Recipes: 22 results
Lille style chicken
(Found inTexts)Chicken breasts and mushrooms, cooked separately, then mixed with a tasty cream sauce before serving. It's a dish with a "cuisiné" taste, but which unfortunately is becoming increasingly rare in restaurants.
351K3.8 50 min. May 10th 2023
Scrambled eggs (Oeufs brouillés)
(Found inTexts)French-style scrambled eggs are rather special. It's not very difficult, just a bit long because it's cooked slowly in a bain-marie. Eventually you will get a delicious, refined and delicate preparation which can be eaten "as it is" or added to another recipe.
262K5 30 min. February 21th 2011
How to heat plates
(Found inTexts)In restaurants serving "à l'assiette", wich means that your dish is presented already served on a plate, it's very important for the plates to be hot, otherwise dishes arrive cold and it's the customer that (rightly) becomes heated. At home it's worth doing the same thing: you are sure to serve hot...
211K 43.7 22 min. February 21th 2011
Tart Tatin
(Found inTexts)Tart tatin is one of the great classic desserts of French cooking. It's an apple tart cooked upside down. Apples are cooked in sugar until they caramelise. Then a circle of puff pastry is put on top, and the whole tart is baked at 356°F (180°C) for 20 minutes. To serve, the tart is turned over so...
396K 13.8 1 hour 17 min. October 30th 2015
Pilau rice
(Found inTexts)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,...
376K 14.4 33 min. February 21th 2011
Pan-fried potatoes
(Found inTexts)What could be simpler than fried potatoes? No need of a recipe for that! Quite right, but it's also very easy to end up making fried mash instead. Here are the main pitfalls to avoid.
289K4.5 1 hour 37 min. February 3rd 2011
How to cook red meat properly
(Found inTexts)Cooking red meat well is not as simple as it might seem. Even if you start with high quality meat, with poor cooking it can become dry and tough. Here's a way that will guarantee you a perfect result.
463K2.7 1 hour 24 min. October 13th 2010
Potato purée
(Found inTexts)The French have fond childhood memories of this, and while nothing will ever be as good as "Maman" made, here's a fairly straightforward way to make it.
230K5 1 hour 35 min. October 3rd 2010
Real home-made chips*
(Found inTexts)It's not easy to make these - the original "French fries" - well at home, that is, to produce golden and crunchy chips from fresh potatoes. Here is a way of doing it in three cooking stages, which gives very good results: melting in the middle, crunchy on the outside, and a nice golden colour....
424K5 1 hour 47 min. December 30th 2019
Eggs meurette
(Found inTexts)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.
193K 14.1 1 hour 11 min. March 29th 2020
Caramelized brioche with pear and kiwi
(Found inTexts)This "classy restaurant" style dessert consists of a sort of dish made of caramelized brioche filled with a mix of pear compote and kiwi salad with vanilla, served surrounded by real custard (crème anglaise).
95K 15 45 min. April 29th 2012
Crème de foie gras
(Found inTexts)This is a rather tricky recipe in which foie gras is used to make a savoury cream, similar to a crème brulée but - of course - without sugar and without caramelizing the top. Instead, it is topped with an espuma (a light hot foam) of potatoes, garnished with crispy morsels of serrano ham.
137K3.8 1 hour 33 min. December 17th 2023
Hot tomato sauce
(Found inTexts)This is a quick tomato sauce, just the thing for dipping crisps (chips, if you are American), or nachos. It is very similar to the sauce served with aperitif snacks in Tex-Mex restaurants.
112K4.1 42 min. September 20th 2012
Brioche feuilletée (flaky brioche)
(Found inTexts)For brioche feuilletée (or flaky brioche), the brioche dough is treated like puff pastry, with layers of butter incorporated by repeated turning and rolling. Coarse sugar crystals add a sweet crunchiness. Needless to say, this is very rich and quite irresistible.
117K 24.6 3 hours 49 min. November 10th 2013
Sushi
(Found inStages)Sushi is probably the best known element of Japanese cooking outside Japan. For the Japanese it's a culinary art learned over time from masters, but we can make simplified and easier sushi which are still pretty and delicious. The most common types of sushi are nigiri: a little oval-shaped mouthfuls...
326K4.5 1 hour 38 min. October 13th 2010
How to prepare broad beans
(Found inStages)Here's how, from fresh beans in pods, to obtain beans ready to use in a recipe.
1,711 31 min. July 3rd 2024
Mimosa eggs
(Found inComments)Mimosa eggs are hard boiled eggs where the yolks are removed, chopped and mixed with a herb mayonnaise, then this mix is used to refill the whites. It's a classic recipe of traditional French bistro cooking.
285K 25 46 min. February 21th 2011
Crème brulée
(Found inComments)Crème brûlée (burned cream) is quite easy to prepare: it's a simple egg-cream dessert. The only difficulty is in making the delicious crunchy caramel layer on top. The perfect crème brulée (for me) is a cold and soft cream, with on top a nice hot caramel crust. This is a completely new version...
1.6M 74.3 4 hours 38 min. December 31th 2011
How to succeed in making sabayon (syllabub)
(Found inComments)A sabayon is a delicious and delicate preparation based on egg yolks and sugar, with a liquid added (wine, alcohol, fruit juice, etc), which is then whipped in a bain-marie until it is both light and smooth. Usually sabayon is sweet (syllabub), but you can make it savoury, in which case there is...
924K 54 18 min. November 12th 2017
Blog articles: 16 results
The ideal restaurant
Like all passionate cooks (I suppose), from time to time I dream of opening my own restaurant. I imagine loads of things: it will be like this or like that, we'll do this, I'll cook that, the room will have this or that – in short, I dream.12K4.4 October 15th 2012
The painter, the restaurant owners and the opera singer
You might well have noticed that there are recipes involving names that have been so overused (often for any old thing) that they have almost become common nouns.17K4.4 September 25th 2012
Fried potatoes or fried mash?
In cooking there are a lot of dishes that appear to be extremely simple but which can actually prove to be very tricky. Amongst those that I'm aware of having this reputation are omelette and fried potatoes.21K4.5 February 6th 2011
Properly cooked! (the taste)
Going out to a restaurant is getting harder at the moment. In France, at least, you have to try and find one that has agreed to pass on the new lower rate of VAT at anything other than a symbolic level, and there aren't many. And then, most importantly, you have to find a good one: one where you...14K 14.6 February 6th 2011
Well-cooked meat
Have you ever noticed that if you like your meat well done, it invites strange looks? For instance, in a restaurant, when asked “How would you like that cooked?” If you reply, “Well done,” it is almost as if you are swearing….29K 14.4 May 21th 2011
Too much sweet and savoury
There is a food trend which is creeping in everywhere in France right now: mixing sweet with savoury. In some restaurants, it is becoming difficult to order a classic dish, like “roast veal” for instance, without being served fruits in the garnish or honey/conserves/syrup in the sauce or cooked...23K4.5 November 3rd 2011
Choosing a chopping board
It's a no-brainer, surely? If you want a chopping board, just find a piece of wood, and Bob's your uncle! You can happily chop away with a knife and not damage the table or worktop. But in reality, it's a bit more complicated than that. You need to be careful what you are buying, in particular the...46K4.6 May 8th 2012
What is the difference between bakery and patisserie?
This is a question that you may well have asked yourself and which I will attempt to answer. In France the two trades of "boulangerie" (bakery) and "pâtisserie" (patisserie and confectionery) have always been quite distinct, but where exactly do the boundaries lie? .121K 14.1 February 7th 2017
Children and vegetables
This is an attempt to address the question that all parents and grandparents, maybe you included, face so often: how can we get children to like vegetables? And at the same time, we might get away from the familiar, day-in, day-out round of pasta, chips, toast.. Well, I can hear you say, it's...12K5 March 9th 2017
Do you know Yotam Ottolenghi?
Do you know Yotam Ottolenghi? Maybe not, in which case let me tell you a little about him.3,9584.8 December 19th 2020
The perfect boiled egg
Making boiled eggs is always a delight and it pleases the young and old alike. This little transgenerational side puts them on the list of "things to do on Sunday evening when you don't know what to do" in many families (including mine)... That said, it's not that simple, you have to pay...13K4.7 January 30th 2021
Cooking scallops
We are, as I write these lines, in the season of the scallops, if you like that it is necessary to benefit from it as much as possible, although it is alas not cheap. I like scallops a lot, but I have to admit that it has naturally little taste, or, said differently, it takes the taste of what...8,5845 November 23th 2021
The return of the "Norman hole"
You maybe know the "trou normand", this old gastronomic custom typically French which consists in taking a (small) glass of calvados, generally between the last course and the dessert? It's something that seems a bit anachronistic nowadays, having a glass of an alcohol of more than 60° in the...8,5334.8 December 18th 2021
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)...5,169 April 9th 2022
Toss the salad
When you've finished preparing a salad, green or otherwise, it's usually time to add the dressing and toss. It's often said to "toss the salad", which means to season and mix. Is it easy? Not so easy...5,4275 March 8th 2024
Wipe meats and fish before cooking
When you want to cook meat or fish, there's a very simple yet very important step to take before you even start: It's to dry, or wipe, each side of the meat or fish, sometimes called "dabbing" or "sponging". But why? And how? Let me explain.4,4214.5 April 14th 2024