voices in food.

Debora Robertson has swapped metropolitan London for coastal France, but finds she still has a lot in common with the locals – including a love of food and admiration for the Queen

RECIPE: DEBORA ROBERTSON. PHOTOGRAPHS: HANNAH HUGHES. FOOD STYLING: JESS MEYER. STYLING: LAUREN MILLER

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the generosity of cooks. We are the ultimate over-sharers. If you’re sick, we’ll bring you soup; if you come for lunch, we’ll send you home with leftovers. Not sure how to mend a split sauce or a broken heart? Have this tip, this steak, these chips. Of course, we share recipes and techniques, but it’s about more than what’s on the plate or in the pan.

It feels good to show someone how to tell when a piece of fish is cooked or how to make a perfect vinaigrette – these precious spoonfuls of knowledge are things people take off into their lives forever.

Once learned, you can’t unknow them. But the real, gentle thrill to these exchanges is that this is how we build intimacy, create friendships.

When we moved to our French village last autumn, we knew only a handful of people. Then Christmas rolled around and every day, it seemed, someone rang the doorbell with something they’d baked. Our front door became an advent calendar of vanilla-scented goodness. This harbour may have once been a busy little fishing port and a hub for the wine trade, but it’s now largely a port de plaisance. Fellow expat writer Laurence Phillips says, “The principal export of the port of Marseillan is love at first sight.”