Świnia w Prowansji. Dobre jedzenie i proste przyjemności w południowej Francji

by Georgeanne Brennan, Janusz Ochab (Translator)

Przed czterdziestu laty Georgeanne Brennan, zdobywczyni nagrody Jamesa Bearda, pisarka i miłośniczka kuchni, postanowiła zrealizować swoje marzenie o spokojnym, wiejskim życiu w Prowansji i razem z mężem i malutką córką wyruszyła na słoneczne południe Francji. Kupiła domek ze skrawkiem ziemi, kilka kóz i tytułową świnię i rozpoczęła swą przygodę z celebrowaniem przyjemności życia.
Jej żywe, pełne smakowitych przepisów i lokalnego kolorytu wspomnienia oddają bogactwo prowansalskiej kuchni i tradycji. Razem z autorką zaglądamy do garnków, ogrodów, lasów i winnic, zbieramy grzyby, robimy sery i gotujemy najprawdziwszą bouillabaisse. To czarująca opowieść, od której cieknie ślinka, smakowita strawa dla ducha i ciała, idealna dla smakoszy, miłośników Francji i wszystkich tych, których choć raz marzyli o tym, by spakować walizki i kupić bilet do pięknego życia.
Georgeanne Brennan jest wielokrotnie nagradzaną autorką książek o kuchni i ogrodnictwie. Mieszka w północnej Kalifornii i w Prowansji, gdzie prowadzi szkołę kucharską.
"Anglosasi kochają Prowansję, a prawdziwie spełnieni w tej miłości czują się dopiero wówczas, gdy kupią sobie dom we Francji i napiszą o tym książkę. Bez obaw jednak, Świnia w Prowansji nie jest kolejną enuncjacją maklera giełdowego z Londynu czy Bostonu, zachwycającego się naiwnie dźwiękiem cykad i smakiem pomidorów. Pochodząca z Kalifornii pani Georgeanne Brennan to uznana autorka książek kulinarnych, swą kulturową i jedzeniową przygodę z najpiękniejszym regionem Francji rozpoczęła już w roku tysiąc dziewięćset siedemdziesiątym, więc dobrze wie, o czym pisze. Na tyle dobrze, że w trakcie łapczywej nocnej lektury spożyłem słoik oliwek, pół pęta francuskiej kiełbasy, kilka kieliszków różowego wina z departamentu Var, zamarynowałem schab w szałwii oraz rozmarynie, a tylko nad wyraz późna pora powstrzymała mnie przed sięgnięciem po calvados".
Robert Makłowicz

Genres: Travel, Food, Memoir, Nonfiction, France, Cookbooks, Biography

235 pages, Paperback

First published March 8, 2007

About the author

Georgeanne Brennan, born and raised in Southern California, is the author of the James Beard Award winning cookbook, The Food and Flavors of Haute Provence, and the International Association of Culinary Professionals award for her book, Aperitif, among numerous others, including her best-selling memoir, A Pig in Provence, about her years raising goats and pigs and making cheese in France in the 1970s. She’s divided her life for many years between her modest home in Provence, where she learned to make French style aperitifs, and a small farm in Winters, CA. She co-founded the pioneering seed company, Le Marche Seeds International, an important source for emerging organic market growers, in the 1980s. In the 1990s she conducted week-long Culinary Vacations in Provence. In 2014 she founded the on-line store lavierustic.com. She and her work have been featured in numerous publications including the New York Times, Food and Wine Magazine, InStyle, Vogue and many others. She has a bachelor’s degree in History and English from San Diego State University and master’s degree in History from UC San Diego.

Reviews

[Melodie · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a good many of us, winter has long lost it's appeal. For moi, it never had any appeal. Too much cold, waayyy too much frozen white stuff. Well, take a staycation. Indulge in a trip to unfamiliar territory with tantalizing tastes. Go to France!
I have never entertained any notion to travel to France. Not on my bucket list, just have never wanted to go. But after reading this, I might consider it. Not your typical travelogue, the author invites you into her home and her life in Provence.From raising goats and making cheese, to hunting mushrooms, to attending a local wedding, Ms. Brennan takes the reader on a tour of her life.
Each chapter has a recipe at the end so the reader can try their hand at French cuisine. I have always shied away from French cooking. Too frou-frou,too pretentious. Well how wrong have I been?! The food of Provence is based on simple earthy local ingredients.
This was just the right tonic for my winter blahs. Now where do I want to go next?

[Jessica · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought this would be a cool book about an American family who decides to live in Provence, France. The author and her family have alternated living in California and Provence, but the book is just random stories compiled from all the times she lived there. The most confusing thing was in one chapter she's with her husband Donald and in another she's with her second husband Jim. What happened to Donald? Divorce? Death? What? Some of the chapters were OK, but I was expecting a continuous story about her experiences, not chapters about random events that she experienced in Provence. I would not recommend this one.

[Robin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has a promising beginning. I typically enjoy books with chapters that tell a story followed by a recipe from the story, in fact I often follow that formula in my own blog at seasonaleating.net. However, unlike a blog, a book works best if the chapters build together to tell an overall story with beginning, middle, and end. Although some of the first chapters tell entertaining stories about an American living with her husband and children in rural Provence in the 1970s, other chapters jump abruptly into the 21st century, with the same American in Provence sans kids and with a new husband. These latter chapters describe various feasts, foods, and French people, but with little sense of place or continuity compared with the 1970s-based chapters. Husband #2’s character isn’t developed at all. And whatever happened to Husband #1, so calm, knowledgeable, and handy with the couple’s pigs and goats when emergencies arose?

With that said, the first two chapters are wonderful. A young American couple with a small child move to Provence. They try their hands at the lost art of traditional goat cheese making and then at small scale pig farming. The neighbors who help are clearly depicted as unique individuals. The third chapter, all about learning to find and prepare wild mushrooms, is also quite enjoyable, with another quirky French character or two. Too bad the couple moved back to the US after this chapter, because the thread of the story didn’t pick up readily again. Also, a glossary of French words and their translations would have been beneficial for readers who don’t speak French.

[Michele · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was odd to me. I expected to like it a lot, & did like it some but not enough to highly recommend it. The food part was interesting & lived up to review promise but the personal part didn't. The author included information about her life in bits & pieces, not in sufficient amounts to really work. It needed a lot more detail, or a lot less with all emphasis on the people & food of France & none on her own life.

[Rhonda · Rating 4 out of 5]

LOVING this! I'm a third of the way in and I'm so happy I picked it up as a sidewalk find in my neighborhood. Autographed copy at that!
Food writing is the only memoir type I read consistently. I think it's because I enjoy the sense of discovery inherent. It's a very accessible sense of adventure. Oh, if I could have traveled to Provence in the 70's, I might have started an artisanal goat cheese business, before 'artisanal' was a thing (instead I was in elementary school, ha)! This book is written episodically, and so, sometimes I wished to know about the 'gaps.' The writing is loving but not sentimental. We buy a ramshackle house together, forage and cook with neighbors, and grow to become a part of the community. It's a charmed life and I was sad for it to end.

[alissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being my current obsession is France (don't let me down, Lady!) and food/farming, this book gives me the butterflies just thinking about it. It's also given me trouble on the vegetarian front: am I really? Don't I want to eat Poulet aux quarant gousses d'ail (yeah, that's one chicken, forty cloves of garlic), or roasted leg of lamb? Troubling indeed. But the book is wonderful. The book is about a woman who moves to Provence in the 70s with her three-year-old daughter and her husband. What it's really about is the old way of food in France, and specifically in Provence, as well as the wonderful culture of food, friends, and family, something we urbanites have lost (but are trying to recover--or just read about, is probably more close to the truth). It's a beautiful, beautiful book that's tender and mouth-watering (even if they are making food out of a pig's snout).

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The opening chapters of this book were utterly captivating, and I looked forward to learning more about her and her husband and young daughter's experience moving to Provence, where they planned to provide for themselves by making and selling goat cheese. Then it abruptly ends with "we didn't do that for very long" and "then my second husband Jim" ....
The author had what could have been a series of excellent books about living in Provence an condensed it down to one book that covered a lifetime, only with a lot of gaps.

There was one chapter about slaughtering a pig which was really interesting. Not sure if the title comes from that chapter or from the fact that the author recounts every meal in great detail and how much she ate, meaning she is the pig in Provence?

Still, I enjoyed the book enough to give it 3 stars. I only wish it hadn't tried to cover so much ground.

[Betty C. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book started out so well. It promised to be an expat tale unlike others; one of a (probably) hippy-style young California couple setting out to live off the land in pre-tourist invasion, pre-supermarket Provence.

But somewhere mid-memoir, the story line fritters away, and we are left with lengthy and overly detailed descriptions of various food-related events in Provence. But when do they take place? What happened to the first husband so prominently featured in the early chapters? Or even the children?

Like so many other books today, I feel this one needed a good editor to whip it into shape. The potential is there for a great story, but the construction of the book is more like a first draft.

[Lorraine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book, and there are some lovely moments that allowed me to give it two stars. Overall, though, a meandering mishmash of stories in search of a good editor.

[Gosia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jedzenie jest centralną częścią naszego życia nie dlatego, że daje nam siłę i dostarcza przyjemności, lecz przez to, że łączy nas ze wszystkimi, którzy byli tu wcześniej. Jedzenie tworzy więź z ziemią, z przyjaciółmi i krewnymi zgromadzonymi wokół stołu, z przyszłymi pokoleniami. W kruchym, niestabilnym świecie jedzenie jest wartością stałą.

Autorka pokazuje rytm życia na francuskiej wsi i tłumaczy sezonowość tamtejszej kuchni. Nie tylko przedstawia przepisy na niektóre z dań, ale również tłumaczy zmiany zachodzące w nich na przestrzeni lat.
Piękna narracja spokojnie prowadzi nas przez wydarzenia opisane na kartach książki. Kolejne rozdziały skupiają się niejako wokół konkretnego wątku. Brennan przedstawia swoje realne, nie zawsze bajkowe życie w Prowansji. Robi to z wielką gracją dostarczając wielu wzruszeń.
Książka jest swoistą pochwałą prostoty i sezonowości w kuchni - zdecydowanie inspiruje. Nie tylko do gotowania, ale również do świeższego spojrzenia na życie.

[Jessica Marquis · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a sweet life. As I read about Brennan's young family and their move to Provence, about 3-year-old Ethel clutching her baby lamb, my heart is seized with nostalgia for this life that isn't mine. This book has something that you don't always see in the "move to France" narrative: perspective. Brennan writes from several years in the future. Her kids have grown up, her first marriage has ended (for reasons undisclosed). We see seasons change and people age. Brennan and her family sell the house and move away.

The constants: friends that feel like family and the land that feels like home.

This book is full of beginnings and their endings. It's a bittersweet collection of stories that follows the lavender-scented French dream past the 'happily ever after' to something true.

Cue "Turn! Turn! Turn!" by the Byrds

[Julie Haigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely read.

Georgeanne Brennan spent her early years in Orange County, USA.  In her late twenties she moved to Provence with her husband Donald, and 3-year-old daughter, Ethel.

What a lovely cover. A book that makes you just want to read it. Tales of moving abroad, with recipes intertwined.

Beautiful writing. You can picture things, and smell them. Powerful description, yet not overly wordy.  Her love of food really comes through her writing. This was so lovely to read.

Moving to Provence; a new country lifestyle; keeping livestock-this book was an absolute delight.  A luxury read for me.

This is a bit different to the usual moving abroad memoirs. It's not a chronological account of what happens when they live there, it's more focused on the foods of the region. Each chapter is relevant to something they've made/cooked/friends and neighbours have served etc., with life events interwoven too. I loved the format, and the relevant recipes at ends of chapters. It was like experiencing lots of tasty things, without any of the calories. Her skill describing everything so exquisitely just made my mouth water again and again.

A feast of a book.

[Allie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enticing book on food culture in France that leaves you both salivating and ancy to get into the kitchen and experiment.

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don't get too attached to the pig, folks! So many of the culinary aspects of this memoir reflect my own experiences. My siblings and I vied for the chance to dip bread into the liver juice. No, none of us ever ate the liver, but the vinegar flavored juice, yum!!

[Debra Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the descriptive language of the province and learned a few things like how to make goat cheese and find truffles.

[Booknblues · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Pig in Provence: Good Food and Simple Pleasures in the South of France
By Georgeanne Brennan
4 stars
pp.209

The warmth, the good natural food, the close to the land feel is all there in Georgeanne Brennan's memoir A Pig in Provence: Good Food and Simple Pleasures in the South of France. Which starts with Georgeanne, her husband Donald and her young daughter Ethel attempting to start a goat herd and begin making cheese to sell for a living. They have relocated to Provence during the height of the Vietnam war and as her husband has a degree in animal husbandry it seems like a logical choice.

The most wonderful thing about the book is her descriptions of the food and gatherings that she has in Provence over the years. There is a truly interesting and mouth water description of a neighbor making bouillabaisse, which made me realize that although I've eaten it at restaurants, I have never truly had bouillabaisse. It left me longing.

Where the book is lacking is coherence. Brennan jumps around a bit chronologically and while she describes her time with her husband Donald fondly, we read of him in one chapter and the next chapter we are talking about her husband, Jim with no explanation of what has happened to poor Donald. Her children, Ethel and Oliver are treated similarly. We share so many times with them, but in the end they must be grown and yet their is no mention of them.

So for a book about food A Pig in Provence excels, but for a memoir with insight into a life it fails.

[Jane · Rating 2 out of 5]

Parts of this book were really interesting. The first three chapters, which describe Brennan's early years trying to get started as a cheese maker in a small village in Provence in the 1970s, include some very detailed food history, such as an up close description of "le jour du cochon", or the seasonal, day long process of slaughtering, dressing, and preserving an entire pig.

Brennan at her best is a full-sensory writer, and can set a scene really well. Pair that with her curiosity and interest in sharing, and it makes from some entertaining descriptions of her time in Provence.

After chapter three, however, the structure of the book falls apart and her narrative becomes occasionally....self-indulgent? She fabricates the sentimentalism of her experiences and it bleeds through. By the end, I feel she spends more time telling us about what plates, flatware, and napkins she brought to the community meal than about the community itself.

Toss in a few truly unthoughtful and alienating references to the immigrant communities living in her area and -for me- the book is heading quickly on its way out.

On a side note, I just couldn't help but laugh when I read Alice Waters blurb: "Brennan's captivating memoir reminds me of why I, too, was enchanted by Provence."

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hidden gem written by a woman who lives part time in Provence, first when raising her young family, then on frequent visits. Not so much a memoir as much as it is a travelogue and fascinating exploration of Provence's agricultural and culinary traditions, like the tradition of walking sheep through villages to the Alps to graze in the summer, or the real tradition of making Marseilles bouillabaisse. Some stories are also framed by tales of the author's family living in Provence but the richest stories are about the author's neighbors passing on cooking traditions to her. My only criticism is that the chapter on North African food in Provence seems like a bit of an afterthought. Recipes throughout, but worth reading if you're a Francophile and not a foodie. Pairs well with Julia Child's My Life in France, some of which is set in Marseille.

[Bernadette · Rating 2 out of 5]

I admit I read this food/travel memoir over several weeks in fits and starts so I may not give it the fairest review. It spans forty years or more of food writer/cooking instructor Brennan's life mainly in Provence and a bit of California. The sensual details of food and farming/cooking traditions in Provence are well rendered but the book lacks a strong sense of direction, unlike Peter Mayle's work (my favorite writer about Provence). Recipes enrich the content and some readers may enjoy the book just for those. I could not get through all the details in chapters about mushrooms and bouillabaisse, so I skipped them. Perhaps I'm not enough of a foodie to appreciate them.

[Shiloah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sigh, such a lovely life in Provence. I loved learning all the cooking and mushroom hunting nuances and traditions.

I'm convinced we can all bring aspects of this life with us no matter where we live or in whatever part of the world. It's about slowing down, growing your own food, raising animals if you can...and living the simple life.

Definitely a book I will refer to often. Being pregnant while reading this one her constantly talking about fish broth has made me crave it. We went to the fish monger here in Germany and bought some whole fish to try our hand at it today. Bon appetite!

[Catherine Woodman]

I really enjoyed this book, which is a memoir of a life in Provence for a Californian over the course of several decades--the focus is very appropriately on food and the importance of making, growing, preparing, and eating food has in the region. there is a great chapter on starting a goat cheesemaking operation, and another one on making stuffed vegetables that made me want to make this this summer, immediately. Another good theme is the 'use everything' aspect of living that I really love and try to live by.

[Patti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful book about French cuisine in the Provence region. It was hard not to feel like you were tasting all that was described. I will attempt some of the recipes, but butchering a pig won't be one of them!

[Radek Oryszczyszyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Świnia w Prowansji" jest książką o tym, jak życie może się kręcić wokół jedzenia. Autorka jest Amerykanką, która przyjechała z Kalifornii na południe Francji, z mężem i córką, aby zamieszkawszy w dość spartańskich warunkach zbliżyć się do "życia w zgodzie z naturą".

Brzmi niepokojąco i powiewa popularnymi przez cały czas ucieczkami młodych, wykształconych, z wielkich miast na zabite deskami dzicze, opisywanymi na blogach i bardzo szybko monetyzowanych sklepami eko, sprzedającymi przez internet produkty rolne wytwarzane "tradycyjnymi" metodami, z "tradycyjnie" uprawianych roślin i "tradycyjnie" hodowanych zwierząt, z prawdziwym wiejskim życiem nie mających nic wspólnego. Ot, moda na eko sposobem na udany zarobek. Eko-mydła, eko-skóry, eko-sery, eko-gówno. A wszystko to zarządzane z klimatyzowanych willi z wszystkimi udogodnieniami nowowczesności.

Na szczęście pani Georgeanne Brennan nie ulega takim pokusom i podejmuje próbę prostego, niekiedy ciężkiego życia na wsi, wśród ludzi żyjących tam od wielu pokoleń. Dzięki takiemu podejściu zdobywa zaufanie sąsiadów, pokazujących im sposoby wyrobu kozich serów, uprawiania ziół, hodowli świń na mięso. Opis świniobicia w tej książce swoim naturalizmem przypomina ustępy "Postrzyżyn" Hrabala, choć do kunsztu czeskiego mistrza jest pani Brennan oczywiście daleko.

Choć napisana przez kobietę, nie jest to literatura kobieca tak bardzo, jak się tego obawiałem. Fajnie, że można przekonać się o takich miejscach na świecie, gdzie jedzenie w pojedynkę jest daleko idącym absurdem. Przepisy podane książce zakładają liczbę porcji na 8 do 20, bo takie są właśnie obiady i kolacje w Prowansji. Tam, wspólne jedzenie, kupowanie produktów na targu w pobliskim miasteczku, pomaganie sobie w zasiewach i zbiorach, są głównymi instytucjami tworzenia więzi towarzyskich, sąsiedzkich i uczuciowych.

Tam, rozmowa przy stole, jest wręcz społecznym oczekiwaniem, a nie czymś, za co nasi polscy rodzice karali nas zawsze reprymendą.

[April Capil · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of stories about her early years building a life in Provence with her family and getting to know the locals, this book is a wonderful journey of what it is to connect with nature, to respect its rhythms and befriend the seasons - to nourish a community and be nourished by it. I am just entranced by Georgeanne’s stories and her voice, even more so than I was when I first read “In the French Kitchen Garden”. There is something so right about knowing where your food comes from, how it was produced and who labored over it. I wonder sometimes if that way of living is coming back or gone forever. Is it too much to dream of a pitcher of my own someday?

[Jerry D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

What happens in Provence......

The first two chapters gave me high hopes that this book would be a revealing glimpse of village life in Provence and whether that lifestyle would come kicking and screaming into the twenty first century.
There were well woven stories of personal stories with good descriptions of the people, culture and food. After that there were only brief flashes of a few friends over many years followed by recipes I'll never have the ingredients to prepare well.

[Meredith Malburne-Wade · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a food memoir: there are some pieces of stories throughout, but the main purpose and focus is on the culture and history surrounding food and food practices in Provence. I found this memoir very enjoyable and an excellent review of food and culture in the region. The story that is woven in could be a little more developed, but it isn't distracting from the text overall. As someone about to teach a class on food and literature, this text is a bit niche and pretty perfect: it includes recipes, clear descriptions, and approachable/readable history.

[Christy Olesen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was hoping for more of a memoir of life in France. The author is a little older than I am and I was interested in what led them to move to Provence and make cheese at a time when I was barely able to cope with encroaching adulthood. What was it like to adjust; learn the language and customs, etc? The stories were entertaining and the descriptions of the county good, but on a whole disappointing. I'm not a cook and the recipes looked impossible to me. I guess they are written as you would learn them at the side of someone who had learned it at the side of someone before them.

[Cameron Toney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I seem to have an endless appetite for stories of strangers in France. (This is the second one I've read this year, and it's only February!) Fortunately there seems to be an endless supply of these.
This one is focused very much on the authors experiences being a farmer in France, including the knitty gritty and trials of it.
It was an interesting read, with the usual raptures about French food, and a bunch of recipes that I will never cook.
I liked it, but it didn't catch me as much as I hoped it would.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This charming book is an homage to Provence, its people, its way of life, but most importantly, its cooking. It's not just a memoir: the chapters are not chronological, but rather detail a particular food, with anecdotes about the author's time living in Provence with her family, their attempts at animal husbandry, and the many friends they made there. There's also a recipe at the end of each chapter, which really appealed to me. But it isn't just about cooking, there are many humorous stories too. This isn't just a Peter Mayle spinoff either, it's an enchanting and well-written book.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book at a used book fair and had no clue what it was about. Turned out the author lived in France for a number of years and this is a collection of stories about her time there mostly about the food she learned to cook. I know that some of the other reviewers didn't much like this book but I liked it a lot. It made me want to go back to south of France and taste their wonderful food. Everything there is simple and rustic but so good.