Madeleine Pan

Madeleine Pan, 42, was born and grew up in Palavas-les-Flots, a fishing village near Montpellier in the south of France on the Mediterranean coast. She spent her teenage summers working in the kitchens of the local bistros in the area. As a young adult, she went on to culinary school in Marseille, and worked in several award-winning restaurants in France, Italy, and Spain. After emigrating to Louisiana in the US in her thirties, she was surprised to discover how many Americans thought the food of her native Mediterranean culture was difficult to make for themselves, thinking it was refined, elevated, “cheffy” food that could only be created by professionals in a restaurant. “It’s just not true,” she explains. “At home, we have always been proud of how simple our food is. We have good ingredients and do as little to them as possible, to let their flavors shine.” She was also confused by how many people thought that healthy eating was similarly complicated. She enrolled on a nutrition course, but found that everything taught on it was just the normal attitudes towards cooking and food with which she and her European peers had grown up. “It is crazy to me how Americans are told by the diet industry that they will only be healthy if they buy these expensive diet plans or processed products,” she says. “Making good, nourishing food is so easy!” As well as being delicious, Mediterranean food is of course also famously healthy, with heart-healthy olive oils, a focus on fresh fruit and vegetables, fish and seafood, nuts, seeds, whole grains, and fermented dairy products; with meat, butter, and cream used more sparingly, and in smaller portion sizes. Madeleine is on a mission to help people reconnect with an honest appetite for real food, simply prepared, in sensible portion sizes. “There are no secrets to it,” she laughs. “Americans are just as capable of cooking Mediterranean food as we French are, I want to help them understand how easy and tasty it is – and how much they’ll feel the health benefits.”