Tag: chicken recipes

Chicken with fennel and flageolet beans

Chicken with fennel and flageolet beans

rebecca@chateaudelaruche.com September 6, 2026 No Comments

I’ve been cooking this dish for many years, it was a firm favourite for a long time, served up time and again at summer dinner parties, but somehow, I’d forgotten…

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I imagined a weekend of good food, eaten around be

I imagined a weekend of good food, eaten around beautiful tables in the summer sunshine, days spent cycling through French vineyards and mornings mooching around the market. I dreamt of teaching people a favourite recipe and sharing our love of good, seasonal food. Our usual laid back but luxurious hosting style but with some carefully curated experiences layered on top.

What I couldn’t have imagined were the unbelievable people who came to stay. A group of strangers caught up in the magic of this special place, so determined to have fun and enjoy themselves, that their laughter and joie de vivre was infectious. It’s safe to say that we didn’t really want our Big Foodie Weekend to end.

We cooked and hosted, ate together, shared stories, swapped life lessons and laughed a whole lot. I taught my first cookery class and we made enough strawberry tarts to feed a small army.

There’s nothing quite like someone taking you aside to tell you what an amazing time they’re having. Each time it happened it made a little lump of emotion rise in my throat. We feel so grateful to be able to share our home with such lovely folk. We couldn’t have asked for a better group to create our first Big Foodie Weekend for and we can’t wait for the next one. Thank you all for coming - we miss you already.

Our 2026 retreats are all sold out but you can find details of our 2027 retreat weekends on our website.

A huge thank you to Yohan @dionysosbike for taking such great care of our guests and showing them all the secrets of the Loire on one of the hottest days of the year so far.

My only regret is not taking more pictures of the food. There just wasn’t time in the kitchen.

Did you catch us on @chateaudiy this evening? It w

Did you catch us on @chateaudiy this evening? It was lovely to look back behind the scenes of our first Summer Flowers Retreat. I couldn’t have asked for a lovelier bunch of women to be my first workshop guests. Sharing my cutting garden and my love of flowers with them was really special, even if I was terrified the whole time.

What the cameras didn’t really capture was what a wonderful job they all made of the table centres they created, nor the beautiful table we all put together for our gorgeous lunch. So here are a few more pictures to show you just how beautiful it really was.

There was no one here to film the second day of our workshop, when Kate @uniquekr8ivity took our guests foraging for flowers and then taught them how to cast the flowers into beautiful bas relief plaques.

It was such a lovely, peaceful weekend full of flowers and food and laughter. We’re looking forward to doing it all again with another lovely group this summer. This year’s workshops are all sold out, but our retreats for 2027 are up on our website now and the first spots have already been snatched up. Take a peep if you’d like to join us.

A huge amount of time and effort went into this workshops and this one was made possible with help from the lovely folk @niwaki.hq for the fantastically sharp floral snips for our guests to use in the cutting garden, @floreagarden for being a brilliant source of flower seeds to help me grow so many flowers and for gifting our guests a whole heap of seeds too, @katerynalebreton for taking such lovely photos, and of course @t1mjones for being there to help me pull it all together.

After weeks of mild, dry days, soft breezes and no

After weeks of mild, dry days, soft breezes and not a drop of rain, the weather finally broke. Dark clouds, thunder growling, wind whipping through the trees and the first fat drops of rain.

The storm felt like the release of a long slow breath, the garden sighing after a long awaited drink. Petals heavy with raindrops, but stems straighter, the green somehow greener, leaves dripping and tousled by the storm.

At first light a mist shifts across the garden, vapours swirling above the lake as if it’s about to come to a simmer. The trees slowly emerging from the half light of the morning, the air fresh and cool. More rain to come to bring forth more flowers, a long cool drink before summer proper arrives. Roots reaching out to sip, plants settling in, readying themselves to bloom.

The garden feels washed clean, spring reinvigorated, the countryside awake again, tractors rumbling, crops growing, cows and calves quietly chewing the cud in the fields. There’s a peaceful energy to it all that it’s a privilege to be part of.

I took my last walk alone, under the trees, along

I took my last walk alone, under the trees, along the gravelly track of our winding driveway, through the meadow and into the cool greenness of the woods. Taking a moment to take it all in, to listen to the birdsong and take a deep breath in the midst of a non-stop week. Making the most of having the gardens and grounds all to myself before we open the doors of our home to our summer full of guests.

We have scrubbed the house clean, opening up rooms that have been closed all winter, dusting corners and chasing away cobwebs, making beds, plumping cushions and filling vases full of flowers.

The days have been warm, and look set to be beautiful for a good while. We’ve opened the windows and let the fresh spring air sweep through the house, filling the rooms with the scent of the wisteria and clematis that are flowering everywhere, scrambling up the walls of the house and shouting that it’s springtime.

We worked until the very last moment, tidying ourselves up and lighting the candles just in time for our first guests to arrive. Our summer season is here, the house is full again, people chatting and laughing, sharing our home with us from now until the Autumn. It’s going to be busy, wish us luck.

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