The Food of France

"He’s an American and you can travel with him. Outsiders always observe and know exactly what’s going on. He goes through all the regions and he writes about the regions and chooses recipes. He’ll tell you about the people, the landscape, the architecture and from that the food. In the Touraine you’ll get woodcuts of a beautiful château and you’ll be told: ‘Touraine is the heartland of France and the heartland of haute cuisine.’ He’ll give you the classic haute cuisine recipes. What he mostly describes are the ingredients you’ll find and what you do with them. ‘The difficultly of obtaining chicken blood at the corner grocery doesn’t quite account for the disappearance of the perfectly made boudin.’ So, he very often looks at the white and black puddings in the charcuterie, and if you’re travelling you’ll know what the basic language of gastronomy is in that area. A lot of guts, tripe and andouillette and lots of imported spices, wonderful dairy, cheeses. It’s very rich land. Lots of pigs."