Eggs and Cheese

The simplest dishes of eggs and cheese are often the most delicious, especially when they have been favored with a few fresh herbs or a pinch of herbes de Provence.

Nearly every market in the South of France has a stand selling dried herbs and spices. Often the spices are sold from a nest of open-topped wooden boxes, while the herbs are displayed in small fabric sacks, their tops rolled down neatly to display their contents. The colors are subtle and gentle – pale-green dried mint alongside dusty-yellow lime flowers for making tisanes, the grey-mauve flowers and seeds of lavender for scenting sugars, and smokey-gray sage and serpolet for seasoning a daube of beef or for adding to a marinade.