Cooking and Travelling in South-West France

"Another one by Stephanie Alexander called Cooking and Travelling in South-West France. I’m from the Southwest and my feet are very much in the ground there, and what I find in that book is she definitely captures the soul of the Southwest. It’s very interesting for me to look at this book, even the choice of recipes are very clever and really the spirit of the Southwest – 120 per cent – it couldn’t be anywhere else. She obviously has such a good understanding of what she is doing and she captures the identity of the place. I don’t think a French person could have done better, even somebody from the Southwest, so I’m very impressed. She refers a lot to people by name – for example she says, When I see Madame Morissette she was doing this cake and I looked and changed it a bit because I think it will need this ingredient. She talks about the place and the people and I read this and I felt it was part of my childhood. It’s so close to what it is that it reminds me of memories and stories. She talks about the market, the produce, and some very unusual recipes. But cooking is not only recipes, and this book helps for that because she makes you understand why in that region they’re doing this kind of food and where it comes from. She might say: Chicken in that region is nice and they do this kind of dish, because they have that mushroom and this wine, or whatever. And then people kind of put things together – because you really read this and say: In my region I have a light beer. Oh! Maybe I should try to do my chicken with a light beer in a stew, you know? So it kind of opens your mind and if you get a bit of confidence in your way of thinking and how you see food and understand food, then maybe you try different things and develop your own way of cooking. Of course – I come from the Southwest so I do a lot of things that are already typical, like my own charcuterie, I do the air-dried duck, stuffed neck of duck, rillettes of duck. My food has always been described as something very gutsy with a lot of direct and strong flavour and I think that’s the terroir. It’s all about something you can identify from an area, and hopefully people can identify my food to Bruno, you know?"