My mother was brilliant with food. If you had a headache, she would pick a borage leaf from the garden and put it in a sandwich for you. If your iron levels were low, she would bake you a molasses cake. And if you were feeling down, she would invite you for Sunday lunch and feed you comfort food such as roast chicken with a creamy fresh tarragon sauce.

But despite all her knowledge of the healing properties of herbs and good food, her efforts to eat herself well in a 17-month battle against cancer ended last March. The sound of clattering pots disappeared. The kitchen became dusty and derelict. My 67-year-old father, who hadn’t cooked much since 1963, turned to tinned fruit, white bread, rubbery cheese and red wine. The fridge started to contain things it had never seen before, such as E-number-heavy pizzas that didn’t rot after three weeks. Soon after my mother died he phoned from their home in France: “I’ve bought an avocado, what do I do with it?”

This was not a good situation: stranded alone in France in a house full of memories and wallowing in grief. Months of neglecting himself while nursing my mother, followed by mourning, had taken a physical toll and he started to avoid social contact. It took some persuading but he agreed to come on a French cookery course in Provence with me.

The first day was emotional. Just the mention of the words “borage leaf” or “tarragon” as we explored the herb gardens was upsetting. So while the rest of our lively group from the UK, France, Italy, Switzerland and Australia followed the Michelin-starred chef René Bérard around his grounds, notebooks in hand, Dad skulked behind.

The cookery course was in an old farmhouse draped in wistaria and surrounded by almond trees. Each day we would enter the kitchen, the table heaving with courgettes, tomatoes, aubergines and leafy celery, chopping boards before us. Whether fanatical cooks — one of our Swiss companions cited making stock on Saturdays as a hobby — or beginners such as my father and a couple of the Australians, we were going to learn a lot.

Did you know that you should prick holes in your chicken carcass so more flavour oozes out when making stock? Or that vanilla pods should be scraped on to the side of the whisk, not the bowl, to mix in more easily?

There were a million tricks to be learnt from Bérard (though his habit of sticking a leathery finger into boiling cauldrons to test the temperature is one I’ll give a miss). Premix your salt and pepper so you can sprinkle it more easily when cooking. Put your thyme in the coffee grinder to get a convenient powder for sprinkling over roast meats and vegetables. To get slices of basil, roll up three leaves together and cut thinly.

Bérard might be a Michelin man, but that is the only thing he has in common with Gordon Ramsay. “A chef is a tradesman of happiness,” he said. “I can’t teach people to be a chef in four days. This is an initiation into Provençal cookery.”

This was an enthusiastic group — to the point that people raced each other to the stoves. We started with an onion tart. The slightly spongy dough contained flour, warm water, yeast, salt and olive oil, and was, like many of the dishes we learnt, simplicity itself. We whizzed up a tapenade in the blender with juicy black olives, blanched garlic and anchovies. Saddle of rabbit stuffed with black olives and sun-dried tomatoes in a rosemary honey sauce sounded impossible, but really wasn’t. We watched Bérard slicing out the rabbit’s bones and copied obediently.

Ooh la la, Ralph, magnifique,” Bérard would call down the table to my father, who concentrated hard as he diligently carved out rabbit bones or massaged olive oil and herbs into a piece of meat. This was a man who had been fretting a week earlier that the course would be too hard.

Much of it was easy, with a couple of exceptions. For example, the bisque bouille sa-franéewas one of the most delicious meals I have ever tasted, but where am I going to find scorpion fish, gurnard fillets and rockfish at home?

Ah, yes, the eating. Half of each day was spent cooking, the other consuming. Each afternoon we would sit on the terrace at a long table enjoying a lunch washed down with crisp local rosé. Our ages spanned five decades and stories unfolded from our companions: the mother, father, pregnant daughter and her husband from Perth and their camper van trip around Europe; the Swiss businessman and his new wife who gazed lovingly into each other’s eyes all day and owned a French holiday home near by.

One morning we rose early and drove to Sanary, a fishing village where Bérard walked us around the stalls inspecting that night’s catch. All the fishermen seemed to know him, and warmly stuck out their wrists for him to shake (because their hands were wet and smelly). Provence is a cook’s heaven. The piles of pumpkins, juicy figs and bunches of tiny black sweet grapes adorning the stalls left me depressed at returning to the Frankenstein fruit and polystyrene-packaged vegetables in London.

So back at home several months later, has Dad become a gourmet cook? Not exactly... but he doesn’t eat tinned fruit any more and is fussy about the raw ingredients he buys. Unlike me, he doesn’t have bad habits to break. When he slices an onion, he does it like a chef.

“I am amazed at myself,” he told me. “I can produce stuff that is delicious.” And when he made roast duck in an orange sauce followed by chocolate fondants for my sister and her husband, his delight was twofold. “They could not believe it. ‘Did you really cook this, they asked?’ It gives you a glowing feeling. I have never enjoyed cooking before. It was something you did to keep alive.”

He has also signed up for organic fruit and vegetable deliveries and makes fantastic soups, roasts and dips. He has lost weight and moved back to London, where he is picking up his life again. And he has an address book of new global friends.

Need to know

Jeannette Hyde travelled with On the Menu (08708 998844, www.holidayonthemenu.com). A five-night course, including B&B at Hostellerie Bérard in La Cadiãre d’Azur, lunch and welcome dinner, and four cookery sessions, is £945pp (based on two sharing). The next cookery course dates are March 18, April 22 and May 6.

Getting there: She flew with easyJet (0905 8210905 — calls cost 65p a minute, www.easyJet.com) from Gatwick to Marseilles for £72 return and hired a car through Carrentals.co.uk (0845 2250845, www.carrentals.co.uk).

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