If any food deserves to be linked with impressionist Vincent Van Gogh, it is surely potatoes, writes Helen Peacocke. His first real lithograph, The Potato Eaters, in which he struggled to capture the vegetable he considered the essence of sustenance along with those who produced them, he gives us shows the family eating their boiled potatoes in lamplight, having dug the earth in which they grew with the very hands they were putting in the dish. In creating this work in 1885, he realised he had achieved something that overstepped the boundaries of conventional beauty.

Van Gogh was an artist whose appetite for painting was far greater than his appetite for food, however.

When he did create still-life pictures of food, he selected basic vegetables - cabbages, lemons and food grown from the 'good earth'. When he went further and created works such as Crab on its Back (Arles 1889) in bold, contrasting reds and greens, it was seen as a disguised self-portrait that represented his struggle to recover his balance and self-confidence.

Together, in Van Gogh's Table (Artisan, £14.99), Alexander Leaf and Fred Leeman examine Van Gogh's attitude to food and the regional dishes that Van Gogh would have enjoyed in 1890 while at the Auberge Ravoux, a café/inn in Auvers-sur-Oise, an artists' colony 22 miles from Paris where he produced some 70 works in an astounding 70 days.

This remarkable book provides the background to many of Van Gogh's works and a rare insight into the central role of the cafe in French culture.

The book also provides 50 superb recipes that work as well today as they would have done during Van Gogh's time.