The Pommes de Terre a L'Huile (French potato salad), uses no mayonnaise. The potatoes are boiled and sliced, and then marinated in dry white wine while still warm and soft, so they absorb the wine. They are then dressed with a simple vinaigrette and served while still warm or later, chilled.
This recipe is used in the Salade Nicoise.
This is the true basic French dressing, brilliant in its simplicity and bright, balanced flavor. You can make it with or without minced green herbs and with either wine vinegar or a mixture of wine vinegar and fresh lemon juice.
This is a garlic soup. It's light and delicate because the garlic is boiled and seasoned with a little bit of sage, thyme, and bay leaf.
This exquisite anchovy-based spread is wonderful on crudites or on toasted baguette rounds. It's the kind of recipe that leaves your guests wondering what all the flavors are. This recipe is said to come from the occultist, folklorist, and "celebrated gastronome" Count Austin de Croze (1866-1937), by way of Martha's Vineyard restaurateur, cookbook author, and cycling enthusiast Sarah Leah Chase's Pedaling Through Provence.
Here's a tasty salty-sweet spread from Provence that is easy to make in quantity. Use good olives, not the woody canned variety. If you cannot get the figs, 1/3 cup of fig jam is an acceptable substitute. Serve this on crackers or on toasted baguette rounds, or with crudites.
This is the filling for Paupiettes of Sole Stuffed with Crab, with Lobster Cognac Sauce or any other crab-stuffed sole.
Here's another French dish with a creamy sauce, this time sparked up with paprika. You bake the breasts in a savory onion-butter-paprika base, then use that base on the stovetop to prepare a creamy sauce.
When you're done, you'll have a lot of sauce, but it goes great over rice or with boiled new potatoes. If you want a more elegant presentation than shown here, you can serve the breasts with minimal sauce and pass the rest in a gravy boat.
This dish of chicken breasts with mushrooms and a cider cream sauce is a hearty fall or winter dish. The chicken breasts (or thighs) are sauteed in butter with mushrooms, then flamed with calvados and braised in cider until tender and cooked through. Then the sauce is finished with heavy cream and an egg yolk to thicken it, making it awesome comfort food.
The sauce is delicious, so consider serving this with rice or potatoes, or crusty bread - you will want to get every bit of the sauce!
In late February of 2022 we had a feast to explore the classic cuisine of Normandy. As usual we had multiple courses including fish, meat, vegetables, a dessert, and regional drinks. Here's how we did it:
Before dinner, we gathered in the living room to catch up over a slate with a Pate Campagne, three Norman cheeses (Camembert, Pont Leveque, and Livarot), and some chilled Dubonnet. Dubonnet is not from Normandy, but it's a popular aperitif throughout France and I had some in the fridge.
This recipe is built from three simpler recipes. First you poach the fish and save the poaching liquid, then you turn the poaching liquid into a Sauce Parisienne. At the same time on another burner, you make 1 quart of Mussels in White Wine. Then you enrich the Sauce Parisienne and add mushrooms, truffle, and shrimp.
I made this for our Feast of Normandy. This is double the size of the base recipes because I make it for dinner guests.
