Vegetarian recipes from France

Meatless French cooking rests on three farm staples: wheat, potato and the vegetable of the season. The fat changes with the latitude, and the fat carries the flavour: butter and cream in the north, in the egg and cream quiche or the reblochon tartiflette; olive oil in the south, in the baked vegetable tian. The aromatics are few and steady: onion, garlic, thyme, bay, parsley. Dishes are moistened with water or wine rather than meat stock, and cooked long and uncovered, to concentrate rather than to spice. Cheese and egg stand in for meat without imitating its texture.

A meal reads as a sequence rather than a single plate: soup or a starter, a main, then cheese. Soup holds a place of its own, because it is the real evening dish: gratinated onion soup in winter, cold leek vichyssoise in summer, cabbage garbure when the table needs feeding. Regions bring their own bases: chickpea flour in socca from Nice, a flatbread baked in a wood oven, and vegetables alone, with nothing beside them, in ratatouille, where each vegetable is cooked apart before they are brought together.