Ever since my domestic science teacher Miss Healing, made me cry into an impossibly glutinous and very adhesive bread dough, I have been wary of recipes. My mistake in the forth year was to add one litre rather than one pint of luke warm water to my mix. She stopped and stared and Snaped with restrained but obvious relish, ’crying into it will only make it worse.’

Don’t think my mum particularly liked cooking. It took me years to work out that, growing up in the war, she had always had to struggle with food rather than enjoying it. Then of course, when rationing eventually ended and you could get hold of pretty much whatever you wanted to eat, mum had no idea what to do with it! She followed a set of neatly copied recipes, faithfully without ever varying them. She tried many many times to get me making sponge cakes and pastries and crumbles and biscuits. All of them seemed to come out like chewy grey slabs when I tried. I could follow the recipe as strictly as she did, but the results were disgusting.  Again, it took me years to understand that I never liked sweet things, so making these puddings and stuff was a meaningless exercise for me. I wasn’t at all engaged in the process.

I think that I did understand very young that I didn’t want to eat meat, it was always a revolting process to see the lamb flesh pulled away from the bone. But as we  had meat three times a day, every day, it never occurred to me that it was possible to go without…

So here I am now. Hating the tyranny of recipes, not liking sweet stuff and being a mum in a totally dedicated vegetarian household. Our kids have never eaten meat and have no desire to. Its just one of those things.. we don’t much care what other people eat, so long as we are left to enjoy our food. Its never really been an issue for us. Until, that is, we bought a house in france.

I know that French cooking is supposed to be good.. I have heard that. However, I have never had the chance to find out. All that is ever on offer is Omelette, or chevre salad.  Very often, these are not considered to be quite proper unless they have a liberal sprinkling of Jambon.’ Mias oui Madame, it is a vegetarian dish as you asked, these they are just specks added to give the food a raison d’etre’.

We don’t eat out in France. Instead I cook.

I never know what I am going to cook until I see what veg are in the market, then the ideas come thick and fast and the dishes invent themselves. And most of the time they work out just fine..
Here are a few dishes that I have cooked and illustrated from meals we have shared with friends in London and Tarn.

They are not to be followed strictly, they are ideas to enjoy.

Bon apetit!