Jeanne Strang publishes Magrets and Mushrooms cook book

Although Jeanne lived all her adult life in Hamilton Terrace, St John's Wood, she sourced the traditional recipes from her second home in South-West France.

In 1961, long before it was fashionable, Jeanne and her solicitor husband Paul bought an abandoned farmhouse in the Aveyron - and thus began a 60 year love affair with the area, their neighbours and the French way of life.

Jeanne Strang and husband Paul bought a house in the Aveyron region of France in 1961 and she took inspiration from the local food traditions to write her classic book Goose Fat and Garlic (Image: Ckbk)

Orlando Murrin, who has written an introduction to the new book Magrets & Mushrooms was captivated by Goose Fat & Garlic's evocative descriptions of the area's authentic recipes, flavours, and rural traditions.

The President of the Guild of Food Writers got to know the Strangs after buying a house nearby: "They were a wonderful couple, very go-ahead and they bought the house before it was a trendy thing to do," he says.

"Jeanne's first book was a classic, never out of print, I read it and fell in love with South West France and went to live in that region partly because of it.

The recipes in Magrets & Mushrooms draw on local ingredients such as this one for chicken drumsticks and mushrooms (Image: Alison Stattersfield)

"I adored them. Paul was intensely musical, the son of conductor Thomas Beecham, he was a wonderful pianist, who wrote about wine, and Jeanne was charming and fed everyone."

Murrin says while in London the couple mingled with famous musicians, their "idyllic life" meant spending the whole summer in France  - even into their 90s

"It was romantic and pretty, but still quite primitive by modern standards. Jeanne threw herself into cooking and collecting recipes from friends, neighbours, the local cafe owner, or baker - they were the product of the ingenuity of generations of French women trying to make the food better.

"She was a no-nonsense person who didn't clutter the recipes with unnecessary detail so they are lean, authentic, and always worth the effort."

After Jeanne's death, Paul helped to edit and finalise publication of Magrets & Mushrooms: More Recipes from South West France, but died in March just after it was published.

The new book is published posthumously by Cook book app ckbk (Image: ckbk)

Murrin says with its warm anecdotes, witty observations, and research into the Aveyron's food traditions, the sequel stands as a tribute to the couple's life together.

The 138 recipes celebrate regional ingredients of rabbit, fungi, goose fat, goat's cheese and pork, as well as the evolution of cooking to incorporate ingredients from further afield such as flat peaches, butternut squash, raz-el-hanout and filo pastry.

Of course there are several recipes for magrets, the plump local duck breasts of the title.

Murrin, who compares Jeanne's first book to Elizabeth David or Robert Carrier, says the follow up is a "window into the culinary soul of South West France: “If one thinks of Goose Fat as a love letter to South-West France, Magrets & Mushrooms is a renewal of vows, and deserves a place in the bookshelf of every Francophile and admirer of authentic French country cooking."

French cookery enthusiast Alison Stattersfield who has a house in the Lot, fell in love with the recipes and decided to cook them as a retirement project.

Her photographs feature in the book which is published by digital subscription service and app ckbk.

La Terrine Aux Herbes (Image: Alison Stattersfield)

La Terrine Aux Herbes Herb pâté

Ingredients:
350 g spinach
350 g raw pork
100 g cooked ham, diced
100 g lardons
1 medium onion, finely 
chopped
½ tbsp each of basil, parsley 
and chervil
3 rosemary leaves
2 cloves garlic, chopped
cayenne pepper, nutmeg, salt 
and pepper
2 eggs, lightly beaten
strips of pork fat to line the 
terrine and cover the pâté

Method:
Cook the spinach in a pan for 5 minutes, then drain, chop coarsely 
and mince with the raw pork. Add the ham, lardons and onion, 
then the herbs, garlic and seasonings. Stir in the beaten eggs and 
turn into a terrine lined with the pork fat. Cover with more strips 
of the pork fat.
Heat the oven to 150C/300F/gas mark 2. Cover the terrine 
with foil, put in a bain-marie and cook for 1 hour, then allow to 
cool completely. Serve cold.

The Pate should be served cold (Image: Alison Stattersfield)

Aiguillettes de Canard Aux Pruneaux Duck breast with prunes

Ingredients:

400 ml red wine
6 tbsp prune juice
2 heaped tsp honey
600 g aiguillettes de canard (thin slices of breast)
as many prunes, whole, as there are aiguillettes
4 tbsp duck or goose fat
salt and pepper
verjus (or lemon juice)

Method:

To make the sauce, put the wine, prune juice and honey in a 
saucepan, stir well and put over a low flame to reduce until 
syrupy.

Meanwhile, roll up a prune in each of the aiguillettes and 
secure with toothpicks. Season.

Heat the fat in a pan and sauté the aiguillettes briefly, turning them over to ensure even cooking, keeping them pink.

Transfer to a serving dish, deglaze the pan with the verjus (or lemon juice) 
and add the pan juices to the sauce.

Serve with pommes rissolés and a green salad or vegetable.