Just in time for Thanksgiving in the United States, here’s a chestnut stuffing recipe with a French twist. Herbes de Provence and, especially, fresh sage impart an unbeatable flavor that will have your guests clamoring for more. The stuffing may be prepared in less than an hour and — here’s the beauty of it — can be made ahead of time and frozen until the big day. Then all you have to do is set the table and stuff the turkey.
Farce aux chataignes / Chestnut stuffing
You may not think Thanksgiving is a big deal in France or elsewhere abroad, but in my circle, it is. Every year since the mid-1980s I’ve been c0-hosting a traditional Thanksgiving meal with an American friend who, like me, was on the international reporting circuit. We’ve held Thanksgiving dinners in Moscow and Rome as well as Paris, where our dinners have become something of an event. Every year there are more would-be guests than there are seats at the table, so we rotate the guest list to make everyone happy.
This year, Thanksgiving will be at my place. Here’s the menu: roast turkey with chestnut stuffing (and sausage stuffing, my friend’s specialty, on the side); cranberry sauce; puréed sweet potatoes; green beans; a mixed salad; corn bread if one of the guests wants to bring it; and a couple of pies — pumpkin, apple, walnut or pecan. If I have the energy, I might add a pumpkin gratin, a fabulous dish that I first tasted the year I was invited to help make a Thanksgiving-style meal with one of France’s most famous chefs, Georges Blanc.
That’s a tale in itself. It was back in 2013, not long after I started this blog, when the French TV channel Arte asked me to participate in a program called De l’art et du cochon in which a three-star chef was asked to create his/her take on a meal seen in a well-known painting. After airing episodes on Leonardo’s The Last Supper and Manet’s The Luncheon on the Grass, they got around to Norman Rockwell’s Freedom From Want, which shows an American family gathered around a table as the holiday turkey is presented.
The Arte team took an early morning train down to Vonnas, the site of Georges Blanc’s best-known restaurants. My job was to bring the cranberry sauce — and then to pose for the recreation of the Rockwell scene. (That’s me with Georges Blanc at right). His take on Thanksgiving featured roasted figs, the pumpkin gratin and the smallest turkey I’d ever seen. I wrote about this experience at the time, so if you like you can read more here.
Another thing about French Thanksgiving that may surprise American readers is that serving Champagne is de rigueur. Forget about bourbon at cocktail hour. If there’s no Champagne, the guests revolt. They also often demand a cheese course, but I draw the line there. Thanksgiving is enough of a meal without the cheese.
As for the fresh sage, it’s an herb I use so often that I grow it myself on my veranda. If you’d like to do the same and you live in Europe, you can order fresh sage plants from plant d’Avenir, a nursery in western France specializing in sustainable, drought-tolerant plants. Fresh sage is also available at good markets.
This stuffing may of course be used with a Christmas turkey as well, or to stuff any bird of your choosing — roast chicken and roast partridge come to mind.
And now for some news beyond the culinary agenda. I am delighted to announce the forthcoming publication of my new book, The Rites of Man, a novel set in 1996 in which a woman’s entanglement with an author sparks a national conversation about artistic legitimacy and the rights of women. The book will come out on Dec. 3, with pre-orders beginning in next week. And for readers of The Everyday French Chef, there will be a special offer. Watch this space…
Happy cooking.
French fish soup is a deeply flavorful dish that is traditionally served with rounds of toast, grated cheese and rouille, a garlic mayonnaise flavored with saffron and cayenne. Unlike other fish soups, this one comes to the table totally smooth, without any pieces of fish. In the classic version, fresh fish are cooked, bones and all, with veggies and herbs, and the soup is passed through a sieve. One can simplify by using fish fillets, fresh or frozen.
The color of French fish soup can vary from salmon pink to rusty red, most likely a result of the type and amount of tomatoes used. Mine came out pink, probably because it’s autumn and fresh tomatoes are less red and ripe than in mid-summer. The soup may also be made with tinned tomatoes.
This sophisticated French take on the burger is made of ground veal flavored with grated Comté cheese, garlic and herbs, then lightly breaded and fried. Serve it on a bun, and it becomes child friendly. But it also makes a surprisingly elegant main dish that marries well with anything from pasta to veggies to salad. And despite its name, which makes it sound like an Italian dish from Milan, this dish is totally French — and rather unusual.
It’s the tail end of summer, so let’s make pickles! Not the tiny, vinegary French kind, but home-style dill pickles with an East European flavor. I am dedicating this post to my Ukrainian friend Valya, who returned to Kyiv this week after three-and-a-half years as a war refugee in Paris. It’s as dangerous there as ever, but for her it was just time to go home. I made these pickles for her as part of the picnic I gave her for her two-day bus journey back.
Four hours later you can already try your pickles! They’ll be crunchy, with plenty of flavor. If you’d rather save them for later, you can transfer them to a clean jar and refrigerate for up to a week — no sterilization needed. It’s also possible to preserve the pickles by canning, but this is a far more complicated procedure. Many sites online explain how to do it, if you’re interested.
An artist, she went out every day to draw and paint Paris. Here is one of her works. It shows Marianne, the symbol of the French republic, draped in a Ukrainian flag. Valya made the sketch at the Place de la République shortly after a pro-Ukraine demonstration when people still thought the war would be brief. She gave it to me for my birthday three years ago. And the war goes on…
It’s blackberry season and, when down in Provence last week, I couldn’t resist the temptation to make a blackberry-nectarine crumble. The two fruits married beautifully. Blackberries on their own would have been difficult because Provence got hammered by extreme heat and dry weather this summer. The blackberries on the bushes lining the road near my friends’ place were less plump and juicy than usual, and fewer and farther between.
So now let’s leave this thorny subject (pun intended, sorry) and return to our two-fruit crumble. To tell you the truth, I cheated a little by adding some store-bought blackberries, which are far larger than the fruit one finds growing wild and therefore suspect, in my view. However, in this case it made for a juicier crumble. You can improvise, too — with peaches instead of nectarines, or blueberries instead of the mûres, or whatever strikes your fancy.
Move over, potato pancakes. This lighter, summery version with zucchini is perfect in hot weather. The pancakes combine grated zucchini and potato with egg and plenty of herbs — mint is my favorite. Fried in olive oil until crispy and golden, they may be served on their own or with a tangy yogurt-garlic sauce. You can make them in half an hour for a couple of people. Or, if serving for a crowd, make a lot — you’ll find them going like pancakes…
Grilled chicken with rosemary and thyme is one of the delights of the summer season, particularly if you have access to a barbecue — but even if you don’t, as I experienced once again last weekend while staying at a friend’s place in Normandy. We marinated the chicken in olive oil, lemon juice, minced garlic and the herbs, fresh from her garden. We had planned a barbecue, but alas the heavens opened. So we grilled it in the oven. Ab fab…
The green olive spread from Provence known as tapenade verte is delightful at cocktail hour on warm summer evenings. Like its cousin, 
If you prefer white, choose a crisp, fruity variety. Or you may like to serve pastis, the oh-so-Provençal anise-flavored apéritif. Pastis, of which there are many varieties (Ricard, Casanis, Pernod, etc.), comes out of the bottle deep yellow but turns a cloudy pale yellow when water is added. Pour about an inch (2.5 cm) of it into a glass, add ice and top up with water. This goes brilliantly with tapenade — green, black or both.
Forget everything you’ve ever heard about jam-making taking all day. It doesn’t! A few jars of apricot jam, for example, can be made in less than an hour, setting you up with a burst of summery flavor all year long. The key words being ‘a few jars’. If you make your jam in small batches, you can fill your cupboards as the seasons unspool. So far this year, I’ve made strawberry and apricot. I’ll go on to 
For one kilo of fruit, you will get 3-4 jars of jam. That may not sound like much, but if you do it several times a summer with different types of fruit, you’ll end up with enough to last the winter. I missed the red and black currant season this year, but plums and figs are yet to come, and with any luck I might find some blackberries in the autumn.
Bo bun, which originated in Vietnam and has taken Paris by storm, is an ultrafresh, healthy, flavor-packed bowlful of lemongrass beef, rice vermicelli, veggies, fresh herbs and peanuts, bathed in a tangy sauce. It is often topped with nems (mini fried spring rolls). Making it at home is a bit of a challenge, as there are many steps. But how else to enjoy this fantastically tasty salad bowl if you don’t live within range of a place that sells it?
Meantime, if you’re into growing your own herbs, I’d like to point you in the direction of 
