It's not surprising that Joanne Harris's novels -- Chocolat, Blackberry Wine, and Five Quarters of the Orange -- celebrate the pleasure and magic of food, since her fondest childhood memories are of making pancakes with her great-grandmother Memee picking blackberries with her grandfather in Yorkshire, and exploring the early morning markets of Noirmoutier. Now, with coauthor Fran Warde, Harris shares her treasured collection of family recipes that have been passed down from generation to generation in this illustrated cookbook. Harris encourages cooks to engage all their senses when cooking -- look at what you're cooking, smell the ingredients, mix them with your fingers, and enjoy their sounds and textures. Cooking, she reminds us, is about as close to magic as modern society allows: to take a handful of simple, fresh ingredients and turn them into something wonderful, otherworldly. The 120 recipes include French classics such as Onion Soup and Onion Tart, Coq au Vin, and Creme Brulee as well as family favorites like Anouchka's Chile Garlic Bread, great-aunt Simone's Marinated Tuna, and great-aunt Marinette's Slow Fudge Sauce. And, of course, there's an entire chapter devoted to chocolate-cakes, meringues, and spiced hot chocolate. My French Kitchen, a collaboration between Joanne Harris, a writer who loves food, and Fran Warde, a former chef who loves to write about food, belongs in your kitchen.

Author Biography

Joanne Harris (Author) Joanne Harris is an Anglo-French author, whose books include fourteen novels, two cookbooks and many short stories. Her work is extremely diverse, covering aspects of magic realism, suspense, historical fiction, mythology and fantasy. She has also written a Doctor Who novella for the BBC, has scripted guest episodes for the game Zombies, Run!, and is currently engaged in a number of musical theatre projects as well as developing an original drama for television. In 2000, her 1999 novel Chocolat was adapted to the screen, starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. She is an honorary Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and in 2013 was awarded an MBE by the Queen.Fran Warde (Author) Fran Warde's career has been fuelled by a passion for food. Trained as a chef, she worked at the Cafe Royal, on an Australian prawn trawler, ran her own cookery school and then moved into food styling and food writing. She is the food editor of Red Magazine and the author of Food for Friends, Eat, Drink, Live and Thirty Minute Italian. She lives in West London with her husband and two children.