Sud de France

Languedoc-Roussillion (not forgetting the Midi-Pyrenees and Aquitaine) are the regions of France most settled by English expatriates. 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. Hhere she concentrates upon this single region of Languedoc which curls up from the Spanish border, along the Mediterranean coast as far as the Rhone 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 - Nimes, Toulouse, Carcassonne, Narbonne, Perpignan, Montpellier, Beziers - 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 of cooking than the rest of France. There is information on the particular specialities of the pays, such as chestnuts, sweet onions, Bouzigues mussels and oysters (shellfish reared in the Bassin de Thau), salt cod, poufres (baby octopus), charcuterie, salades sauvages (salads of wild plants), the rose coloured garlic of Lautrec, wild asparagus and local mushrooms. There will be descriptions of places where oysters, truffles, chestnuts or calcots - a giant spring onion, eaten roasted on a fire of vine-prunings - are the obsession of everyone in the community. Caroline Conran is a writer with a quiver of successful books in her armoury.