The Cooking Of Southwest France: Recipes from France's Magnificient Rustic Cuisine Hardcover – September 16, 2005

Wolfert's book has taken the short shelf in my kitchen alongside Richard Olney, Alice Waters, and Marcella Hazan. The Cooking of Southwest France, especially in this new and improved edition, is a rare feat: not only are the recipes detailed, clear, and deeply informative, but the accompanying text is the best I've found for a hard-to-penetrate region of highly chauvanistic local opinion and practice. The introduction and the section on the flavors of the Southwest is an enlightening essay on its own, the bare bones of a great travel book which is fleshed out in the recipes.Now about those recipes: Richard Olney has long been my standard for great cooking instruction. His recipes manage to be clear and opinionated, true to the region [in his case mostly Provence] but manageable in a big-city American kitchen, relentless in their pursuit of pleasure, dismissive of the narrow and purse-lipped health obsessions of the food-as-medicine Anglo-Saxon crowd, and deeply informed about the ingredients per se. Paula Wolfert, to my knowledge, is the first writer of cookbooks to equal Olney's contribution. Her style is more broadly journalistic and less opinionated, but her recipes are equally true to their sources.That being said, her sources are French. French farmhouse kitchens and French starred restaurants. So these recipes can be arduous, a real stretch for the average American home kitchen. Many recipes require not only equipment most Americans don't own, but techniques that are dificult to master and even harder to research. But we welcomed Julia Child by spending more time in the kitchen and more money buying kitchen tools, and Wolfert's recipes deserves that same dedication. As Richard Olney said, paraphrased: "The best food requires effort and skill and a sensitivity to the raw materials". So, after stretching my well-equipped kitchen to the limits this last weekend making a beef daube with cepes-prune sauce, stuffed onion a la Michel Bras, and God knows what other multi-page recipes only He can forgive, I can say that if your stove can't sloooow simmer, if you don't have a fine seive, if you don't have access to real cepes, if the idea of reducing two bottles of Cahors to two cups of sauce makes you shudder, and if you don't want to stand at the stove skimming and re-skimming, then this book isn't for you. Don't just open this book on the evening before the boss is due for dinner. Start a week ahead and plan well, and know that your efforts will be rewarded if you are true and steadfast.

The recipes, the photographs, and most of all, Paula Wolfert's very fine writing all work together to make me wish I could just drop everything and go live in Southwest France. We're not likely to actually make many of the recipes in this book, mostly because the ingredients can be difficult to track down, and the investment of time can be off-putting, but we have tried a few recipes, which have turned out very well, thanks to Wolfert's exhaustive instructions, and have marked several others as possibilities. We bought the book primarily for its cassoulet variations, and are not disappointed. Now we just have to wait for the cold, blustery weather that marks cassoulet season.In all, this book is a delight to simply thumb through, marvel at the photographs, and fall in love with Wolfert's sparkling prose and her determination to track down the most authentic versions of classic rustic French cooking. If we never make another dish from this book (and we will!) it is still well worth the money and the precious bookshelf space we've invested in it. Bon appetit!

Read and follow Paula Wolfert's recipes in this book, and guests will be drawn to your dinners by the reputation you will establish as a very proficient cook of the cuisine of southwestern France. The dishes are the epitome of comfort food, made with generally accessible ingredients and slowly cooked until, as one diner told me after eating a plate of her Glandoulet: "This is the most tender, flavorful pork I have ever eaten - barely retaining its structual integrity, with a depth of complex flavor I have never experienced befor"'. The tips, alone, found on almost every page virtually guarantee your reputation as a knowledgable and accomplished cook. Yes, there is prep time, yes, there is cooking time. The results of your investment in time will be repaid a hundredfold with every fork or spoonful. This is one of the finest cookbooks, of culinary resources, of educational and practical kitchen information I have ever read and used - and I use it a lot! I cannot recommend it highly enough - any intermediate level cook, and every advanced cook, to say nothing of professional chefs who yearn to introduce their patrons to a new world of culinary delights - and serious home cooks, as well, will savor every page of this cookbook. A 'must have'!

The recipes and explanations and background of the foods are very interesting. The book was published in 1982 on very cheap paper that has aged poorly and smells like an old dusty book. If that doesn’t bother you, it’s very enjoyable.Correction: The original hardback was printed in 1983 but what I purchased was the paperback reprint in 1988.

Excellent recipes from southern France that include the Basque region. This book includes her travel stories and wow what a life she leads. I'm a little jealous. My husband was 100% Basque and his parents were immigrants. My husband also traveled the Basque region and ate many of the dishes in the book. I bought this book because my son is Basque and Polish. My son will be traveling to the Basque region in 2023 on his honeymoon and we have a lot of relatives there. Thank you for the wonderful book.~The Lartigau Family~

I have made quite a few dishes from this superlative, specialized cookbook. Ms. Wolfert really knows her stuff about all countries that border the Mediterranean. And here she is sharing her vast knowledge of Southwest France. Because of some of the ingredients (i.e., the liberal use of booze!) often called for, quite a few of these recipes are not everyday economical. Although in France many of these things are much cheaper!I have shown off at several dinner parties , both at home or as a contributing guest, with the deeply flavored and unusual Walnut Caramel Tart. With a healthy flourish of slightly sweetened whipped cream, this is a classy delicious act!

That she loves life comes across clearly in this well written and informative book. There are many secrets that one could not know without her clear explanations, no matter how many times one visits the South West.

Great Book! very interesting recipes without photos! But in this book you do not pay attention to this fact. the author did enormous work

I have another recipe book from Ms Wolfert & I love it but this one is a real disappointment and I doubt that I will be able to make a fraction of the recipes in the recipes involve way too much time & ingredients. Too bad!!