Product Description

For the past fifteen years, Patricia Wells has been carrying on a love affair with a region of France, a centuries-old farmhouse, and a cuisine. Provence is uniquely blessed with natural beauty as well as some of the world's most appealing foods and liveliest wines Wells's culinary skills have transformed the signature ingredients of this quintessential French countryside into recipes so satisfying and so exciting that they will instantly become part of your daily repertoire.

Here are over 175 recipes from Wells's farmhouse kitchen, including whole chapters on salads, vegetables, pasta, and bread There are simple but imaginative "palate openers," such as Tuna Tapenade and Curried Zucchini Blossoms, and soul-satisfying soups, with such delights as Monkfish Bouillabaisse with Aroli, Wells's own brilliant interpretation of a Provencal classic. When it comes to meat and poultry, Wells offers earthy daubes, the slow-simmered stews so beloved by the French, and such melt-in-your-mouth delicacies as Butter-Roasted Herbed Chicken You will savor Wells's fish and shellfish creations with recipes like Seared Pancetta-Wrapped Cod. And no meal would be complete without a delight from the treasure trove of desserts here, including Cherry-Almond Tart and Winemaker's Grape Cake.

Illustrated with famed photographer Robert Fréson's captivating pictures, Patricia Wells at Home in Provence is a book you'll want to revisit time and again.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #682364 in Books
• Published on: 1996-10-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

From Amazon.com
Tomato clafoutis, herb-cured filet of beef Carpaccio, garlic family soup, Catalan tuna daube: these and 171 other recipes pour off the pages of this sumptuous coffee-table cookbook by the author of Bistro Cooking and Simply French. Wells concentrates on coaxing the utmost flavor out of simple, fresh food, and her French recipes are not all swimming in cream, oils, and fats: the filet, for example, profits not from a heavy sauce but from being wrapped for two days in tarragon, parsley, basil, thyme, and salt. In a couple of places Wells even commits the heresy, for a French-style chef, of switching a red wine used to simmer meat to a white wine.

From Publishers Weekly
Patricia Wells. Scribner, $40 (352p) ISBN 0-684-81569-9 Relaxed and unfailingly enticing, this superb collection of 175 recipes will make readers feel as comfortable in their kitchens as its accomplished author is at Chanteduc, her 18th-century farmhouse in northern Provence. Wells (Bistro Cooking; Simply French) is not the first to underscore the appeal of simple, fresh food, but she coaxes new tiers of flavor from many of the dishes here by her creative arrangements of basic ingredients. Instead of the standard cherry clafoutis, for example, she offers Tomato Clafoutis as appetizer or Chanteduc Clafoutis, made with mixed fruits, for dessert. Herb-Cured Filet of Beef Carpaccio, in which the filet, wrapped for two days in tarragon, parsley, basil, thyme and salt, attains a savory goodness with surprising ease. The True Salad Fan's Salad, composed of finely chopped tops of very young root vegetables (carrot, radish, beet, celery, etc.) with vinaigrette, and Garlic Family Soup (with leeks, onions, shallots and a head of garlic) fairly vibrate with an abundance of flavor. Catalan Tuna Daube marries anchovies, capers, onion, lemon zest, tomatoes and cubes of tuna steak in a memorable union. La Broufade is another outstanding daube, but with beef simmered in white wine instead of the usual red. Wells is sensible in her use of oils and fats, calling, for example, for whole milk and cream in judicious amounts. The diner's delight flows from the wisely prepared ingredients; the cook gets the added pleasure of reading Wells's warm, intelligent prose?and serving up excellence. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Wells, author of the well-known Food Lover's Guide to Paris (Workman, 1993. rev. ed.) and Simply French (LJ 9/15/91), among other titles, presents recipes for the dishes she cooks at home when she's not hot on the trail of the best food France has to offer. Like Lydie Marshall (Chez Nous: Home Cooking from the South of France, LJ 3/15/95), Wells has ingredients at hand any cook would envy, from olives, perfect fruit and even truffles on her own land to the fresh cheeses and Mediterranean fish offered by local merchants. With its dozens of full-color photographs, Wells's book is a more lavish affair than Marshall's, and her recipes are often richer and more elaborate as well: Artichoke, Parmesan, and Black Truffle Soup; Minted Crabmeat Salad; and Herb-Cured Fillet of Beef Carpaccio, accompanied by detailed wine suggestions (which may often be out of reach of those who do not have a farm in Provence). In any case, not to be missed.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.