French Recipes
1126 recipes found

Gratin Of Flageolet Beans

Taillevent's Cream of Watercress Soup With Caviar

Roasted Carrot, Parsnip and Potato Soup
This is a creamy, comforting winter soup that is incredibly simple to make. All you need to do is blend together broth and roasted vegetables and heat through. You can make the soup with other roasted vegetables as well, but I love the sweet combination of the carrots and parsnips. If you’ve got roasted vegetables on hand, you’ll need about 4 cups.

Soupe au Pistou
Perhaps Provence’s answer to minestrone, this seasonal vegetable soup — enriched with a simplified basil pesto (no pine nuts) — was inspired by the white beans, canned tomatoes and soup pasta languishing in my pantry, as well as the basil in my garden and the early summer vegetables at the local farmers’ market. The ingredient list is long, but the labor involved in making this soup is minimal. It tastes best if you make it through step 2 a day ahead.

Green Garlic, Potato and Leek Soup
A very pale green springtime cousin of vichyssoise, this purée is comforting when served hot, refreshing when cold.

Buttered Corn Soup Amuse-Bouche

Turnip, Leek and Potato Soup
A simple French soup that works well regardless of which vegetable gets the emphasis. This is a simple French soup. If you want to vary the proportions of vegetables you can; it works well whether you emphasize the turnips, as I do here, the leeks or the potatoes. Turnips have a slightly bitter edge, and tarragon makes a lovely sweet garnish. Chives would also work.

Celeriac, Potato, Leek and Apple Soup
A sweet and savory mixture that works well as a soup. I’ve always loved the combination of celeriac, potatoes and apples, which I first tasted in France as a celeriac, potato and apple purée. The sweet and savory mixture works very nicely as a soup. I like to strain this soup after I purée it to get a velvety texture.

One-Pot French Onion Soup With Garlic-Gruyère Croutons
I don’t make onion soup at home partly because I lack the flameproof bowls that chefs run under the broiler to melt the cheese. And what’s the point of making onion soup without the elastic cap of gooey Gruyère? The more I pondered this, the more I wondered if I could skip those individual bowls, layer the croutons and cheese directly into the soup pot, and just broil the whole thing.

Rustic Cabbage, Beef and Buckwheat Soup
A few of the Côtes du Rhône in the recent tasting exhibited some elegance, but most wore more heavy flannel than silk, making them satisfying to sip on a raw day with a hearty plate of grub. In Provence you might dig into a beef daube. But since the distinctive accent of Provençal terroir was not so evident in the glass, I went elsewhere.This thick, rustic beef soup relies on a winter larder: cabbage, celery, turnips and even buckwheat groats. Some smoke from bacon and paprika echoes the wines. And a whiff of orange zest sends a postcard from Provence.

Lamb Ragout With Spring Vegetables
To celebrate the end of winter, French cooks make navarin printanier, a lamb stew. Instead of serving it with potatoes, parsnips or other winter root vegetables, this colorful stew is brimming with fresh spring produce, a mixture of small vegetables like baby turnips, fava beans and scallions. To keep it on the lighter side, use a splash of white wine instead of red. Finish with peas or asparagus tips, cooked briefly, if they are available. The stew can be made a day ahead, but the vegetables should be freshly cooked before serving.

Tournedos Rossini
If you want a phrase that summons all the voluptuous pleasure of haute cuisine in its heyday, “tournedos Rossini” does the trick. As a culinary undertaking, they are simultaneously simple and sybaritic. Toast two buttered spheres of bread. Top them with warm-from-the-pan filets mignons. Crown them with a slice of hot foie gras. Then anoint these little monuments of luxury with a sliced truffle or two and a small waterfall of sauce.

Coffee-Roasted Fillet of Beef
Just when I think all my recipe snipping and gluing and saving has been for naught, something turns me around. Take this coffee-roasted beef with mushrooms and pasilla chili broth. I couldn’t imagine why I had ever cut it out — so busy, so restauranty. But I tried it, soaking chilies in one corner, shiitakes in another, coating the beef with ground coffee and roasting it. Stacking was involved in the plating. I brought the admittedly gorgeous dishes to the table with a cynically arched brow. It was heavenly. And my faith was restored.

Lora Brody's bete noire (A special chocolate cake)

Melon Sorbet
I’ve learned a lot about making sorbets from Jacquy Pfeiffer, the founder and dean of student affairs at the French Pastry School in Chicago. He taught me to use a small amount of corn syrup – about 5 percent of the weight of the fruit – to prevent the sorbet from developing ice crystals. A very small amount of honey will also work. I asked him what the least sugar I could get away with is, and he said it depends on the fruit, but as a general rule he uses 15 to 20 percent sugar. I decided to factor the corn syrup and honey into that weight, and my sorbets were beautiful, with great texture. You can use yellow or green melon for this as long as it’s really ripe and sweet.

Oyster Velouté with Black Caviar

Shortbread Cookies with Warm Apples and Jam
WHILE chocolate desserts, fresh fruit sorbets and fruit tarts re main the classic, ever-popular French desserts, lighter, cookie- based desserts are appearing more frequently. Several Paris restaurants have recently offered sable, or shortbread cookie, desserts. This recipe comes from Jacqueline Fenix, a fine restaurant in Neuilly, a Paris suburb, where the chef, Michel Rubod, offers warm shortbread with sauteed apples and homemade apricot jam. At Tour d'Argent the menu recently featured a dessert made of three layers of sables interlaced with fresh raspberries, all set in a pool of fresh raspberry sauce, while at Jacques Cagna sables came warm from the oven, accompanied by sauteed apples and cinnamon ice cream.

Hot Chocolate Souffle

Crisp Potato Cake (Galette de Pomme de Terre)
A well-seasoned cast-iron pan is ideal for making this easy, comforting side dish. Make sure the potatoes are sliced thin, and dry them well before assembling the dish. This will ensure full crispiness.

Crown Roast of Lamb
The crown rib roast is one of the most festive and serviceable cuts of meat, beautifully proportioned and wieldy, with luscious, lean red meat at the chop end tapering off into rustic, fatty and crispy rib bits at the bone end, with a built-in handle to facilitate gnawing. Domestic lamb is more than suitable for crown roast and with its slightly firmer texture seems to stand up better on the plate than the incredibly supple lamb from Australia and New Zealand. The local lamb is also a good deal.

Cherry Clafoutis
This classic French dessert looks fancy, but it is a cinch to make. I use yogurt in my clafoutis, although it isn’t traditional (the French use cream). And I always enjoy leftovers for breakfast.

Julia Child's Berry Clafoutis
This recipe is for a delicately sweet dessert whose elegance should not distract from its ease (it can be made while the rest of dinner is in the oven). Make sure you have fresh berries, and serve the result warm. We call for blueberries or blackberries here, but feel free to try it with whatever seasonal fruit catches your eye.

Le Bernardin's Salmon-Caviar Croque-Monsieur
When the stock market is doing well, people with money to spend go out to spend it — thereby serving as unwitting patrons of the culinary arts. In the late '90s, the chef Eric Ripert said, “Everybody was a bit, I think, crazy and inclined to indulge in excess because of the end of the millennium." His contribution to the madness was this croque-monsieur layered not with ham and béchamel but with something even more indulgent: smoked salmon, Gruyère and caviar on brioche. Make it home, and don't look at the grocery bill. It is in service of luxurious flavor.
