Instructions: As we drove through Provence this spring, my husband and I saw traces of the cuisine in the land: orchards of olive trees, wild herbs, and rows of terraced vineyards. The flavors of this sun-soaked part of France emphasize seasonal ingredients.

Here, its traditional to shop at the market every day, where shopkeepers display their wares with style and precision, and where cooks demand the best and freshest ingredients for their table.

You can find much of this Provencal cuisine in the kitchen of Martine Alexandrian, who makes dinners for guests at the bed and breakfast she owns near Aix-en-Provence. Her family origins are rooted in the Mediterranean.

During her childhood, she split her holidays between her relatives. Her grandparents had a fishermans cottage on the island of Porquerolles, a small island off the coast in the Mediterranean. Her great-grandmother, to whom she says she owes her culinary skills, had a home in Toulon, near Marseille.

Martine retains her passion for the flavors of the region, with her cuisine still deeply-anchored in tradition. An imaginative chef, she continually delights her guests. She cooks both Provencal and Italian food.

Because Provence borders Italy, mixing the two cuisines is typical and popular. Martine saw no conflict in directing us to her favorite restaurant in downtown Aix-en-Provence: an Italian place. The mix of foods continued there.

The roasted, intensely-flavored (French) ratatouille we ordered as an appetizer was a sensuous mix of roasted and fresh tomatoes, smoky eggplant, Nicoise olives and celery. Our entree was Italian: spaghetti carbonara. It came with a raw egg in a half shell sitting on top. For added richness, we stirred it into the pasta.

Back at the B & B, on our first night as Martines guests, our meal began with a perfectly ripe melon wrapped in proscuitto. The orange melon is a specialty of the area. It is a small and round fruit with green stripes, deeply sweet, and intensely perfumed. She paired it with a small green salad with shaved Italian Parmesan, dry and piquant.

For the entree, she simmered chicken parts in a Provencal sauce of tomatoes, red pepper, onion, eggplant, garlic, and thyme. She sauteed chicken livers quickly in olive oil, mashed them, and slathered them on a toast triangle. For dessert, Martine perched a raspberry Napoleon on a base of creme anglaise, and added swirls of raspberry puree to please the eye.

Watching her cook in her immaculate kitchen, with a calm confidence and without recipes, I was struck by the simplicity of the dishes. "Provencal cooking is not complicated," she said with a shrug. Flavors were robust but never heavy-handed, and the ingredients were so well melded that one flavor never dominated, even the garlic.

The next day, we returned in the late afternoon to find that she had already baked a cherry clafouti (with pits still inside). Her husband picked the cherries a few days earlier from a tree on the edge of their property.

The oven held a layered casserole of tomatoes, zucchini, herbs, and garlic, prettily arranged in scalloped rows of green and red. She was cooking it down for about 2.5 hours. Occasionally shed remove it to pat down the surface with a fork, condensing it and moving the juices to the bottom.

On the stovetop was a pagre, a red whole fish lying in a rustic ceramic dish, on a bed of dried wild fennel stalks Martine collected from her garden. Its a Mediterranean fish, similar to the American pomfret. Later she sauced it with pistou (like pesto, but without Parmesan and pine nuts) that she had mashed by hand with a mortar and pestle. When we pointed to a food processor nearby on her counter, she shook her head emphatically.

Using the mortar releases the flavor and scent of the basil, she explained, which becomes lost in the processor. As we finished another simple yet spectacular meal, we agreed that Martine is an expert on flavor, freshness - and tradition.

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