ARRAZAT’S AUBERGINES – INSIDE A LANGUEDOC KITCHEN

Patrick Moon

Profile Books, £12.99

Patrick Moon’s Arrazat’s Aubergines – Inside a Languedoc Kitchen is the perfect book for any lawyer who has ever sat at a desk staring dolefully out through the dusty office blinds, wondering what it would be like to leave the law and do something different. Mr Moon did exactly that – swapping a 19-year career in the law and a partnership at London firm Nabarro Nathanson – for his own personal 12.5-acre patch of France, in the Languedoc region.

In his first book, Virgile’s Vineyard – a year in the Languedoc Wine Country, Mr Moon shadowed a wine grower for a year and learned all there is to know about grapes. This time, he is taken in by one of the region’s top chefs to help out in the kitchen and see how French cooking is really done.


Clueless at the beginning, he soon finds himself filleting and shelling with the best of them, with only the occasional wrong-sauce-on-the-starters faux pas to separate him from the professionals. Outside the kitchen, he contends with leaky roofs and broken pumps, uncovers the mysteries of Roquefort slowly maturing in caves and Perrier water bubbling forth from its source, and lingers in tiny villages, sampling the local delicacies as he goes.


For those readers less interested in the precise fennel/anise ratio of pastis, though, the greater entertainment is in the subtle humour Mr Moon deploys to describe the characters he encounters along the way. Particularly enjoyable is Manu, the amiable yet slightly devious neighbour who is perhaps a little too partial to the vin rouge, and always seems to harvest more of Mr Moon’s fruit than he does.


Though, as Mr Moon himself admits, his portrayal of the locals is best taken with – as no doubt the French chef Arrazat would approve – a large pinch of salt.