French Recipes
1126 recipes found
Croque-Monsieur Breakfast Casserole
This French classic needs little introduction, but if you haven’t had it in baked form, you’re in for a treat. Think upscale ham sandwiches drenched in egg custard and cheese, melted to a deep golden-brown. There are no tricks here, save for the addition of two extra yolks for maximum French-toast tenderness. Serve it warm, or at room temperature — a fitting breakfast feast that's welcome any time of the day.
Crustless Egg and Cheese Quiche
If you love quiche, get to know this crustless version, dotted with cheese, mushrooms and herbs (and no fussy pastry to chill or roll). Once you master the perfect dairy-to-egg ratio, you’ll find this recipe to be as much of an ally to the Friday fridge clean-out as it is to a brunch for friends. Pay close attention to the baking time: The center should be a touch wiggly when you remove the quiche from the oven. The end result is a quivering, spoonable custard that melts in your mouth, to be served with a bracing salad. Crisp greens with mustardy vinaigrette, or a citrus laced endive and radicchio number — anything in that vein will do.
Aioli
In Provence, the garlic-infused mayonnaise called aioli is typically served with a platter of raw and boiled vegetables and sometimes fish. With its intense creamy texture and deep garlic flavor, it turns a humble meal into a spectacular one.
Roast Pork With Milk
A bistro basic that the critic Bryan Miller brought to The Times in 1988 with the help of Pierre Franey, this luscious roast of pork comes from the kitchen of Adrienne Biasin, who for years ran a homespun and legendary restaurant in Paris, Chez la Vieille. The meat is first browned over the stovetop to sear in the moisture, then braised slowly in onions and milk. The pan juices are set aside to form the base of a gravy, and the roast is finished in the oven. It takes some time, but is beyond easy to make, and pairs well with a glass of Beaujolais and dreams of travel. (Sam Sifton)
Chicken La Tulipe
Jonathan Reynolds brought this recipe to The Times in 2000, from the New York restaurant La Tulipe. He thought it a perfect dish for a man to cook for a woman. (Whether that is also true for men cooking for men and women cooking for women, he said he didn’t know, so we tested it out: It does.) The morels and Cognac are wildly sophisticated additions to what otherwise might be a plain roasted chicken, making the dish an easy, stylish win for newish cooks interested in making an impression on a sweetheart or someone who might become one. Make the cooking “appear effortless,” Mr. Reynolds wrote. “Pour things from a great height. Think Fred Astaire, not one of those grunting tennis players.”
Choucroute Loaf
This recipe for choucroute loaf, vaguely Alsatian in its addition of smoked ham, apples, mustard and caraway to the usual mixture of ground chuck, veal and pork, makes astonishing meatloaf and terrific Sunday lunch sandwiches afterward. Paired with sauerkraut, the dish winks at real choucroute and in some ways is even more delicious. For finicky kids, provide a side dish of mashed potatoes.
Crepes
These delicate pliable crepes can be simply served warm, dusted with confectioners' sugar, or given a little flair by dousing with a buttery orange syrup to make the French dessert, Crêpes Suzette. You can make the crepes in advance; pile them between torn-off sheets of baking parchment then wrap well and store in the refrigerator for a good three days.
Chicken Marengo
In the middle of June 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte's troops were engaged in battle with Austrian forces near the small village of Marengo in northern Italy. The battle was fierce, or so the legend has it, and Napoleon, of course, emerged victorious. And hungry. He asked his chef to prepare a meal quickly and the cook scoured the countryside looking for foods to prepare. He scurried around and discovered a chicken, olive oil, tomatoes, herbs, eggs and crawfish. Within minutes, a fire was started and the chef prepared a quick sauté of the chicken with tomatoes, oil and herbs. It is said that he garnished the dish before serving it with a fried egg and crawfish. In my version, the chicken, cut into serving pieces, is simply browned in a little olive oil (I add a touch of butter to give it flavor) on both sides. I then prefer to add sliced mushrooms (there are those who declare that truffles were among the original ingredients), seasonings, wine, tomatoes and parsley and cook covered until done, about 10 minutes longer.
Rib Steak With Marrow and Red-Wine Sauce
Sauteed Potatoes With Garlic
Ladyfingers
Unmeasured Crepes
Disorienting as this may seem, there is no unit of measurement for the recipe below. If I added “teacup,” I worry that it would prevent you from using an au lait bowl, a Champagne coupe or a coffee urn, when in fact they will all serve very well. (Figure that a pint glass will feed four.)
Roast Oysters and Tomato Butter
These oysters are a good way to start a festive meal. One reason is that oysters seem to have built-in festivity — even when they were abundant to the point of local glut, they were eaten happily in bars that served only them, festively. The part of this recipe that requires any skill or focus is the shucking. This is a good skill to have anyway, and can't be gotten other than by practicing, meaning an hors d'oeuvre that is both nice for your guests and an exercise in self-edification. Once they’ve been opened, the oysters need little other attention.
Boeuf à la Mode
At the apogee of cooking in vino is this dish, which involves a whole beef roast. As befits a thing that humans have been eating since before computers, before cars, before guns — perhaps before science itself — boeuf à la mode tastes less invented than it does discovered. The best strategy is to cook it a day before you plan to serve it; it tastes better reheated than immediately, and the seasoning is most even and best distributed when it has time to spend in its rich broth.
Coq au Vin With Prunes
The standard coq au vin, even when it is made with shortcuts, is a hearty dish, what with its bacon, garlic, deep red wine and enrichment of butter. But the one I like best is made with prunes: it's darker, richer, fuller, the kind of recipe one adores and makes repeatedly. The prunes melt into the wine and become barely recognizable, bringing even more depth, not only of color but of flavor. Despite its relative ease of preparation, this becomes a serious dish, the kind that demands plenty of bread so that you can linger over the juices. Feel free to play with variations here: sauté some sliced button mushrooms, a dozen or more peeled pearl onions or whole cloves of garlic (but don't omit the chopped onions) in the skillet after you've cooked the bacon.
Blueberry-Ginger Clafoutis
One of the most wonderful ways to celebrate fresh (and, in this case, even frozen) fruit, clafoutis originated in the Limousin region of France. Here, a small part of the batter is baked in the baking dish, then the berries, ginger and the rest of the batter is layered on top to prevent the blueberries from sinking and burning. For maximum lemon flavor, zest the lemon over the batter in Step 3. You can substitute any type of fresh fruit — berries, grapes, or cherries; just remember to adjust the amount of sugar you add accordingly.
Veal Glaze
Walnut Tart
If you seek inspiration for a better pie, you need look no further than a traditional French walnut tart. It is only marginally different, but vive that difference. The reason is butter: butter in the crust and butter in the filling. Oh, and cream in the filling, too. If they had pecans in France I’m sure they would use them, as you could in this recipe.
Julienne Carrot Salad
Sometimes a classic, masterfully executed salad is just what you want, and the easier the better. Enter this simple French salad, also known as called carottes râpées. It is grated carrots dressed with a simple vinaigrette; a lemony one works well. I prefer to cut the carrots into a fine julienne rather than use a box grater, which makes them a bit raggedy. The julienne carrots have a more appealing texture, and they look gorgeous piled on a platter, scattered with chives. It’s not necessary to stay absolutely traditional with this salad. I often veer North African with it, adding pinches of cumin, cinnamon and hot pepper. Nor would it be out of place to introduce Vietnamese seasonings like cilantro, mint, fish sauce and lime.
Croque-Monsieur
While French restaurant and country cooking have been thoroughly examined by American home cooks, somewhere between the two styles lies a branch of cuisine that has been almost entirely missed: France's bar and cafe food. This is the realm of snacks like tartines and rillettes, salads and savory tarts, and one of most delicious of all: the croque-monsieur (literally translated as "crunch sir.") Good croque-monsieurs have a few things in common: a single layer of French ham and Gruyere pressed between two thin slices of bread. Some, like this one, are filled and topped with béchamel, which makes the whole thing creamier and better. The bread is brushed with butter, and the sandwich is cooked on a griddle or toasted under a broiler so that the cheese almost liquefies and the bits of ham and cheese hanging out the side fall limp and caramelize. It should be rich, substantial and salty, so you will reach for a glass of wine or beer between bites.
Mushroom Mille-Feuille With Tomato Coulis
Rich Torrisi developed this intense and terrific recipe for the menu at Dirty French, one of a number of chic restaurants in downtown Manhattan that he runs with Mario Carbone. It is on one hand a simple dish: thin-sliced mushrooms layered with butter and salt, then pressed and chilled until they resemble the French dessert known as mille-feuille, or "thousand leaves." Sautéing a slice of the resulting loaf in a hot pan, and then pairing it with a lovely coulis of fresh tomatoes and herbs? That elevates it to the divine.
Kir Royales
Mini Apple Tartes Tatin
The pastry chef Claudia Fleming is known for her work with fruit desserts, and this recipe, adapted from her cult-classic cookbook, “The Last Course,” is an easy version of the classic caramelized apple tart. If you have large apples (or like large desserts), make this in a jumbo muffin tin; you’ll need more puff pastry, but everything else remains the same.
Clementine Clafoutis
Clafoutis is a classic French dessert most often made with cherries. But since clafoutis is little more than a rich, sweet pancake batter poured over fruit and baked, substitutions are easy. If you're using tiny North African clementines for this version, you'll need a dozen or so for this recipe; if they're the large ones from California, five or six will probably do. In any case, it's worth spending a little time removing any thick white strands from the sections, and any of the fine webbing that comes off easily.