Simple Roast Chicken
A whole bird, salt, heat and not much else — the sort of Sunday supper that feeds a family and leaves enough for the next day. Written up back in March 2015 and still in rotation.
Recipes & Cooking Tips
Simple dishes built on good produce, a little patience and the flavours of the Provençal table — written up as they are cooked at home.
Provençal PantryStart With the Ingredients
The recipes collected here lean on a short list of things done well: tomatoes at their peak, good olive oil, basil pounded into pistou, bread that has some chew to it. Technique is kept light so the flavour of the market comes through.
Seasonal cooking means the menu shifts with what is ripe, so many of these plates are as much about timing as they are about measurements.
From the Kitchen Files
A few of the dishes that keep coming back to the table, season after season.
Tomato Tart
Thin pastry, layered tomatoes, a bake until the edges catch. The best version is the one made the week the tomatoes are sweet.
Baked Figs
Figs split and warmed through until jammy, the kind of easy ending that turns a plain supper into a proper one.
Cooking Tips & Tales
Alongside the recipes are the small working notes: how to handle a hot oven, why anchovies disappear into a sauce, what a market stall in the south can teach about a dish before you ever cook it.
Some of these come straight from the road — the bistros, markets and home kitchens visited on the culinary adventures.
How to Cook From This Page
1
Shop the season
Pick the vegetable first, then the recipe. Everything here flexes around what is ripe.
2
Taste as you go
Salt, acid and olive oil get adjusted at the end, not written in stone at the start.
3
Keep it family-sized
Dishes are built for a table of people who come hungry and stay for seconds.
4
Finish with the pantry
A spoon of pistou, a few good olives, a glass of something cold — the last touches matter.
The heart of Provençal cooking lies not in complexity but in knowing exactly when a tomato is worth eating raw, when a fig needs nothing but a slice of good bread beneath it, and when a handful of herbs picked from a hillside path can carry an entire meal. This approach to the kitchen asks the cook to trust the season and the market, letting each ingredient speak for itself rather than masking it with too many additions. The recipes here follow that same rhythm: a simple pistou stirred into soup at the end of summer, a slow-baked dish of peppers and anchovies that tastes like the sun itself, or a lemon tart that needs nothing more than patience and a steady hand. Technique matters, but only as much as it takes to let the produce shine.
Cook It, Then Taste It in Provence
Take the flavours from these pages to their source with a personalised culinary adventure, or bring a little of the south home with authentic Provençal products from the shop.
See the Adventures