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Art & Culture / Food

After a childhood of experimentation in the kitchen of her rustic family home, Alice Moireau set aside her dreams of opening a restaurant for a new life in Paris. Having returned to the Loire Valley last year, she now draws inspiration from nature for her various creative pursuits, whether it’s cooking or designing textiles. Here she shares some simple recipes from her autumn playbook, from a mouth-watering polenta dish to a comforting almond and pear tart.

Alice Moireau learned how to cook from her father, who illustrated travel books. “I’d stand at his stove, watching his every move,” she tells Konfekt from her house in Olivet, an hour’s drive southwest from Paris. By the age of 13, she was taking her first culinary steps. “Every Sunday I prepared a dessert. I only baked macarons for months, then tarte aux fraises, pancakes or marble cake. I would vary the recipe until it was perfect.”

Moireau’s mother provided another inspiring example. A painter known for her still-lifes, she was also a designer whose work included stoneware for porcelain manufacturer Gien. “She had a strong sense of table decoration,” says Moireau as she stirs a pot of polenta. “We usually set our table with her creations for Gien, then added colour with flowers.”

Despite being a keen young chef, Moireau studied in Paris and went on to work as an event producer, before quitting the city last year. She now spends most of her time at her childhood home, which her parents converted from the former kitchen house of a 1920s riverside retreat. “In those days, people came to eat and drink, and have fun on boats on the river; afterwards, they would sleep here in the hotel,” says Moireau, who points to the three-storey outbuilding, which now houses a b&b called La Maison Rose.

Cooled by river breezes in summer and warmed by a fireplace in winter, her kitchen is the perfect place to experiment and entertain. “You can have breakfast in the sun on the terrace and in the evening it’s a cosy place with a view of the river,” she says, stepping out of the kitchen to set the table. “In autumn the maple trees are particularly beautiful.”

Moireau usually buys ingredients for her dishes on Friday afternoons at the market in Olivet. She has two dreams: first, she wants to bring people from different backgrounds together through cooking and eating. Second, she wants to renovate a Swiss chalet that was on show at the 1889 Paris Exposition, which was rebuilt in Olivet. Former Hermès designer Claude Brouet had found a postcard of it at a flea market and sent it to Moireau. “My mother found out that it was for sale and bought it,” she says. Now she and her younger brother, Emile, own the chalet.

Another dream has already come true. Last spring, Moireau published her first cookery book, Au Pays d’Alice, which presents her simple, rustic kitchen. “The house and garden are an almost inexhaustible source of inspiration,” she says. “Being close to nature and cooking go hand in hand.” Now, Moireau has new plans. She has designed a textiles collection called Table with Marseille designer Caroline Perdrix; a women’s co-operative in Ghana makes the braided sets out of elephant straw while aprons and serviettes are woven in the Vosges. À table, s’il vous plaît.

Konfekt,
Autumn 2022