Mare

If you want the best European food, you start at the water. Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, and Greece are not a mood board of “Mediterranean vibes.” They are the spine of European cooking: olive oil and butter, wheat and rice, the pig, the lamb, the boat.

France is the honest exception. Most of it is not a Mediterranean kitchen — Burgundy is wine and stock, Normandy is cream and apples. We still give it a chapter because European cooking is unintelligible without French technique, and because Provence cooks like its neighbors. Portugal is the other honest exception: it faces the Atlantic. It belongs anyway. Same grammar, saltier sea, a custard tart that has conquered the world without asking.

Mare is the book, and the app you cook from: 115 recipes, a three-course table for tonight, a market list, and cook mode that keeps the step in front of you. From Lisbon to the Aegean, west to east, the way the sun goes.