PATRICIA WELLS AT HOME IN PROVENCE: Recipes Inspired By Her Farmhouse In France

Tomato clafoutis, herb-cured filet of beef Carpaccio, garlic family soup, Catalan tuna daube: these and 171 other recipes pour off the pages of this sumptuous coffee-table cookbook by the author of Bistro Cooking and Simply French. Wells concentrates on coaxing the utmost flavor out of simple, fresh food, and her French recipes are not all swimming in cream, oils, and fats: the filet, for example, profits not from a heavy sauce but from being wrapped for two days in tarragon, parsley, basil, thyme, and salt. In a couple of places Wells even commits the heresy, for a French-style chef, of switching a red wine used to simmer meat to a white wine.