COOKING/WINE

Provence is the fruit and vegetable garden of France, where much of its most beautiful produce is grown. These ingredients combined with Provence's unique identity, position and history have resulted in a cuisine full of heart, balance and soul, a cuisine that showcases its peoples' reverence for the produce, the changing seasons and the land. Caroline Rimbert Craig's maternal family hail from the southern foothills of Mont Ventoux, where the sun beats hard and dry, but aromatic herbs, vines and fruit trees prosper. This is her guide to cooking the Provençal way, for those who want to eat simply but well, who love to cook dishes that rhyme with the seasons, and who want to recreate the flavours of the Mediterranean at home, wherever that may be.

French cuisine is considered among the world’s best, but its traditional ingredients like butter and cream aren’t always appropriate for today’s heart-healthy diets. New World Provence is a new-style French cookbook designed with contemporary North American audiences in mind, featuring healthy, easy-to-find ingredients prepared using traditional French techniques tweaked with the home cook in mind. The book includes beautiful yet simple recipes that take advantage of meats, seafood, and vegetables abundant in North American markets; in keeping with their contemporary flair, pan-cultural influences abound, yet all the while the recipes remain faithful to French traditions. Authors Jean-Francis and Alessandra Quaglia are the husband-and-wife chefs and owners of Provence and Provence Marinaside, two fine dining establishments in Vancouver. Their recipes reflect not only North American sensibilities, but familial ones as well; they are the parents of two young sons, and Jean-Francis’ mother owns the famed Le Patalain restaurant in Marseilles, France. These relationships pervade the book, which reveals how a common love and respect for food can be passed on from generation to generation, from the old world to the new. The book features thirty-six stunning, full-color photographs and over 120 recipes, including prawns with chickpea gallette, whole rabbit barbecue, bean and wild mushroom ragout, fresh crab with tomatoes and fresh herbs, roasted vegetable tart, poached sea urchin on bread, and new-style bouillabaisse.

Paris to Provence is a culinary travelogue of separate summers spent in France, interweaving a collection of simple recipes with evocative memories and stories of those years. “This beautiful mémoire will beguile everyone who loves France and should be essential reading for anyone going there for the first time. Ethel and Sara have captured a beloved place through the rosy, whimsical, wacky, tender, and honest lens of childhood. Forget three-star dining and luxury travel; this is the France that I love and remember with pleasure. The recipes are simple and soul satisfying—from café fare and home cooking to street food and a village feast. I was enchanted with the evocative photos and charmed by every memory.” —Alice Medrich, author of Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts “To read Paris to Provence is to take a beautiful and wonderfully nostalgic journey to the France of my childhood, the France of sweet dreams. If you’ve ever had your soul captured by the magic that exists in the lighter side of la France profonde, and if you have a sensitivity toward joyful moments created around food, family, and friends, then Paris to Provence is for you. It’s a lovely book filled with classic and simple yet delicious French recipes. Somebody needs to open a restaurant here in the United States that uses this book to inspire its menu. I’d eat there at least once a week!” —William Widmaier, author of A Feast at the Beach Ethel and Sara beguile you with recipes and stories from their summer childhoods as they traveled with their respective families from Paris to Provence. In markets, cafés, truck stops, bakeries, bistros, and French family homes, the girls experienced their first taste of France, re-created here through recipes, stories, and photographs. Inspired by her memories of truck stop lunches sitting next to tables of grizzled truckers, Ethel gives us Steak au Poivre à la Sauce aux Morilles (pepper steak with morels). Sara’s whimsical game of using her asparagus as soldiers’ spears to guard her food from her sister is the source of her recipe for Les Soldats (soft-boiled eggs and fresh asparagus spears). Lingering over late-night dinners with grown-ups and listening in on their stories of the resistance and wild boar hunts inspired Ethel’s recipe for Fraises au Vin Rouge (strawberries in red wine syrup). Rosemary and its powerful scent, first discovered by Sara while hiking with her family in the Luberon Mountains in the south of France, infuses her recipe for Cotes d’Agneau Grillées au Romarin (grilled lamb chops with rosemary). From Îles Flottantes (poached meringues in crème anglaise) to Escargots (snails in garlic butter), and from Merguez (spicy grilled lamb sausage patties) to Ratatouille (summer vegetable stew), each recipe reflects Sara and Ethel’s childhood experiences in Paris and Provence. Sixty thoughtful, simple, and traditionally French dishes complemented by over one hundred luscious photographs will send you to your kitchen, and maybe even to France.