Market Day in Provence
Author: Michele De La Pradell
At farmers’ markets, we expect to see fruit bursting with juicy sweetness and vegetables greener than a golf course. For Michèle de La Pradelle these expectations are mostly the result of a show performed by merchants and sustained by our propensity to see what we want to see there. Hailed upon its release in France, the award-winning Market Day in Provence lays bare the mechanisms of the contemporary outdoor market by providing a definitive account of the centuries-old institution at Carpentras, a city near Avignon in the south of France famous for its quintessential public street market.
The renewal and celebration of the outdoor market culture in recent years, argues de La Pradelle, artfully masks a fierce commitment to modern-day free-market economics. Responding to consumer desire for an experience that recalls a time before impersonal supermarket chains and mass-produced products, buyers and sellers alike create an atmosphere built on various fictions. Vendors at the market at Carpentras, for example, oblige patrons by acting like lifelong acquaintances of those whom they’ve only just met as they dispense free samples and lively, witty banter. Likewise, going to the market to look for “freshness” becomes a way for the consumer to signify the product’s relation to nature—a denial of the workaday reality of growing melons under plastic sheets, then machine-sorting, crating, and transporting them.
Offering captivating descriptions of goods and the friendly and occasionally piquant exchanges between buyers and sellers, Market Day in Provence will be devoured by any reader with an interest in areas as diverseas food, ethnography, globalization, modernity, and French culture.
Read also World of Culinary Supervision Training and Management or French Food
Louisiana Cookery
Author: Owen Brennan
"Originally published in 1954, Louisiana Cookery is the classic cookbook documenting the good times Louisianians associate with great food and recipes. It's a timeless contribution to culinary history with entertaining and informative text that combines folklore, history, and over 1,500 recipes to emphasize Mary Land's belief that culture and cookery go hand in hand." In this book, Land collects, refines, and comments on recipes and cooking history from all parts of Louisiana, from its bayous to its back alleys, from rural swampland to urban centers such as New Orleans and Shreveport. These delectable items include such oddities as "Squirrel Head Potpie" and "Poached Alligator Tail," as well as gourmet pleasures from Creole haute cuisine. From banquet-sized meals to intimate dining, this book covers it all and adds a special emphasis on how to prepare Gulf Coast fish and game. The history of Louisiana's wines and spirits is also amply described, with intriguing historical tidbits about the state's contributions to alcoholic beverages. The book reveals the recipes of numerous drinks, unique to this area, but now widely known and enjoyed.
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