This New Cookbook by the Founder of Ghia Will Transport You Straight to a Mediterranean Summer

Reported by Vogue.

There's a specific fantasy that takes hold around this time of year — sun-warmed skin, a glass of something cold, dinner made from whatever looked good at the market. Mélanie Masarin has built an entire brand around that feeling, and now she's put it in cookbook form. The founder of non-alcoholic apéritif label Ghia has released Riviera: Recipes from the Coast of France and Italy, a collection rooted in her French childhood and the hours she spent watching her grandmother cook.

The book didn't start as a career move. According to Vogue, Masarin began developing the recipes during lockdown in 2020, when friends kept asking what she was making and how to make it themselves. "The same instinct that started Ghia is what started this book," she says. "I wanted gathering to feel easy." The philosophy carries through every recipe — tomato tarte tatin, seared scallops, French minestrone — none of which require an intimidatingly stocked pantry. Her actual short list: good olive oil, flaky salt, fresh herbs, garlic, and what she calls "a good attitude."

The Cake That Started It All

Masarin's standout recipe is a fig and yogurt cake — her riff on the pound cake her grandmother made throughout her childhood. Yogurt keeps the crumb tender and slightly tangy; the figs caramelize against the bottom of the pan and become the top once inverted, doing what she describes as "all the work of making it feel like something more." But the genius of it is the flexibility: swap in citrus, frozen raspberries, quince, whatever's actually in season. "Cook with what's in season, and let recipes adapt to your life" — that's her stated ethos for the entire book.

The method itself is almost defiantly low-tech. It's the classic French children's cake, traditionally measured using the empty yogurt pot as your only tool. Masarin's updated version folds in almond flour and a crown of caramelized figs, but the imprecision is intentional and the technique is forgiving — mix wet ingredients in one bowl, dry in another, combine without overworking the batter, bake at 350°F for 35 minutes. The result stays tender for two days at room temperature, though Masarin notes it rarely lasts that long.

If the whole point of summer is to stop making things harder than they need to be, Riviera is the reminder that the best meals have always been the simplest ones.

Read the original at Vogue.