Croque-monsieur

(Found inTexts)
A classic of French "street food" or bistros: a slice of ham between two slices of bread spread with béchamel sauce. The sandwich is then sprinkled with cheese and toasted in the oven.

Corn salad with croutons

(Found inTextsStages)
Corn salad (or lamb's lettuce) leaves mixed with chopped hard-boiled eggs, mushrooms, spring onions, butter-fried croutons, and - of course - a good vinaigrette dressing.

Caesar salad

(Found inTextsStages)
Ceasar salad is a classic of North American cuisine. It consists of lettuce served with croutons and the famous Caesar dressing. Here's my own version.

White asparagus salad

(Found inTextsStages)
This spring salad combines warm white asparagus, hard-boiled eggs and small croutons, dressed with a tasty herb vinaigrette.

French onion soup

(Found inTextsStages)
This warming onion soup is an emblematic French dish, both in bistro cuisine and home cooking. This is a very classic version. The long, slow cooking is the secret to revealing its full flavour.

Warm autumn salad

(Found inTextsStages)
Not quite "surf and turf", but land meets sea in this salad which combines poached fish with cauliflower and buttery fried croutons.

Beetroot salad with cashew nuts

(Found inTexts)
This pink — almost hot pink — salad gets its colour from the raw beetroot, teamed here with toasted cashew nuts and fried croutons.

Warm haricot bean salad

(Found inTextsStages)
Melt-in-the-mouth haricot beans, pan-fried lardons and croutons with chives and a good vinaigrette dressing.

Endive and cheese salad with croutons

(Found inTextsStages)
This starts out as a classic salad of shredded endives, but is pepped up with sliced spring onions, fried croutons and chunks of cheese.

Baby spinach salad

(Found inTextsStages)
It might not be obvious, but spinach can be eaten raw, as in this salad, where the leaves are shredded and mixed with croutons, lardons (bacon bits) and hard-boiled eggs.

Mackerel rillettes

(Found inTexts)
This recipe for mackerel rillettes (or potted mackerel) starts with poaching the fish. The flesh is then taken off the bones and forked into a seasoned mixture of butter, mustard, cream and lemon juice. In France this is traditionally eaten as an aperitif snack, served on small slices of toast.

Bistro-style beetroot salad

(Found inTextsStages)
Beetroot salad is a well-known classic, but have you come across the "bistro" version? The beetroot is still diced, but raw and served with croutons and fried ham in a rémoulade dressing.

Comtoise endive salad

(Found inTextsStages)
An endive salad given a hearty boost with fried croutons, diced Comté cheese and Morteau sausage.

Bistro-style red endive salad

(Found inTextsStages)
Have you tried red Belgian endives? They are similar in size to the more common white sort, just as crunchy, but slightly less bitter. They are the main feature in this salad inspired by French bistro cuisine: combined with chopped hard-boiled eggs, fried ham and croutons, in a rémoulade dressing.

Jerusalem artichoke salad

(Found inTexts)
This very simple salad combines thick slices of tender Jerusalem artichokes with chopped hard-boiled eggs. The salad can be served warm, with the artichokes freshly cooked, or cold later.

Salad paysanne

(Found inTexts)
This rustic traditional dish (literally "peasant salad") combines cold sliced potatoes and green beans (cooked separately) with chopped red onion and fried lardons. The salad is finished with a vinaigrette dressing and parsley, or your choice of herbs.

Nanou's red cabbage salad

(Found inTextsStages)
If you are used to the usual red cabbage salad (just cabbage in a vinaigrette), I hope you will be agreeably surprised with this more sophisticated version using herbs, diced Parmesan and fried croutons.

Julia salad

(Found inTextsStages)
This salad takes its inspiration from the famous Caesar salad, but is simpler. The combination of chicken with croutons is a delicious way to use up leftovers.

Soup Cornouaillaise

(Found inTexts)
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.

Leek and egg frichti

(Found inTextsStages)
A "frichti" is a rough-and-ready dish, born of the French bistro tradition, that you can throw together with what you have to hand. This version mixes leeks with hard-boiled eggs, cream and ham.

Croutons

Do you use croutons, that typically French trick of toasting small pieces of bread on the side to add to a recipe? They're just delicious, but you need to know 2 or 3 things about them. .
December 30^th 202012 K5

The infinite variety of salads

Making a salad for a meal, a few ingredients of your choice and a sauce to bind it all together is still one of the best ways to cook something really good quickly and simply. And since there is often a "fresh" aspect with the vegetables in the ingredients, not only does it taste good, but it's...
March 13^th 202112 K4.6

Soup vs. potage

It's true that we're finally coming out of winter as I write these lines, and that we'll all be making, no doubt, a little less soup and potages, but even if it's out of season, it really is a simple and delicious dish, which is one of the always easy answers to "What's for dinner this (Sunday)...
April 9^th 202214 K

The preservation of bread

Eating fresh bread is always a delight, the crust crumbles deliciously, you take full advantage of the taste of your bread (80% of this taste is in the crust), it is a fleeting moment to enjoy. Who hasn't already eaten the crouton or croutons of his baguette, on the way back from the bakery? ...
June 11^th 202216 K4.7

Parmesan cheese crusts

If you use Parmesan cheese (Parmigiano Reggiano) in your recipes, you may have already noticed: when you grate it, it becomes (very) difficult near the crust, especially if it is a slightly aged parmesan, as the cheese gets harder and harder. So we stop grating, leaving some crust on top, and a...
September 14^th 202219 K4.9

Don't throw away your pizza crusts

You've probably already noticed that at the end of a pizza meal, at least half of the participants have left the crusts in the boxes or on the plates that many don't eat. Naturally, one would tend to put them "to the birds", or worse, to throw them away, and it's a shame because they are in fact...
April 22^th 202311 K4.9

Sauce and salad: When and how to mix them?

When dressing a salad, there's a kind of golden rule: add the dressing very shortly before serving, especially if your salad contains crunchy elements such as croutons or fresh vegetables, which will retain their crunchiness or crispiness. But, as is often the case in the kitchen, there are...
November 29^th 20248,8295