The Old French Kitchen

The recipes she cooked by heart. Finally written down.

I was born on a small farm in the French countryside, in a house where the cooking was done by hand and by heart. I learned at my grandmother's elbow, and she at her mother's — women who fed a whole family out of a garden, a few hens and one heavy iron pot, with never a measuring cup between them.

Nobody wrote a word of it down. You learned it by watching, and you carried it in your hands. My grandchildren never learned the old ways, and I am nearly the last on my road who still cooks like this. So I sat down, finally, and wrote all of it — before it goes with me. This is that book.

What's inside

92 recipes across five kitchens, plus a carnet of kitchen notes — over 200 pages, yours to keep forever.

• The Slow Way — confit, slow onions, eggs cooked soft: the base of half of French cooking.
• Nothing Wasted — yesterday's bread, the cheap cuts, stock from the bones.
• Keeping It Through Winter — jams, pickles and preserves, written the modern-safe way.
• The Sunday & Gathering Table — the roast, the big pot, the sweets, the manners.
• Herbs, Garden & the Little Sauces — vinaigrette, béchamel, hollandaise, beurre blanc.

More than a list of recipes — every recipe gives you the measured starting point (real quantities, metric and US) and the tour de main, the little turn of the hand no measurement can hold. Large, readable type. Blank pages at the back for your own family's recipes.

How you get it — the moment you order, the book arrives in your inbox as a PDF. Read it on any device, or print it and stand it on the counter. Yours to keep.

$37, once. No subscription. Yours forever.