Pascale’s family’s bastide, behind the beach in St. Tropez, is a 250-year old farmhouse built in a tradition where blank, one-meter thick walls, face the dominating winds, the Mistral and the Vent d’Est. The ancient logic behind such a choice is made apparent with the arrival of autumn and the wet blast of the East Wind, flattening trees and roiling the Med to look like the Atlantic, or, blowing in the opposite direction, the 40-to-60 knots winds of the Mistral, turning the sea into a turquoise copy of the Caribbean, but icy cold. What this has to do with food is temperature, both internal and external.

On Mistral days, under crystal blue skies, family and friends would sit in the sun with their backs protected by the patio walls and tuck into a caramelized fig and goat cheese tart or perhaps a pecan and roquefort crumble with a tasty pear and mesclun salad. But when the Vent d’Est boils up, all gray clouds and slashing rain, then it’s thick sweaters in front of a roaring fire, the smell of burning wood and pine cones perfectly complementing a duck tajine married to peaches and dates, or say, braised endives to accompany a roasted filet mignon with a tapenade of fresh herbs, while outside the last golden leaves are stripped off the mulberry trees.