Travelling in Provence

For the next couple of weeks, Rough Cut Kitchen is turning into a bit of a travel food diary.

I’m currently in the south of France and, as you’d expect, the food culture here is impossible to ignore. Yesterday was Avignon. Today, Marseille. We’re now based in Aix-en-Provence for a few days while I wander markets, bakeries, wine shops, cafés and restaurants looking at how people actually eat here day to day.

What strikes me most isn’t fine dining. It’s how seriously ordinary food is taken.

Simple things – tomatoes, anchovies, olive oil, roast chicken, bread, oysters, herbs, tapenade – are treated with enormous respect. Nobody seems in a hurry to overcomplicate anything. The ingredients are expected to do most of the work.

There’s also a strong sense that food belongs to place. Marseille tastes different to Avignon. Aix feels different again. Even the markets change character every few hours.

I’ve already come home with ideas about sauces, vegetables, seafood, slow cooking, market shopping, and the importance of restraint in cooking. French country cooking often feels like the opposite of modern “content food”. Less performance. More confidence.

So for a little while, expect Rough Cut Kitchen to drift slightly into travel mode – markets, meals, ingredients, techniques, and the occasional disaster involving my French pronunciation.

More soon from Provence.