Cuisine des Bastides

The bastide—Provence’s quintessential country house, typically a stone farmstead set among vineyards, olive groves, and lavender fields—has generated its own culinary tradition that sits between peasant farmhouse cooking and bourgeois gastronomy. Bastide cuisine is characterised by abundance without pretension, by the integration of the estate’s own production into every meal, and by a seasonal rhythm dictated by what the property grows. A typical bastide of the Luberon or Var produces its own olive oil, wine, fruits (figs, cherries, apricots, almonds), vegetables from the potager (kitchen garden), eggs, herbs, and sometimes honey and goat cheese—the cuisine’s framework is determined by these ingredients, supplemented by market purchases of fish, meat, and bread. The bastide lunch is Provence’s most characteristic meal: served outdoors under the plane trees (platanes) or the wisteria-covered pergola, it begins with crudités (raw vegetables with anchoïade or tapenade), proceeds through a main dish (often a gratin, a braise, or grilled meat with ratatouille), salad dressed at the table, a cheese course (local chèvre and Banon), and fruit from the orchard. The wine is the estate’s own—or failing that, the neighbour’s. The meal lasts two hours minimum and is as much a social institution as a nutritional one. The bastide cuisine’s principles—cook what you grow, grow what the land provides, share generously, linger at the table—represent the purest expression of the Provençal art of living.

• → Cucina di Fattoria Tuscan
• → Cortijo Cooking Spanish
• → Shojin Ryori Japanese