French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [252]
La Cuisine Gourmande. Michel Guérard. Editions Robert Laffont, Paris, 1978. Translated by Caroline Conran and Caroline Hobhouse as Cuisine Gourmande. Edited and adapted by Caroline Conran. Macmillan, London, 1978. Papermac edition 1981. (American edition Morrow, New York.) Guérard first leapt into the limelight with his 1976 La Grande Cuisine Minceur, a work often, and mistakenly, confused with Cuisine Gourmande.
Ma Cuisine du Soleil. Roger Vergé. Editions Robert Laffont, Paris, 1978. Translated by Caroline Conran and Caroline Hobhouse as Cuisine of the Sun. Edited and adapted by Caroline Conran. Macmillan, London, 1979. Papermac edition 1982. (American edition, Morrow, New York.)
Cuisine à la Carte. Anton Mosimann. Introduction by Quentin Crewe. North-wood Books, London, 1981. Anton Mosimann is currently maître-chef-des-cuisines at the Dorchester Hotel, London. His book is addressed primarily to the profession, but provides some useful tips such as how to clear a consommé with ice.
The following books are concerned with regional and classical French cooking, not with the currently fashionable nouvelle cuisine.
La Bonne Cuisine en Périgord. La Mazille, first published 1929, (see p. 466 of my original bibliography) long unobtainable, was reprinted in a hardback edition by Flammarion, Paris, 1965, and remains unsurpassed by later publications on the same region.
Gastronomie Bretonne d’hier et d’aujordhui. Simone Morand. Flammarion, Paris, 1965. This lovely work on the traditional food and cookery of Brittany was inadvertently omitted from my previous additional lists. Scores of interesting recipes including over thirty for Breton galettes, many for unusual local preserves, cakes, fruit tarts, potato dishes, seafood specialities, (but don’t look here for the fictitious homard à l’armoricaine), Breton junkets, maingaux and other dairy foods. Real country cookery.
Ma Gastronomie. F. Point. Flammarion, Paris, 1969. The celebrated Point, reputed progenitor of nouvelle cuisine, died in 1956, and this book is a hotch-potch of recipes, reminiscences, menus, a kind of hommage to Point and the Pyramide at Vienne. Recipes include his poularde en vessie and his gâteau marjolaine.
Les Secrets de la Mère Brazier. Avec la collaboration de Roger Moreau. Preface de Paul Bocuse. Solar, Paris, 1977. Madame Brazier presided over the kitchens, first of her restaurant in the rue Royale, Lyon, (see pp. 41, 43 & 151 of this book) and subsequently at her beautiful lunchtime establishment at the Col de la Luère above the city. She retired, alas, in 1975 and died the following year. Recipes in the book include one for her light brioche, invariably served with her sumptuous vanilla ice cream and her delicious fromage blanc à la crème. Paul Bocuse served part of his apprenticeship chez la Mère Brazier. He found her tough to work for, but remarks that many of the procedures considered revolutionary in today’s nouvelle cuisine were quite simply, in her case, des trucs de bonne femme.
Simple French Food. Richard Olney. Atheneum, New York, 1974. English edition published by Jill Norman and Hobhouse, London, 1981. Also in Penguin paperback. The author lives in Provence and his recipes tend to a natural bias toward the cooking and the produce of the region. Technique highly polished, recipes not too difficult.
La Cuisine du Marché. Paul Bocuse. Flammarion, Paris, 1976. Translated by Colette Rossant and Lorraine Davies as Paul Bocuse’s French Cooking, Random House, New York, 1977. English edition published as The New Cuisine by Hart-Davis,