Bon Appetit! Travels through France with Knife, Fork and Corkscrew

Bon Appetit! Travels through France with Knife, Fork and Corkscrew

by PeterMayle (Author)

Synopsis

Gastronomy is a wonderful starting point to study France and the French. As the retired school master from Provence says, The religion of France is food. And wine, of course. And they put their money where their mouth is, spending a greater proportion of their income on food and drink than any other nation in the world. Literally hundreds of gastronomic fairs and festivals take place throughout the year all over France - a frog fair, an hommage to the sausage, to the turnip, to the quiche and the noble Camembert. What kind of person is a snail-fancier? Is there a brotherhood of sausage connoisseurs? How can you devote an entire weekend to the French fry? Peter Mayle finds out and brings to life the people who can get passionate about a frog's leg or a well-turned omelette. Over ten years ago he transformed our feelings about Provence, now he wants to capture the irresistible essence of France herself - and her food.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 240
Edition: First Edition
Publisher: Little, Brown
Published: 23 Aug 2001

ISBN 10: 0316857025
ISBN 13: 9780316857024

Media Reviews
Mayle continues to milk (maybe not quite le mot juste considering the litres of wine consumed in the name of research) his Francophile love affair in this gastronomic tour de France. Using the numerous food and wine fairs and f tes which take place throughout the year across France as his pegs, Mayle attends a church service to give thanks for the breathtakingly expensive black truffle, savours frogs legs to become a member of the Confrerie des Tastes Cuisses de Grenouilles de Vittel, is inducted in the mysteries of preparing and eating snails at a Foire aux Escargots where he consumes several dozen despite learning that a snail's natural diet consists of a toxic salad of deadly nightshade, poisonous mushroom and hemlock, and celebrates the elite Bresse chickens at Les Glorieuses in Bourg-en-Bresse. And even when he is reluctantly persuaded to check into a health spa, he is fed a diet of duck, lamb, guinea fowl, pate, cheese, butter, eggs, a little foie gras, potato soup and huge croissants for breakfast . All healthily cooked, of course, the Cuisine Minceur method. As with his Provence books, encounters and conversations with the locals provide fertile copy, and there is much here for the foodie, wine buff and Francophile. But perhaps it doesn't have quite the same broad-ranging appeal of A Year in Provence to emulate that book's million-selling status.
Author Bio
Peter Mayle's trilogy about Provence has sold millions of copies throughout the world.