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

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:

RECIPE: Buckwheat Blini with Crab Salad (or smoked trout)

RECIPE: Céleri Rémoulade

RECIPE: Kate Leahy’s Harissa Deviled Eggs

RECIPE: Dorie Greenspan’s Gouda Gougères

RECIPE: ‘Jubilee’ Pickled Shrimp

RECIPE: Gratin Dauphinois (French Potatoes Gratin)

RECIPE: Lacquered Roast Duck

RECIPE: Croustade with Apples and Armagnac

RECIPE: ‘The Perfect Scoop’ Tangerine Sorbet

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

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?

RECIPE: Carottes Râpées

RECIPE: Gratin Dauphinois

RECIPE: Almond Tuiles

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Did you like this story? If so, you may enjoy:

READ: A stellar Quiche Lorraine (custardy, bacony, buttery-crusted!) is much easier to make than you might think

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

READ: Rich and soulful, classic Beef Bourguignon is the ultimate dinner party dish

READ: No basting, no flipping, no advance prep: Meet the perfect, easy (crisp-skinned!) roast chicken

FIND more Cooks Without Borders recommended cookbooks and reviews

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

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

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!

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

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.

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.

RECIPE: Roasted Ratatouille

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

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’

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’

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.

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’

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.

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.

RECIPE: Gianduja Gelato with Stracciatella

RECIPE: ‘The Perfect Scoop’ Matcha Ice Cream

RECIPE: ‘The Perfect Scoop’ Tangerine Sorbet

RECIPE: Nectarine Sorbet

Recipe for Today: Asparagus, all dressed up!

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!

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

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.

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.

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

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.

RECIPE: Perfect Easy Roast Chicken

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

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?

RECIPE: Vegan Spring Beauty Soup

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.