"The best cookbook no one's ever heard of." --MARK BITTMAN "Through her eloquent writing and delicious recipes, Elizabeth Luard is able to bring us back in touch with the sources of real nourishment. This is a wonderful, inspiring and important book." --ALICE WATERS, founder and owner of Chez Panisse and the author of The Art of Simple Food A classic on the essentials of European cooking Award-winning food writer Elisabeth Luard joyously salutes the foundations of modern Western cooking with recipes collected during more than twenty-five years of travel and research, many of them spent living in rural France, Spain, Greece, Ireland, and Italy. This definitive collection of over three hundred time-tested recipes from twenty-five European countries is an indispensable guide to the simple, delicious, and surprisingly exotic dishes of peasant Europe.