalet, meeting their colleagues, going shopping, cooking and finding out the best bars in town.

So what does training week really involve? Well you usually begin your training with all your fellow staff who will be working in the same resort, you might do this in a different resort to the one you are actually working in. For example a big company like Crystal may take all its staff to Val d’Isere for training week, if you are working for a smaller company then your training will be done in the resort and chalet you are working in. You will be split into groups and under your chalet or resort manger, along with the area manager you will do resort orientation – finding the tourist office, ski hire shops, where to buy lift passes, the medical centre/doctor, the ski lifts, other chalets and much much more.

As chalet hosts if you have set menus from the company you will spend 3 – 4 days cooking meals from these menus so you know what they look like, how they taste, how to present them and getting used to using different ingredients and finding your way around the kitchen. You may do a big shopping trip to the supermarket down the valley to stock up your chalet for the coming winter too. You will have sessions on cleaning and making up your chalet ready for each week of guests, you manager will take you through how you receive information on your guests your welcome speech on their arrival, how to deal with any problems and complaints; you are likely to receive a manual from your company that you keep for reference throughout the season.

Once all this has been done you will be moved to your resort and settle into your chalet and begin to get it set up for the arrival of your first guests. You maybe lucky to have a week or two of guests before Christmas, which will get you into the swing of things before the busiest and most tiring week of the season!

Hopefully in amongst all of this you will get to go skiing a little bit, don’t be surprised or upset if you are not given your lift pass until training is over. This is often the case as you have so much to focus on first that they don’t let you out onto the mountain until your chalet is clean, stocked and ready to rock.

Once you do get out skiing, take care you don’t want to hurt yourself and end your season straight away. You have 5 months of skiing ahead of you and plenty of time to have fun, improve, explore the area and learn how to do a 720!

We hope to have some updates on our students from this year’s cookery courses who will be letting us know how their season is going, no doubt with some great times and some bad times too. So check back to our blog regularly for updates from resorts.

The Alpine Cookery Course is the leading chalet host training course for ski season workers.  We teach you everything you need to know to successfully run a ski chalet, cook delicious, nutritious meals with minimum hassle & maximise your time on the slopes.

www.thealpinecookerycourse.com  ‖ info@thealpinecookerycourse.com

Not very relevant to cooking but I just want to show off my new skis, all we need now is some snow…

Even before I had set a foot into the vast exhibition hall of Olympia and the ski show, I had spent weeks thinking about and researching what new skis to buy for this season. Spending 5 days at the ski show on our stand there also gave me time to look around the other exhibitors and most importantly at the dazzling array of shiny new skis on offer for this winter.

So how do you decide on what skis to buy? Well for me the choice was relatively simple and as I live in Chamonix all year round they will get plenty of use all winter long, so the cost is justifiable. Skis get fatter and fatter every year and it has taken some time to win me over to the huge fat ski’s you now see. I’ve always thought, “well if you can ski less fat skis fine and have plenty of fun then who needs a massive pair?” Well I think this is still true to some extent but there is no question that the fat skis are more fun and technology has moved on so much that they can be skied across the whole mountain on and off piste with relative ease.

So a pair of FAT skis it is for me, by this I mean a width of more than 100mm under foot. So moving onto the make of ski, where you have so many to choose from. Everything from the main stream brands of Salomon, Dynastar, Rossignol to the new small relatively unknown ski makers like Black Crow’s, White Dot and Heidi Skis; where do you begin?

For me the choice was easy, Volkl. I already have a pair of Volkl skis which I love, they suit my style of skiing and felt great from the moment I first used them. They are made with a wood core which gives great feeling and a more uniform flex along the ski; they have a reputation for making excellent bombproof skis and they work with many top ski racers and freeskiers so their R&D is also excellent. And fortunately most of the skis they produce they make in a size that is right for me, 170cm or thereabouts.

Looking through their range of freeskis, some are just stupidly huge like the Kuro that comes in at a whopping 164-132-139 side cut, a snowboard some would say! I decide on the Kiku a women’s version of their much raved about Gotama ski. The Kiku has a side cut of 137-106-122, so big but not too silly! It has the new rocker system in it, which makes the ski look like its bent up the wrong way! According to Volkl’s website “Volkl’s ELP rocker design is a complete system that enhances the versatility of the ski, it allows easy turning and speed control without sacrificing is performance on firm snow”. The ski should combine amazing flotation in powder snow with all-mountain versatility.

All sounds good to me, they are now proudly sitting in my house waiting for some binding to be mounted onto them and more snow to fall so I can take them out to play. Now I just need to move the other 4 pairs of skis already in the garage, to one side, to make room for the new ones.

The Alpine Cookery Course is the leading chalet host training course for ski season workers.  We teach you everything you need to know to successfully run a ski chalet, cook delicious, nutritious meals with minimum hassle & maximise your time on the slopes.

www.thealpinecookerycourse.com  ‖ info@thealpinecookerycourse.com