Put Willan’s latest to the test; you’ll be glad you did

“The Country Cooking

of France” By Anne Willan

A new cookbook by Anne Willan is always cause for celebration, especially if you’re a devotee of downhome French food, or if you’re a cookbook collector who likes to curl up by the fire to read them instead of putting them to work in the kitchen. Willan writes as well as she cooks, and the accompanying photographs by France Ruffenach make Willan’s “The Country Cooking of France” a veritable feast – not just candy – for the eyes.

Readers will be missing out, however, if they don’t actually use “The Country Cooking of France.” Despite the book’s hefty size, each recipe is worth trying; many are quite simple, and each has been written with just enough detail so that home cooks, not just trainees at Willan’s La Varenne cooking school, can prepare them successfully.

The chapters on desserts and fruits, for instance, include numerous puddings, tarts, cakes, sorbets and crepes, but there are no impossibly complex confections such as you might find in the window of a Paris patisserie. (Not even the French attempt those at home.) Willan would be glad, I think, if, over time, your copy falls open to the recipe you use the most, and if there were a few tell-tale oil drips and flour smears throughout its pages.

Willan does not shy away from recipes that demand long cooking times, however. Seven Hour Leg of Lamb means just that and happily so. While many of the recipes come together quite quickly, country cuisine developed generally in quieter times, in places where commutes to the office did not exist. Therefore, many recipes are best suited for trying when you’re planning a day or part of a day at home. It is not hard, though, to roast a chicken and spend time with family and friends (or do a load of laundry) at the same time. Do this often and you’ll find that French country cooking at its best is the most comforting of comfort foods.

There might be one exception to the “worth trying” rule: the recipe for pig’s feet with which Willan finishes the chapter on “Innards and Extremities.” Here, she includes it for fun, and simply because it is one of her personal favorites. But you can be sure that if you have some spare pig’s feet lying around, you could follow her recipe and they would turn out great.

Willan has lived and cooked in France for more than 25 years, and in “The Country Cooking of France” she shares her considerable insight about France’s various regions and ingredients, offers introductions to many producers and cooks, and rounds it all out with little tidbits on all sorts of topics such as the North African influence on French cooking, Christmas markets, chestnuts and stinky cheese.

While some French country cookbooks are arranged by region, with chapters on Alsace, Provence, Burgundy, etc., rounding up the obligatory regional specialties, Willan’s book focuses on ingredients first. There are 17 chapters of recipes featuring the meats, dairy products, desserts, vegetables, sauces, fruits and esoterica at the heart of all rural home cooking in France.

For instance, in the chapter on eggs and cheese, Willan begins with a recipe from wine-sodden Burgundy: Oeufs en Meurette, or Poached Eggs in Red Wine Sauce. Next is Baked Eggs in Ramekins with Onions, definitely country fare but not associated with any particular region. And then, Scrambled Eggs with Wild Mushrooms, from the mountainous Alps and Savoy regions, where morels, chanterelles, oyster mushrooms and all the rest grow in profusion in the spring and fall. As she points out, many regional specialties such as foie gras are now found everywhere in France, and needn’t be pigeonholed to a particular point on a map. And, Willan explores the country’s boundaries to their outer limits, where the cuisine heats up with garlic and spices in the parts of Catalonia and the Basque country that are in France.

Today’s cooks are fortunate to have been exposed to French cuisine, at least on television, from a fairly young age. With some of America’s greatest contemporary chefs drawing mainly on French influences, we are no strangers to goat cheese, garlic mayonnaise, tarte tatin and the appeal of vegetables prepared in myriad delicious ways. But that does not mean that we can not yet be surprised by French food. We still have plenty to discover about how French country cooking can enrich not only our tables, but our lives, and for that, Willan has provided an enticing new guide.