la belle Florence serving soupe au pistou for dinner in Le-Revest-les-Eaux.

And so we return to a familiar theme: authenticity and provenance, this time with soupe au pistou, which I ate three times while I was in Provence. In terms of pedigree, I suppose only two of those occasions counted, since the third was made by me (not French) following the recipe of an American (ditto, see after the jump). In any case, all three were distinct and different and I’m sticking to my usual rationale: make it any way you like, make it delicious, and remember why it exists in the first place – to make the most of what you have around you. (And to allow you to accommodate unexpected extra guests with ease. Thank you, Françoise!)

Paula Wolfert is a new discovery for me: although I knew of her, I had never read any of her cookbooks before this summer. So far, I’m in culinary love. She provides an evocative context for each recipe, writes with the right descriptive tone to allow you to make judgement calls as you cook, and has obviously paid a lot of attention to the numbers – quantities, cooking times and temperatures. She has collected recipes for soupe au pistou from several different regions, but this is a riff on the Marseillaise one that I followed fairly (at least, for me) religiously: