Menu from the Midi explores French gastronomy from the farmer's field to the dining room table. Concentrating on the South of France, the book is structured as a menu carefully compiled to give the reader a balanced diet of gastronomy, history, legend and local colour. Uniquely, it adds into this mix a celebration of the dedicated and passionate people who produce some of the finest raw ingredients and foodstuffs you are ever likely to taste.

Appreciating good food and wine needs the right ambiance, the right company and plenty of time. Sit back, relax and savour the oldest sparkling wine in the world, le Rolls-Royce of olives, pink garlic soup, meats of the black Gascon pig, the legendary cassoulet, cheese from the caves of Roquefort, and learn how the Midi's ornate pigeon towers ensured a constant supply of roast pigeon.

No wonder the father of food journalism and gastronomic guides, Grimod de La Reynière, had this to say 200 years ago: 'In good towns of the Midi, a great dinner is an affair of state. One speaks of it three months beforehand and digesting it lasts six weeks.'