French Recipes
1129 recipes found
Puréed Mushroom Soup
Thick and creamy, with no cream, this tastes so much richer than it is. I use a small amount of milk to thin out the soup, but you can also use stock to thin it, if you don’t want to include any dairy.
Mark Bittman’s Bouillabaisse
You can make any soup with water instead of stock, but the soups that drive you wild usually have a beautiful stock as their base. This is doubly true of bouillabaisse, which should start with a stock so delicious that you can barely imagine improving on it. There are a few ways to do this: Grab fish bones when you see them, and make the stock incrementally. Another is to use shrimp shells. A third is to accumulate lobster bodies, which make fantastic stock. In any case, you combine whatever you have with some aromatics (thyme branches, onion, celery, carrot, garlic, peppercorns) add water and simmer for 15 to 30 minutes. Cool, strain and freeze if you like. When you're ready to make the soup, procure your seafood – pretty much any combination of fish and shellfish will do, but avoid dark-fleshed fish – and go forth. From there, it's no more difficult than making a pot of vegetable soup.
Provençal Fish Stew
This dish turns the proportion of fish to vegetables on its head -- more vegetables, less fish. There's enough shrimp and squid to let you know you're eating a fish stew, but enough chickpeas and spinach to let you know it is something different. A puttanesca-like seasoning of garlic, olives, capers, anchovies and tomato paste flavors the braise.
Cucumber and Dill Salad
Shortcut Choucroute
This pork and vegetable braise requires about 3 hours of time and 5 minutes of work. Spend a few minutes making broad strokes with a sharp knife and layer the ingredients in a deep roasting pan. Then walk away for more than 2 hours. Pass through the kitchen again to uncover the pan and turn the oven up, then go back to your business. You’ve just spent a productive 3 or so hours cooking and doing something else.
Beet and Tomato Salad With Scallions and Dill
A little bistro in Normandy, France, inspired this salad that’s so satisfying in its simplicity. Bright and fresh, the beets and tomatoes are dressed in a tart vinaigrette and served side by side, rather than mixed together. Though the combination may seem unusual, it’s delicious. For the best flavor, choose ripe tomatoes and cook your own beets (don’t be tempted to use the precooked vacuum packed type). Feel free to cook the beets and day or two in advance.
Frisee Aux Lardons
Classic Remoulade Sauce
Soupe aux Truffes V.G.E.
Craig Claiborne brought this recipe to The Times in the summer of 1975, for a short profile of the acclaimed French chef Paul Bocuse. Guests at a lunch in East Hampton, N.Y., ate the soup out of dishes marked "Palais de l'Elysée, 25 Février 1975. soupe aux truffles V.G.E. Paul Bocuse," commemorating Mr. Bocuse's Legion of Honor award by then French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the V.G.E. in question. Mr. Bocuse created the soup for the occasion and soupe aux truffles V.G.E. went on to become one of his most famous dishes.
Roast Fillet of Beef With Wild Mushroom Sauce
Baba au Rhum
A classic French dessert, baba au rhum is a syrup-soaked, soggy, boozy delight. The dough here is intentionally soft and sticky, for a light, tender result. Be sparing in adding flour, incorporating just enough to make it manageable, or refrigerate the dough, then work with it. (Chilled dough is easier to handle.) This recipe yields a dozen babas, but you can bake them all and soak only as many as you intend to serve. You can freeze any baked, unsoaked babas for up to 2 months, then prepare them a day in advance and keep them in an airtight container at room temperature. Any leftover syrup keeps indefinitely in the fridge.
Onion Quiche
Tender, sweet bits of onion suffuse this classic, savory tart, which gets its brawny, salty tang from browned chunks of cured pork (lardons, pancetta or bacon), all bound with a nutmeg-flecked custard. It’s a dish that feels both delicate and rich, and makes a lovely lunch or brunch dish. You can make the dough up to 3 days ahead, and prebake the crust a day ahead. But the quiche is best served warm or at room temperature on the day you assembled and baked it. This recipe is part of The New Essentials of French Cooking, a guide to definitive dishes every modern cook should master.
Roasted Squash With Cheese Fondue
This autumnal dish turns a classic cheese fondue into a sauce for whole roasted squash. The lightly caramelized squash are filled with the gooey fondue mixture and topped with crunchy, garlicky bread crumbs. When the squash are cut, the cheese sauce runs onto the serving plate, to be spooned back over the soft, amber slices. Serve this as a side dish to roasted meats or fish, or as a rich appetizer on its own. For the best presentation, choose squash that are about the same shape and size.
Fresh Peas a la Francaise
Beurre Nantais (Herb butter sauce)
Fines Herbes Omelet
A proper French omelet is all about (you guessed it) technique. Luckily, Jacques Pépin is the master. Note that Mr. Pépin cracks eggs on his cutting board, not against the rim of the mixing bowl. (This prevents any bacteria on the surface of the shells from getting into the bowl.) In the pan, Mr. Pépin maintains a kind of Tilt-a-Whirl shaking and spinning and scraping of the pan, keeping the eggs constantly in motion.
Button Mushrooms à la Crème
I enjoy wild mushrooms, but I happen to like ordinary white button mushrooms, too; the cultivated kind, the ones that are also called champignons de Paris (especially by the French). I suppose they are considered pedestrian in foodie circles, and that’s a pity. This recipe makes great use of them. It’s a simple one, with only a few ingredients: a bit of butter, a handful of sweet herbs and some tangy crème fraîche. Try it as an easy side dish or over noodles.
Ratatouille Pie
In this buttery, rustic pie, chunks of eggplant, zucchini and tomato are roasted with olive oil until velvety soft, then covered in a cheesy, mayonnaise-spiked custard. Chopped olives scattered on top cut through the richness and give the whole thing a salty tang. It's the perfect next-day use for ratatouille, should you have some. Use it here instead of roasting the vegetables. You’ll need about 3 to 4 cups (enough to fill the pie crust two-thirds of the way up). You can parbake the crust, roast the vegetables and make the custard the day before, but don’t bake everything together until the day of serving.
Roasted White Fish With Lemony Almondine
Fish almondine, a variation on a classic meunière, combines toasted sliced almonds, brown butter and lemon juice as a sauce for sautéed, flour-dusted fillets. In this easy, weeknight-appropriate version, the fish is roasted, skipping the flour, for a more delicate result. Then, the sauce gets extra citrus intensity from a bit of grated lemon zest. Flaky white fish, or trout, is most traditional here. But the winning mix of brown butter, lemon and almonds is equally good on any kind of salmon, shrimp, green beans, asparagus – even roast chicken. And it comes together in a flash.
Farci du Grand Bornand
White Wine-Braised Rabbit With Mustard
This is a version of lapin à la moutarde, a homey, traditional French dish still popular in old-fashioned Parisian bistros at lunchtime. Yes, there are quite a few steps required to put this dish on the table, but probably no more than 30 minutes of active work. It is essentially a one-pot meal, with a little fiddling. The pleasingly sharp, succulent, saucy result is worth the extra effort. Get your rabbit in a butcher shop if possible, and ask to have it cut up; if your only option is a whole rabbit, it’s not much more difficult than cutting up a chicken. Serve with noodles if you'd like, or rice, mashed potatoes or steamed new potatoes.
Cafe Brulot
Pork Tenderloin With Orange
Roasted Pepper Tartine
The hot, open-face tartine is a lunchtime staple in Paris’s small neighborhood cafés and bistros. Like a piece of pizza, a tartine is constructed from a thick slice of rustic bread, lightly toasted. A savory topping and some good French cheese precede a few minutes of browning under the broiler. This tartine features garlicky roasted pepper strips (fresh or from a jar), a dab of sundried tomato purée (sliced fresh tomatoes in summer) and black olives. A thick slice of goat cheese makes a perfect pairing, or use Camembert if you prefer. Make a green salad to serve alongside for a quick light meal, or you may cut the tartine into small wedges to serve with drinks.