Meet the Chef!

Now that I’m back in my office, after a rather hectic couple of weeks, I’d like to take this opportunity of introducing you to two important members of the Karibuni team, chef John Crompton and his wife, Jacqui.

This is rather good practice for me, as I’ve recently taken on a gig from a soon-to-be-launched web magazine about food, and I’m trying to write about food, cuisine and chefs without sounding pretentious, over-effusive or slobbery.

John has been cooking for over 40 years, sometimes for an impressive list of household names, headed by Valéry Giscard D’Estaing, Sir Rocco Forte and Baron Rothschild.

Now, he’s Chef de Cuisine at the Hotel Aravis Lodge in the French Alpine village of St. Jean de Sixt. As I’ve already explained, this is the home of Karibuni, a company specialising in ski-ing, walking and adventure weekends.

But, if you’re not into these things, it’s worth coming just for the food … and you can do just that. John runs cookery courses at the Aravis, and you can find out about them at

www.cookinginfrance.biz.

He uses locally-sourced ingredients where he can. Just one example is the rich local milk, with which even scrambled eggs or mashed potatoes take on a flavour of their own. Or, the cheeses. One day, we were given a crispy baton for lunch, stuffed with the local Reblochon and Tomme cheeses and tomatoes. It just made the description ‘cheese sandwich’ sound so inadequate.

We only had those lunch packs because John couldn’t reach our chosen lunch stop in the mini-bus. On the first day, he met us with the mini-bus, loaded with coffee, soup, cheese, sausage, ham and a superb quiche.

Only problem was, after such a repast, we didn’t feel much like walking!

One of John’s specialities are his sea-salt mixes, with herbs and spices. They’re usually set out at mealtimes, and they’re delicious! You can buy them online; just click on the ‘Crompton’s Kitchen’ link on his website.