While buying stoneware pots in Mme Chalendar’s shop in Lamastre I mentioned that I was particularly interested in Ardéchois cooking. The effect was electric: in a flash Madame raced across the shop to call up the stairs to her daughter, Lily. A dark, pretty sixteen-year-old emerged, keen to tell me that she was starting to learn how to cook. In no time I was hustled into the kitchen behind the shop to sample Lily’s latest dish, her chou farci, which tasted so good and was so simple to make that Madame insisted I was given the recipe. Between customers she dictated the recipe while Lily wrote and Lily’s father, seated at a table in the kitchen interjected now and again ‘Don’t forget the garlic.’