Falling Into the Rhythms of La Pitchoune, Julia Child's Home in the South of France

29.04.2024 - 22:47 / cntraveler.com / James Beard

The turn off is small and miss-able, shielded by trees and shrubbery even at the start of the year. As we start up the winding, rutted driveway, I anxiously reach for the Tarte Tropézienne my partner Laila and I picked up in Cannes and placed—carelessly, in hindsight—in the backseat of our rented Renault. The layered dessert is both for research and pleasure: I’m here to write my cookbook, le SUD: Recipes from Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, and La Tropézienne is one of the recipes I’m aiming to perfect.

La Pitchoune, Julia Child's former home in Provence, is now a cooking school and vacation rental.

Marseille, the largest city in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, has a food culture influenced by trade and sea.

It’s a fitting task for a certain pegboard-covered kitchen. La Pitchoune, the house Julia Child built in 1965 in the hills above the Côte d’Azur, has been featured on television, in books, in movies. Now a cooking school and vacation rental, “La Peetch” is currently stewarded by American Makenna Held. She’s generously offered me the run of the place for January.

The kitchen remains as one imagines it did when Julia Child built it. Tart rings, copper pots, measuring spoons, and whisks line the four walls, with outlines marking a designated spot for every single item. Market baskets pile high in a corner; the screened door bangs shut in a way that feels like many have entered through it. And many have. I’m one in a steady line to have the honor and privilege of cooking in this space, a list that includes not just its famous first inhabitant, but also M. F. K. Fisher, Judith Jones, Simone Beck, James Beard, and countless chefs, cooks, and French cooking enthusiasts in between.

I’ve spent the past 18 months researching le SUD across the wide expanse that makes up Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur. From citrus and pasta on its eastern border with Italy, to socca and small, rounded Cailletier olives in Nice, to paella made with rice from the Camargue in Arles, Laila—who is also the book’s culinary researcher—and I have gone deep into the tables of the region. My master plan is to write my book in the mornings, explore in the afternoons, and get in that kitchen whenever I possibly can. La Peetch will, in essence, serve as my own type of writer’s retreat.

Writer Rebekah Peppler spent a month at La Pitchoune, connecting with the art of southern French cooking.

Local walnuts, aromatic cheeses, braids of garlic and Provençal wine were key elements of Peppler's marché hauls.

The best place to start—either in the work of writing about food in France, or the simple act of living life in Provence—is at the marché, and this proves a constant in my life here almost instantly. There are a number of markets to choose