Le Sud de France

Languedoc-Roussillion (not forgetting the Midi-Pyrénées and Aquitaine) are the regions of France most settled by English expatriate colonists. Caroline Conran has spent much time there since the early 1970s and her collection of recipes reflects years of travel, conversation, cooking, eating and drinking. Here she concentrates upon this single region of Languedoc which curls up from the Spanish border along the Mediterranean coast as far as the Rhône valley. This is not polite France, this is ‘in your face’ France; it’s history buried amidst the Crusades and Cathars, its towns and cities – Nîmes, Toulouse, Carcassonne, Narbonne, Perpignan, Montpellier, Béziers – making up a fiercely independent region. Its people are passionate about rugby, about hunting and foraging, with a cuisine of their own, more Southern, simpler, more earthy, and less influenced by the Michelin style than the rest of France. There is information on their particular specialities such as chestnuts, sweet onions, Bouzigues mussels and oysters, salt cod, poufres (baby octopus), charcuterie, salades sauvages (salads of wild plants), the rose-coloured garlic of Lautrec, wild asparagus and local mushrooms.