Wild Asparagus, Wild Strawberries

by Barbara Santich

'...I drank Normandy farmhouse cider, ate strawberries dipped in red wine then sugar, and tasted truffles and soft goat cheeses for the first time. I returned to Australia inspired to become a food writer...'

France bewitched Barbara Santich as a student in the early 1970s. She vowed to return, and soon enough she did – with husband and infant twins in tow.

'Wild Asparagus, Wild Strawberries' tells the story of the magical two years that followed. Buoyed by naive enthusiasm, Barbara and her husband launched themselves into French village life, a world of winemaking, rabbit raising, cherry picking and exuberant 14 Juillet celebrations.

Here we see the awakening of Barbara Santich's lifelong love affair with food history. And also a lost France, 'when the 19th century almost touched hands with the 21st'. Shepherds still led their flocks to pasture each day and, even near the bustling towns, wild strawberries hid at the forest's edge.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Travel, Cooking

296 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2018

About the author

Barbara Santich is a highly respected food writer, culinary historian and academic, with an abiding interest in French food, cooking and eating, currently focused on eighteenth-century Provence. Her book on Australian food history, 'Bold Palates: Australia's Gastronomic Heritage', was shortlisted in the non-fiction category of the 2013 Prime Minister's Literary Awards.

Reviews

[Sally906 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was sucked into Barbara Santich’s French experience from page one. As she first took me with her from their arrival in France, then described what she sees, the people they meet and, oh my goodness, the food she eats. I was entranced.

Beautifully written, describing meticulously what it going on, without falling into the trap of being wordy. The scenes just flowed into each other as they move around France and blend their lives into the seasons. Chock-a-block with amazing characters, and recipes, I have cooked her Tomates farcies (stuffed tomatoes) recipe and it was pronounced a hit by my fussy husband, next up to try is Madame Mourichon’s gateu aux poires (Madam Mourichon’s pear cake) when I mentioned serve with cream he liked the idea!

Overall this is a memoir that kept me riveted until the last page.

With thanks to Wakefield Press for my copy to read and review.

Author Information: Barbara Santich is a highly respected food writer, culinary historian and academic, with an abiding interest in French food, cooking and eating, currently focused on eighteenth-century Provence. Her book on Australian food history, Bold Palates: Australia’s Gastronomic Heritage, was shortlisted in the non-fiction category of the 2013 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.

[Katische Haberfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

This may be a book of delightful rustic beloved tried and tested recipes. But I probably won’t make them. It also describes poetically French landscapes and gives me desires to burn holes in my bank balance.

But what gives me the greatest joy is the pictures it creates in my mind of everyday people doing everyday things that looking back seem extraordinary. I may have even shed a tear when Barbara had to leave but luckily we all know by the sheer volume of her writing, that France never left her heart.

An extra sparkly star for being my university lecturer a long time ago when I thought I might become a food critic or sommelier or travel writer.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I feel I must disclose that I know Barbara, I hope that hasn't coloured my judgement.

I loved this book to pieces. The writing flows and is wonderfully descriptive, without at any stage getting purple, vividly conjuring up the people she meets, their communities and a physical sense of the various villages she lived in. It is also a total eye-opener as to how she embarked on her fabulous career, although the seeds of her passions - academic and gastronomic - were obviously there from the beginning.

I suffered a very mild form of culture shock each time I put the book down, and definitely when I finished it, as I dragged myself away from the life her evocative writing so graphically depicted and adjusted myself back to my own life in another time and another place.

[Loewn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great read. It took me on a wonderful journey into living in rural France a few decades back. While many books of this kind can be light, bright and a telling a story of positive & great experience this book includes the trials of living abroad, getting access to funds, finding a job & more.
This is a keeper for me, I borrowed it from the library and will now buy a copy to read again, and again.

[Sharon Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful telling of a dream that came true. The daily retelling if her day to day experiences, the ups and downs of trying to blend in, work and experience a foreign life.
France of the story set in the 70s, village life has changed little in decades, food and life depend on the seasons.
You're there for it all.
The prologue was sad, she explains that modern day life has come to the midi, and has forever changed village life, the gentle life has gone and is only a memory.

[Anne Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting account of the author's two years in France with her family back in the 1970s. I was interested to read it, having done the Graduate Certificate in Food Writing that Barbara Santich ran at the University of Adelaide several years ago.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve enjoyed three other books by food writer Barbara Santich (all reviewed on my blog):
*Bold Palates: Australia’s Gastronomic Heritage, (2012)
*Dining Alone, Stories from the Table for One, (2014) (editor)
*Enjoyed for Generations, The History of Haigh’s Chocolates, (2015)
But I think I like this one best of all. Wild Asparagus, Wild Strawberries, is a memoir of her two years in France in the 1970s. It’s a perfect book for anyone who loves travelling to France, or who yearns to travel to France, or for world-weary tourists who feel nostalgic for France ‘as it used to be,’ or for anyone who loves reading about food!
I first went to France in 2001, for a week in Paris and a week in the Loire Valley. Things have changed a lot since then, but from this book I can see that changes since the 1970s are even more dramatic. In her family’s first sojourn at Nizas in southern France, Santich documents a passing way of village life, dominated by elderly people whose children had mostly moved away. These people were custodians of traditional ways of doing things, from selecting cuts of meat to cooking rabbit to harvesting the grapes for wine and celebrating afterwards. My guess is that those elderly people who constituted the population of Nizas in this memoir are all gone by now, and the villages that are not in decline have been reinvented as upmarket tourist destinations or as holiday properties with absentee owners for much of the year. Nevertheless there are places that defy these trends and Wikipedia shows me that Nizas is one of them. When Santich was there in the late 1970s with her husband and two small children, the population was under 400, and now it is nearer to 600. Whether that makes it a viable population or not, I do not know.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/08/26/w...