Spicy Reading : With Love From Simca : FOOD AND FRIENDS: Recipes and Memories From Simca’s Cuisine, <i> By Simone “Simca” Beck with Suzanne Patterson</i> (<i> Viking: $30; 528 pp.)</i>

When “Food and Friends: Recipes and Memories From Simca’s Cuisine” arrived in the mail, a flood of memories surfaced from the week in 1979 when I studied at Bramafam, Simone Beck’s farm in southern France.

Before the trip, I’d talked to numerous people who had either studied with Beck or knew someone who had. One person advised me to cut my manicured nails because she had no patience with such frivolity.

I didn’t cut my nails, and they were never mentioned. But she did complain that I drove too slowly. When I arrived in Cannes, Beck and her husband were waiting at the train station. My friends and I rented a car, and Beck navigated while I drove. We were barely on the road before Beck politely told me to step on the gas.

Beck’s book has the same straightforward quality: The recipes are based on classic French techniques, tempered by Beck’s originality. Many are not in keeping with today’s trend toward less fat and fewer calories; however, they stress the use of top-quality ingredients and rely on freshness--be it vegetables, herbs, meat or seafood.

Through her classes and her book Simca teaches about a life that is fast disappearing. At Simca’s, fresh vegetables grown on the farm were brought into the kitchen each morning. Local vendors delivered meat, poultry and fish right to the door. Classes at the farm began rather formally on Monday with a demonstration by Beck, but by the end of the week they had became sessions in which six women worked and chatted together. Each day we studied a different subject: bread and pastry, fish, poultry, lamb, eggs. Using recipes from her books to demonstrate, Beck taught us techniques.

When classes were over at noon, we savored our morning labors along with local wines. Beck lunched with her husband but always made certain we had plans for the afternoon--getting us necessary reservations and drawing maps showing points of interest and good places to shop. At the end of the week we were invited to Beck’s home for Champagne.

Unlike Beck’s first books, this one has the same sort of personal quality as her classes. Recipes in the first part of the book are from menus that intertwine with events in Beck’s life. She shares a birthday dinner for her father in 1913, when at age 7 she baked his favorite chocolate cake; an engagement celebration lunch for her second husband, Jean Fischbacher; a family meal after her husband’s liberation from a German POW camp at the end of World War II; a farewell lunch for students at Bramafam.

From the book you learn about Beck’s meeting with Julia Child in 1949 and how their long friendship developed. (The Childs eventually leased land and built a house, La Pitchoune, on the property of Bramafam.)

The book also gives readers a glimpse of Beck’s early life at Rainfreville, the small chateau built by her parents. You learn that her grandfather found the secret formula for Benedictine in an old trunk and established a family business that manufacturered and marketed this cordial until the company was sold to Martini & Rossi in 1989.

Beck also talks about her recent life. When her husband of 49 years died in 1986, says Beck, “My life turned gray, and I sank into a kind of limbo.” But gradually she again found reasons to live and says of her life today: “So with my distracting pals (her pets), I keep on plugging at my work, getting somewhat nervous and irritable if I can’t spend time at my trusty typewriter every day. I love the attention of friends, relatives and neighbors, but less and less tolerate idle conversation. There is so little time left to waste . . . “