Bruno's Cookbook: Recipes and Traditions from a French Country Kitchen

As I have shared in more than one post, I am a big fan of Martin Walker's crime series featuring Bruno Courrèges, policeman of fictional St. Denis, a small village in the Dordorgne in France. More than a policeman, Bruno is completely comfortable in the kitchen, and every book features several occasions in which Bruno prepares wonderful meals for his friends and colleagues. The mysteries themselves are usually pretty interesting, but honestly, it's the food and the cooking, gardening, harvesting, canning, and foraging that are the real reasons I love these books.

For Xmas, my husband gave me a copy of Bruno's Cookbook: Recipes and Traditions from a French Country Kitchen, written by Martin Walker and Julia Watson. I am slowly reading the cookbook, not only for the recipes but for the anecdotes, excerpts from the books, and insights into life in the French countryside.

The book is organized differently from most cookbooks--each section focuses on the source of the type of food featured, so the first section is on the vegetable plot and market, so there are recipes for haricots verts (green beans), Sarlat-style fried potatoes, leek/potato/sorrel soup, and a red onion tarte tatin, which I am dying to make, among lots of other tasty veggie dishes. 

There are also sections for the fisherman (Walker and his fictional Bruno live along a river and just a couple of hours from the Atlantic), the hunter (featuring duck, goose, pigeon, boar, etc.), the butcher, the cheesemaker and dairy man, the baker, the forager (truffles, anyone?), and the all-important winemaker, which has wines, liqueurs, as well as entrees and desserts cooked in wine.

It's a very snowy day in Colorado today, and I am thinking that I need to jump ahead and read about Pot Roast Chicken Henri IV-Style. That just might be what's for dinner tonight.