From the very first moment walking up the carriageway to Château de Gudanes magic seems to linger in the air. That moment when for the première fois, you finally cross through the iron gates overgrown with ivy and gaze up at the Château, with her faded shutters, intricately carved family crest over the door and light sand-coloured rendering crumbling away to reveal her stonework underneath, it is like nothing one could have ever imagined. There is an overcoming sense of awe, a sense of wonder… of a by-gone era passed, of the intense history of the place and of the immense beauty.
For me, I felt an instant connection. I felt welcome. I felt like I was home.
So, who you may be wondering, am I? And how did I come to be at Château de Gudanes?
Well, let’s start from the beginning. My name is Jennifer Pogmore, and I am 32 years old. I grew up in England, in Worcestershire (like the sauce), I studied business at university and ten years ago, I decided to move to Paris. I have been living in France ever since.
My mother is French, and while I did not unfortunately grow up speaking the language, I decided in my twenties that it was time to expand my horizons, move abroad, and learn more about my French heritage, about the language, the culture and of course the food.
And this is where my story begins…
I have always enjoyed food. When I first moved to France I began working in marketing in Paris. But, it quickly became more and more apparent to me that my interest in cuisine extended far beyond eating out at restaurants and cooking at home, especially when this concerned pastries.
The exquisitely decorated windows of the pâtisseries, the decadent French desserts and artistry behind their creation lured me in. I would spend weekends walking the streets of Paris tasting and testing pastries at every boutique I could find. And before long, I was trying my hand at making macarons in ma maison.
Very soon, my mind was set. I could no longer deny what had become obvious to me. And so, after months of research and saving every centime I had, I enrolled at the world-renowned Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Institute, and started my official training to become a pastry chef.
My world completely changed overnight. My desk was replaced with a marble worktop, my computer mouse with a rolling pin. My life was now spent watching and learning from the incredible chefs that were my teachers. They would demonstrate how to make the most intricate pastries and then each member of the class would carefully replicate the process until perfect. We learnt about the history behind each creation, the importance of each ingredient and how they worked together in a recipe. With this I gained even more depth of appreciation for the art of pastry and love for what I was creating. And as my studies progressed, I was able to make the desserts that I had admired in the displays of Paris’s pâtisserie windows for so long.
After a year of “Oui Chef !”, several tonnes of butter and cream, and a minor burn or two, my parents came to Paris to watch me at my graduation ceremony. As I left behind the safety and comfort of school and set out to begin my first job as a pastry intern, I knew there was no looking back, and that my life had changed forever.
After several years of working in pastry shops in Paris, my career came full circle and I had the opportunity to return to Le Cordon Bleu, only this time no longer as a student, but as a teacher. Teaching runs in the family, and so following in the footsteps of both my mother and my sister, I took the position without any hesitation. To share my knowledge, my experiences and my practical pastry skills - everything that had been so graciously passed on to me over the years - was an honour.
It was so wonderful to see the classroom from a different perspective having been a student myself not so long ago, being able to put myself in the students’ shoes, understand their mistakes, appreciate their willingness to learn and admire their creations.
While a student (and later also as a teacher) at Le Cordon Bleu, I had the opportunity to meet fellow students from around the world and have since had the pleasure of following their onward journeys. One such student was Molly. Originally from Texas, Molly too had followed the trail of sugar and spice and all things nice all the way to the school in Paris, and upon graduating, stayed working here in France. She happened upon the restoration of an incredible Château in the south of France, and whilst working at Château de Gudanes one summer, I had the opportunity to come and visit her for a few days.
My first time meeting the Château is something I will never forget. As was my première rencontre with Karina. Within hours of arriving, we were all baking up a storm in the Château pastry kitchen, rolling handmade orecchiette for dinner with Julie, one of the amazing Château Cuisine Chefs, and dashing around in the van visiting all of the local brocantes in search of vintage furniture and antique porcelain.
I remember Karina welcomed me as if we had known each other for years, and before long we were talking of English gardens and edible flowers, weddings and Château cookbooks, and the difference between the English and the Aussies.
It was no surprise that the following year, when Karina invited me to return to the Château as part of the pastry team for their first ever wedding, that I jumped at the chance. Joining me in the team were two pastry chefs all the way from Brazil. In a turn of events, so serendipitous that they can only prove how small the world is, Mariana, one of the chefs, was one of my fellow classmates from Le Cordon Bleu several years before. On graduating, she had returned to Brazil to open her own pâtisserie and Larissa worked with her. I couldn’t believe I would be meeting Mariana again after so long and at the Château of all places!
Image courtesy of Coline Brun-Naujalis
It was a long day making my way down from Paris all the way to the Château with a suitcase full of pastry equipment (rail networks in France were bien sûr officially on strike and so all my trains were cancelled and I had to car-share the way!). After I arrived the whole Château Team gathered together, each of us with a glass of sparkling in hand to toast to the wedding. And before I knew it candles were lit and a table set for a wonderful dinner. I finally had the pleasure of meeting Jasmine, Larissa and the rest of the Château Team in person.
From the first moment, I felt an instant connection with Larissa. At just 20 years old, she had left Brazil for the first time, travelled all the way to Europe to follow her dreams of working in pastry abroad having just graduated from culinary school.
I was amazed by her positivity, strength, her incredible energy and her English… she had learned how to speak in just a few weeks! I could relate to her situation, being in a strange land, with people she didn’t know, with a language she was learning how to speak as it echoed my first journey to France. And we bonded.
The wedding was a blur as the three of us, Mariana, Larissa and I, worked away in the pastry kitchen creating confection after confection. The pièce de resistance of the wedding feast was a six metre long forest table laden with desserts, which following dinner we presented together in the Château’s 18th Century gold-gilded Salon de Musique...
Image courtesy of Coline Brun-Naujalis
And so, we worked together, we danced, we laughed and I tried my best to learn a few words of Portuguese. After a week of hard work, I left the Château to return to Paris and my job teaching and Mariana returned to Brazil. Larissa however, stayed and worked the whole summer at the Château creating towers of croquembouche, chocolate garden cakes, tarte tatins, raspberry and pistachio tartelettes, violet sorbet… the list goes on!
Image courtesy of Coline Brun-Naujalis
After the summer season was over, Larissa came to visit me in Paris. I will never forget the tears in her eyes as she saw the Eiffel Tower for the first time. We ate dessert for breakfast, lunch and dinner, we went to every pastry shop and kitchen supply store in the city and we laughed non-stop. Larissa came to visit me again in Paris with Jasmine before returning to Brazil and we all talked about how wonderful it had been working together and sharing the wedding experience that year.
It wasn’t long before the New Year arrived and 2019 was a year that changed many things for me. After years of working for other people, I decided it was finally time to step out on my own and become freelance. At the beginning of the year, Karina and Jasmine reached out to me to see if I would be able to return to the Château Culinary Team and the answer was a resounding oui ! Tracy the fantastic cheffe de cuisine who I had met during the wedding the previous year, and Julie who I had met the first time I came to the Château would be joining the cuisine team again, and of course, I would be working with Larissa in the pastry kitchen.
That summer Larissa and I spent working together last year was a dream. We baked together, we danced, we laughed, we shared our hopes and dreams. We spent several hours escaping from the summer heat in the pool. And one thing came up which we started to discuss more and more…
Larissa was in the process of applying for her Italian citizenship in order to stay and work in Europe without the need for a visa, and she was wondering what to do after the summer season at the Château. Having become recently freelance myself, I too had wondered what to do once summer was over. And as we talked more, an idea began to take shape. We knew every year that someone stayed and looked after the Château for a few months over winter so that Karina and Jasmine could return to Australia for Christmastime and so that Karina could renew her visa. And so we thought what if this year, we both stayed?
As it turns out, we did! But that is a story for another time yet to come…in Part 2!
With all our love and a lot of sucre from the pastry kitchen,
Jennifer x
