French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [12]
The Cookery of the French Provinces
To compile a comprehensive volume of French regional recipes would take a lifetime of work and research; even then it could not be complete, because like any other lively art, or science or craft, whichever you prefer to call it, cookery is continually evolving. So all I have set myself to do in the present volume is to put together a small collection of French recipes which have pleased me and which can be reproduced in English kitchens without too much difficulty. Such a selection must naturally reflect the author’s own tastes and preferences. But I have also tried to exercise a due regard for practical matters, omitting dishes which, however good, are disproportionately expensive or troublesome. But people’s ideas as to what constitutes extravagance, or tediousness in the matter of preparation, naturally differ a good deal so I have tried to provide as wide a choice as my experience and space allow. I hope that readers who wish to pursue the knowledge of French cookery beyond the limited introduction contained in this volume will find the bibliography on pages 462‒73 useful.
In the brief survey of the different kinds of French provincial cookery which follows I have tried to convey some idea of the variety of dishes which may be found by those who care to look. These notes are, like my choice of recipes, based on personal preferences and experiences. If I start off these impressions with a description of the food of Provence it is not necessarily because I am convinced it is the best. I have heard people with some claims to being connoisseurs assert that ‘there is no cooking south of Dijon.’ Preposterous though such a statement may sound, it is a question which each person must judge for himself. And if I seem to be biased in favour of the food of the South, it is perhaps because the country itself has for me such a very powerful appeal. But that is by no means to imply that I am blind to the charms of the lovely dishes of Normandy and Brittany, of Anjou and the Loire Valley, of Alsace and Lorraine and the Dauphiné, of the Languedoc and the Auvergne and Burgundy.
Provence
Provence is a country to which I am always returning, next week, next year, any day now, as soon as I can get on to a train. Here in London it is an effort of will to believe in the existence of such a place at all. But now and again the vision of golden tiles on a round southern roof, or of some warm, stony, herb-scented hillside will rise out of my kitchen pots with the smell of a piece of orange peel scenting a beef stew. The picture flickers into focus again. Ford Madox Ford’s words come back, ‘somewhere between Vienne and Valence, below Lyons on the Rhône, the sun is shining and south of Valence Provincia Romana, the Roman Province, lies beneath the sun. There there is no more any evil, for there the apple will not flourish and the brussels sprout will not grow at all.’
It is indeed certain, although the apple of discord can hardly be said to have been absent from the history of Provence, which is a turbulent and often ferocious one, that the sprout from Brussels, the drabness and dreariness and stuffy smells evoked by its very name, has nothing at all to do with southern cooking. But to regard the food of Provence as just a release from routine, a fierce wild riot of flavour and colour, is to oversimplify it and grossly to mistake its nature. For it is not primitive food; it is civilised without being over-civilised. That is to say, it has natural taste, smell, texture and much character. Often it looks beautiful, too. What it amounts to is that it is the rational, right and proper