French Recipes
1126 recipes found
Béchamel Sauce
One of the five mother sauces of classic French cuisine, béchamel is a versatile, creamy white sauce that serves as the foundation for countless dishes. Commonly used in lasagna and mac and cheese, it’s a thickened mixture that involves first cooking flour in butter to create a roux, then whisking in milk to form a silky sauce. Traditionally the milk is heated first before it’s whisked into the roux, but in the interest of saving time (and minimizing cleanup!), this method adds cold milk in small increments while whisking to prevent clumping. Béchamel can also jump-start many other sauces: Add grated Parmesan or Cheddar for an all-purpose cheese sauce, or mix in cooked ground sausage to make a rich breakfast gravy.
Clarified Butter
Clarified butter can withstand heat without burning for a longer period and at a higher temperature than whole, nonclarified butter, making it ideal for pan-frying. Clarifying is a relatively simple process that takes just a few extra minutes. Essentially, you’re removing the water content and white milk solids from the butter. Expect to end up with about 25 percent less butter than you started with. Clarified butter keeps up to 1 month in the fridge. This recipe is part of The New Essentials of French Cooking, a guide to definitive dishes every modern cook should master.
Provençal Tomato and Basil Soup
I learned to make this soup years ago when I lived in France. If there are no fresh tomatoes at hand, use canned. The soup is delicious and silky if you thicken it with tapioca.
Celeriac, Celery and Carrot Remoulade
When I lived in France I discovered céleri rémoulade, the creamy grated salad made with celery root, mayonnaise or crème fraîche, or both, and mustard. It was a dish I always ordered when I saw it on café menus, and brought home from French delis on a regular basis. This is inspired by the French salad, but it is not quite as creamy (or gloppy). However you can make it more so if you wish just by adding more crème fraîche, yogurt (healthier), or mayonnaise.
Endive Salad With Blue Cheese Dressing
I modeled this salad after one of my own great secret weaknesses: iceberg lettuce with blue cheese dressing. The big difference here, of course, is that endive has much more flavor than iceberg, which has more texture than flavor. The bitter edge of the endive is soothed by the sharp blue cheese dressing, and the combination is set off by the small apple dice that garnishes the wedges.
Roasted Red Pepper Filled With Tuna
This recipe is an adaptation of a classic Provençal dish. A roasted red pepper filled with a flavorful combination of canned tuna, capers, anchovy and lemon juice makes a satisfying and healthy meal for one.
Aioli (Garlic Mayonnaise)
The renowned chef Alice Waters makes her aioli in the most inefficient and old-fashioned way possible: using a mortar and pestle to mash the garlic, a fork to whip up the emulsion and no lemon juice, vinegar or any other acid at all. It was the best mayonnaise I've ever tasted, but then again, she did use a wonderfully perfumed olive oil. For this recipe, you should do the same.
Bouillabaisse With Orange Zest, Fennel and Saffron
This Mediterranean fish stew is more difficult to spell than to prepare, and it is traditionally neither an idée fixe nor the centerpiece of a grande bouffe, but a spur-of-the-moment combination of the day's catch. Trying to duplicate the real bouillabaisse is an exercise in frustration, as the traditional combination of fish is not found in American waters. But creating an admirable local version is no more difficult than making clam chowder. Though some will argue that bouillabaisse must contain fish stock, any time you add a few pounds of fish to a simmering stew there is enough fish essence to make stock superfluous. If additional liquid is needed, water will do just fine.
Chopped Salad With Apples, Walnuts and Bitter Lettuces
The best place for a salad on the Thanksgiving menu is at the beginning of the meal, before everybody fills up. We often pass around plates of this vegetarian chopped salad (no bacon) to accompany the drinks before we sit down at the table. The salad is a great mix of bitter and sweet flavors, juicy and crunchy, and comforting, too. Sweet/tart, crisp juicy apples like Braeburns, Jonagolds, Honey Crisp and Granny Smith work well here.
Spinach Bouillabaisse
The license to call this nourishing one-dish meal a bouillabaisse comes with the generous pinch of saffron that is added to the broth. It is one of many humble, filling and comforting vegetable soups from Provence that are given that lofty title.
Potatoes au Gratin
The humble potato gets the red carpet treatment in this easy yet luxurious recipe for potatoes au gratin. Sliced Yukon Gold or russet potatoes (you can use either, but don't use a combination as they cook at different rates) are layered with half-and-half or heavy cream, topped with butter and grated cheese, then baked until golden and bubbly. Feel free to play around: Add leeks, onions, garlic or more cheese between the layers. Experiment with fresh or dried herbs. It's incredibly adaptable and practically foolproof. Just don't forget to season with salt and pepper as you go. Like all potato dishes, it needs plenty of seasoning.
Classic Bacon and Egg Quiche
This is a classic bacon and egg quiche in the Alsatian manner (cheese or stewed onions are sometimes added, though not traditional). It is baked in a nine-and-a-half-inch fluted French tart pan, the sort with the removable bottom. The resulting quiche, as opposed to those baked in a deeper pie pan, stands only one inch high, and their relatively short baking time ensures a creamy, unctuous texture.
Plum Almond Tart
This beautiful plum tart, adapted from the pastry chef Alex Levin of Osteria Morini in Washington, brings together a sablé butter crust flavored with vanilla bean; colorful, juicy plum slices; and an almond cream filling with a lovely flavor that complements the fruit. Using confectioners' sugar in the crust gives you a texture that is finer and smoother than if you use granulated sugar. And the sugar in the crust and filling removes the need to sweeten the plums (which in turn means the fruit juices won't leach into the dough) — though you'll want to sprinkle a little turbinado sugar over the top for added crunch.
Antoni Porowski’s French Omelet With Cheese and Chives
There’s nothing quite like a classic omelet. On Netflix’s “Queer Eye,” Antoni Porowski, the food-focused member of the Fab 5, teaches the people he helps make over how to nourish themselves in an accessible way. This simple but sophisticated recipe, adapted from his cookbook, “Antoni in the Kitchen,” follows in that vein. It requires few ingredients and a dextrous hand: You’ll want to consider your ingredients carefully, and take care to not overmix the eggs. Keep it simple, or add mix-ins. Serve it alone, or pair it, as he suggests, with a favorite salad.
French Toast With Cinnamon Plums
These plums can also be made in advance (though remember to reheat gently so the fruit doesn't fall apart) and their berried cinnamon-scented syrup drenches the sweet French toast gloriously. If you wish, you can remove the cooked plums and let the syrup reduce for a more intense, stickier sauce.
Kenmare’s Asparagus Gratin
Poilâne’s Corn Sablés
In her book, “Poilâne, The Secrets of the World-Famous Bread Bakery,” Apollonia Poilâne, who heads the legendary Parisian boulangerie, describes the sweets in her shop as pâtisseries boulangères, bread-bakers’ pastries, which are typically less sweet, less fussy and less fussed over. These corn shortbread-style cookies, known as sablés in French, fit into that category perfectly. They’re made with all-purpose flour and corn flour – corn ground so fine that you can barely feel a bit of grit when you rub a little between your fingers. (Do not use cornmeal or cornstarch.) Baked, the cookies have the characteristic sandiness of sablés and the beautiful golden color of corn. To get the best texture, make sure your butter is soft and creamy. The dough is a pleasure to work with and, because it holds its shape when baked, a good choice for fanciful cutouts. At Poilâne, the cookies are always cut into simple rounds, so that, as Apollonia says, “they look like minisuns.”
Bittersweet Chocolate Soufflé
Dark and intense in flavor, yet with a light and custardy texture, a chocolate soufflé is an eternal showstopper of a dessert. To get that intense chocolate flavor, this version uses a base of melted butter and chocolate without any starch. Be sure to use excellent bittersweet chocolate, but if you prefer a slightly sweeter soufflé, feel free to substitute milk chocolate for all or part of the bittersweet. Or to move the soufflé in the other direction, substitute a chocolate with a higher cocoa solids ratio, 70 to 75 percent, which will decrease the overall sugar. For maximum "wow" factor, always serve a soufflé straight from the oven. Crème anglaise or chocolate sauce would be fine accompaniments, as would scoops of your favorite ice cream. This recipe is part of The New Essentials of French Cooking, a guide to definitive dishes every modern cook should master.
Cinnamon Basil Chocolate Mousse
Chocolate-Cardamom Pots de Crème
Rich and creamy with a hit of floral cardamom, these puddings are a perfect make-ahead dessert. For the most flavor, make sure to break open the cardamom pods and crush the seeds using a mortar or pestle or the handle of a wooden spoon. Semisweet chocolate is recommended, as bittersweet will mask the cardamom, but they are interchangeable if you prefer chocolate with a higher cacao percentage. (Accordingly, you may want to use the higher amount of cardamom if cooking with bittersweet chocolate, but do go easy: A little cardamom goes a long way.) You’ll need to use chopped chocolate bars or chocolate fèves for these pots de crème. Chocolate chips are made with stabilizers that inhibit melting, so would result in a pudding that is less smooth and spoonable.
Garlic Souffle
This gentle, earthy soufflé first appeared on the menu of Chez Panisse, Alice Waters’s groundbreaking restaurant in Berkeley, Calif., and was brought to The Times by Craig Claiborne and Pierre Franey, who called it “splendid.” That it is. (The New York Times)
Salty, Spicy Vegetable Soufflé
Overseasoned or overcooked vegetables gain new life from being folded into unseasoned eggs to make a frittata, quiche filling or soufflé.
Baked Camembert Salad
Cheese encased in pastry and baked until brown might seem like an old-fashioned dish, but it’s one of the most reliable ways to please a small group of omnivorous people. Flaky pastry, warm, runny cheese, what’s not to like? Baking is also a great way to turn a mediocre wheel of cheese into something great. Cut the wheel in half, sandwich it with something savory and something sweet and wrap it up tightly with pastry. If you want to replace it with Brie, or another soft cheese with an edible rind, feel free — just make sure there aren’t gaps in the sides of the pastry, or the cheese will leak out in the oven.
