a cook's tour of france mireille johnston

Mireille Johnston Obituary

"Food writing's shameful secret is its intellectual poverty," writes John Thorne, himself a distinguished member of the fraternity. This widely valid generalisation was notably challenged by Mireille Johnston, the French/American cook, author, scholar and television presenter who has died the day after her 65 th birthday.

The format and content were worked out in collaboration with her producer, Clare Brigstocke. In each locale that Mireille visited she was able to establish in a few words its distinctive cultural identity. The music made its contribution as well; all of it was French and much of it related to the scenes it accompanied. The series has recently been rebroadcast abroad on BBC Choice, but radio and TV, alas, are ephemeral media. This is a timeless document which should be available on DVD.

Lulu Peyraud is the matron of the great Bandol vineyard, Domaine Tempier, and the subject of Richard Olney's fine portrait, Lulu's Provençal Kitchen. Mireille's visit to Lulu was particularly appropriate, inasmuch as the latter is a close friend of Alice Waters, the mother of modern California natural cuisine. Alice, like Mireille, came to food by way of an academic career coupled with political activism. They subsequently met over lunch at Alice's Chez Panisse in Berkeley.

MIREILLE'S academic and political interests were encouraged by her lifelong husband, Thomas Johnston, whom she met in 1958 on the Ile de France during her first trip to America, to continue her education. After her undergraduate study in Aix-en-Provence, she had been awarded a Fulbright scholarship, for which she showed her sophisticated grasp of American culture by choosing to study American Indian civilisation at Oberlin College. Tom and Mireille were married within a year and continued their academic studies together at Yale. After gaining her doctorate in comparative literature, she taught at Yale, then Sarah Lawrence and Barnard.

Tom, in the meantime, was beginning his own career as a documentary filmmaker. This took them both to New York City, where he worked with D.A. Pennebaker , also Yale-trained, in the ground-breaking cinéma vérité production unit, Drew Associates . This brought him into contact with the Kennedy family and in 1964 Tom took charge of Robert Kennedy's New York City office; over the next four years he was to organise the Senator's many diplomatic journeys to foreign countries. Mireille thus met several of the world's political leaders, such as President Mitterand, and also entertained some of America's best-known intellectuals, including Norman Mailer, Jules Pfeiffer, and Random House Publisher Jason Epstein.

The fact that Mireille was a polished hostess and able cook did not go unnoticed, and Epstein commissioned her first cookbook, Cuisine of the Sun: Classical Dishes from Nice and France (1976). This and her subsequent book, The Cuisine of the Rose (1982), were both designed by Milton Glaser, another dinner companion. Mireille Johnston's Complete French Cookery Course (1992-4) was based on her TV series. Her books contain highly personal versions of classical French recipes, but her departures from tradition are conscientiously noted.

IN 1972 Mireille translated into English, for overdubbing and subtitling, the transcript of Marcel Ophuls' remarkable four-hour documentary on occupied France, The Sorrow and the Pity . When I spoke with her last May she explained that her work on the film had been a tribute to her father. He was disgusted, she said, with the number of known collaborators who after the war claimed to have remained loyal to France. This theme is thoroughly explored in Ophuls' film, in which Emile Coulaudon, known to the underground as Colonel Gaspar, remarks: "There's a thing that amazes me when I talk to people that I know supported Petain. They all tell me what they did in the Resistance."

"At its best the Resistance was the first classless society in France," says Philippe Daudy in a filmed interview. "The two classes became comrades in arms, sharing the same dangers, and even death."  Inheriting from her father this sense of social justice, Mireille remained a dedicated and active member of the French Socialist Party. Her translation for the film, together with biographical and appendix material, was published in Britain in 1975.

COMMENTING on Mireille Johnston's heritage, Charles Shere of Chez Panisse remarks: "The magnificent coastal garden, from Barcelona to Genoa, spreading so enterprisingly up the slopes, and out to the islands, contains the seed and the source of Mediterranean civility. That old, old setting, from Greek times to ours, has produced such amazingly rich, evocative, imaginative, earthy intelligences." Indeed, Mireille brought to her life's work all that she had received through her father's Italianate family, conditioned and enriched by her Nicean upbringing. The result was a cultural blend as complex yet coherent as the cuisine which she so ably practised and presented.

Mireille Busticaccia, born Nice, France, 4 October 1935; married 1959 Thomas Johnston; two daughters, Margaret-Brooke Johnston-Clarke and Elizabeth Johnston; died Paris, 5 October 2000.

©2000 John Whiting

Published in the Guardian , October 28, 2000

21 Oct 2000 John Thorne writes:

Very polished, moving and revelatory. Please do my obit when my wayward lifestyle does me in.

I was impressed with the deft pedal work that made for rich chords without overstating the theme. You reveal her as a very complex, interesting, and valuable person without claiming anything more for her books than what they deserve. It seemed to me a perfect gem.

My hat is off,

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NOTE : I've been able to transfer A Cook's Tour of France to DVD. The programmes are old enough so that I'm sure there would be no problem in a few copies going out. In fact, these days I could probably even put them up on YouTube!

June 2015 They're HERE !

• Food & Drink
• National & International Cookery

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Mireille Johnston's Complete French Cookery Course Hardcover – 20 Oct. 1994

• Print length 352 pages
• Language English
• Publisher BBC Books
• Publication date 20 Oct. 1994
• ISBN-10 0563370149
• ISBN-13 978-0563370147
• See all details

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ BBC Books; Revised Omnibus Edition (20 Oct. 1994)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0563370149
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0563370147
• 8,188 in National & International Cookery
• 114,831 in Home & Garden (Books)

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Mireille johnston.

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Mireille Johnston, Authority on Food, Dies

International Herald Tribune

• Oct. 11, 2000

PARIS— Mireille Johnston, 65, an author and television personality whose work was well known in France, the United States and Britain, died Thursday in Paris, where she lived.

Mrs. Johnston taught comparative literature at Yale University and Sarah Lawrence College in the United States. She wrote a series of books on the foods of France, including "Cuisine of the Sun," on the cuisine of Provence, "Cuisine of the Rose," on the cuisine of Burgundy, "French Family Feast" and two volumes derived from her BBC series, "A Cook's Tour of France."

She was also the author of "Central Park Country, a Tune Within Us."

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Mireille Johnston's Complete French Cookery Course Hardcover – January 1, 1994

• Print length 352 pages
• Language English
• Publisher BBC Books
• Publication date January 1, 1994
• ISBN-10 0563370149
• ISBN-13 978-0563370147
• See all details

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ BBC Books (January 1, 1994)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0563370149
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0563370147
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.6 pounds
• Best Sellers Rank: #2,408,707 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books )

About the author

Mireille johnston.

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• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 5 star 82% 12% 6% 0% 0% 82%
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• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 3 star 82% 12% 6% 0% 0% 6%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 82% 12% 6% 0% 0% 0%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 82% 12% 6% 0% 0% 0%

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Mireille Johnston - A Cook's Tour of France

Stumbled across this glorious series on Youtube. Who remembers it from the early 1990’s?

Thanks for this Mandy… I shall watch it later… I’ve taken a quick peek and it looks great.

There are 12 of them. Proper local French recipes and all conversations in French which is lovely. I hope to see them all in the next few days.

I will have a look. Thanks.

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Mireille’s Complete French Cookery Course

by Mireille Johnston

from the publisher

This is a combined volume of two books which accompanied the BBC television series, "A Cook's Tour of France", covering twelve regions of the country, including Provence, Brittany, Auvergne and Limousin, Normandy, Loire, Ile de France, and the North. The recipes incorporate starters, salads, meats, charcuterie, fish, sauces, desserts and home beverages, and there is a section on famous cheeses and how to put together a good cheese-board. Mireille Johnston offers advice on preparation, and suggests time-saving methods to help the busiest cook to enjoy both the creating and the sharing of a meal, whether it's with the family or a dinner-party for friends. As well as her own versions of familiar French dishes, she has included some recipes from both well-known chefs and ordinary family cooks.

Why aren’t the recipes for this book available on ckbk?

This book has been licensed, and will soon be available on ckbk. New books are converted and uploaded each month.

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