Bouquet garni

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Used very frequently in French cuisine, a secret of French chefs, it adds flavour to a lot of recipes, and it's easy to prepare. The basic principle is to make a small bundle of herbs, bind them in green leek leaves and to tie it up, so that the whole thing can be removed and discarded easily after cooking.

Pilau rice

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Pilau rice (also called "restaurant rice" in France) is a way of cooking rice that's very different from using a rice-cooker. In this recipe, the rice is first "pearled" with onion in olive oil, then chicken stock is added, and the whole lot is put in the oven. This produces a very tasty moist rice, which can easily be kept waiting without drying out.

Eggs meurette

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Eggs meurette or "œufs à la bourguignonne" is a great classic of French cooking, and of Burgundy in particular. It consists of poached eggs on a bed of fondue onions and bacon, served on a slice of fried bread. This is topped with a tasty reduced red wine sauce.

Bourguignon potatoes

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Potatoes cooked "bourguignon" (or Burgundy) style is a delicious twist on a classic potato gratin. The potatoes are cooked in milk, with added flavour from lardons and fried onions. A tasty topping of cream with Époisses cheese is poured over just before the dish goes in the oven.

White bean gratin "à l'italienne"

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White haricot beans enriched with the Mediterranean flavours of tomatoes and herbs. The beans are boiled first then mixed with chopped tomatoes and finished gratin-style in the oven.

Hearty potato and ham gratin

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A potato gratin with an original twist: fried diced ham with mustard.

Artichoke Soup

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For this recipe, we will first steam the artichokes, recover all the flesh, and prepare with shallot and milk a delicious soup.

Chicken "cantina"

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Chicken cantina is a simple recipe for spicy chicken with onions and tomatoes, served with rice, red beans or both.

Roast in the bag pork with fondant vegetables.

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Roasting "in the bag" is a simple but long method. The meat is sealed in a bag and cooked slowly at moderate temperature, keeping it very tender and with an amazing flavour. Meat cooked like this produces delicious juicies without adding anything else. These can be used to cook vegetables to a melting texture as a perfect accompaniment for the meat. This recipe might look complicated, but it is really very simple, just a bit long, and the flavour and texture are out of this world.

Hotpot my grandmother's way

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If you like slow-cooked dishes prepared with loving care (mitonné), you will certainly love this hotpot recipe, with the taste of Franche-Comté, inspired by my grandmother. It's an old-fashioned dish full of flavours and aromas, cooked vegetables, stock, smoked sausages, all cooked long and slow.

Cream of cauliflower soup with smoked haddock

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This soup with a difference plays up an amazing flavour combination: creamy cauliflower with morsels of smoked haddock.

Soup Cornouaillaise

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This rustic soup comes from Cornouailles in Brittany – France's very own Cornwall. It is made with fried bacon and onions, and thickened with a little buckwheat flour, typical of the region.

Cassoulet

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Cassoulet is typical, even emblematic, of southern French cuisine. It is a "slow food" casserole in which meat and vegetables, particualrly dried beans, are cooked together for a long time. Here is a simplified version of this famous dish.

Langoustine gratin

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This elegant gratin has a layer of brunoise vegetables in the bottom, with langoustine tails (scampi) cooked in two stages on top, finished with a thick creamy sauce, made with the "fumet" from the langoustines. This recipe is quite long to make, but can be prepared in stages over a number of days. The end result is well worth all the effort.

Cured Pork Belly With Lentils

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Pork belly with lentils is a typical French bistro dish. In principal, it is a mixture of different cuts of pork, usually salt-cured, cooked slowly until "confit" and meltingly tender, served with lentils cooked in stock. This dish takes a good while to prepare, but it's a real treat! It reheats very well, tasting better each time, so do make plenty in one go.

Tomato sauce (for pizzas)

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This is the sauce to put on pizza bases before the toppings.

Coq au vin

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Coq au vin is one of those iconic classics of French cuisine, though these days it is more likely to be made with chicken. The poultry is marinated in red wine, fried, then flambéed in cognac before being simmered slowly in the wine marinade. It has much in common with that other classic, boeuf (beef) bourguignon: delicous tender meat cooked slowly in red wine for several hours. To simplify the recipe (the site is called cooking-ez, after all), I have used chicken breasts instead of a whole...

Five hours poultry

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Perhaps simplest recipe on this site, but what a result! The idea is to cook the bird, without fat, at low temperature, covered, and for a long time. In this way, the poultry cooks so as to be almost like a "confit": soft and very tasty. The effect is more spectacular with duck because it is a rather firm meat, tough even, but with this method it can be cut with a fork like a confit. This recipe is applicable to big poultry too, it's also a response to questions like "How to cook a turkey?" or...

Boeuf (beef) bourguignon

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Bœuf bourguignon is a traditional recipe of French cuisine (bourguignon means from Burgundy). It's chunks of meat cooked slowly with bacon, onions, carrots and mushrooms in red wine.

Blanquette of veal

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Blanquette is a classic dish of French family cooking, but can also be found in bistros. Veal is cooked slowly, and the sauce is thickened with a mixture of egg yolks and cream. I have set out a rather special way of making it.

Cooking with herbs

Herbs: there's nothing else so small that can add so much to a recipe. They are not only for garnishing, but are a true part of the dish, sometimes one of the main ingredients. A small example of the "power" of herbs: you make a chopped carrot salad, which is very good with a vinaigrette, but if you...
June 3^rd 2024227 K 13.9

It's something you have probably have done yourself: cooked or pre-cooked vegetables before adding them to a recipe. This is almost always done the same way: peel the chosen vegetables (carrots, for example), cut them up, boil them in salted water (using a tablespoon or so of coarse salt per litre),...
November 22^th 201633 K5

Parsley, whether curly or flat, is a delicious ingredient in many recipes, where it is used both raw and cooked. When used raw, in a salad for example, where it always provides, alone or with other herbs, a remarkable freshness, only the leaves are kept. And when used cooked?
July 28^th 202511 K 13

Olive oil

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Olive oil is a fat obtained by the cold pressing of olives (the fruit of the olive tree). Rather like wine, olive oil comes from a vast array of origins and cultivation methods. In the bottle, this offers many different bouquets, flavours and colours. So there is not just olive oil, but lots of...
23 K3.9