Dorie Greenspan knocks it out of the kitchen with books about baking and French cooking

By Leslie Brenner

Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.

[NOTE: This story was updated Feb. 16, 2022.]

Cookbook author Dorie Greenspan / Photograph by Heather Ramsdell/Food Network

It seems fitting to lead off our series with an appreciation of the woman who launched my own food-writing career: Dorie Greenspan. In the early 1990s, Dorie was the editor of a stapled-together newsletter from a cooking organization that had only been created a few years earlier: The James Beard Foundation. Dorie gave me the opportunity to write for that flier, called “News from the Beard House.”

Dorie was a wonderful editor to work with back in the day; in the decades that followed, she has proven again and again that she’s a splendid story-teller, and a great cook. Her recipes work beautifully, and they’re always delicious.

Dorie’s cookbooks include (among others):

• Around My French Table

• Baking with Dorie

• Baking Chez Moi

• Baking: From My Home to Yours

• Dorie’s Cookies

• Everyday Dorie

Around My French Table is one of my favorite French cookbooks — as is Café Boulud Cookbook, which Dorie co-wrote with chef Daniel Boulud.

An apple-Calvados cake adapted from a recipe in ‘Around My French Table’

A couple weeks ago, I thought about an apple cake I love in Around my French Table, swapped the rum in the recipe for Calvados, and we were all sweetly rewarded.

Made in a flash, intensely chocolatey and ludicrously easy, molten chocolate cake deserves a comeback

By Leslie Brenner

There was a time when chocolate molten cakes were so ubiquitous that they became a runny joke — especially because the more it went, the less they were cooked. In went your spoon, and liquid eggy chocolate spilled out all over the plate. Ick.

Over the years, we’ve been subjected to so many mediocre versions of the dessert that we forgot how appealing they were way back when, as they poofed — pillow-like and fabulous — onto the scene. They were like small chocolate dreams — something between a soufflé and a mini-flourless chocolate cake, but preternaturally light, and intensely chocolatey. The middles were molten, but not liquid, just a bit oozy and soft. They were a way to show off great chocolate.

That was back in 1991, in New York City. I was a fledgling food writer there, molten chocolate cakes were everywhere, and they were wonderful.

I remember eating one at JoJo, Jean-George Vongerichten’s restaurant (his first), where he called it Chocolate Valrhona Cake. They’d been invented sometime before that, either by Vongerichten himself or by star pastry Jacques Torres, or maybe by someone in France, depending on whom you talked to. Vongerichten had served them a few years earlier, when he was chef at a restaurant called Lafayette, in the Drake Hotel, but apparently they were too early for their time. (I was still a starving grad student when Vongerichten was at the Drake, so I never made it there.)

In any case, as a society, in the intervening decades, we OD’d on them.

Now, at a time when we need small, easily achieved pleasures, it feels like a great time to rediscover them. A molten chocolate cake may be the biggest dessert bang you can in under a half hour, start to finish, and it’s ludicrously easy. All you need to have on hand is two good chocolate bars, four eggs, a stick of butter, a quarter cup of sugar, a pinch of salt and a couple spoonfuls of flour. If you want to impress a date, a spouse, a friend, a child — or anyone else in your orbit — you can whip this together in a flash and make quite a splash.

I thought about them the other night when my pod clamored after dinner for dessert, something rare and special in our small world. What could Wylie (our 24 year-old son) and his girlfriend Nathalie conjure quickly? I thought about this recipe, verified that we owned two bars of chocolate, and we found a perfect recipe penned by Vongricheten, published in Food & Wine magazine, 22 years ago.

Five seconds later, there Nathalie and Wylie were in the kitchen, melting the chocolate with butter, whipping eggs with egg yolks, folding in the melted chocolate and butter with a spoonful of flour and a pinch of salt, turning the batter into soufflé molds and baking. The cakes spend just 12 minutes in the oven. Maybe leave them in one extra minute, so they’re glossy and molten in the center, but no longer liquid. Pull ‘em out, let ‘em sit for one minute, and unmold.

Anyone can do this. And any of us — event the most well traveled and sophisticated — might well be dazzled all over again.

Happy Valentine’s Day! ❤️

RECIPE: Molten Chocolate Cake

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A chocolate mousse for every mood: This classic, easy-to-make French dessert is yours to customize

The first time I had chocolate mousse was when I was five or six years old and my dad took me out to lunch — just the two of us — at a fancy French restaurant. I don’t know what the restaurant was called, but it was on the same plot of land in Los Angeles where Eataly now stands, in Century City. The restaurant was cozy, dark, and — to my five-year-old mind — terribly elegant. I wore white gloves.

I don’t remember most of what we ate, only that I couldn’t wait for dessert. We were going to have a chocolate moose, my dad told me. How fantastic — a chocolate moose! An edible Bullwinkle!

And then it landed, and it was something much better than a moose: It was a Champagne coupe filled with something chocolate, crowned with a dollop of whipped cream and topped with a candied violet.

A sugar-coated tiny purple flower you could eat! This was the best thing ever. And that mousse! In that Champagne glass! I still remember the sensation, the flavor, the mouthfeel: It was like eating a rich, chocolate cloud. Heaven.

Recently, my extreme bouts of culinary adventurism have been punctuated with longings for nostalgic French foods. Onion soup. Quiche. Chocolate mousse.

Anyone can make chocolate mousse, but you do need the right recipe. I like a classic one, which is basically melted chocolate with egg yolks mixed in, folded gently into egg whites. Chill it for three hours, and dessert is yours.

The nice thing is you can dress it up or dress it down for any mood. Spoon it into Champagne coupes if you’re feeling fancy, or jelly jars if the vibe you want is chill. Some people like to leave it in a big bowl and serve it from that, or just give everyone a spoon. You could use pretty tea cups, or ramekins or custard cups — whatever you have.

Make the mousse as sweet or dark chocolatey as you like. We’ve based our recipe on two 3.5 ounce bars of chocolate; choose the one you most love to eat. If you’re a 70 or 72% cacao person, use that. If you like sweeter (60%) or darker, adjust accordingly. My chocolate of choice is 85%. That might be a little un-desserty for dessert, so I use one 72% bar and one 85% bar: That’s perfect for me.

You can really get creative in that melting bowl of chocolate. I like to add orange liqueur, such as Grand Marnier. David Lebovitz, whose chocolate mousse proportions informed our recipe, favors Chartreuse. Julia Child called for strong brewed coffee as well as orange liqueur (which she whipped into the egg whites). Cognac could be nice, or Turkish coffee kissed with cardamom. You can use vanilla or almond extract, or even peppermint (just a touch).

Serve it naked for the full-on, chocolate-forward mousse experience, or top it with whipped cream, lightly sweetened or not, depending on how sweet you went with the mousse.

And then the (totally optional) final flourish, geared to your audience or expressive of your mood. Multi-colored or chocolate sprinkles! Slivered candied orange peel or cacao nibs! Dried rose petals! A candied violet!

If you love this recipe as much as I do, you’ll want to keep a couple of extra chocolate bars on hand for whenever you might want to conjure something special with very little effort. As long as you have four eggs, you’ll be good to go.

RECIPE: Your Favorite Chocolate Mousse

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Need a perfect, easy holiday side dish? Try my family's longtime favorite roasted potatoes

If you’re anything like me, you’re likely to forget something as you plan your special holiday meals, or leave one thing to the last minute to strategize.

If for you that means spuds (during this weirdest-ever pre-holiday moment!), we’ve got just the thing: my family’s roasted potatoes.

The dish couldn’t be simpler, really, and it’s not much of a recipe. Think of it as a method. I usually use Yukon Golds or similar potatoes, but I’ve also used red ones. Most often I use medium-size Yukon Golds.

Here’s what you do: Peel and quarter the the potatoes lengthwise, drop them in a baking dish with a yellow onion peeled and cut into eighths. Drizzle with a couple of glugs of olive oil, liberate the leaves from four or five thyme branches, sprinkle liberally with salt and freshly ground pepper. Pop the dish in a hot oven, stirring once or twice with a wooded spoon to make sure they don’t stick, and roast for 45 to 55 minutes, until they’re crispy-edged and golden brown. Swap in other herbs, such as rosemary or oregano, if you don’t feel like thyme, add garlic cloves if you like, or swap the onions for shallots.

That’s it. I usually keep a big jar of grey sea salt from France in the pantry; I love using it with potatoes done this way. (But any salt will do.)

The potatoes are great with all kinds of rich holiday foods — prime rib, tenderloin and other roast beefs, turkey, ham, duck, goose and so on.

Best of all, they’re easy.

Oh, if you’re wondering about the platter they’re sitting on, it was an early work by my friend the ceramist Christopher Russell. He has since become a big deal artist who shows in galleries and whose work is highly sought-after. (I’m a huger fan than ever; check out his website.)

Back to those potatoes. They’re not just handy for holidays; they’re also brilliant with roast chicken or leg of lamb. Here you go:

RECIPE: The Brenner Family’s Roasted Potatoes

Happy holidays from Cooks Without Borders to you and yours!

What to make this weekend: world-class Beef Bourguignon. You and your family deserve it!

When the weather starts to cool down, there’s nothing as appealing as a living space filled with gorgeous cooking aromas — the kind that come most easily from long-braised dishes. And if you are an omnivore, it’s hard to imagine anything more alluring than the aroma of beef bourguignon, France’s classic stew, simmering in the oven.

In normal times, I think of the dish as something celebratory, or as a dish to enjoy with great friends on a weekend evening with a good bottle of wine.

But during The Great Confinement, we need ways to make family dinners feel special — and now that there’s a nip in the air, this classic fits the bill sumptuously. As Julia Child wrote in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, “Carefully done, and perfectly flavored, it is certainly one of the most delicious beef dishes concocted by man.”

Though you see it done many different ways in the United States, in France the dish is straightforward: It’s cubes of saucy wine-braised beef garnished with mushrooms, pearl onions and lardons (small bars of bacon). Though carrots and celery add significant flavor in the braising, they get strained out before giving the dish its finishing touch: that garnish.

There are no potatoes in the dish (ever), though beef bourguignon is usually served with potatoes — boiled is traditional (toss them with butter and parsley), though many (including some French people) prefer mashed. Buttered noodles are a legit choice as well, according to Child, though my French husband disagrees.

Don’t be in a rush when you make this; once the meat is brown and the thing is assembled, it braises for about an hour and 45 minutes. But as long as time is on your side, it’s not nearly as demanding to put together as you might think.

“Carefully done, and perfectly flavored, it is certainly one of the most delicious beef dishes concocted by man.” — Julia Child

I used to think the peskiest part was browning the cubes of beef: It takes forever to brown them on each side. But inspired by a 2016 story by Serious Eats’ Daniel Gritzer, I started playing with the browning, and agree wholeheartedly with him that in fact it’s best not to do so much browning. My solution is a little different than his: Brown each cube well on one side, then give another side just a quick sear. Compared to the old way, it goes very quickly, and the result is much more tender.

Since publishing our story about it a few years ago, I’ve discovered another time-saving innovation: Rather than blanching and peeling a pound of pearl onions, pick up a pack of frozen ones, which will be already peeled. There might be a teeny, tiny deficit of flavor in the onions themselves, but honestly, it’s barely discernible, and worth it if you want to save a little time and effort. (I can usually find them at my local Trader Joe’s.)

It’s not hard to find the main ingredients: beef chuck, button mushrooms, slab bacon (thick-cut will do in a pinch), pearl onions, red wine, beef shanks. If you don’t find shanks, just buy extra chuck.

Don’t spend much on the wine; use an under-$12 bottle. (Save your wine dollars for whatever you’ll drink with it.) Enjoy the aromas while it cooks, enjoy the dish with your family — and raise a glass to the day we can gather safely with friends once again. I’ll bet you’ll like this dish so much you’ll repeat it for them.

RECIPE: Beef Bourguignon

Deviled Duck Legs Provençal: a rich, herbal, piquant and crunchy example of how recipes evolve

Recipe provenance is a hot topic among food writers at the moment, as efforts to avoid cultural appropriation and give creators their proper due is top-of-mind. In his “What to Cook” column last week, New York Times food editor Sam Sifton announced changes to the way that important publication will be acknowledging provenance in its recipes henceforth. 

We applaud the Times’ new focus on transparency. Here at Cooks Without Borders, we’ve always tried to be mindful of crediting creators whose recipes we’ve adapted. And now, as we are in the process of adding recipe cards to each of our recipes (yaaas!), we have been simultaneously taking stock of our own acknowledgement of provenance — fine-toothing our recipe archives to shine the spotlight a bit brighter on recipes’ originators. 

Sometimes it even results in a name-change for a dish, usually one we’ve adapted from a cookbook. Raw Zucchini Salad with Green Olives, Mint and Pecorino, for instance, is now A16’s Raw Zucchini Salad with Green Olives, Mint and Pecorino. Although we had previously acknowledged Nate Appleman and Shelly Lindgren and their 2008 cookbook, A16 Food + Wine, as the source of the recipe, we thought it would be even better to commemorate the provenance directly in the dish’s name. 

Still . . . the whole issue of who actually creates recipes is often much more complicated than who wrote them down and got them published in a book, or served them in a restaurant. The truth is that dishes generally evolve over time — getting tweaked, changed, added to, zhuzzhed and riffed on by cooks around the world, in the course of years and decades and centuries. Occasionally a brand-new dish springs fully realized from the head of a creator, but that’s the exception rather than the rule. 

Deviled Duck Leg Provençal served with saucy braised lentils

So, if we adapt a recipe for, say, moussaka from a cookbook author who learned that recipe from a home cook in Greece, how should we handle that? It’s not as simple as it might seem. Certainly we credit the cookbook author in the headnote, but probably not in the name of the recipe. It’s totally a judgement call, and we try to err on the side of too much credit rather than too little. That said, it’s the home cook back in Greece who gets the short end of the wooden spoon, which is not ideal. 

Now and then, we’re able to trace the evolution of a dish — at least somewhat — and I always find it uncommonly satisfying.

Deviled Duck Legs Provençal is a case in point. I was introduced to it by a Los Angeles Times story by Regina Schrambling back in 2003, shortly before I joined the staff of the Times. In the story, Schrambling explained that she found the basis for the dish — duck legs rubbed with Dijon mustard and coated with bread crumbs — in Madeleine Kamman’s book In Madeleine’s Kitchen. Shrambling’s own touches were adding herbes de Provence and swapping panko for regular bread crumbs. 

Now that that’s straight, consider the dish itself: slow-baked duck legs, rich and meaty, with a bright tang of Dijon, lovely herbal notes and the delightful crunch of panko. For something so easy to achieve, it’s pretty damn fabulous. 

Serve it on undressed spring mix, as Shrambling suggested lo those many years ago, or on arugula or frisée, and let the salad sop up the duck’s juices.

Or go the lentil route, and simmer up a saucy batch of French green lentils braised in red wine with mirepoix. We haven’t put together an actual recipe for those lentils yet, but they’re a snap to make. Cut a carrot, a stalk of celery and about an equal amount of onion or shallot into small dice, sweat those in a little olive oil with a branch or two of thyme, add French green lentils, coat them with the mirepoix mixture and let them cook a minute. Add some red wine to cover, bring to a boil, let the alcohol cook off, then lower the heat and simmer till the lentils are just tender, about 20 or 25 minutes depending on the lentils, stirring now and then. Add more wine as necessary to keep the lentils happy (you can also add water or chicken broth if you prefer). Keep it a little wet and saucy at the end: You’ll want that winey sauce.

Want to make it even more luxurious? Whisk in a little butter at the end.

Aw, go on — you deserve it.

RECIPE: Deviled Duck Legs Provençal

Cookbooks We Love: Camille Fourmont’s ‘La Buvette’ lets you live (and eat!) the vibe of Paris' 11th

La Buvette: Recipes & Wine Notes from Paris, by Camille Fourmont and Kate Leahy, 2020, Ten Speed Press, $24.99

Backgrounder: Camille Fourmont opened her cave à manger (wine bar with snacks), La Buvette, in 2013 in a dull stretch of what was rapidly becoming a hot Paris neighborhood, the 11th arrondissement. It was an instant hit: called “hyper-fashionable” by the New York Times and named Wine Bar of the Year in 2014 by Le Fooding. A buvette is a refreshment stand, and La Buvette is tiny; Le Fooding calls it “about the size of a sardine tin.” It’s a good metaphor, as there’s no kitchen — just a fridge, a wooden cutting board and a portable burner. What Fourmont serves (she’s cook, sommelier, bartender, etc.) is smart little bites put together from great ingredients, including some that come from cans, like her famous gros haricots blancs au zeste de citron — gigante beans with lemon zest.

Why we love it: La Buvette is a modest book of small ambition, great charm and a sweet foreword by co-author Kate Leahy. Fourmont, who describes herself as an “untrained cook,” shares stories that make you feel part of the intimate little scene and recipes that come from what’s obviously her great palate. Most of them are perfect for “apéro” — France’s version of happy hour, which involves an apéritif or glass of wine and a little bite to go with it. Many are super easy to put together, really more ideas than recipes — like those beans, which “people come from all over the planet to eat,” as her headnote explains.

La Buvette’s ‘Famous’ Gros Haricots Blancs au Zeste de Citron made using dried gigante beans in the Cooks Without Borders kitchen.

The dish was born early on when Fourmont opened a can of giant white judión beans imported from Spain and seasoned them with olive oil, Maldon salt and bergamot zest. “The key to this very simple dish,” she writes, “is the fresh citrus grated on top, which brightens the flavor of the beans.” She changes citrus according to the season, “from bergamot to mandarin to lemon or citron,” and sometimes decorates the beans with a few edible flowers, such as chive or garlic blossoms.

It’s not so easy to find plain canned giant white beans stateside (most I find are swimming in tomato sauce), but if you can put your hands on dried gigantes, you can cook them up. Then, following Fourmont’s instructions, put them on a plate, drizzle them with your best olive oil “until the beans look shiny, add a good pinch of salt and grate zest directly over the top to finsh.” That is literally it for the recipe. I have made gigante beans a bunch of different ways, and as simple as this one is, it is my hands-down favorite.

Besides the dishes she serves at La Buvette — which include pickles, flavored butters, things to do with cheese and some simple charcuterie — there are also “Anytime Recipes” Fourmont puts together at home. They’re the kind of “imprecise recipes that allow freedom to add more of a favorite ingredient or to be flexible with what you do have on hand.” In other words, perfect for cooking from a pandemic pantry. There are things to do with sardines (serve them with flavored butter and halved seared-till-caramelized lemons), unusual salads (like green bean, white peach and fresh almond), a “really buttery” simplified croque monsieur and an anchovy, egg yolk and hazelnut pasta that’s a riff on carbonara. We haven’t made these yet, but have our eye on that croque monsieur.

You’ve gotta try this: Another chapter, “Le Goûter,” offers treats for afternoon snack, which in France usually means something sweet. It’s here we found Fourmont’s recipe for Rose, Cumin and Apricot Sablés. Tender, buttery and savory from the cumin — with a lovely sandy texture and a beautiful whisper of dried rose petal (sounds like a wine description!) — they’re one of the best cookies ever to come out of our kitchen.

Rose, Cumin and Apricot Sablés from Camille Fourmont’s ‘La Buvette’ cookbook

From the “At La Buvette” chapter, we got a kick out of making cured magret — duck breasts — which is so much easier and quicker than you’d think. Besides the duck breasts, only salt and pepper are involved, and they’re ready in two or three weeks. Just bury the breasts in salt, leave in fridge 12 hours, wipe them off, add pepper, loosely wrap them in a kitchen towel and let them cure tucked away in the fridge till firm and dry to the touch. Slice and serve: The result is pretty stunning.

Slices of Cured Magret

I couldn’t resist trying a “classic chocolate mousse,” which Fourmont and Leahy adapted from Trish Desein’s Je Veux du Chocolat! It was very good and easy to achieve, but much denser than what I think of as a classic mousse. In fact it was so dense and rich none of the three of us could eat more than half a serving — which felt like a miracle, considering we enjoyed it so.

I was torn about whether to offer the recipe, as it’s so dense and intense (definitely for serious chocolate lovers), and in the end decided to skip it. We’d happily reconsider, though, if there is interest — do let us know.

Still wanna cook: Rillettes! Our favorite sandwiches in France, filled with the potted pork spread known as rillettes, and accented with cornichons, have become harder and harder to find there in the last 10 years. (According to Fourmont’s headnote butchers at Rungis, the wholesale market outside of Paris, pack into a cafe called Le Saint Hubert to eat sandwichs rillettes at 4 or 5 a.m.) Fourmont’s recipe, adapted from Terrines by Le Repaire de Cartouche’s Rodolphe Paquin, looks approachable and easy. If it’s as good as it looks, we’ll be slathering baguettes with it sooner rather than later.

RECIPE: Rose, Cumin and Apricot Sablés

RECIPE: Cured Magret

Dreaming of a Mexican beach vacation? This vibrant aguachile from Colima will (almost!) take you there

You might have to squint real hard to pretend your patio — or a picnic table at your city park — is in fact a beach in Mexico. But take a bite of this gorgeous, suave shrimp aguachile and it’s not hard to feel thousands of miles away.

In the last few years in the United States, aguachiles have eclipsed ceviches as the raw seafood treat grabbing attention; in Mexico, they’ve been popular much longer. Unlike ceviches, which involve a relatively long soak in lime juice for the raw seafood, aguachiles get just a very brief bath in serrano-spiked citrus (aguachile means water infused with chiles).

The dish was born in Mexico’s Sinaloa state, as an excellent story published last year in Eater explains. And though you find aguachiles in restaurants from Mexico City to Houston to New York City to Los Angeles using just about every type of seafood, including scallops, tuna, snapper and yellowtail, on Mexico’s west coast where they were born, they are all about shrimp. (Not from the start, though, as Michael Snyder’s Eater story explains.)

Chef de Cuisine Olivia Lopez’s aguachile at Billy Can Can in Dallas

It was an aguachile that helped revive me after two and half months of confinement, when Thierry, Wylie and I ventured out to a restaurant a few weeks ago. We dined on the patio at Billy Can Can, our favorite modern Texan dining saloon (which I helped open in 2018 when I worked for the company that owns it.)

The dish was gorgeous and bright; I loved the way the dabs of avocado purée played with the lime and chile, and the shrimp had beautiful texture and flavor — unlike the rubbery, eraser-like creatures that over-soaked ceviche shrimp often become.

I asked Olivia Lopez, the restaurant’s chef de cuisine who created the dish, to tell me about it. She got a dreamy look in her eye as she started talking about making aguachile back home in Tecomán, her hometown in the state of Colima — which is about 700 miles south of the part of Sinaloa where aguachile was born. Her friend Nayely would make it, and they’d take it to the beach, where they’d enjoy it, with toastadas, along with coconut water or beers.

Billy Can Can Chef de Cuisine Olivia Lopez | Photo courtesy of Billy Can Can

Colima is one of the most important lime-growing states in Mexico, she told me (the other is Michoacán), and on the road from their home in Tecomán to Playa El Real, “all you see are lime trees and palm trees. And a lot of lizards.”

For Billy Can Can’s aguachile, Lopez blanches the shrimp before their lime-serrano soak, as her customers don’t love the idea of raw shrimp, she says. To compensate for that and prevent over “cooking” from lime, she adds olive oil to the sauce.

We were thrilled when she generously offered to share her recipe with Cooks Without Borders. But could we have it the raw shrimp way, just as Lopez makes it for herself at home — the way her friend Nayely did in Tecomán? Lopez was happy to oblige.

Happily, it’s very easy to do. And it’s so spectacularly delicious that we will be making it frequently — as frequently as we dream of a beach vacation in Mexico, which is to say constantly.

In our version, raw, butterflied shrimp get a quick 10-minute dunk in lime juice with a little salt and a splash of Worcestershire sauce. (“Yes, they use that in Mexico!” Lopez says.) The marinating juice then gets puréed with serrano chiles, cilantro and avocado, and the beautiful, emerald-green sauce that results gets tumbled with the shrimp. Transfer it to a platter, dress it up with sliced cucumber, avocado and red onion, and Playa El Real is yours. You can find tostadas in a Latin-American supermarket, and probably young coconuts for coconut water as well.

One small detail: The aguachile is meant to be eaten immediately, so the shrimp doesn’t get overcooked in the lime. It did take Lopez and her friends a few minutes to get to the beach with it, but that’s OK, she says; you just want to be sure to eat it within an hour.

Honestly, once you behold that gorgeous dish you’ve made in your own kitchen, I don’t think you could wait that long.

RECIPE: Aguachile, Colima-Style

How to make the most of asparagus: Dress it up with a glamorous new-wave gribiche

If asparagus might be destined for your Easter or Passover table, I can’t think of a more spectacular way to serve it than dressing it with a new-wave gribiche. Based on the classic French gribiche, which is an herbal, shalloty mayonnaise, this fresher version was inspired by a 2015 cookbook from one of my favorite restaurants in L.A. In Gjelina: Cooking from Venice, California, chef Travis Lett dressed some gorgeous fat asparagus with a sort of deconstructed gribiche and grated bottarga. Fantastic.

A few nights ago it struck me that this kind of new-wave gribiche is not only a glorious way to feature asparagus, but also to honor the egg — as eggs have become so precious these days. The recipe calls for just two of them, really spotlighting their gorgeousness when cooked just three minutes.

It’s also a great way to spotlight beautiful soft herbs — dill, chives, chervil, parsley, tarragon (whatever you’ve got).

Want to know more about gribiche? We took a deep dive into it a few seasons back.

This new-wave take on it is also wonderful served with simple fish preps, boiled shrimp or roasted vegetables, or stirred into a bowl of boiled-then-sliced red potatoes. Find more ideas here.

Here’s the asparagus recipe.

Wishing you all a wonderful Passover or Easter. Stay safe and healthy, everyone.

Bastille Day cooking made easy: How to conjure a rustic, fabulous French summer feast

This year's Bastille Day feast starts with make-ahead smoked trout pâté, served with crackers and endive leaves.

Because I'm almost French (I've been married to a Frenchman for almost 22 years; one of these days I'll get around to applying for French citizenship), I love to celebrate Bastille Day. Going to a restaurant isn't usually what I feel like doing, partly because there aren't many good French restaurants in Dallas, where we live.

Referred to in France as le Quatorze Juillet, or la Fête Nationale, or la Fêt' Nat – never Bastille Day – the holiday rarely falls on a weekend, which creates a quandary: How to pull together something deliciously French after working all day?

This year, I think I found the answer: Make it rustic and easy, prepare a couple things the night before, invite friends over after work and light up the grill. 

Mikie's marinated olives can be made the night before.

Laid-back apps – like marinated olives, asparagus vinaigrette, a freeform savory tart, maybe a saucisson or some store-bought pâté with baguette toasts – are totally festive with glasses of rosé, chilled Lillet garnished with orange slices, or (my favorite!) Ricard. 

Or hey – why not pour a pet nat, since it rhymes with Fêt' Nat! What's a pet nat? It's short for pétillant naturel – the natural sparkling wines, often from France, that are hugely popular in wine circles these days. (If you're new to the natural wine phenom, here's an excellent article, co-authored by my friend Michalene, explaining it.) 

Flipping through award-winning cookbook author Georgeanne Brennan's beautiful new book, La Vie Rustic: Cooking & Living in the French Style, I found plenty of delicious-looking inspiration, starting with her super-easy recipe for smoked trout pâté. 

Honestly, it couldn't be easier: You just mash together smoked trout with crème fraîche, lemon zest, chopped tarragon and one or two other things, pack it in a crock and that's it. While you can make it just before serving (in no time flat), it's the perfect thing to mix up the previous evening and let chill in the fridge. Serve it with Belgian endive leaves and crackers or toasts. Brennan writes in her book that it also works well with smoked salmon – something I'll be trying soon (with dill or fennel leaves, probably!). 

Also inspired by Brennan's book, I've lately become addicted to grilled artichokes. But while Brennan serves them with a yogurt-and-mayo-based herb dip (which also looks really good), I've been pairing mine with garlicky aïoli, one of my favorite substances in the world. This summer I can't get enough of it.

The artichokes can be mostly prepared the night before, as well – boil them, trim out their chokes, stash them in the fridge and make the aïoli (which probably even gets better as it sits overnight; the garlic mellows). When you're ready to serve them, just brush the artichoke halves with a little olive oil and plop them on the grill – along with halved lemons as a squeezable garnish, if you like.

For a main course, you can keep it super simple: Throw some duck breasts or a butterflied leg of lamb on the grill. You can even pick up a roast chicken (very French!) or two at the supermarket; serve it with Dijon mustard and cornichons, and French side dishes. You can blanch some haricots verts, for instance, and toss them with a little red wine vinegar, your best olive oil and some minced shallots; finish with fleur de sel and lots of freshly ground black pepper. 

Or make a warm French lentil salad – which you can either toss together in less than a half hour and serve warm, or prepare the night before and serve room temp.

Here's the easy, forgiving recipe:

Or, you know what? You can even do without a main course altogether, and just serve a bunch of delicious nibbles – French wine-bar-style. 

For dessert, there are lots of possibilities. One of the easiest is also one of the most delicious: a berry and peach crisp. Put the almond topping together the night before, and it's very quick to put together and throw in the oven. Top it with whipped cream, or crème fraîche (you should have some left over from the smoked trout pâté), or a combo. Or serve it with vanilla ice cream. 

Otherwise, if you make pastry cream the night before, you can put together a quick and easy berry tart – with the colors of the French flag!

Here are those two recipes:

Alternatively, you could make a chocolate mousse or pôt de crème the night before (yikes - I need to create some chocolate French recipes for the site – will do that soon!) Or play hooky from work and make a gorgeous stone-fruit tart. Or make profiterôles – cream puffs filled with ice cream and drizzled with chocolate sauce. That's another easy recipe I'll put together soon.

You could also do what so many French people do – pick up something lovely at the bakery.

Or take a tip from my French relatives, and slice up a ripe peach into the glass of red wine you've been sipping. It can't get any easier – or more delicious – than that.

So, want more ideas? Take a spin through Cooks Without Borders' French page – updated recently with a bunch of new recipes. Sound good?

Happy Bastille Day! Vive la France!

From Paris' trendiest tables to yours: Whelks with basil aïoli are a snap to make

If you've been to Paris in the last few years (I just got back!), you know that bistronomie – laid-back bites in relaxed, new-style bistros – is Parisians' favorite way to dine these days. Expensive, elaborate menus dégustations (tasting menus) are pretty much for tourists and rich old fogies. OK, perhaps that's an exaggeration, but that's how it feels.

Thierry, Wylie and I dined bistronomie-style each of four nights when we visited Paris earlier this month, and twice we found bulots – the small sea snails English-speakers call whelks. They seem to be having a moment! I'd seen and eaten them occasionally in decades past on plateaux de fruits de mer – chilled seafood platters – where they'd sometimes be mingled with oysters and clams on the half-shell and steamed or boiled bigourneaux (periwinkles). 

"Bulots mayo," is how they were announced on the blackboard menu at Jeanne A – a terrific little bistro in the super-hot 11th arrondissement. I had to order them (6 euros) – for the three of us to share with our other starters. 

They came chilled in a coffee cup, accompanied by a little pot of good, house-made mayo. So much fun! A couple nights later, there they were again – listed under "zakouskis" at Le Servan, which offered them with mayonnaise au piment for 8 euros. (Le Servan, by the way, was wonderful – the best meal I had in Paris this trip, also in the 11th.) 

Ding ding ding ding ding! A lightbulb went off over my head: We can make bulots at home! Why? Because I know where to find them – and very inexpensively: at Jusco, an Asian supermarket with a fabulous seafood selection, in the Dallas suburb of Plano. In fact, I'd picked some up (about $6 per pound) to toss onto a seafood paella just a couple weeks before my France trip.  

As I researched bulots on my return, I learned a few things. First, that they're also called buccins, though I've never seen them called that on a menu. Second, that they're traditionally served in Provence with aîoli – the super-garlicky mayo whose name has been appropriated by American chefs who want to make gentler flavored mayos sound chic.  And third, that whelks is a term applied to several different types of sea snails, which explains why they don't always look quite the same – some are striped or ridged; others are spotted and smooth.

In any case, they couldn't be easier to cook. First, give 'em a 10-minute soak in cold water, so they release any sand, and rinse. Then boil them in heavily salted water for 20 minutes. That's it. I went a step further and tossed some sliced onion, thyme and bay leaves to the water as it came to a boil, and added a splash of white wine – a court bouillon on-the-fly. 

But first I whipped up some aîoli – a real one, with lots of garlic. It's easy to make in a blender. I flavored half of it with chopped basil. Or you could add chopped or puréed roasted red pepper. Or you could serve the bulots with mayo from a jar, dressed up with a squirt of harissa from a tube. But even plain mayo – home-made or store-bought would be swell.

With the aïoli – and glasses of chilled rosé – they were outstanding, a fabulous pre-dinner nibble, ideal for laid-back entertaining. Serve 'em warm, or chilled, or room temp – with toothpicks, which you need to coax the meat out of the shell. Delicious fun indeed. Want to try it? Here's the recipe:

Please let us know if you find them in your neck of the woods – and how you like 'em!

How to fool your friends into thinking you shelled 9,000 English peas

When spring rolls around – and even before – I start craving asparagus. And strawberries. And English peas. 

Unless you live near a farm, grow them in your garden or have access to a great farmers market – and depending on where in the world you live – finding sweet, tender English peas can be a real challenge. If you're lucky enough to find English peas at a supermarket, they're likely to be hard and woody, or if they're still small and tender, they'll likely have lost their sweetness. 

The solution? Frozen peas. That's right – they're actually really good, especially if you pick up the tiny ones sometimes called petits pois. I usually have a bag or two in my freezer – even in springtime, when we're all focused on what's fresh. 

And nowhere do they show better than in this wonderful soup, based on traditional French potage Saint Germain. 

It's the easiest thing in the world to whip up. Wilt a head of soft Boston or Bibb lettuce in butter. (Hey, this is like a salad within a soup!) Add a couple bags of frozen peas, stir and cook 10 minutes. Add water, and a few fresh mint leaves and simmer for 20 minutes. Whirr it up with a stick blender, et voilà. Garnish it with a dab of crème frâiche. Or not. That's it!!!

It's vegetarian. And it's a knockout. Serve it to your friends, swearing you shelled 9,000 English peas for their pleasure. 

Or tell the truth. And get ready to hand over the recipe.

Rich and soulful, classic beef bourguignon is the ultimate dinner party dish

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 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, as I did this Christmas Eve, 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.

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, Willan calls for boneless beef shank. Why not keep the bone to cook in the stew, I thought, as it (arguably) adds body and flavor? Better than throwing it away, right? I was glad I did.

I read with great interest Serious Eats' thorough story on how to make a great beef bourguignon, and pulled from it other great ideas. Author Daniel Gritzer writes about extensively testing using a marinade versus not, concluding that there's no point in marinating a long-braised dish such as this. I will gleefully accept his assays, as I've never noticed a difference in marinated verses non-marinated versions, and it's a pain to dry off the meat before browning it.

And here's something even more interesting Gritzer concludes: Browning bite-size cubes of beef dries out their surface too much. That's definitely something I've noticed over the years. His solution is to cut the meat into big slabs, and brown just two sides of the slabs, then cut up the meat. I took a different (and simplified) approach, cutting the meat into large-ish chunks (around an inch and a half is ideal), and browning just one side of the cube well, then a quick sear on another side and that's it. It's much less time-consuming (and boring) than thoroughly browning the cubes, as I used to do, and it resulted in a texture that was definitely softer and more appealing, while still getting some of the wonderful, flavor-enhancing caramelization of browning. It's a lazy man's solution that pays off! 

Yes, I know; this is a lot of bla bla bla. But it's all in the service of trying and testing and experimenting so that you (and I!) get the best possible result with the least possible effort.

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 – another labor-saving idea I got from Serious Eats), and a little garlic. Deglaze the pan with a little wine, then add back the meat, the shank bone, the rest of the bottle of wine, a little chicken broth and a bouquet garni, 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.

It's more time than work, and the payoff is nothing short of awesome.

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One way to honor France: cook up some of its culture

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So sad. 

France is so close to my heart. My husband is French. My son – that's him a few years ago in the photo above – is French. Well, half-French, but he's a citizen. 

One feels so powerless in the face of such evil – a Bastille Day attack that left so many people, people who were celebrating what's wonderful about France – dead. And more wounded. 

There's nothing to do. Except maybe what we can do: continue celebrating what's wonderful about France. Liberté, égalité, fraternité. What it means to be French: a love of life, of food, of the world. An open spirit. An embrace of beauty. It has so much in common with what's wonderful about being American.

I'm going to become French, too – as soon as I get off my butt and do the (ridiculous amount of) paperwork. What happened in Nice inspires me to get off my butt. 

But for now –  tonight –  I just want to cook something French. I think it'll be a niçoise salad – yes, for what happened in Nice. I'll try to post a pic and a recipe this weekend.

Meanwhile, maybe you, too, feel like cooking something French. For France.

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I can't think of anything more à propos than a pissaladière. The onion and anchovy tart with niçoise olives is definitely something you might eat in Nice. It's really good as an appetizer (entrée, in French, as it's your entry into the meal . . . ) with a glass of pastis. Ricard – an inch or so poured into a tall glass, then diluted with about three times as much ice water – is very very French. Or you could have it with a glass of rosé.

On the other hand, you could do something really simple to start, like cut up a fabulous ripe cantaloupe and serve that as an entrée – that's what my mother- and father-in-law do. They live in Bordeaux most of the year, and spend summers at their house near the beach at Lacanau-Océan. Or trim some radishes, and serve them with sweet butter and salt. 

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An artichoke vinaigrette makes a great entrée if you feel like doing a little cooking. 

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After that, you could make deviled duck legs. They're super-easy, and crazy-good. Serve them on a bed of frisée, if you like. 

A simple green salad could follow, maybe some cheese, if you want to over-do it. 

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For dessert, consider a stone-fruit tart with thyme.

Though you don't want to make that if you're scheming a pissaladière – too many crusts! In that case, or if you really want to keep it simple, and still very French, peel a ripe peach and slice it into your glass of red wine. Eat the slices with a spoon, and sip the wine.

Life is so precious, and so fleeting. As long as we can savor it, we have something no one can take away.

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.

Artichoke vinaigrette: an easy, elegant, French (and vegan! and healthy! and make-ahead!) appetizer

Growing up in California, I took fresh artichokes for granted. After all, Castroville – the town that bills itself as "the artichoke capital of the world" – is right there in the central coastal part of the state, not far from Monterey. I used to love stopping there on road trips and seeing the giant concrete artichoke sculpture that greets you at the edge of town.

In the spring and summertime, my mom always steamed artichokes and served them as an appetizer with melted butter to dip the leaves in. I love them even more dipped in mayo, or a mustardy red wine vinaigrette. Wylie loves it with balsamic vinaigrette.

A classic French way to serve artichokes is  à la vinaigrette – that is, actually dressed in the vinaigrette; shallot vinaigrette suits them particularly well. Pouring the sauce over them while they're still warm lets the vinaigrette penetrate the leaves – no additional dipping sauce required. An artichoke vinaigrette is also pretty beautiful. It's great as a sit-down starter at a dinner party or as a sharable treat before the dinner gets started. 

A few years ago, I served boiled artichokes as an appetizer to new friends in Texas, and was surprised that they found them exotic. "How do you eat them?" they asked. We showed them how to pull off a leaf, dip it in sauce, scrape off the meaty part (closest to the crown) with your teeth and discard the rest of the leaf. When all the leaves are gone and only the thin, prickly ones at the heart remain, you pull those off, scrape the fuzz off the crown with a spoon, and eat the heart  – the prize! – which is also delicious dipped in mayo or vinaigrette.

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Many cooks boil artichokes rather than steaming them. I've prepared them both ways, and find that boiling them in plenty of salted water gives them the best texture. Acidulating the water with lemon juice (as some cooks do to prevent discoloration) is unnecessary; I find the results to be the same with unacidulated water. Instead, after I trim them, I simply rub the cut surfaces with half a lemon.

For a party of four to eight, I often make two artichokes and serve it with another app or two. For a dinner party, you can serve one per person, or for a more casual dinner, one for every two to share.

So, how to trim them? You can get all fancy, and remove the chokes if you want to, but I usually don't. 

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Once you do it once or twice, it's easy. Using a sharp serrated knife, slice off the stem, creating a flat surface for the artichoke to rest on. Then slice off the top straight across – removing the tops of the inner few rows of leaves. Next use your fingers to break off the tough row or two of small leaves around the bottom.

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Finally, use kitchen scissors to snip off any remaining leaf tips (be careful – there's a prickle at the top of each). Rub the cut surfaces with half a lemon and they're ready to cook.

Boil them in lots of salted water in a covered pot. Don't worry if they bob up to the top; flip them over with a spoon once or twice so they cook evenly. While they're cooking, whisk together the vinaigrette. 

Drain the artichokes upside down, then dress them with the vinaigrette. Voilá. Easy, chic, delicious and healthy. And there are a couple of bonuses: You can serve them warm, or make them ahead, serving them chilled or at room temperature. And . . . they're vegan!

Ready to try? Here you go!

Gribiche, gribiche, gribiche: A different take on the sauce that jazzes up everything

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Boiled shrimp with four-minute egg gribiche

Last month I wrote about a modern take on sauce gribiche, promising to follow up right away with more about gribiche. Forgive me – I got sidetracked by a startling hummus development! 

So, back to gribiche. I don't know how long gribiche has been around, but I do know August Escoffier gave a recipe for it in his 1903 Guide Culinaire. You've gotta love the way recipes were written then:

"Crush in a bowl the yolks of six hard-boiled eggs, and work them into a smooth paste, together with a large tablespoon of French mustard, the necessary salt, a little pepper, and make up the sauce with one pint of oil. Complete with two teaspoons of parsley, chervil, and tarragon (chopped and mixed), as many capers and gherkins, evenly mixed, and the hard-boiled whites of three eggs, cut in short, Julienne strips. This sauce is chiefly used with cold fish."

A few notes: First, this is the 1969 American English translation of the French; today it would no doubt say "Dijon mustard" rather than "French mustard." Second, I love the phrase "the necessary salt." Third, by "make up the sauce with one pint of oil," I'm pretty sure he meant whisk the olive in slowly, as in a mayonnaise – though I was surprised not to find vinegar or lemon juice in the recipe. "Gherkins": no doubt Escoffier was referring to cornichons. 

Anyway, the effect would have been like a chunky mayo – and that's what sauce gribiche meant for the better part of the century. (Excuse me while I geek out on culinary history; if I'm boring you, just skip down to the modern part!) 

Fast forward to The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, which the late great Judy Rodgers published in 2002. In it Rodgers included a recipe for Four-Minute Egg Gribiche. 

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"This one is inspired by the mustardy gribiche the Troisgros brothers drizzled over beef carpaccio," she wrote, "and crowned with a pile of crispy hot fried potatoes, as an alternative to the familiar raw-egg steak tartar. " She goes on to describe the grillions of things you can do with it, from serving it with grilled fish or poultry to slathering it on sandwiches to putting it in potato salad.

Her version is much more like a mayonnaise than my modern take is. But it's much zingier, herbal and zesty than mayo, with wonderful texture.  Here's my adaptation of Rodgers' recipe:

It requires more a bit more concentration and technique than my easy modern version; you need to whisk all that olive oil in slowly so the sauce emulsifies (getting that mayonnaise consistency) and doesn't "break." But for some people it'll be worth it: Thierry loved it even more than he did my new-wave version. 

Roasted romanesco with four-minute egg gribiche

And if right about now you're thinking it would be fun to live with me because I cook, think again: I must have fed him gribiche twenty times that weekend! That day for lunch we had the gribiche three ways: with boiled shrimp (excellent); with boiled asparagus (wonderful) and with roasted slabs of romaneso (also very good!). Insanely weird all together: We had gribiche coming out of our ears! But that shrimp would be really nice as a main course for a Sunday lunch, or as a starter at a dinner party (the shrimp can be served warm or chilled). Or it would be great with cracked crab. Or roasted ham. Maybe even a roast tenderloin of beef. 

I'm not providing formal recipes for those very simple things, but happy to walk you through the three I made:

Roasted romanesco (feel free to substitute cauliflower): Slice the romanesco into slabs about 1/2-inch thick, place on a baking sheet, brush with olive oil, sprinkle on a little salt and pepper and roast in a 425 degree oven for about 20 minutes, or until just tender. Serve with sauce gribiche – the four-minute egg version or the new wave version. 

Boiled shrimp: Devein the shrimp, but leave the shells on. Drop them in court bouillon or boiling salted water and cook just thill they're pink and firm, about three minutes or so, depending on their size. Drain and serve. To make a quick court bouillon, fill a medium sauce pan about half way full with water, add a few glugs of white wine, half a sliced onion, a peeled and sliced carrot, salt, a few black peppercorns, celery leaves, thyme and parsley, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer 15 or 20 minutes. Don't worry if you're missing an herb or two. Serious people would tie the herbs and peppercorns in a bouquet garni, but I see no harm in the stuff floating around. To me it's easier to fish out the shrimp than look for the cheesecloth. 

Boiled asparagus: Trim the bottoms, and use a vegetable peeler to peel the asparagus to an inch or three below the tips. Simmer in a pan of salted water until the asparagus are floppy but still firm-ish, about four minutes for average-size asparagus – longer for jumbos and quicker for pencil-thin. Don't want to peel? Roast them instead: 17 minutes in a 400 degree oven, et voilà.

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Best potato salad ever – thanks to new-wave gribiche

Oh: I almost forgot to mention. I had friends over for burgers last weekend, and made a batch of new-wave gribiche to see how it would do in a potato salad. Success! Here's an actual recipe:

Sauce gribiche makes every simple thing you cook instantly delicious

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Seared barramundi with gribiche

How about an easy-to-make sauce that can turn the simplest grilled fish into a dazzling dinner party dish? Or that can dress up boiled or roasted asparagus? Or that you can add to sliced boiled potatoes to turn them into the snazziest potato salad ever?

That's the beauty of sauce gribiche: It can make every simple old thing deliciously new again. 

Poached leeks. Poached chicken. Boiled shrimp. Cold cracked crab. Fried or pan-fried soft shell crabs. Steamed mussels. Thick roasted slices of cauliflower. Sliced rare roast beef or lamb or ham. The possibilities are, you know, endless.

Traditional sauce gribiche is a mayonnaise made with hard-boiled egg yolks instead of raw ones, dressed up with herbs, capers and cornichons. (It's French, which is why it's called "sauce gribiche" instead of "gribiche sauce.") That old-style version is just as tedious to make as mayo, too, as you have to dribble in the oil while you constantly whisk, being careful not to let it "break." (Don't worry, though: Our new-wave version is super easy!)

The traditional style of gribiche bears little resemblance visually to the new-wave versions turning up in restaurants these days, though the ingredients are the same. The reason? Instead of whisking the ingredients into an emulsion, you quickly stir everything together. Using soft-boiled eggs instead of hard-boiled ones, and lots of herbs, brings it irresistibly into the 21st century in terms of looks and taste. 

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Grilled jumbo asparagus with gribiche and bottarga from Gjelina: Cooking from Venice, California

I stumbled on one as I flipped through Gjelina: Cooking from Venice, California – the new book from chef Travis Lett. Lett uses it to sauce jumbo asparagus that he first parboils, then grills; the dish is finished with lots of grated bottarga, dried cured mullet roe. I love bottarga, and I happened to have some in my fridge, so I made it – and loved it. (Note: in case you happen to make it, boil the asparagus longer than he tells you, or it will be crunchy-hard. Also, I substituted panko for the garlic crouton crumbs that added a bunch of extra steps to his recipe, and the panko worked great.) But bottarga is hard to come by, and it's expensive, so before I added it to the dish, I tasted it without. Good, but not great. It wanted a little more zing. I decided to develop a recipe that would be zingy enough to jazz up simple, plain food without the help of bottarga. 

I pretty quickly hit upon the answer: cornichons. Traditional gribiches include them, yet Gjelina's did without them (probably they would taste weird with the bottarga). Adding them did the trick: It was much more vibrant. I made a batch and tried that on asparagus I cooked simmered in salted water till tender:

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Asparagus with new-wave gribiche

Bingo! This was perfect! I also used it to sauce barramundi, a delicately flavored fish with nice body. I did nothing fancier than put salt and freshly ground black pepper on the fish, and seared it gently in a little olive oil. Wow – it was really good, something I'd happily serve at a dinner party. 

Want to try it? Here's the recipe:

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Seared barramundi with new-wave sauce gribiche

I didn't stop there. I also found a version in one of my all-time favorite cookbooks, Judy Rodgers' The Zuni Cafe Cookbook. I'll tell you about that – and more about gribiche – in my next post!

Ta-da! Presenting a custom-created, Cooks-Without-Borders reader-asked-for-it lemon-raspberry tart

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So I'm pretty excited about this: A reader who signed up for the Cooks Without Borders newsletter mentioned that she's craving a lemon-raspberry tart and would love a recipe. Hmm, I thought. That does sound awesome! Especially this time of year. 

I didn't know how I would make one, but I decided to give it my best. I knew what crust I'd use: Lindsey Shere's amazing short crust pastry from the Chez Panisse Desserts cookbook. It's foolproof, easy to put together (even if it seems kind of crazy while you're doing it), doesn't require rolling pin skills (you press it in the pan with your fingers) and results in an incredibly tender and flaky crust. 

I thought it would be nice to marry a classic lemon tart – filled will lemon curd – with raspberries somehow. But simply garnishing a lemon curd tart with raw raspberries didn't sound great. I could create a raspberry tart with lemon pastry cream, but pastry cream is a pain in the neck; lemon curd is easier and more forgiving. 

I found inspiration in Shere's recipe for a simple raspberry tart. She has you brush a prebaked tart shell with melted, strained raspberry preserves, line the shell with rows of berries, bake it for only five minutes, and then glaze it. Why bake the berries only five minutes? "This brings out the perfume of the raspberries without softening and making them mushy," she writes. Bingo! I'd make a lemon-curd tart, pull it out of the oven five minutes early, add just a couple rows of berries (so as not to overwhelm the lemon flavor with too much berry flavor), bake it five minutes more, then glaze the berries.

It turned out great! Two pals and I nearly polished off the whole thing, in any case – after eating a giant dinner. My raspberries were sort of dull-tasting supermarket berries, but treating them this way heightened their flavor. 

Are you up for it? Here we go!

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First we make the crust. Don't be afraid: It's easier than you may think, and every time you make one it gets easier and easier. (Believe me: I'm not much of a baker, and I can manage it!). It's such a great crust that if there's one thing you want to learn dessert-wise, this crust might well be it. It's that good. 

To make it, whisk flour, salt and sugar together in a bowl, add sliced chilled butter and work in the butter with your fingers or a pastry blender until it looks like this:

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Add vanilla and water, gather it into a ball, let it rest 30 minutes, then use your fingers to press it into a tart pan. It may look at first like you won't have nearly enough dough to cover the pan, but you do – just keep pushing it around with your fingers until you have an even layer covering the bottom and sides.

Stick it in the freezer for a half an hour, then it's ready to bake: in a 375 degree oven for 25 minutes, or until it's golden-brown and baked through. Got it? Here's the recipe:

Now let's make the lemon curd. Again, this may sound scary, but it comes together really nicely – and it has beautiful, bright lemon flavor.

Basically you cook eggs, sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest, milk and butter – stirring constantly – over low to medium heat until the mixture thickens to the consistency of a thick cream. Let it rest five minutes, give it a quick whisk, then chill it. Once it has cooled down, pour it into the baked tart shell.

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Bake it in a 375 degree oven for 25 minutes, pull it out (leaving the oven on), add a couple of rows of berries, and pop the tart back in the oven for 5 minutes longer. Remove it from the oven, melt some strained raspberry preserves, stir in a little kirsch, and glaze the berries. Tart accompli! Shall we do this? Here's the recipe. Please let us know in a comment if you plan to try it – and if you do, how it turns out!

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My pissaladière: a French cook, three pounds of onions, a jar of anchovies and an overscheduled journalist add up to one snazzy starter from Provence

There I was, caramelizing onions at midnight on a Thursday night. At seven the next morning, in between dressing for work and putting on my makeup, I found myself rolling out tart pastry, organizing anchovies, putting things in and pulling them out of a hot oven. My morning workout? Not happening.

It didn't seem completely batty to offer to bring a pissaladière -- a Southern French caramelized onion-and-anchovy tart -- to dinner at my friends' house on a Friday night when the event was a couple weeks off in the future. No problem, I thought, as I normally I work from home on Fridays. But as I stared down my schedule the Wednesday before, I found myself with back-to-back-to-back meetings at the paper downtown. Working from home was not in the stars. The dinner was a Francophile dinner party at our friends Keven and George's place (also downtown); the theme was Provence. Georges had bouillabaisse on the menu as the main course. So how to manage the promised  pissaladière?

No worries -- I'd prepare the ingredients on Thursday evening, assemble and bake it in the morning, drive it (gingerly!) downtown, and let it cool its heels in my car all day while I did my thing at the paper. A quick turn in Georges' oven, and we should be great to go.

Crazy? Perhaps, given all I have on my plate at the moment. But making this classic dish is much easier it would appear, and making the tart actually turned out to be a high point in a stressful week. Have I mentioned that I'm happiest in the kitchen?

More often than not, a pissaladière is made with bread dough, but I learned to make it from an old friend, Danièle Mazet-Delpeuch, who makes hers using pâte briseé  -- a savory tart crust. We could argue about bread vs. pâte briseé all day long, and Danièle is not from Nice (from whence the dish comes), but rather Dordogne. But I think she has it right: The flavor of sweet, deep onions with salty anchovies melting into them show more deliciously on a flaky crust.

Interesting side note: Danièle was a home cook, queen of the hearth oven in the kitchen of her family's 500-year-old stone farmhouse, when François Mitterand -- who was president of France at the time -- tapped her to be his private chef at the Élysée Palace. They made a movie about her a few years ago called Haute Cuisine; Catherine Frot did a wonderful job portraying Danièle. Here's an interview Epicurious did with Danièle when the movie was released in the U.S. In any case, she's a wonderful cook, and an amazing spirit. A true cook without borders if ever there was one.

But back to our regularly scheduled tart.

So, the first thing to do is caramelize onions -- a lot of them. It's a slow caramelization, and I'm completely opposed (morally, gastronomically and vehemently) to adding sugar to speed the caramelization. Required: a sharp knife, a low flame and patience.

Slice thin about three pounds of yellow onions in a little olive oil (or better yet duck fat, if you have some) and let them cook very slowly for more than two hours, till they're deep golden and sweet. Then you drain them. While the onions caramelize, make your pâte briseé. Give flour and salt a whirl in the food processor, toss in bits of chilled butter, pulse till it has the texture of coarse meal, add an egg lightly beaten with a dollop of milk, let the motor run till it clumps together. Honestly, it's that simple.

Let the dough rest in the fridge half an hour, roll it out, fit it into a tart pan with a removable bottom, pour in the onions, smush them in nicely, garnish the top with anchovies, niçoise olives and bits of fresh thyme, pop it in the oven, and in 35 minutes, you have a gorgeous pissaladière. Click on the black bar below for the recipe.

Place in shopping bag, drive to the office, spend the day getting things done, arrive at K and G's, present tart, demand Ricard. (That's is the beloved anisette aperitif of Southern France.) 

Note to self: Next time I make this, do it on a weekend!