How to be French: First get your hands on some duck legs

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Have you ever wanted to be French? It's not that hard. Here's how to do it without breaking a sweat.

First get your hands on some duck legs, maybe six of them, or eight. Finding them is not as challenging as it used to be. 

Open a jar of Dijon mustard. Salt and pepper the duck legs and rub them with herbes de Provence. Now slather some of the mustard all over them. Sprinkle them liberally with panko, then drizzle a little melted butter over them. Slide the duck legs into a slow oven and forget about them for an hour and a half. Take them out.

Et voilà. Now you are French. I don't even need to tell you to grab a glass of red wine, as you are already French. 

If you're feeling contrary (hey – you must be French!) you can leave out the herbes de Provence. 

It was my friend Regina Schrambling who created this dish. Regina credits the great cookbook author Madeleine Kamman, citing a Kamman recipe for Dijon-rubbed duck legs sans herbes de Provence, and with standard bread crumbs instead of panko. But I love Regina's Reginafication of it; the herbes de Provence definitely add that certain je ne sais quoi. 

It's a great dish for entertaining, as it requires minimal effort yet delivers fabulous flavor and marvelous crunch. Plus you shove it in the oven and forget it, so it's absolutely stress-free. 

Because you're French, if it's a proper dinner you're scheming, you'll start with asparagus vinaigrette or leeks vinaigrette or an artichoke vinaigrette.

Or begin with céleri remoulade or a little frisée salad with walnuts and Roquefort, and serve some butter-braised asparagus avec. Just use this recipe and substitute frisée for the escarole. You could roast some potatoes in duck fat, if you had it – which you will after you make the duck legs, so next time. Haricots verts blanched then finished in butter are very French too, and here's a bonus: You could serve any old green beans and call them haricots verts. 

If you want to blow your friends' minds and be super-French, serve a salad after the duck legs, then some cheese, then some fruit. 

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Or make a lemon-raspberry tart, and call it a day.

Bonne nuit.

Bring on the eggs, hold the carbs: Introducing the best Caesar salad ever

I make a lot of Caesar salads, always have. I love them for their crunch, for their garlicky-anchovy-Parmesan wonderfulness. 

Wylie has loved them since he was a wee toddler, and I converted many of his childhood friends to salad eaters by persuading them to taste my Caesar. Not that it was so special – it was really a minimalist one. I never felt croutons were worth the effort or calories (unless my brother Johnny makes them; then they're totally and one hundred percent worth it!). So I do without croutons. And for eons, I've done without the traditional coddled egg – just because Caesar was my quick go-to starter, and who wanted to coddle an egg? 

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But lately I've been thinking my Caesar could use an upgrade. No, not grilled chicken. (Horrors!) And I've never met a Caesar made with white anchovies I'd loved, so I'd stick with the salt-cured ones. In fact, very few futzed-with Caesars I've tasted have bettered a traditional one. 

Still, I kept thinking I could improve it. 

Got it! I'd bring back the egg, but instead of having one coddled egg that got so thoroughly mixed in no one would notice it, I'd use two gorgeously coddled eggs that you would very much notice, sort of broken into pieces so you could see and taste a just-starting to set golden gelatinous yolk here, a bit of white there. And I though a bit of lemon zest – an interloper, as it wasn't in the original Caesar recipe – would sing with the freshly grated Parmesan. 

I tossed it up, breaking up the egg but not completely. Garnished it with extra parm and lemon zest, a few extra grindings of fresh black pepper. Oh, baby – it turned out pretty great.

You might say it's not legit, as it does without the croutons. You can add some if you like. But in my world, the less white bread, the better, and I don't miss it. OK, here goes. I'm saying it officially here: This is my new Caesar. Try it! And tell us how you like it.