Many of my earliest memories are about food, I remember making pancakes with Mรฉmรฉe, my great-grandmother, in her house in Vitrรฉ when I was three years old. 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. 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.
Having sworn I would never write a cookbook, this is my French cookbook. It contains most of the recipes that people keep asking me for and which I have mentioned in Chocolat, Blackberry Wine and Five Quarters of the Orange, They are mostly family recipes from France and I have co-written the book with Fran Warde the author of several excellent cookbooks, who helped me make sense of all the ingredients and quantities. It was terrific fun to write, although I don't think I will be writing another one (although anything is possible!) and I am donating all my share of the proceeds to Mรฉdecins Sans Frontiรจres.
A collaboration between a writer who loves food and a former chef who loves writing about food, The French Kitchen gathers together simple yet stylish recipes from the heart of a French family.
Fran Warde trained as a chef, she worked at the Cafรฉ Royale, on an Australian prawn trawler, ran her own cookery school and then moved into food styling and food writing. She is the food editor of Red Magazine and the author of Food for Friends, Eat, Drink, Live and Thirty Minute Italian. She lives in West London with her husband and two children.
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