French cuisine is considered among the world’s best, but its traditional ingredients like butter and cream aren’t always appropriate for today’s heart-healthy diets. NewWorld Provence, by the proprietor-chefs of the esteemed restaurants Provence Mediterranean Grill and Provence Marinaside in Vancouver, is a new-style French cookbook designed for contemporary North American audiences, featuring healthy, easy-to-find ingredients prepared using traditional French techniques tweaked with the home cook in mind. The book includes beautiful yet simple recipes which take advantage of meats, seafood, and vegetables abundant in Canadian markets across the country; in keeping with their contemporary flair, pan-cultural influences abound, yet all the while the recipes remain faithful to French traditions.

The recipes not only reflect North American sensibilities, but familial ones as well; authors Jean-Francis and Alessandra Quaglia are the parents of two young sons, and Jean-Francis’s mother is a renowned chef in France who comes to Vancouver frequently to cook at her son’s restaurants. These relationships pervade the book, which reveals how a common love and respect for food can be passed on from generation to generation, from the old world to the new.

The book features 32 sumptuous full-color photographs and over 120 recipes, including prawns with chickpea gallette; whole rabbit barbecue; bean & wild mushroom ragout; fresh crab with tomatoes and fresh herbs; roasted vegetable tart; sea urchin on bread; and new-style bouillabaisse.

Husband-and-wife team of Alessandra and Jean-Francis Quaglia met in Nice, France, where they were both working as chefs. Alessandra is originally from Toronto, and comes from a family of cooks; Jean-Francis is from Marseilles, France, where he cooked at the restaurant run by his mother. They moved to Canada in 1992 and opened their first Provence restaurant in Vancouver in 1997; a second Provence opened in 2002. In addition to running both restaurants, they are the proud parents of two children.