French

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Elegant and easy, scallops grenobloise stars in a dazzling dinner for two

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By Leslie Brenner

They’re plump, gorgeous, oceanic in flavor — and just the thing to wow a dinner partner when staying in sounds more delightful than date-night out. Succulent sea scallops are the perfect centerpiece for a beautiful dinner for two.

Yes, they’re pricy, but it’s pretty easy to make them dazzle. Lately, my favorite way is with a French prep known as à la grenobloise: seared in a hot pan, spooned over with a sauce of browned butter, lemon and capers and finished with parsley. With so few ingredients and very little prep, it’s quick as it sounds, and ideally suited for a special evening. It’s also light, so dinner doesn’t have to end with a groan.

Named for Grenoble, the city known as the unofficial capital of the French Alps, the preparation is better known as a way to sauce skate (raie à la grenobloise), sole or trout. (And yes — it’s also wonderful with those, if they call to you from the fish counter.)

The trickiest part of the grenobloise is cutting a lemon into suprêmes — segments freed from the citrus’ membranes. But even that is easy once you have the hang of it. (Watch the video of Lefebvre making the dish to see how.) But suprêmes aren’t strictly necessary; you can just as well cut the lemon into very thin slices and cut those slices into pieces; no one will be the wiser. Other than that, the only advance prep is chopping a little parsley, measuring out and draining some capers and squeezing a lemon.

I must admit, I’m a bit perplexed that seafood à la grenobloise isn’t better known. Jacques Pépin also makes them in a video (he adds mushrooms), but I can’t find it in any of the Anglophone French cookbooks on my shelves — including Julia Child’s Mastering the Art, Ann Willan’s Country Cooking of France, Dorie Greenspan’s Around My French Table or Patricia Wells’ My Master Recipes. Nor is it in the 1,086-page French-language Le Grand Livre de la Cuisine Française, nor Hubert Delorme and Vincent Boué’s The Complete Book of French Cooking, recently published in English translation from the French. And no, not a single mention of à la grenobloise — or sole, skate or scallops prepared that way — in Escoffier (at least that I could find).

It is, however, all over the French internet. (Spoiler alert: Many of the recipes also include croutons toasted in butter.)

You might be curious about how sauce grenobloise got its name. After all, Grenoble is landlocked. The French Wikipedia listing for “la sauce grenobloise” cites one Claude Muller, author of Cuisine traditionelle des Alpes, as explaining that fish arrived in Grenoble a bit worse for wear after being transported, and the custom developed of hiding the off-taste with capers. (Oh, sure — the famous old caper trick!)

Celery, Endive and Crab Salad

So, what to have avec?

Precede the scallops with a celery, endive and crab salad, or — if you want something warm, an easy minted pea soup (it’s made from frozen peas, but the flavor is amazing). Either can be made almost entirely in advance, leaving you free to enjoy your evening.

With the scallops themselves, you could serve rice or potatoes of some kind, or keep it light and let them stand on their own. Ludo Lefebvre, chef-owner of Petit Trois in Los Angeles and Chez Maggy in Denver, includes blanched cauliflower florets in his, which is also a lovely idea.

And for dessert: Tangerine sorbet!

Tangerines (aka mandarins) are so fabulous this time of year. One of my favorite recipes from David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop captures and intensifies their brilliant flavor in a sorbet. Make it the day before, and all you’ll need to do is scoop. Serve it alone, or with some simple almond cookies or tuiles, homemade or store-bought.

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A perfect French winter salad that marries frisée, lardons and Roquefort

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Leslie Brenner

You know that classic French bistro salad of frisée, lardons and a poached egg? Known in France as salade lyonnaise, it’s wonderful. But I’m not always in the mood for a runny egg to start off dinner.

I definitely don’t often feel like carefully poaching four eggs to top salads when I’m cooking for friends or family. Too stressful!)

For those times when that salad is the right vibe but you’re not up for a poached egg situation, this salad sings. Bits of Roquefort stand in for the egg, adding rich umami. You get bites of the fluffy frisée tangled with a little of that cheese and a bacon lardon — set off by a lightly zingy sherry-shallot vinaigrette. It’s kind of perfect, and you’re not stressed.

Would you find this salad in France? Probably; it has such a bistro feel. But it’s really a cross between that salad lyonnaise and another classic, endives with Roquefort, walnuts and apple.

In any case, it’s pretty easy and very adaptable. You can swap endive or escarole for the frisée, which isn’t always easy to find. And just about any kind of blue cheese will do, as long as it’s not too creamy (you want it to crumble a bit). Bleu d’Auvergne or Fourme d’Ambert are good candidates; or use an American blue, such as Maytag.

Depending on where you live, slab bacon might not be easy to find, either (in recent years, I’m seeing it much less in my neck of the woods). If you can’t get it, you can use pancetta, or even sliced bacon.

However you spin the thing, it’s way better than the sum of its parts — a dream of a winter salad.

If you like this, we think you’ll enjoy:

RECIPE: Escarole Salad with Egg and Crispy Prosciutto

RECIPE: Shaved Brussels Sprouts with Bacon Vinaigrette

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EXPLORE: All Cooks Without Borders French recipes

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Baba au rhum may be the most fabulous French dessert of them all

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By Leslie Brenner

“A forkful of rum-soaked baba and Chantilly is one of life’s great pleasures.” Coming from Aleksandra Crapanzano, that’s really saying something: The food columnist for The Wall Street Journal counts Gâteau, a volume filled with recipes for 117 French cakes, among the three cookbooks she has authored. She grew up in Paris and New York, and currently lives in New York, and no doubt she’s eaten some pretty delicious forkfuls.

Nor is she the only one who feels that way about baba: For eons, whenever I’d ask my husband Thierry what dessert he would like for various special occasions, he’d say “baba au rhum.”

If we were in France, fulfilling that wish would be easy: You find baba au rhum in just about every pastry shop, and pastry shops are everywhere. Chez nous, in the U.S.? Not so easy. I’d gladly have been baking babas all these years, but I didn’t have the requisite savarin mold — a speciality baking pan that’s not easy to source. Baba recipes aren’t exactly a dime a dozen, and one that read as legit never crossed my path. Until last year: For Christmas, Thierry finally got his baba.

I found the recipe in Crapanzano’s latest book, which had recently been published. (It is included in our Ultimate Cookbook Gift Guide.)

RECIPE: Baba au Rhum

It’s a splendid recipe, and Crapanzano solves the problem of the mold by calling for a Bundt pan. In fact, if you use a 6-cup Bundt pan, which I never knew existed, it’s the same size as a savarin mold. Eureka! I ran around the corner to the cookware shop and found one.

A year earlier, I spent many hours researching the history of the dessert, so that if one day I was able to make one I could provide background. I needn’t have bothered; Crapanzano supplies it:

“The history of this classic dates back to the early 1700s, when exiled Polish king Stanislas Leszczynski complained to his pastry chef, Nicolas Stohrer, that the kugelhopfs — the prized cake of Nancy, where he was living — were too dry. Stohrer responded by brushing his next kugelhopf with a rum soaking syrup, and a classic was born. Stanislaus named it baba after his favorite fictional character, Ali Baba, and the name stuck. When Leszczynski’s daughter married King Louis XV, she moved to Paris and brought Stohrer with her — smart woman. He went on to open what remains today one of the great pâtisseries of Paris.”

In case you’re wondering about the Chantilly part of the equation, the stuff that’s on Crapanzano’s happy forkful, that would be crème Chantilly — French for whipped cream. You can either serve each slice, as Crapanzano suggests, with an “excessive dollop” of it, or just before serving you can fill the center of the Bundt-shaped cake with a giant cloud of it.

This, of course, would be a delightful extravagance to finish any kind of holiday dinner. But you could also make a baba between the holidays — or on a dreary afternoon in January or February — and invite friends over to devour it.

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Carottes Râpées, France’s ubiquitous carrot salad, gets a game-changing upgrade

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By Leslie Brenner

It’s about time carottes râpées got an upgrade. The simple carrot salad, ubiquitous in France, is what French people make when they don’t have anything but carrots in the larder, or their imagination has run dry. Dressed with lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper and maybe a little Dijon mustard, it has the potential to be delightful. Yet most French people are anything but excited to see it land on the table.

That’s because it’s usually made with a box grater (râpées means “grated”); it’s a salad whose wood-shavings-like texture nearly always drags it down. At least in France it’s not weighed down by raisins and mayo, the way it might be in America; the French do keep it light and savory.

Those who want to take some time and care with it are capable of culinary magic: elevating an ordinary dish to something you might even serve to friends. They take out their sharpest knife and, after peeling the carrots, cut them into fine julienne. That’s what James Oseland suggested in his 2021 book World Food: Paris.

Julienned carottes râpées

And he’s right — it is much nicer.

But cutting carrots into julienne is also a lot of work, even if you use a mandoline.

Recently I found a better way to elevate the dish: Once you’re done peeling the carrots, just keep going — use the peeler to shave the entire carrot into ribbons. Before long, and with little effort, you’ll have a mountain of ribbons. Dress it with the classic combo of lemon and olive oil, snip some chives on top (or parsley, or chervil, or dill) and you’re good to go. The ribbons give the salad lovely texture. Add some nigella seeds or poppy seeds if you want to give it a little more dimension. But only if you want to. The ribbon treatment alone makes it really nice.

It’s that little bit of culinary magic: You’ve turned the dish into a plate of tangy, fresh, bright, ribbony delightfulness.

And you didn’t have to turn on the stove.

RECIPE: Carottes Râpées, Ribbon-Style

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Classic French lemon tart: After 15 years of tinkering with the recipe, this is the one we adore

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By Leslie Brenner

Among all the desserts in all the world, it’s hard to think of one more enduringly craveable and satisfying than a classic French lemon tart. At this moment before berries fully rev up (and as cherries and peaches quietly prepare to steal our hearts), a tarte au citron is a deliciously tangy way to celebrate spring.

Sunny and optimistic, the iconic dessert is almost absurdly simple: just a pastry shell filled with lemon curd. Yet it’s so purely pleasurable it never goes out of style.

But what’s the best recipe? After many years of tinkering, I’ve distilled everything I’ve learned into one I think is just right. As with many things that are simple, it’s all about the quality of those components and how they talk to each other.

For the shell, some recipes use a short crust (pâte brisée) with a touch of sugar; others use a sweet pâte sablé, made with egg and lots of powdered sugar. Lemon curds are similar at their base — eggs, sugar, lemon juice and butter, cooked on top of the stove to creamy-custardy. But differences in approach, amounts of ingredients and technique can change the quality of the tart, sometimes dramatically.

The lemon tart’s power to cheer is remarkable. Back in 2008, when the global financial crisis hit, I baked one nearly every day for couple months to keep my spirits up, doing something slightly different each time. Since then, I’ve turned to it whenever I crave that gorgeous lemony blast, experimenting with different crusts, using more or less sugar, changing up the egg-approach, how much butter to use or when to incorporate it. Sometimes, I’d act like a lemon tart virgin and faithfully follow a recipe in a new cookbook, hungry to discover something fresh.

What I’ve learned over these many years is that despite the oft-cited dictum that baking is an exact science, a lemon tart gives you plenty of room for error, and inevitably plenty of joy. There’s more room for improvisation than you’d think. If you know the basics of how to make a crust, you can hardly go wrong, and lemon curd is not difficult or finicky.

I also learned that there’s a world of difference between a good lemon tart and a great lemon tart.

To me, the ideal is a very lemony one that’s not overly sweet, with depth of flavor, a velvety texture and a crust that’s brilliantly tender and buttery. And as a cook, I want a recipe that yields spectacular results every time with as little fuss as possible and in the shortest time.

A short crust pressed into a tart pan, before blind-baking

The question of crust

Choosing between pâte brisée and pâte sablé was easy for me; with a palate more savory than sweet, I’ve always been a short crust fan. Before my 2008 tart follies, I was accustomed to crusts that you form, chill and rest, roll out, fit into the pan, chill again, fill with weights, and bake. I think it was my friend Michalene who suggested I try the short crust in Chez Panisse Desserts by Lindsey Shere (the iconic restaurant’s original pastry chef).

Here’s something beautiful: It doesn’t require rolling. You start with butter that’s not too cold, work it into the flour with your fingers, gather it into a ball, let it chill, then use your fingers to press the dough into a tart pan with a removeable bottom. Chill that, then blind-bake it (no pie weights necessary) till it’s golden. Much shorter from start to finish, less messy, less scary.

It’s a beautiful crust that’s more tender than any other I’ve made. I’ve tweaked Shere’s original a bit over the years — yielding a bit more dough so it stretches more easily into a 9-inch pan, and decreasing resting/chilling time. It’s just as wonderful.

Conquering curd

As for the curd, there’s an aesthetic divide among lemon tart creators: Some fill the blind-baked crust with chilled curd and say voilà, while others fill the blind-baked crust then bake it again with the curd. The first way results in a filling that’s silky and creamy; the second is nicely set and firmer, more like velvet than silk. I prefer the texture of the baked filling, and feel that the time in the oven adds depth of flavor as well.

A lemon tart with an unbaked filling — smooth, silky and lovely, but not the vibe that rocks our boat

To make the curd, you can use whole eggs or a combination of whole eggs and yolks, for extra richness. Personally, I don’t need it to be extra-rich, so I use whole eggs without messing with separating them just for the yolks. (And that way I’m not left with unspoken-for egg whites.) When to add the butter is another question. You can drop it in directly after combining the eggs, sugar and lemon juice, and let it melt as you start cooking, or whisk in cold bits of butter after you’ve cooked the eggs, sugar and lemon juice.

And then there’s the matter of how sweet or tart to make it. Shere’s recipe for lemon curd filling, published in that same cookbook in 1985, calls for 6 tablespoons of sugar (roughly 1/3 cup) for a 9-inch tart. These days, many recipes call for double or triple that much sugar, or more. (A recipe for French Riviera Lemon Tart in Dorie Greenspan’s Baking with Dorie calls for 3/4 cup sugar; the Pioneer Woman’s Lemon Tart filling calls for 1 1/4 cup.) America’s sweet tooth wants more and more sugar.

Not me. I like my lemon tart more tart and my sugar consumption in check, so my recipe calls for 1/2 cup. If you’re worried that won’t be sweet enough, consider that my bookshelves are filled with classic old cookbooks calling for 1/2 cup sugar for their 9-inch classic tartes au citron: It’s sweet enough for history — and for my husband and his sweet-tooth.

On board for the sunny, tangy treat? Make one next weekend! It’ll be just the thing for an Easter brunch, a special dinner with friends, or a just-because-I-deserve it pick me up.

Our favorite lemon tart: press-in short crust, baked filling, not-too-sweet

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Coq au Vin — the soul-satisfying, heartwarming French classic — is a magnificent dish to make at home

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By Leslie Brenner

A chill winter day is the perfect opportunity to make coq au vin — chicken marinated overnight and then braised in red wine and aromatics. Not only is the classic French dish fabulously delicious, it feeds a crowd (or lasts a few days into the workweek), and it will fill your living space with gorgeous aromas.

Seems like I’m not the only one craving this type of old-fashioned French comfort food; it’s having something that feels much bigger than a moment. A few days ago, The New York Times published a story about 25 essential dishes to eat in Paris. (The only one I’ve had is the first on the list — cassoulet from L'Assiette — and I couldn’t agree more. Go eat it, if you can!) Classic-style French bistros and brasseries are drawing crowds in Los Angeles, New York (always!), Chicago, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Dallas — and every other American city with a heartbeat. Buvette — which chef Jody Adams opened in New York a dozen years ago — now also has locations in Tokyo, Seoul and Mexico City (as well as Paris and London).

Oddly, for many crave-able bistro and French-home-cooking dishes, it’s not easy to find outstanding, workable recipes. For coq au vin, I’ve used (or consulted) probably no fewer than 20 recipes from various usually-excellent sources. (The great Julia Child fell down on this one; the coq au vin recipe in her Volume I of Mastering the Art does not have you marinate the chicken in the wine first; you merely braise it.)

The marinade: Start with a bottle of red wine.

For well over a decade, I’ve been working on my own recipe, informed by everything I’ve learned along the way. At long last I feel it’s worth sharing.

Developing it has required some accommodations. For one thing, traditionally the dish is made with a big old rooster — that’s the coq. These days, both stateside and in France, coq au vin is usually made with chicken. Either way, the bird is cut up, marinated in red wine and aromatics overnight (or up to two or even three days), browned then braised in the marinade and and garnished with mushrooms, pearl onions and lardons.

No problem with the mushrooms; you can use either white mushrooms or crimini. And you know what? I find the mushrooms so delicious in coq au vin that I’ve doubled the amount most recipes use — that way each person gets a generous amount.

Lardons, however, may be problematic for many American cooks, as it has become difficult to find the required slab (unsliced) bacon in supermakets, even the best ones — at least where I live, in Dallas, Texas. (Readers in better-provisioned cities like New York, L.A. and San Francisco may have an easier time.) Happily, we do have an old-school butcher shop that carries it; perhaps you do, too.

Pearl onions are another problem. No so long ago, I used to find them, or cippolini, fresh at our better supermarkets; alas, no longer. You can buy a bag of frozen pearl onions from Birds Eye or at Trader Joe’s — already peeled, which is nice, but they’re pretty flavorless. I’ve taken to hunting down the smallest shallots I can find and treating them like baby onions; sometimes it means pulling two or more cloves apart from a larger one. To tell the truth, the shallots add such nice flavor I actually prefer them to baby onions. If one day I can’t find small enough shallots, I don’t know; I’ll probably punt and use the frozen pearl onions. Or relocate.

In place of an old rooster, I had been using a whole cut-up chicken, but because it’s smaller than a coq, I added a couple of extra thighs or drumsticks. Who wants to go to all this trouble for just four servings? Lately, I started using only thighs and drumsticks — and why not? Everyone in my orbit prefers dark meat, and dark-meat only simplifies the preparation. (Though our recipe allows for either approach.)

The versions of coq au vin that most informed mine are Anne Willan’s, from her wonderful 2007 book The Country Cooking of France, and one from Le Grand Livre de La Cuisine Française. Published (in French only) in late 2020, the latter book — which clocks in at 1,148 pages and weighs more than 8 pounds — comes from Jean-François Piège, one of France’s most renowned chefs. His book is an instant classic. I’ve cooked from it quite a bit (and referred to constantly) since the French cooking spree I’ve been on since I first lugged it back in my carry-on two years ago, having picked it up in a bookstore in Bordeaux. Imagine me literally running — with that anvil of a volume in tow — in order to make my connection (barely!) in Paris at Charles de Gaulle to come back home.

Piège’s and Willan’s recipes have much in common, but like many of the recipes in Piège’s tome, his is very restaurant-y. For instance, the chef assumes we will have on hand a liter of brown veal stock, 10 cl of sang de volaille ou de porc (poultry or pork blood), and some marc de Bourgogne (an eau de vie made from Burgundy grape must, like a French grappa) with which he wants us to flambé the bird first, and the garniture later. Oh, and that bird is either a coq or a Bresse chicken. He has us turn the mushrooms, sauté them in lardon fat and set them unsauced atop the finished dish, rather than cooking them in the sauce. Call me a peasant (or even a pheasant), but I like to simmer the mushrooms briefly in the sauce for a bit of flavor-exchange. (Willan’s recipe does that, but only for three to five minutes.)

One of the key issues with coq au vin is how to give the sauce enough body. Ideally, you’d use homemade chicken stock — that would have enough gelatin to give it a great texture. Most of us don’t have that lying around our freezer, though, so my recipe calls for store-bought chicken broth. Many recipes rely on whisking in beurre manié — softened butter mixed with flour — at the end. That works, but I don’t love its raw floury vibe; I’d rather leave the sauce a bit thinner and sop it up with lots of great crusty country sourdough. Recently, I came around to the idea of including a small amount of optional purchased veal demi-glace, which you can find in the freezer section of better supermarkets (or online at D’Artagnan). It’s expensive, but you can freeze and keep what you don’t use, and it does add silkiness and a bit more depth.

The wine question

I know what you’re wondering: What kind of wine should I use? First, don’t spend too much — pick up a bottle to cook with for $10 or less, if you can. Pinot noir, Beaujolais, Dolcetto d’Alba, Barbera, Sangiovese and Tempranillo are all good choices. Spend more, if you’re so inclined, on a great bottle to drink with it.

Besides the crusty bread, coq au vin is traditionally served with boiled potatoes tossed in butter and parsley, or maybe less frequently, pommes purées — mashed potatoes. I have also seen references to buttered noodles, which I have served chez nous. That raised an eyebrow on the face of the Frenchman to whom I am married, but all was forgiven once he dove into the saucy, fragrant, flavorful dish.

Don’t forget that you do need to start this dish the day before you want to serve it. The marinade needs to cool down completely before you add the chicken, so best to achieve that in the morning (it’s just 10 minutes or so of active time). Cool it down during the day, and plop in the chicken that evening. The next day, you’ll be ready to roll, whenever. Want to make the whole thing in advance? It’s even better, reheated, the next day.

I hope you enjoy this dish half as much as I do.

RECiPE: Coq au Vin

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Rich and soulful, beef bourguignon is always in style

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By Leslie Brenner

[Note: Originally published Dec. 19, 2016, this article was updated Dec. 7, 2022.]

For as long as I've been a cook, I've been making boeuf bourguignon – the classic French wine-braised beef stew with mushrooms, lardons and baby onions. There's something so deeply soulful about the dish, which simmers for a couple of hours in the oven, filling the kitchen with an incredible aroma.

Those transporting scents always deliver on their promise: Beef bourguignon, a dish that coaxes maximum deliciousness from humble ingredients, is a dreamy dish to serve to friends – with good red wine and a loaf of crusty French bread for soaking up the fabulous, richly flavored sauce. It's impressive enough for any important celebration – such as Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve – or no occasion at all. Maybe it's just what you want to eat on a cold winter evening with a fire going in the fireplace. It's a dish that never shows off, but always thrills. And while it may look like a lot of steps, it's no more complicated or time-consuming than making chili.

And because you can completely make it ahead – even the day before – it's the ideal (stress-free!) dish to serve at a dinner party, along with boiled or roasted potatoes or buttered noodles.  Precede it with a wintry salad, céleri rémoulade or a super easy-to-make yet luxurious and velvety roasted cauliflower soup swirled with brown butter. 

I must have originally learned to make beef bourguignon from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but over the years, I've played with the recipe, trying to answer the questions that inevitably nip at a cook's heels: What's the best cut of beef to use? What kind of wine? Should you marinate the beef or not? 

After so many years, and so many versions – abetted by a recent round of reading and more playing – I think I finally have my be-all-and-end-all version. 

Let's start with the red wine. You use a whole bottle, so you'd better use something really good, right? Well, no – happily, it doesn't much matter what you use, as long as it hasn't turned to vinegar. I never spend more than $8 or $9 dollars on the wine for this dish. It doesn’t even have to be French.

For the beef cuts, I had to abandon my beloved Julia, who calls for "lean stewing beef." Mais, non! – what you want is a fattier cut, like beef chuck, which will become super-tender as its collagens break down through its long braise. Lean stewing beef becomes hard and tough. 

From Anne Willan, author of many wonderful cookbooks and head of La Varenne cooking school in Burgundy, I gleaned the idea of using a combination of chuck and beef shank. In her fine recipe in The Country Cooking of France (2007), Willan calls for boneless beef shank. An excellent choice, if you can find the cut. (I used to be able to reliably, but not recently; our recipe includes instructions for whether you have one or not.)

An article on Serious Eats freed me from the notion that marinating the meat was worthwhile, so I scrapped that step — which shortens the process by an entire day. And rather than browning each side of the cubes of beef — which is time-consuming and dries them out — I just brown two sides, and leave them in bigger chunks. It results in a texture that’s softer and more appealing, while still getting plentyof the wonderful, flavor-enhancing caramelization of browning. A lazy person's solution that pays off! 

Ready to cook?

Here's the way it'll go, in a nutshell. Brown the meat, then lightly cook your aromatic vegetables – onion, celery and carrot – which you don't even have to dice (just cut 'em in a few pieces), and a little garlic. Deglaze the pan with red wine, then add back the meat, the rest of the bottle of wine, and some chicken broth (homemade beef broth would be even better if you have it, but I never do). Toss in a bouquet garni (herbs, peppercorns and bay leave tied up in cheesecloth), bring to a simmer, then shove it in a slow oven for almost two hours, nearly unattended (just just want to stir it once or twice). Skim off the fat, discard the aromatic vegetables and bone, strain the sauce and add the meat back in, then add the garnishes you've prepared: lardons, mushrooms and baby onions, and braise another half hour.

There’s actually not much work involved; time does the flavor-building for you. If you want to do most of it a day or two in advance, you can stop and refrigerate it after the two hours in the oven; the day you’re ready to finish and serve it the fat will have solidified and you can lift it right off, add the garnishes and braise it another half hour before sending it out.

Serve it, as the French do, with mashed potatoes (they call it pommes purées), buttered egg noodles or boiled potatoes, plus crusty bread. And this is the moment to pull out that great bottle of red.

Add friends or other good company, and the payoff is nothing short of awesome.

RECIPE: Beef Bourguignon

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Easy, fabulous and just a little boozy: Say 'bonjour' to Apple Calvados Cake

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By Leslie Brenner

If you’ve got a few apples, a springform pan and a splash of brown liquor, have we got a cake for you.

Easygoing and pretty much foolproof, this spirited apple cake is majestic enough to impress celebrants around a dinner table, casual enough to nibble with a cup of coffee on a rainy afternoon, and laid-back-festive enough to feature at brunch.

One very much like it first grabbed my attention when Dorie Greenspan published her wonderful book Around My French Table more than a decade ago. In it, I found a dessert called Marie-Hélène’s Apple Cake, which Greenspan described as “more apple than cake.” Ah, oui!

Over the years, I’ve played with it — first swapping out half of the all-purpose flour for whole wheat flour, and then getting rid of both and using spelt flour instead, for maximum ancient-grain goodness. Then I switched Greenspan’s dark rum for Calvados — France’s famous apple brandy. Wowie kazowie! That double-apple thing is spectacular. Apple jack works just as well.

Don’t have apple brandy? And kind of brandy — Cognac, Armagnac, Spanish Brandy de Jerez, whatever you’ve got will be great. Or use whiskey, such as bourbon or rye.

It’s all good. So is the apple situation: Grab four apples, whatever kind you happen to have, including mix-and-match. Cut them into big chunks, and fold them into a quickly whisked batter that doesn’t even require you to plug in a mixer.

Baked up, the apples melt into softness, gently cloaked in cake. It’s so nice that all through fall and into winter, I try always to have apples on hand in case the mood strikes. Thank you, Dorie — and Marie-Hélène, whoever you are.

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Easy-to-make homemade mayo unlocks a world of French bistro and American classics (mind-blowing BLT, anyone?)

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By Leslie Brenner

In director Eric Bésnard’s film “Delicious,” released in the U.S. earlier this year (it’s “Délicieux” in French), a pivotal plot point revolves around mayonnaise.

The chef-protagonist, Pierre Manceron, pays a late-night visit to his ex-boss, the Duc du Chamfort, who had fired him months before because one of his courtiers objected to a dish. Chef Manceron finds the duke sitting miserably in his kitchen, not-enjoying a midnight snack of langoustines. “This is what I’m reduced to,” the duke says in subtitled French, joylessly spearing a langoustine. “I ingurgitate, but without enjoyment.” (OK, I would have translated that differently.)

“Good cooks are rare, Manceron,” the duke continues. “Your successor was a sauce spoiler. And the one that came after him could barely make a mayonnaise.” He looks away, wistful. “How the little things can evoke the greatest memories. Look at that,” he says, nodding toward his sad snack. “It’s hopeless. No balance, no invention, no harmony. Nothing.”

“May I?” says Manceron, reaching for a small bowl of oil. “This’ll take but a minute.” Into another bowl, he cracks an egg, pours in some oil and starts whisking with a small broom-like whisk. In two seconds, he has a beautiful mayonnaise — miraculously garnished with sliced chives.

The duke sticks his finger into the mayo, tastes. Closes his eyes, blissed-out. “And so you came to torture me?”

I won’t tell you where it all leads (and yes, it’s worth watching!), but the point is clear: There’s nothing like a great homemade mayo. And here’s the best part: It’s way easier to make than you might think. OK, maybe not quite as effortlessly as Manceron makes it happen. But easy enough that if you love it as much as I do, you might find yourself making it every week or two.

Homemade mayonnaise makes so many things so much better. A height-of-tomato-season BLT. A next-level tuna salad sandwich, using the best tuna packed in oil. Deviled eggs. Egg salad.

Or depart from American classics and try some French favorites, like Céleri Rémoulade — the salad of julienned celery root that’s a bistro classic.

Céleri Rémoulade — one of homemade mayo’s best party tricks

Or Macédoine de Légumes — a simple, parti-colored salad of diced and blanched carrots, haricots verts and turnips, plus peas, cloaked lusciously in good mayo.

Use your delicious homemade mayo straight-up for dipping leaves of boiled artichoke or dolloping onto poached shrimp, or whisk into it a bit of crème fraîche, paprika and sherry vinegar, and call it the best sauce ever invented for chilled asparagus.

Macédoine de Légumes - glamourous cafeteria food!

But wait — how do we achieve this?

J. Kenji López-Alt, of Serious Eats fame (now with The New York Times) has an ingenious method for making mayonnaise. A hand-blender creates a vortex that does all the work for you. Pour canola oil over a layer of egg yolk combined with lemon juice, mustard and water, submerge the immersion blender, turn it on, slowly pull it up through the ingredients and voilà: mayonnaise in an instant.

That’s even easier than Chef Manceron’s movie magic. However, there’s a little more to do if you want the result to be not just mayo, but delicious mayo. For that, you need olive oil for flavor. Unfortunately, you can’t include the olive oil in that blender jar; olive oil has a different molecular structure than canola oil does, and the vortex trick doesn’t reliably work with it. (Occasionally it does; often it “breaks” — that awful thing that happens when your beautifully thick mayo falls apart into what looks like a vinaigrette.) That’s why, after the super-easy hand-blender trick, López-Alt has you whisk in a lot of olive oil by hand. It’s not the end of the world, but it does take some muscle to whisk in a full cup.

I wanted to make the process a bit easier, and I also prefer mayo that’s richer than López-Alt’s. While I do like the 50-50 olive oil-to-flavorless-oil ratio he uses, I favor a mayonnaise with a higher ratio of egg yolk to oil. For that, I turned back to a chef from mayo’s birthplace.

Mayonnaise the French way

In late 2020, renowned Paris chef Jean-François Piège published a monumental book that ambitiously and impressively aimed to codify the canon of contemporary French cooking: Le Grand Livre de La Cuisine Française: Recettes Bourgeoises & Populaires. I got my hands on a copy last year when I was in Bordeaux and schlepped the 8.2 pound, 1,086 page tome back in my carry-on (yep, shoulda checked it — its weight nearly made me miss my tight connection at Charles De Gaulle!).

It was worth it — I’ve referred to it a ton. Including Piège’s recipe for Mayonnaise — in which he uses 8 egg yolks for a liter of oil, which is about 2 yolks per cup of oil — a ratio that tastes just right to me. He also uses a full 5 teaspoons of Dijon mustard per cup of mayo, and red wine vinegar rather than lemon juice. (The mammoth cookbook, in case you’re wondering, has yet to be translated into English.)

Taking that page from Piège, our Mayonnaise recipe offers more depth of flavor than López-Alt’s, while requiring 25 percent less hand-whisking. It’s as delicious as Piège's, and more easily achieved than López-Alt’s.

RECIPE: Our Favorite Mayonnaise (Immersion Blender Method)

Go make a batch — you won’t be sorry. Covered in the fridge, it keeps for two weeks — though with all its delectable applications, yours might not stretch that long.

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How to cook France's favorite dish, something most Americans have never even heard of

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By Leslie Brenner

What is the favorite food of people who live in France — steak frites? Boeuf bourguignon? Quiche? Mais non — it’s magret de canard, a dish most Americans probably have never heard of.

In the last four or five years, magret — duck breast cooked medium-rare like a steak — has risen to the top of the popularity charts and stayed there. In bistros and restaurants from Paris to Nantes, from Bordeaux to Toulouse, and Montpelier to Lyon, and in kitchens of home cooks from the most basic to the foodiest, magret is everywhere.

Though the preparation may be slightly different, it’s usually easy to recognize: deep rosy-pink-to-red slices, each edged with a pad of golden-brown-edged fat. There might be sauce, or perhaps not. It’s sometimes grilled, and often cooked à la poêle (in a pan). If there is a sauce, it is probably not sweet, as it would be in the United States; more likely something like a red wine sauce. (Yes, duck à l’orange exists in France, but it’s not the most usual preparation.) It looks more like red meat than poultry.

The flavor? Superb — rich and lean somehow at the same time, delightfully ducky, and not gamey (at least as long as it’s not overcooked). This is why the French love it: It’s delicious.

As these things go, its rise to the pinnacle of popularity has been dizzying. By most accounts, the dish was invented by André Daguin, owner and chef of the Hôtel de France in Auch, a small town in Gascony, around 1959. The hotel restaurant was known for (among other things) its outstanding confit duck legs, a specialty of the region. One day, suddenly tired of wasting the duck breasts, Daguin was struck by an idea: Grill them rare and serve them as if they were steaks. He called the dish Lou Magret. (That’s Occitaine dialect for “le maigre” — the lean.) Reportedly he served it with a duck-fat sauce béarnaise, later switching it to green peppercorn sauce.

Robert Daley, a Times correspondent writing a travel story in 1971, described Lou Magret’s presentation this way:

“Daguin lifted it onto a plate. From a silver casserole he added tiny potatoes that had been sautéed in butter, and all over this he spooned a thin green sauce with fresh peppercorns in it.”

Just one small problem with the conventional — and widely reported — wisdom about Daguin having invented the dish: He himself told Daley that he had not. “Absolutely not,” Daley quoted him as saying.

“The Hotel de France has been in my family since 1926, and we’ve served it all that time. My grandfather was a famous chef as well, and I know he served it back in the 1890’s.”

Unfortunately, Daguin died in 2018, so we can’t ask him to clarify. I did ask his daughter Ariane Daguin, via email, what she knows about it. She is founder of D’Artagnan, the pioneering New York-based purveyor that supplies duck products (including foie gras, breasts and legs) to restaurants and home cooks around the United States. Daguin has not yet responded. (When and if she does, we will update this article.)

Whether it was Ariane Daguin’s father or great-grandfather who first served magret, no question but that it was her father who popularized it — putting Gascony on the world culinary map at the same time.

Magret waiting to be cooked

How to make magret

If you visit France and you’re an omnivore, you will want to order it. (In fact, it’s hard to avoid!) In the meantime, it’s a fabulous thing to make at home.

Because the duck breast is covered with a thick layer of fat — most of which needs to be rendered — it can be a bit tricky to cook it medium-rare. But take it slow, cook it rather low, and you’ll nail it. Cook it once or twice, and you’ll get the knack — and feel pretty brilliant about the extremely French dish you can turn out with very little effort. It’s special enough to impress yet quick and easy enough for a weeknight dinner.

Prick the skin all over with a toothpick to help the fat render. (Many recipes have you score the fat, but pricking it is easier and equally effective.) Season with salt and pepper, place skin-side-down in a cold skillet, give it high heat for half a minute till it sizzles, then cook about 15 minutes on medium-low. No need to touch it during that time, so you can set the table, or make a veg, or mince a shallot for the pan sauce. Flip it skin-side up — the fat will be mostly rendered and the skin will be a beautiful, crisp golden-brown. Cook a minute or two on the flesh side till medium-rare. Make a quick pan sauce while the breasts rest for 10 minutes. Slice the breasts, sauce ‘em up and you’re in for a treat. Here’s an actual recipe.

Serve them with haricots verts — French string beans, and (if you’re feeling expansive) potatoes sautéed in duck fat, or (if you’re feeling decadent) Gratin Dauphinois.

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Spring's dynamic duo — grilled butterflied leg of lamb and asparagus — make a marvelous (and portable!) feast

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By Leslie Brenner

In my corner of planet earth, we’ve arrived at the point in spring when the evenings are starting to stay warm enough to kindle thoughts of grilling — of sharing a glass of rosé out on the patio with friends, of nibbling dips and chips and such and taking in the intoxicating aroma of something delectable cooking over the coals.

And so yesterday, with our patio not yet exactly fit for prime time, I proposed bringing a ready-to-go grilling party to friends who had just moved into a new house. A butterflied leg of lamb and asparagus would be the base offering, along with a bottle of French rosé. Not a hard sell — you should try it some time!

It was so easy to put together — and turned to to be so delicious — that it sparked an “aha” moment: Rosy slices of flavorful grilled lamb and tender spears of lightly charred asparagus love to be the life of the spring party. The combo isn’t only great for instigating BYO-main course dinner invitations; it’s also the delightfully low-stress solution for Easter dinner or lunch, breaking a Ramadan fast, or (in a matter of weeks) setting the table for Mother's Day.

Asparagus and spring onions, cooked on the grill

Prepping for the event is shockingly quick. Procure a boneless leg of lamb: The first one I saw was 2.8 pounds, large enough to serve 6. A smaller one would be sufficient for four. Grab some fresh herbs — our marinade recipe calls for mint and cilantro, but you could swap either for parsley, rosemary, thyme, oregano or marjoram, or use a combo. You probably have everything else (red wine vinegar, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper) on hand. And grab a bunch or two of asparagus: a pound and a half is perfect for four, two pounds for six.

This time of year, you might also find spring onions — the ones that look like scallions, but with much bigger bulbs on the bottom. Yesterday I found both red and white ones. These are fantastic thrown on that grill as well — as are garlic scapes, if you’re lucky enough to find them.

Once you’re home with the booty, make a marinade: Chop the herbs, toss in a bowl with pressed garlic, vinegar, salt and pepper, whisk in olive oil. Unwrap the lamb, removing any strings holding it in shape, and flatten it as much as possible. If it doesn’t lay flat, feel free to slash with a knife here and there, keeping it all in one piece: You want a shape that will cook relatively evenly on the grill. Don’t worry, though, if it’s much thicker in places — it’ll still be great.

Place the lamb in a shallow bowl, coat it on both sides with the marinade and transfer it to a large zipper bag. (Alternatively, you can put the lamb in the bag, pour in the marinade, zip it up (pushing out the air first), then massage it a bit so it’s completely covered in marinade. Leave it like that for at least two hours (refrigerating for all but the last hour), and it’s ready to cook. Heat the grill, wipe off the marinade and cook on both sides — it’s quicker than you might think: 12 to 22 minutes total (depending on the heat of the grill) will get you lamb that’s medium-rare where thickest and medium where thinnest.

RECIPE: Grilled Butterflied Leg of Lamb

You should have enough room on the grill to throw on the asparagus — which needs nothing more than olive oil and salt before going on. (For my portable feast, I trimmed off their woody bottoms and placed them in a zipper bag with about two teaspoons of oil and about a quarter teaspoon of salt, zipped it up, rolled the spears around a bit to coat, and transported them just so.) Ditto the spring onions: Trim the tops, slice them in half, creating a flat surface on the bulbs, and give them the same oil-and-salt treatment. If you’re not transporting them, you can put the asparagus (and spring onions if using) on a sheet pan, drizzle with oil, sprinkle with salt, and let them sit till you’re ready to grill.

As for timing, you can grill the asparagus at the same time as the lamb, cooking till the spears are as tender as you like them (I like them tender, and take them off when they’re floppy with picked up with tongs). Spring onions or garlic scapes will be perfect once they’re a bit charred, and both are fine served room temp. Want them hot? Grill the veg once you’ve pulled off the lamb to rest 10 minutes.

Slice the lamb, arrange on a platter surrounded by the asparagus, pour any collected juices over the lamb, and your feast is ready.

And it’s delicious just like that. Want to make a few more things?

This Tangy Green Everything Sauce — packed with mint, parsley, dill and shallots — is pretty dreamy with the lamb.

And so is its oregano-forward cousin, chimichurri. Both can be made ahead, and they’re easy to transport in a jar.

Yesterday, prepping the lamb, asparagus and spring onions was so quick that I remembered some red potatoes I had in the pantry, I boiled them up and threw together a quick (and super portable!) French-accented potato salad. While the potatoes cooked, I whisked together red wine vinegar, a goodly dollop of whole-grain mustard, salt and olive oil, then added a spoonful of mayo, thinly sliced shallots, roughly chopped parsley and black pepper. When the potatoes were cooked, I sliced them in their jackets and tossed them with the sauce: delicious.

A bit more involved, our Best Potato Salad Ever is great with this, too. (Find more potato salad recipes here.) All potato salads are portable as can be — ideal for stress-free at-home entertaining, or we’ll-bring-it-all personal pop-up dinners.

For dessert, the arrival of strawberry season makes it easy to keep it simple: Stem the berries (halving or quartering if they’re large), sprinkle with a little sugar or toss in Grand Marnier or other orange liqueur, let macerate an hour or two and serve just like that. Or with ice cream.

Strawberry Pavlova

If it’s a fancier feast, you can make Strawberry Pavlovas: These are great for Easter, Mother’s Day or Passover celebrations (they’re flour-free!). Again, everything can be made ahead — just assemble them on the spot.

So that’s the blueprint: As simple or extended as you like.

Happy spring!

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Chef Daniel Boulud gives a humble French dish, hachis Parmentier, the royal treatment

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By Leslie Brenner

The dish known as hachis Parmentier is decidedly not one of France’s sexier dishes. In fact, it’s not a sexy or aspirational dish at all. At least I didn’t think it was — until I heard of one I simply had to have.

Traditionally, hachis Parmentier was leftover pot roast chopped up (hâcher means to chop), covered with mashed potatoes and baked. Today, most French people know the dish as a layer of sautéed ground beef in a baking dish topped with mashed potatoes, then browned in the oven. The beef may have some chopped onion and carrot in it, but that’s as fancy as it usually gets. In other words, it’s more or less shepherd’s pie.

That’s why when I read that Daniel Boulud, New York City’s superstar French chef, has a thing for hachis Parmentier, I was dying to hear how he approaches it.

I had been researching the dish, looking for recipes from cookbook authors I admire, and found one in Dorie Greenspan’s excellent Around my French Table. Dorie’s headnote led with an anecdote. She and her husband were lucky enough, some years back, to have Boulud cook a meal for them. “It was luxurious,” she wrote:

“and at the end of it, after thanking Daniel endlessly, I asked him what he was going to have for dinner. ‘Hachis Parmentier,’ he said with the kind of anticipatory delight usually seen only in children who’ve been told they can have ice cream. We had just had lobster and truffles, but Daniel was about to have the French version of shepherd’s pie, and you could tell he was going to love it.”

I had to have it! I’d already scoured the four Daniel Boulud cookbooks on my shelves without turning up a recipe; next I searched online. Nada.

So I emailed him, asking the Lyon-born, world-renowned, double-Michelin-starred chef — who was recently named the best restaurateur on the planet — if he had a recipe he might share with Cooks Without Borders. Thrillingly, he did! (Thank you, Daniel! And thank you, Daniel’s wonderful team!)

Daniel Boulud’s recipe

Ground beef? Nah — Daniel’s recipe starts with cubes of boneless ribeye steak. Which you marinate in Burgundy wine. The meat gets seared, then diced onions, carrots and parsnips are sweated, and all of it gets simmered for hours with the Burgundy (which you reduce way down first), combined with veal stock flavored with a bouquet garni with herbs, garlic and peppercorns.

“Hachis parmentier is all about how you build your sauce and flavors,” Daniel had written in the headnote. “It is a baked dish that starts with humble ingredients and simple techniques. I love to expand my version with the deep and rich flavors of Boeuf Bourguignon under a layer of creamy mashed potatoes topped with nutty Gruyère cheese.”

Those mashed potatoes? They’re not just figuratively creamy; they’re enriched with lots of butter and cream.

“Nothing warms your soul like the anticipation of this casserole on a cold winter’s day,” Daniel added. You can say that again.

Unless you’re a lot wealthier than I am (ribeye is expensive!) you won’t be making this dish on a random Tuesday; it’s special enough for dinner party fare. I confess I did not open a bottle of Burgundy for the sauce (don’t tell Daniel!); I used a $14 French pinot noir instead. The pinot was decent enough that I bought a second bottle to drink with the finished hachis Parmentier.

Meltingly tender after its hours of marinating and slow braising, the ribeye had fabulous flavor — this was by far the most luxurious beef stew I’ve ever simmered. I didn’t have veal stock (unless you’re a chef, odds are you don’t either), so instead used Daniel’s recommended second choice: store-bought beef broth boosted with veal demi-glace. (D’Artagnan makes a good demi-glace that you can buy online or find in some higher-end supermarkets.) You need that boosting because the sauce has to be substantial enough that it holds the meat together under the potatoes and doesn’t run all over the plate when you serve it. The natural gelatin in demi-glace (and also in veal stock) adds the right body, as well as a lot of flavor.

Because the dish is so expensive (even with the pinot swapped for Burgundy, the ingredients totaled more than $60), I wondered how it would be with a less pricey cut of beef. So I made it again — substituting chuck for the ribeye.

It was good — and I do recommend that if you’re keeping to a budget. But it’s considerably less special than Daniel’s original.

Without further adieu, here is Chef Boulud’s recipe. After that, we’ll dive into some of hachis Parmentier’s finer points and history, so unless you want to geek out with me, you may now be excused from the table.

What sent me down the H.P. rabbit hole

The recipe that started me on the hachier Parmentier mission was one in World Food: Paris, published last year by James Oseland. The dish was delicious (I love the idea of adding umami and body to ground beef with oyster sauce), but the recipe had some small technical issues. It whetted my appetite for it, though, and piqued my curiosity about what the dish could be in its best expression.

Read “Cookbooks We Love: James Oseland’s new ‘World Food’ title celebrates the iconic dishes of Paris”

Though I’m married to a Frenchman and have spent a lot of time in France over the decades, hachis Parmentier is not something I’d ever been served there — too homey, probably, to serve to a guest.

When we were in Bordeaux last summer, I picked up a copy of Le Grand Livre de La Cuisine Française: Recettes Bourgeoises & Populaire, by the renowned Paris chef Jean-François Piège. It’s a mammoth tome of nearly 1,100 pages, published just about a year ago. Basically it defines, catalogues and provides recipes for the French canon of standard dishes (in French only; it has not been translated). And yes — among its 1,000-plus recipes is one for hachis Parmentier. The beef cut: “3 grosses joues de boeuf” — three big beef cheeks. One is instructed to cook them for two and a half or three hours in red wine and veal stock till they’re “très fondantes” (very melty). Piège has you pull the braised beef cheeks apart with your fingers, then enrobe them in strained-and-seasoned braising liquid to which you add chopped parsley. Lay that in an oven-to-table baking dish, cover with brunoise (tiny dice) of onion, carrot and celery that’s been gently cooked in butter, top with potato purée, then with bread crumbs you’ve tossed with chopped garlic and grated comté cheese. Bake until the top has a “belle croûte dorée” — a beautiful golden crust. Et voilà.

Beef cheeks: Not the easiest cut for home cooks to find, and the recipe assumes much more cooking knowledge than most American home cooks will possess.

Wait, what about Dorie’s version?

So glad you asked! Dorie called for either cube steak or chuck in the version that follows the diverting headnote in Around My French Table. After simmering the meat, she chops it up — then adds pork sausage to the filling, which no doubt amps up the flavor and adds richness. Her hachis Parmentier looks very good; I look forward to trying it one day soon.

That’s about all I’ve got on the hachis. That leaves the Parmentier!

France’s permanent potato prince

Any French dish with “Parmentier” in its name necessarily involves potatoes. That’s because in the 18th century, Antoine Augustin Parmentier, a French agronomist and pharmacist, won a prize in 1773 offered by the Academy of Besançon for the discovery of plants that could be useful during times of famine, according to Larousse Gastronomique. Parmentier’s plant of choice: the potato.

Prior to that time, the French considered potatoes to be unwholesome and indigestible, suitable only for animal feed or to nourish poor people. Parmentier extolled potatoes’ nutritive virtues, and didn’t fail to let people know that they also taste really good. After winning the prize, Parmentier popularized the potato, publishing booklets about its uses and cultivation. He famously prepared a dinner for visiting statesman Benjamin Franklin starring a potato-centric menu, putting the potato permanently on France’s culinary map.

“For a time the potato itself was known as the parmentière in his honour,” Larousse recounts, “and he gave his name to various culinary preparations based on potatoes, especially hachis Parmentier — chopped beef covered with puréed potatoes and browned in the oven.”

And so we come full circle. The recipe that follows in Larousse goes roughly like this: “Dice or coarsely chop” boiled or braised beef. Cook lots of chopped onion in butter, sprinkle with a little flour, cook till lightly brown, add beef stock, cook down a bit, then add the chopped beef. Put the beef and onions in a gratin dish, cover with potato purée, top with breadcrumbs, moisten with melted butter and brown in the oven. “Although it is not traditional, a small cup of very reduced tomato sauce can be added to the chopped meat and a little grated cheese may be mixed with the breadcrumbs.”

I’ll be making Daniel’s recipe again before long, I suspect. I might even make veal stock to use as its foundation, should veal bones present themselves. Hard to imagine another version with such luxurious depth.

Maybe I’ll even spring for a bottle of Burgundy. No, not for the braising liquid, but to honor the finished — and fabulous — dish.

RECIPE: Daniel Boulud’s Hachis Parmentier

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Celebrating in place? Try Daniel Boulud's short ribs braised in red wine

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By Leslie Brenner

We all need them — at least those of us who love to cook, and love to entertain need them. They’re the dishes we know we can count on to make everyone swoon. It might be for a family member’s birthday dinner, or an anniversary, or the occasion of entertaining someone you want to impress. Or hey — maybe you need an extraordinary dish for New Year’s Eve, in a season when it feels important to treat yourself to something nice.

Daniel Boulud’s short ribs braised in red wine has long been one of those dishes for me. Braised short ribs are always delicious (as well as very easy to make); what makes Boulud’s version special is that it’s dressed up with a spectacular celery duo — celery root purée and glazed celery — and bathed in a marvelously deep-flavored and silky sauce. It’s gorgeous on the plate, like it came from an incredible restaurant.

The wine-braised short rib dish is from ‘Café Boulud Cookbook,’ which (alas!) is out of print. With so many great recipes, it would be worth republishing!

I first fell for the dish sometime back in the 1990’s, at dinner at Café Boulud, one of my favorite restaurants in New York at the time. (It is temporarily closed, with plans to relocate.) And then, when Boulud published the Café Boulud Cookbook (co-authored with Dorie Greenspan) in 1999, there was the recipe in its pages — what a gift!

The dish is timelessly delicious. Fall-apart-tender, incredibly flavorful and rich short ribs melt into the purée, which is actually a gorgeously earthy, creamy blend of celery root and Yukon Gold potatoes — like potato purée with a PhD in philosophy. The sauce is made by sending the braising liquid through a fine strainer. The glazed celery on top celebrates and elevates a vegetable that used to be a luxury in days of yore.

There’s nothing difficult or tricky about putting it all together. There is a single pyrotechnic moment, when we’re asked to light some heated wine on fire, but if that makes you nervous, just skip that part — it’ll still turn out great. In fact, if you’ve never made short ribs before, this recipe will teach you about all you need to know about them: Brown them, then long-braise them, and you’ll be richly rewarded. You can play with the braising liquid, and it’ll still be good. It’s a perfect dish for entertaining, as it’s ideally made in advance, so you can chill it overnight, lift off the fat and have most of the work done.

Precede the show-stopping dish with a salad of winter greens (maybe with smoked trout, or crab and avocado), or oysters on the half-shell.

The recipe serves eight, but don’t let that bother you if you’re cooking for four or fewer: You’ll have the best leftovers imaginable.

RECIPE: Café Boulud Short Ribs

Looking for more festive dishes for New Year’s Eve? You might like these:

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Cookbooks We Love: James Oseland's new 'World Food' title celebrates the iconic dishes of Paris

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By Leslie Brenner

World Food: Paris by James Oseland with Jenna Leigh Evans; photographs by James Roper, 2021, Ten Speed Press, $26.

Backgrounder

This is the second installment of World Food, in which James Oseland covers the heritage recipes of great food cities around the globe. The series is inspired by Time-Life’s beloved “Foods of the World” cookbooks published in the 1970s. (World Food: Mexico City was published last year.) Oseland is the former long-time editor in chief of Saveur magazine.

The timing of this volume is particularly noteworthy, as interest in this style of French cooking — decidedly un-modern and informal, with a focus on iconic bistro dishes — is on the rise, both in France, where Hachette published a mammoth 1,000-plus-page cookbook from well known chef Jean-François Piège last December, and stateside, where restaurants like Bicyclette in Los Angeles and Frenchette in New York are hotter than ever. (Watch these pages, as more stories are on the way!) For those seeking entrée into the genre — or in the mood for a vicarious trip to Paris — Oseland’s book is a great place to start.

Why we love it

The slim, smallish, beautifully photographed volume conveys the current food mood of the City of Light. Flipping through its pages transports us — into the bistros, the kitchens of the city’s best home cooks, the marchés, the boulangeries. The Time-Life influence is expressed in approach and voice, making it feel familiar and nostalgic, while we delight in discovering dishes we know or have heard of (and suddenly crave) and others less familiar but no less enticing.

Some of the most successful recipes are the simplest, such as Carottes Râpées — the grated carrot salad that’s ubiquitous not just in Paris, but all over France. Here it gets an upgrade: Instead of grating the carrots (which most home cooks would do), these are cut into fine julienne. It’s labor-intensive, to be sure, but it results in a more elegant version of the homey dish, dressed with a lemony vinaigrette. Bonus: The carrots miraculously stay fresh and crunchy even after a couple days in the fridge. Not up for julienning? Go ahead — grate ‘em. (My permission, not Oseland’s.)

The Tartare Aller-Retour a l’Echalote shown above — Veal Burgers with Shallots — comes together in short order on a busy weeknight. Oseland’s headnote tells us that a tartare turned into a cooked patty is called tartare aller-retour — news to me, and how delightful, as aller-retour means “round trip.” The recipe serves two, so it was perfect for Thierry and me, but you could double or triple it for four or six.

I’m not supplying the recipe here just yet, as we’d have liked it even better with a little sauce made by deglazing the pan, so I’ll adapt it that way and revisit. (I’m ideologically opposed to browning meat and leaving the browned bits in the pan, when it’s so easy to turn up the heat, pour in a splash of wine and deglaze the pan for a voilà la sauce moment.)

You gotta try this

On the other hand, Oseland’s Gratin Dauphinois needs no enhancement. If you’re looking for a foolproof potato gratin, this one will take you heartwarmingly through through the season of indulgences. Entertaining soon? Plan your holiday meal around this beauty.

Easy to see why it made the cover of the book, with that gorgeous browned and crisp, beautifully textured top. Inside it’s creamy and luscious.

There’s no cheese involved (if it’s a cheesy gratin you’re after, this ain’t it), and Oseland departs from Gratin Dauphinois tradition in several ways: He has us use new potatoes or waxy potatoes rather than starchy ones, cut thicker than the usual thin-as-a-coin slices, and he boils them in milk and water first rather than baking them raw. I suddenly feel a Gratin Dauphinois story taking shape in my head, so do stay tuned on our French channel. (Or sign up for our free newsletter, if you haven’t already, so you don’t miss it.)

Small quibble

This book will probably be more useful to experienced cooks than neophytes, as the recipes sometimes need adjustments that should have been picked up in testing or editing. If, for instance, we were to layer the Hachis Parmentier (France’s answer to shepherd’s pie) in the 13 by 9 inch baking dish called for, that would have made quite the shallow dish, probably not more than half an inch deep. Suspecting that a pound of ground beef and a pound of potatoes would be more comfy in a much smaller pan, I used a 9-inch square, and even so, mine was barely deep enough to cover the tines of a fork. Fortunately, I knew better than to think that amount of meat and potatoes would serve 4 to 6 people; more like 3. But I was thrilled to be reminded of the French home-cooking classic, and Oseland’s, based on one by home cook Diane Reungsorn, gets the flavor just right.

Hurray for Almond Tuiles!

Oseland’s recipe for Almond Tuiles is right up my alley — its simple batter comes together in no time flat, with staple ingredients I always have on hand. (I keep a bag of sliced almonds in the freezer.) No electric appliances are required; just a whisk. You form the cookies by dropping spoonfuls onto a parchment- or silicone-mat-lined baking sheet (no, you cannot use waxed paper to make cookies, as the book suggests — the wax will likely melt!), then using the back of a spoon to spread them into thin circles.

Tested exactly as written, the tuiles — which are supposed to be very thin and crisp — were almost right, but soft in the middle, and leaving three inches between cookies on the baking sheet made it impossible to bake more than five or six on each sheet. That’s appropriate if you’re making classic tuiles you want to shape into cones (the classic roof tile shape for which they’re named) or cylinders, and don’t want them coming out of the oven too many at a time. But that’s not the idea here, so why not go for lots of fabulous crisp cookies in a snap?

Using Oseland’s excellent batter, I reduced the amount for each cookie and ask you to spread them thinner than he does — as thin as possible. Baking time drops by two minutes, and I halved the amounts of ingredients (except the almonds, which I upped) to keep a similar yield, and not keep you in the kitchen baking batch after batch.

Because they’re much thinner, they come out beautifully crisp throughout, absolutely delightful.

Still Wanna Make

A bunch of things! Country-Style Pork Terrine, for starters (if we can summon the nerve to buy that much fat). Quick-Cured Sardine Fillets (once I can find fresh sardines). Herb-Poached Fish with Beurre Blanc Sauce (this looks so luxurious!). Blanquette de Veau. North African Lamb and Vegetable Tagine. Crème Brûlée (need to replace Wylie’s broken blowtorch for that).

OK, your turn: What do you want to make?

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This glorious plum-and-blackberry buckwheat tart is way easier than pie

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Plum and Blackberry Buckwheat Tart

By Leslie Brenner

Lazy bakers, this one’s for you.

If you know anything about galettes, you know that the free-form pastries are super-forgiving, nearly foolproof. Hard to imagine, then, that the enticing tart shown in the photo above is actually (ahem!) a failed galette.

Here’s how it came to be. (I promise to make the story snappy and get right to the super-easy recipe.) On a recent trip to France, my husband Thierry and I lucked into a kilometers-long stretch of wild blackberry vines. After picking our way into purple-fingered, mûre sauvage happiness — with about a kilo of wild blackberries as our prize — I thought, time to bake a galette. I was looking for ease, didn’t want to make a pastry cream, and didn’t have a tart pan (or a rolling pin, or measuring tools, or a full-size oven) in Thierry’s mom’s kitchen.

I reached for Melissa Clark’s excellent New York Times master recipe for Fruit Galette. I had to make the galette oval, not round (to fit in the tiny oven!) but the wild blackberry galette was pretty damn wonderful! In fact, quick and easy as it was, it was one of the best tarts I’d ever made.

Wild blackberry galette

Wild blackberry galette

And so, when I returned home to Texas and wanted to make a lazy-person’s dessert featuring summer-into-fall blackberries and plums, I thought — naturally — of a galette.

Thing is, I’m crazy about whole grains and ancient grains, and love to incorporate them in baking projects whenever possible. Buckwheat, I thought, would be particularly nice with those deep early autumn fruit flavors, so half the flour would be buckwheat flour (and the rest all-purpose flour). I’d cut back the sugar and cornstarch — as I did with the wild berry galette — expecting success.

But when I tried rolling out the dough, it refused to hold together.

Aha!, I thought. Buckwheat does not have gluten, so the dough is not elastic enough to roll, even after resting an hour.

I pivoted, grabbed a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom, and pressed the dough into it: a perfect fit. Much easier than pie. (Anyone with fear of crust-rolling should be delighted!)

I chose not to blind-bake the crust, and didn’t give the dough time to rest after pressing it into the pan: This is truly a lazy baker’s tart. No need to peel any fruit, nor meticulously arrange carefully cut fruit into concentric circles. Just cut the plums in eighths (removing the pits), toss them with blackberries, sugar, cornstarch and a pinch of salt, dump the mixture into the crust, scatter sliced almonds on top (no need to toast first), and bake. It’s that simple.

And it was amazingly good. I’ll be baking this baby again and again. (Can’t wait, in fact!) The buckwheat flavor was right on; the crust was tender and flaky; the almonds were lovely with the the fruit, whose flavors concentrated gorgeously.

Want to try? Here’s the recipe.

Happy autumn!

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For the best (and easiest!) ratatouille, capture the fabulous flavor of late summer by roasting those vegetables

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Roasted Ratatouille

By Leslie Brenner

Ratatouille — the famous French stew of zucchini, eggplant, peppers and tomatoes — always sounds so much better than it winds up tasting. It took an actual trip to France for me to discover how to make one that’s actually pretty fabulous.

One evening on my recent sojourn there, I needed to make dinner for my French in-laws, whose gastronomic leanings present a challenge. Belle-mère and beau-père, my parents-in-law, require old-fashioned food (yes, French —what else is there?), while belle-soeur, my sister-in-law, is vegan. My husband Thierry and I? We just want something good.

Thierry had the answer: ratatouille.

Visions of courgettes and aubergines (so much more beguiling than zucchini and eggplants!) danced in my head, which I lost for a moment, conjuring next an image of a gorgeous dish of perfectly cooked late-summer deep greens and reds and golds.

And then a panic-pause as reality set in: Come to think of it, I’d never had a ratatouille I’ve loved — including, but not limited to the ones produced in my own kitchen. Liked OK, yes. Loved, certainly not. The result, achieved on the stovetop and not terribly fun to make, is usually kind of watery, tomatoey and monotonous, with pillows of eggplant that skew either spongy or sodden.

Components of a roasted ratatouille

Not seeing an alternative, and after all, it was late summer, I committed to the project and headed to the supermarché — actually, a lovely supermarché bio (organic) that had sprung up in the four years since I’d last visited the small seaside town, not far from Bordeaux. In any case, I’d buy some good crusty bread to sop it up; some great cheese post-ratatouille would probably be the highlight of the meal.

Necessity, I’d forgotten to remember, is the belle-mère of invention. And my belle-mère’s kitchen is not terribly well appointed. Therefore, failing to find a skillet large enough for ratatouille for five, I turned on the oven. I’d roast the eggplant, which might actually be an upgrade from cooking in a pan. (It was!) While I was at it, I’d roast a red bell pepper, and half of the zucchini, thereby saving room in the skillet. Why did I not roast all the zucchini? Because the oven was too tiny. (Go ahead and mentally insert that forehead-slap emoji.)

Onto the stove’s electric heat went the medium skillet, then a glug of olive oil, into which I pressed, once it was hot, the remaining zucchini. I seared those rounds nice and golden-brown, so they’d maybe keep their integrity and some texture (they did!), then set them aside. Next I sweated diced onion, adding garlic, which I’d minced with a paring knife sharp as a spoon. Ding! The eggplant was roasted. (No, I didn’t use a timer, but felt this story could use a sound effect.) A fork poked into the thick rounds found little resistance, so out it came — and hey, turned out the red bell pepper and those darling courgettes were done, too. While the onion softened, I cubed the soft eggplant (not a problem with the spoon-knife!), peeled and cut up the pepper.

Now the pressure was on: The table was set, the entrées (first courses in France) were in place. I don’t even remember what the entrée was, so focused was I on the plat. Maybe the starter was saucisson, a crowd favorite for all but my belle-soeur. The clock was ticking perilously close to 8:00. I felt grateful that my 95-year-old parents-in-law were an ocean apart from the early-bird proclivities of America’s seniors.

Into the pan went the aubergine, along with the courgettes (roasted and pan-seared) and peppers for a brief hot mingle together, and then a couple cut-up tomatoes. I tasted and seasoned, and wow — that ratatouille was pretty damn good! I sent it to the table decorated with torn basil.

The verdict? They loved it.

You might be saying, of course they said they loved it. They’re your family-in-law. But it was ratatouille: It’s never that good.

It was very good. Nicer than any I’d probably ever had, with better texture and deeper flavor: Late summer concentrated in a luscious, light, saucy, tasty, vegan, traditional French dish.

Ten days later, I was back home, and Thierry — who remained in France for a bit — texted me that he wanted the recipe. (Thierry, who doesn’t even cook!) I wrote him out a recipe. He cooked it. He loved it again, and texted photos — also something he never does with food.

Craving it suddenly (how weird!), I made it again — at home, in my own kitchen, with sharp knives and full-size oven, and weights and measures for recipe building. Also a practical tweak or two, such as all the zucchini gets roasted, along with the garlic. The resulting method is simplicity itself. Everything roasts for the same length of time, and altogether it’s quicker, easier and less fussy than the traditional way. And yes, more delicious.

Traditionalists may scoff. To them I say: dudes. Try this. A hundred euros says you’ll never go back.

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Cookbooks We Love: David Lebovitz's 'The Perfect Scoop' is the only ice cream book you'll ever need

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Our photo of ‘The Perfect Scoop’ shows the 2007 first-edition paperback, but our review refers to the 2018 updated and revised edition.

Our photo of ‘The Perfect Scoop’ shows the 2007 first-edition paperback, but our review refers to the 2018 updated and revised edition.

By Leslie Brenner

The Perfect Scoop: 200 Recipes for Ice Creams, Sorbets, Gelatos, Granitas and Sweet Accompaniments (revised and updated), by David Lebovitz, photographs by Ed Anderson, 2018, Ten Speed Press, $24.99

Backgrounder: Paris-based former Chez Panisse pastry chef David Lebovitz has a wonderful blog and website (which you should be following if you love sweets or French cooking); we always refer to his section on Paris restaurants when we find ourselves in the City of Lights. He is the author of many excellent books, including Drinking French, Ready for Dessert, My Sweet Life in Paris and others (he has published nine in total), and The Perfect Scoop is our favorite of them all. Originally published in 2007, Lebovitz revised and updated it in 2018, adding a dozen new recipes, and it is that edition that’s the basis of this review and the recipes we’ve adapted.

Why We Love it: Lebovitz is the undisputed king of ice cream, and we’ve been making his frozen desserts since way back when the book was first published. The recipes always work perfectly as written, but they’re eminently riffable, and even provide such a strong foundation that if you’re a confident cook, you can probably start creating your own recipes. Besides chapters on the frozen desserts themselves, there are also chapters on Sauces and Toppings (Classic Hot Fudge, Cajeta, Candied Red Beans), Mix-Ins (Butter Pecans, Peppermint Patties) and “Vessels” (Ice Cream Cones, Crêpes, Profiteroles, Brownies).

We’ve made or tasted probably at least a dozen frozen desserts in the book, which besides ice cream, also includes gelatos, sorbets, sherbets and sorbettos, frozen yogurts, ices, granitas and ice pops. Recently, we made up a batch of Lebovitz’s Watermelon Sorbetto, pouring into ice-pop molds and turning it into not-too-sweet watermelon paletas (so good!). His Lavender-Honey Ice Cream is one of our favorites ever; Peach Ice Cream is a Philadelphia-style (no eggs) classic you’ll love all summer long; Cinnamon Ice Cream is classic as well. At Christmastime, Egg Nog Ice Cream is killer, and any time of year, Lemon Sorbet is a terrific version of classic lemon Italian ice. (You’ll have to buy the book to get those recipes, but believe me, you won’t be sorry.)

Gianduja Gelato with Straciatella from ‘The Perfect Scoop’

Gianduja Gelato with Straciatella from ‘The Perfect Scoop’

Recently we fell in love with (and wrote about) the Gianduja (hazelnut-chocolate) Gelato swirled with the Stracciatella (Italian-style chocolate chips) found in the Mix-Ins chapter.

Matcha Ice Cream from ‘The Perfect Scoop’

Matcha Ice Cream from ‘The Perfect Scoop’

Lovers of Japanese sweets will adore Lebovitz’s green tea ice cream. Made with matcha and rich with egg yolks, it is quite simply the best we’ve ever tasted.

Tangerine sorb edit.jpg

You’ll have to save for the winter, when mandarins (also known as tangerines) are in season and at their most flavorful, to fully appreciate Lebovitz’s Tangerine Sorbet. But do keep it in mind — with an incredible purity of flavor, it’s one of our all-time favorite winter desserts.

Nectarine Sorbet from ‘The Perfect Scoop’

Nectarine Sorbet from ‘The Perfect Scoop’

You’ve Gotta Try This: In Southwest France, where I’ve spent a lot of time over the last three decades, my French in-laws have a delightful custom of slicing a ripe peach into their red wine glasses at the end of dinner. The peaches get macerated, turning them into a glorious, light dessert, so fab with the red wine. A few years ago, I tried to develop a peach ice cream recipe that would replicate those flavors, but never succeeded. Lo and behold Lebovitz’s recipe for Nectarine Sorbet, which he suggests scooping into wine glasses and letting everyone pour in red wine to their taste. Dare I say it’s even better than the real thing!? The sorbet on its own is pretty magnificent — and easy to make, especially as nectarines don’t require peeling.

Nectarine Sorbet is marvelous in a glass of red wine.

Nectarine Sorbet is marvelous in a glass of red wine.

Still Wanna Make: Oh, man — where do I start?! Chartreuse Ice Cream is high on the list (will do that soon!), and so are Toasted Almond & Candied Cherry; Aztec Chocolate; Toasted Coconut; Dried-Apricot-Pistachio; and Prune-Armagnac (all ice creams). Among the dairy-free recipes, I feel a batch of Pineapple Sorbet coming on soon. And doesn’t Cucumber-Gin Sorbet sound like fun?

I’m guessing you’re half-way out of your seat and ready to churn; make sure your ice-cream-maker insert is in the freezer.

If You Don’t Yet Have an Ice-cream Maker: Do spring for one — it’s well worth it if you love ice creams and sorbets as much as we do. Our 15+ year-old Cuisinart finally died a month ago, and I bought a new one with a larger capacity — the Cuisinart ICE-70. It’s not inexpensive, at about $139 (at the moment), but I appreciate that it can churn up to 1 1/2 quarts of ice cream. (Note that it is not the 2 quarts its specs suggest; a full review is coming soon!) The New York Times Wirecutter highly recommends the much less pricey Cuisinart ICE-21 (my purchase was also based on a positive Wirecutter review, among others), but at three-quarters capacity, I believe that would cause overflow problems with many recipes, including some of Lebovitz’s.

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Recipe for Today: Asparagus, all dressed up!

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AsparagusGribiche.jpg

By Leslie Brenner

We have a new feature at Cooks Without Borders: our Recipe for Today. Every morning, the green announcement bar at the top of all our pages offers a link to something that sounds delicious to us that day: Recipe for Today!

It’ll be right for the season, holiday-appropriate if something’s going on, and keyed to whether it’s a weekday or weekend.

As often as we can manage, we’ll also feature it in a quickie story, like this one.

Asparagus with a new-wave gribiche is one of our favorite ways to celebrate spring. It’s great for a weekend brunch, a picnic in the park, a dinner with friends, a potluck or even a festive celebration. The New Wave Gribiche in our recipe is inspired by L.A. chef (Gjelina, Gjusta) Travis Lett’s modern take on classic French sauce gribiche, made with eggs, capers, cornichons, herbs, shallots and other good things.

Enjoy your Recipe for Today!

If you enjoy Recipe for Today, please share it on your social channels or email it to a friend who will like it. Thank you!

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Family gift from the Great Confinement: the perfect, easy roast chicken

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Perfect easy roast chicken with crispy, brown skin. Our recipe requires no basting, no flipping and no advance preparation.

Perfect easy roast chicken with crispy, brown skin. Our recipe requires no basting, no flipping and no advance preparation.

By Leslie Brenner

Yesterday was bittersweet. Wylie, my 24 year-old son and partner-in-cooking during The Great Confinement, finished packing up his silver Honda Fit, took one last look around to see what he left behind (inoperable culinary blowtorch, heavy suede jacket, melancholy parents) and — with his girlfriend Nathalie in the passenger seat — hit the road for California.

It’s a scene that’s been happening all across the country during recent weeks, apparently, as life begins to return to normal. Whatever that was.

The reasons for the bitter part of bittersweet are obvious. The sweet part is my feeling of gratefulness for the time we all had together — Wylie was with us during the entire pandemic.

I can’t exactly say that while Wylie was here I taught him to cook. That started long ago. He asked for a crepe pan for his birthday when he was, I think, seven. He spent the last year of his time in college in Los Angeles wowing his housemates with Santa Maria barbecues or giant pans of baked ziti.

But when he rejoined us a year and a half ago to regroup post-college and embark on a job search, he still had a lot to learn — as we all do. I’m pretty sure that’s when I taught him how to deglaze a pan, though he’ll probably dispute that. I definitely taught him to make corn tortillas and miso soup, soufflés and Chinese dumplings.

What I can say is that while he was here, Wylie grew up culinarily. Cooking nearly every meal during the year of confinement allowed both of us to fully immerse ourselves in the kitchen.

Cherries.jpg

Of course for me there was (and always will be) plenty to learn as well. We both learned from cookbooks, videos and websites, along with conversations with cooks — Monish Gujral in India, who taught us about murgh makhani (butter chicken, which his grandfather invented); An-My Lê in New York, my brilliant photographer-friend and home cook who taught us about bánh xèo (sizzling crepes) and pho ga; Yuyee Sakpanichkul here in Dallas, the chef-owner of Ka-Tip, who talked me through the way to build a Thai curry.

What surprised me most in all this was how much I learned from Wylie. He’s a quick study, and when he wanted to master a dish, he dove headlong into it — watching chef videos, reading websites (always seeing what Kenji had to say at Serious Eats), consulting cookbooks. Most of what he wanted to learn was French (Thomas Keller became one of his faves) or meat-centric. (Kenji, in case your internet has been out for the last few years, is J. Kenji López-Alt; his fans call him Kenji.) Yet Wylie is seldom satisfied that his teachers have shown him the best way. He absorbs their wisdom, and then pushes forward, questioning assumptions, making improvements. (I suppose the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree; that constant tweaking and evolution is the animating ethos of Cooks Without Borders.) 

One of the most useful things I learned from Wylie is his take on roast chicken. I had taught him everything I know on the subject, beginning with the late Judy Rodgers’ method of salting the bird a day or two before you want to roast, air-drying the skin, then tucking fresh herbs between skin and flesh and roasting simply in a skillet in a very hot oven. No need to baste, but you flip it twice. The result is an exquisite bird with wonderfully crisp skin. He tried that, tried Thomas’ Keller’s wet-brine method, which he was sure would be better (it wasn’t), tried CWB’s viral rendition of Lucky Peach’s lacquered roast chicken (impressed, but he tweaked the glaze). He tried other versions, too. We invested in a stove-top rotisserie, which makes a fabulous and very easy bird, but fixing the chicken on the rotisserie axle is a bit of a headache, and the thing can only accommodate birds smaller than three pounds, which aren’t easy to find.

After a year or so of experimenting, Wylie had settled into his preferred method. He feels salting ahead of time is best, but more often than not, when we want a roast chicken, we want it right now. One day, I suggested trying to pick up a supermarket roast chicken, something Wylie’s father and I used to do all the time when I was working at an office, and Wylie scoffed. “It’s just as easy to roast our own,” he said, “and so much better.”

Wylie’s solution to lack of time to salt and air-dry is hilarious: He pats the bird dry, sets it on a rack on a sheet pan and puts the pan on the floor with a small Vornado fan pointed at it for a half hour or so. Very effective! Then he finely chops a lot of thyme, distributes it between skin and flesh (sometimes suspended in butter), seasons inside and out, puts a whole lemon in the cavity and roasts — very simply. He uses Judy Rodgers’ basic method, heating a dry skillet on the stove, then setting the bird on it breast-up (at which point it makes a terrible loud farting sound!), and immediately putting it in a very hot oven.

Raw chicken.JPG

Unlike Rodgers, however, Wylie doesn’t flip the bird. Rodgers’ method calls for turning it breast-down after 20 minutes, then flipping it back breast-up for the last five or ten to crisp the skin back up. Wylie doesn’t believe that there’s much (if anything) to gain with the flip, and certainly not worth the risk of the breast skin tearing in the process. He wants that perfect, crisp, browned skin.

After having eaten an adulthood’s worth of Judy birds and a year’s worth of Wylie birds, I daresay he’s right.

Last night, hours after he and Nathalie drove off, I needed roast chicken. Had Wylie been here, he would have insisted on roasting the chicken himself. Instead, I channeled him, with edits. 

As I started putting it together, I realized that I finally had something I’d long been seeking: the best streamlined way to roast a chicken with minimum effort and maximum impact.

The Perfect Easy Roast Chicken, resting after its 50-minute, no-basting, no flipping stay in the oven

The Perfect Easy Roast Chicken, resting after its 50-minute, no-basting, no flipping stay in the oven

Busy all day, I hadn’t thought of taking the bird from the fridge and letting it come to room temp. No matter. I rinsed it and patted it dry, tucked some thyme under its skin and salted it inside and out. Pepper on the outside, too. I tied its ankles together, heated a skillet, plopped down that bird, and shoved it in the oven, set at 450. Our ridiculous smoke alarm went off three times (though the kitchen was not smoky), making us curse and miss Wylie. I pulled out the chicken and took its temperature in the thickest part of the thigh, which the experts always tell you to do: 190 degrees — overdone!  How was that possible after just 40 minutes?

And then a lightbulb went off, and I finally understood that the thickest-part-of-the-thigh dictum is wrong. How many times have we pulled out the bird when thickest part registered more than 165, let it rest, carved it, and found that next to the bone, it was underdone.

So instead I inserted the thermometer next to the drumstick bone: 145. Not done. Back in went the chicken for another 10 minutes, I took the temp in the same place, and got 165.

Out came the chicken to rest — resplendent in its golden-brown skin. I made a little pan-sauce, having minced a shallot finely enough to meet Wylie’s exacting standards. (I used to be sloppier.)

I carved the bird, missing Wylie’s sharp carving knife. (He built an impressive knife collection while here.) We dined, Thierry sipping a glass of rosé, me sipping fizzy water, having reclaimed our two old accustomed places at the table for dining à deux. We toasted Wylie and Nathalie — and the adventure they’d driven off into.

And the chicken? It was perfect.

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Beautiful, light, and herbal: This easy-to-customize vegan soup gracefully celebrates spring

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Cooks Without Borders’ Spring Vegan Soup

By Leslie Brenner

A couple weeks ago — shortly after spring had sprung — a recipe in the Washington Post captured my fancy. Its lede photo depicted a brothy bowl with peas and spinach, leeks and dill in varying shades of green, set off gorgeously with pink-skinned, white-fleshed potatoes. The story’s author and the recipe’s creator, Ellie Krieger, offered it up as “Proof spring is soup season, too.”

Had to have it! I made the soup that very evening, and absolutely loved it. No question I’ll make it again and again.

Still, in my mind’s test kitchen, I couldn’t help but riff. Wouldn’t it be lovely with some asparagus tips? English or snap peas still clinging to their pods? Fresh favas or field peas, if I happened upon them? Wouldn’t turnips be just as nice as potatoes — or even nicer, if it’s optimal healthy one is after, or if you could find those beautiful tiny Tokyo turnips? Sure, I’d lose that pretty pink flourish, but I could add slices of slender springtime carrots instead.

And hey, couldn’t this soup be made vegan — if I created a broth out of the castaway tops of leeks I’m forever gathering in the crisper (the WaPo recipe added to my stash), would that have sufficient flavor?

Well, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes! The very next night, that riffing went live — and the result was grand.

I call it Vegan Spring Beaty Soup partly because it’s beautiful to look at, and partly because of its healthful purity: I imagine that the more frequently you eat it, the more beautiful you become.

Even after I created our vegan version, the test kitchen lobe of my brain continued to riff. You could use just about any kind of soft herbs: chervil, tarragon, cilantro, mint. If the vegan part’s not important to you, you could swap dashi for leek broth, and maybe add a dash of white soy sauce, and lots of sliced scallions in place of the herbs.

Of course, if you want to keep it super-easy, you can use the store-bought chicken broth, as Krieger’s recipe does — do that, and it comes together in 25 minutes or less.

Ain’t that beautiful?