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Doubleday • National & regional cuisine
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Introduction
Many of my earliest memories are about food. I remember making pancakes with Mémée, my great-grandmother, in her house in Vitré when I was three years old. I remember making jam with my grandfather in Barnsley, and picking blackberries to make wine. I remember my Yorkshire grandmother's rhubarb and apple pie, and my French grandmother's green fig jam. I remember long childhood holidays on the island of Noirmoutier, going round the markets in the early morning or cooking sardines on a charcoal brazier on the sand, and I remember poule au pot in Gascony with my grandfather's old friends the Douazans. So many memories are associated with the tastes and smells of cooking; so many places, so many people can be brought to life using nothing more than a handful of herbs or an old recipe.
It's astonishing how much of our past and our culture is secretly defined by food. Our earliest sensations are to do with tastes and smells; as infants we experience food as comfort, food as an expression of love. Later we make our own associations, but for me, the kitchen has always been the heart of my family, a place where the family assembles, not just to eat, but to be together, to talk, to put the world to rights, to teach, to remember the past, to watch and learn.
My kitchen is essentially French in character. There's a strong tradition of cooking on my French side, handed down from my great-grandmother. My mother, too, is a terrific cook, and when she arrived in Yorkshire - speaking virtually no English and feeling, inevitably, a little homesick - she used the familiar recipes to remember the people at home, to remind herself of who she was, and to keep in touch with her cultural identity.
As far as I know, my father had no difficulty in adjusting to this radical change of diet. However, married as I am to a vegetarian (and with a militant 8-year-old veggie daughter), I have discovered that sometimes cultures clash. Not that I have anything against vegetarianism. I enjoy vegetarian food, and when I am at home I rarely cook anything else. But food is as much about heritage as it is about taste; and the French half of me refuses to let go of so large a section of my past. As a result, this book is a kind of family album, in which every recipe paints a picture, as well as, I hope, an introduction to some of the regional flavours of France.
Cooking is a social activity. My mother's kitchen - and my grandmother's, and my great-grandmother's - was open to all comers. My grandmother sang constantly (and very tunelessly) as she peeled potatoes. My mother told stories. There were forbidden areas (my great-aunt Marinette's pancake pan, for instance, was formally out of bounds), but for the most part the kitchen was a learning zone for children, a place where philosophies were expounded, histories examined and scandals unearthed. Inevitably, much of my childhood seems to have taken place in and around kitchens. The recipes in this book are mostly French because my main influences come from there, mostly traditional because they have been handed down over many years, and mostly very simple to make. When the ingredients are really good, simple food works; there is no need for complicated sauces or fiddly garnishes. Traditional food demands respect and attention to quality, and this, I think, is the principal ingredient of the French kitchen.
Regardless of other differences, on this subject my English and my French sides are in complete agreement. Food - and its preparation - should be a pleasure. Faced with such a bewildering selection of 'conveniently' processed foods and ready meals in the supermarkets, it is sometimes hard to remember this. There is nothing convenient about bad food. When in a hurry, it still takes less time to make a fabulous salad or sandwich or pasta dish than it does to defrost an overpriced tray of mush. So take a little time in selecting your ingredients; go out of your way to find a really good organic butcher or cheesemonger or baker. Visit markets instead of supermarkets. Rediscover the joy of eating locally grown produce in season, instead of food flown in from the other side of the world. Try growing your own herbs (lack of space is no excuse - even a window-ledge will do). If you are lucky enough to have a garden, then you may already have discovered the difference between home-grown and far-flown; if not, try a couple of life-enhancing rows of carrots or spinach or raspberries or a pot of some impossible-to-find species of tomato. Brought up alongside my grandfather's allotment in Yorkshire, I developed this addiction to home-grown food early in life, and I am still amazed at the number of people who think that tomatoes are round and red and tasteless (as opposed to green and sweet and stripy, or long and yellow and tangy, or orange and lumpy and fantastic), or that most unidentified things taste like chicken, or that strawberries have a uniform shape. Food is a sensual, whole-body experience: look at what you are cooking, smell the ingredients, mix them with your fingers. Enjoy their sounds and textures. Bear in mind that cooking is about as close to magic as modern society allows: to take a set of basic ingredients and to transform them into something wonderful, something from another part of the world. Most of all, have fun. Bring your friends into the kitchen; ask your family to help. Let your children watch. Enjoy it together.
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© Transworld Publishers |
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More Information
Publication Date: 04/11/2002 • 240 pages • 0 x 0 mm
• ISBN: 0385604769
Territory: UK C/Wealth + Can, EU |
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