French Countryside Cooking

Daniel Galmiche

From Shelf: My cookery books

Daniel Galmiche, a Michelin-starred chef and author of the French Brasserie Cookbook shows how to make authentic French dishes, using the ingredients found in the rural parts of the country, from orchard to meadow, river to seashore, in sustainable and stunningly inventive ways.

Multiple-Michelin-starred Daniel Galmiche presents a fresh approach to French cooking. Taking inspiration and ingredients from meadow and orchard, from field to forest, and from river to sea, each recipe elevates authentic French rural classics to sophisticated dishes, full of flavour and easy to create at home. French cooking centres around one maxim: start with quality ingredients, and the resulting flavour and freshness of the dish will shine. Daniel shows how to showcase the humblest of ingredients, with tips on how to source them sustainably and seasonally. Starters, mains, sides and desserts are organised by the origin of their key ingredient. From the meadow, gather flowers for a dandelion, wild thyme and lemon cake. From the farmyard, make use of a chicken carcass to create a beautifully clear and nourishing broth. Or from the sea, create fragrant lemongrass-skewered prawns with sauce vierge. With short ingredients lists and straightforward guidance on how to perfect chef-level techniques such as dehydrating and sous-vide without the fancy equipment, this book will allow you to master innovative French cuisine - and reduce food waste - with simplicity. This is a new and updated edition of the classic Revolutionary French Cookbook, with a timely emphasis on sustainability and responsibly-sourced ingredients. This book was inspired by Daniel's return to the countryside during the pandemic. With each long country walk, his background in rural France returned to him and everything began to make sense. He felt a need to return to these recipes, and a need to revive them alongside new recipes created during that quiet time.