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.
If you have made the Fillets of Sole Bercy, then this richer, more elegant Parisian version will be easy. It's essentially the same recipe but the sauce gets a little more attention, including thickening it with egg yolks.
After you make a Sauce Parisienne, you can garnish it in various ways to make it Normande, Dieppoise, Nantua, Bonne Femme, etc.
I made this one with halibut, but any white fish will work.
This Chou Rouge a la Limousine is a wonderful hearty fall-and-winter recipe to accompany roast pork or pork sausages, or roast goose. It's one of my favorite things to prepare when the cold weather finally returns to Plymouth!
It's easy to turn this into a full Porc Braise aux Choux Rouges dinner by cooking a 3-lb pork loin in with the cabbage.
This is from the French Riviera, with the typical bright flavors of sunny Provence, but less complicated than the similar Sicilian Swordfish alla Ghiotta.
The sauce from this, if you have any leftover, is great on black squid-ink pasta, along with any leftover swordfish. I often cook some shrimp with the swordfish with the plan to have leftovers on pasta.
These big predator fish can have a strong fishy flavor that improves when it's marinated for an hour or two. One batch of marinade is enough for two good-sized steaks or 1.5 pounds of cubed fish.
Steak au Poivre is awesome and awful - you really need to know what you are signing up for.
Steak with cracked pepper can be a fine combination if you keep everything in balance. This classic French recipe does just that. Rather than burn the aromatic pepper by searing it with the steak, you cook the steak properly and then dress it with a peppercorn cream sauce.
Some recipes call for crusting the steak with crushed peppercorns and then grilling it or searing it on a hot griddle. That's a bad idea. The best flavor of pepper comes from the volatile oils that provide that peppery zing. But exposing volatile oils to a screaming hot griddle burns them into smoke leaving only charred pepper-husks. Try it yourself and see. Then try this recipe.
Note: Black pepper is no friend to wine. Green and pink peppercorns work better, but they're not awesome. In my opinion, this recipe is best with no wine, but some fine cognac works wonders...
This simple dish serves as the base for any number of derivatives to accompany all sorts of dinners. It easy to make with the frozen petite peas from the supermarket even in the dead of winter.
Here is a presentation somewhat more restrained than the Swordfish Provencal or the Sicilian Swordfish alla Ghiotta.
After serving these steaks for dinner, I cut up the leftovers and tossed them in the sauce to use over pasta for lunch the next day.
This is a hearty winter dish, bursting with flavor and calories! I think this would be good after shoveling snow for an hour. It's quite easy, you just boil potatoes and then simmer them in cream and top with cooked andouille sausage. The andouille is spicy (especially if you use an American Cajun variety), but the cream and the potatoes moderate the punchiness to a fine degree; this is easy to gobble down more than you should.
A fougasse is a French focaccia, often cut into elaborate shapes for more crusty surface area. If you are in the area of Kittery, Maine, you can find excellent full and half-size fougasse at Beach Pea Bakery that you would be proud to bring to any family event.
You can make it yourself, if you have a few hours to allow time for the dough to rise; baking takes under 30 minutes. If you want to do the traditional sourdough version and you don't have a starter, you can make one but it takes a few days to get really active, or you could try the Biga Starter, which is ready in a day.
The cuts are important. They serve to provide more crusty surface for the bread. This bread is not a light, airy load, it's all about the olive oil and salt and other flavors that you include. It's great with wine and cheese.
