SAVOURING FRANCE

Savouring France takes readers on an unforgettable journey to the cities and hamlets, mountains and seacoasts of a country celebrated for its good food. Both a collection of recipes and a gastronomic travelogue, this engaging book profiles a culinary tradition built on fierce national pride and unwavering respect for local products. Award-winning author Georgeanne Brennan presents an appealing mix of rustic and refined dishes in 140 recipes, and the country and its table are captured in lavish scenic and food photography, endearing watercolours, and a lovely hand-drawn map. Simply put, Savouring France offers the pleasures of good eating, and good living, in a single memorable volume. A meal in France. Few people can resist the invitation. It might be dinner in a Mâcon bistro, with the local Pouilly-Fuissé freely poured, or a lunchtime salade niçoise at a rural auberge in Provence, a midnight steak-frites in a Paris brasserie or a hamper of picnic provisions bought at a marketplace in Bayonne. Savouring France invites readers or, an unhurried culinary tour in search of the true French table, an intriguing tapestry of local specialities and national dishes. The journey is recorded in compelling text and 140 recipes, including Sautéed Foie Gras with Grapes from Bordeaux, Duck with Lavender Honey from Provence, Whole Stuffed Cabbage from Alsace, and Cherry Custard Cake from Limousin. Together the recipes, each one stunningly photographed, deliver a fully drawn portrait of French cooking that reveals a respect for the rustic and the refined, the traditional and the innovative. But this is also a book for cooks who love to read. Award-winning author Georgeanne Brennan, who has owned a farmhouse in Haute Provence for some three decades, shares a wealth of stories and lore that takes readers from raising goats in the hills above Nice to dining in a fashionable restaurant in Paris to cooking bouillabaisse over a driftwood fire at the beach. In over two dozen boxed features, she explores such intriguing topics as the importance of the cheese course in the French meal, the heady taste and fragrance of herbes de Provence, and the New Year's Eve ritual of raw oysters and Champagne. These instructive passages, combined with the rich personal narrative, lavish scenic photography. and beautiful watercolour illustrations, blend to make Savouring France a trip not only to the French table but to the very heart of French culture.