The Cooking Of Provincial France

by M.F.K. Fisher, Mark Kauffman (Photographer), Geraldine Schremp (Contributor)

Discusses the cuisine of the provinces of France and provides many traditional recipes from these regions.

Contents:
[v.1] Main work. 208 pages.
[v.2] Recipes: the cooking of provincial France. Recipe instructions by Geraldine Schremp. 112 pages.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Nonfiction, History, France, Reference

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher was a prolific and well-respected writer, writing more than 20 books during her lifetime and also publishing two volumes of journals and correspondence shortly before her death in 1992. Her first book, Serve it Forth, was published in 1937. Her books deal primarily with food, considering it from many aspects: preparation, natural history, culture, and philosophy. Fisher believed that eating well was just one of the "arts of life" and explored the art of living as a secondary theme in her writing. Her style and pacing are noted elements of her short stories and essays.

Reviews

[Jerry]

The Time-Life series can be a bit spotty; sometimes they have more essays than recipes. In their defense, the boxed set always helps, since the little recipe book has more recipes than the big essay book, and they may have never expected to sell the sets unboxed. This might be the first time I’ve seen one in its natural habitat.

Some of these dishes look deceptively simple: the photo looks simple, but the the recipe has a whole lot of steps. I am probably not going to try Scallops with mushrooms in white wine sauce, for example.

But the onion and potato soup looked so simple I almost didn’t make it. I‘m not sure it was a good thing I did: the half recipe I made should have been enough for four people. It was so good I ate it all in one meal.

[Steve]

I didn't think I could get into any of the Time-Life food series, but I just love this book (after finding it in a thrift store). It's a great primer on French food.

[Ron Peters]

The Cooking of Provincial France is really a travel book disguised as a cookbook. Fisher was brought in to write the text, and what she did is very Fisher: she turned what could have been a straightforward recipe assignment into a memoir of place. More than recipes, you learn why a Norman farmer puts cream in everything and why a market in Lyon smells the way it does.

Quite a few of the recipes have that very 1960s Time-Life test-kitchen quality— a little fussy and a little Americanized. Where Fisher shines is in the interludes between the recipes: her notes on bread, on wine as a daily drink rather than a luxury, on offal and thrift, on eating alone. There is, for instance, a mouth-watering, wonderfully sensual description of a sole meunière on page 101.

In other words, I read this book for her writing much more than for the recipes themselves. I’ll get over my queasiness about buying live rabbits to slaughter at home, and I now want to expand my patio-top collection of pots of fresh herbs next year!

[L B]

Book provides both the cultural background of provincial French cuisine and excellent, well-tested, easy to follow recipes. This was just the book I needed as a teenager returned from a year and a half in Europe, learning to cook in the culinary wasteland that was American cooking in 1968. A half century plus later, I have yet to find a better chocolate mousse recipe.

Note the author is MFK Fisher. These books -- the whole series -- were ubiquitous and you can probably find this for a dollar or two at the local Goodwill. Grab it!

[Linda]

My favorite of the Time Life series, mainly because the recipes that I successfully tried to duplicate from my first trip to France in 1972 were the recipes that I found in this particular book. Page 112 (Coquilles St Jacques a la Parisienne) and 193 (Tartes aux Fraises, except I substituted framboises) are stained and splattered testimony to my efforts.

[Reader]

a friend and fellow book, cooking, and eating enthusiast lent me her collection of Time Life cuisine literature. this was my favorite of the bunch. it's a slice in the life of culinary france in the late '60s. fascinating. the book was long on photographs and discussion of culinary culture, short on actual recipes. a wonderful collector's item but insufficient for a cook's reference.

[Avis Black]

One of the Time-Life series. Unfortunately, Fisher did not do a good job with this book.

[jennifer]

i somehow did not know m.f.k. fisher did one in the time life series. infinitely worth $3.