Hot Sun, Cool Shadow: Savouring the Food, History, and Mystery of the Languedoc

Pauline Carey is an actor, playwright, and fiction writer. She is the
author of Magic and What’s in a Name?

In 1993, Angela Murrills, a food journalist, and Peter Matthews, an art
director, decided to escape Vancouver stress for at least part of the
year by finding a simpler life in a place where they could write, paint,
and cook. Both agreed it had to be a place “where food played the
leading role, where food ruled.”

That turned out to be Languedoc, a little-known region of France close
to the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees and famed for its country dishes
and its wines. For several years these two very inquisitive people
travelled to the area, sometimes with their daughter Kate, sampling the
food and learning to cook it, discovering its history, enjoying its art
and continuously looking for the perfect place to buy.

The reader may feel this book about their travels is all about food.
Murrills has an inexhaustible exuberance of language to describe, it
seems, every market vegetable and every restaurant dish that she comes
across. However, along this unabashedly culinary route she also guides
us through the Toulouse-Lautrec museum at Albi; the making of vermouth
in Marseillan, the home of Noilly Prat; the small seaside town of Stes.
Maries de la Mer, where the patron saint of gypsies is honoured and a
bullfight ends without killing; the history of denim, which started in
Nоmes; the bookworm’s heaven in the “book town” of Montolieu; the
“luminous harbour” of Collioure, made famous by Matisse and Derain
and also renowned for its anchovies; a detailed description of how
copper pots are made in Durfort; an early morning visit to watch the
making of croissants; and the delights of a three-star restaurant in
Montpellier, a town that Murrills finds “obsessed with food.” She
should know.

Every chapter starts with a food title and ends with one or two clearly
told recipes, ranging from the contentious mysteries of confit to the
simplest salad that will tempt the most nervous of cooks. There is a
map, and bold sketches are of local food or cafés, castles and
gargoyles, and country roads.