I first tasted this earthy wild mushroom spread at the home of my friend Vera, who lives across the street from me in Paris but is originally from Czech Republic. She served it on toast during cocktail hour and it knocked me out of my socks. The mushrooms – porcini, or cèpes in French – had been gathered by her nephew in a Czech forest and dried before being turned over to Vera. She brought them home, worked her magic and a recipe was born.
Crème à tartiner aux cèpes / Wild mushroom spread
Making the spread is simple. The dried mushrooms are boiled in water for about half an hour to rehydrate them. They are then chopped and mixed with cream cheese, minced red onion, fresh dill and freshly ground black pepper, with the optional addition of hot pepper. The spread may be made well ahead of time and any extra may be refrigerated or frozen.
Although Vera has lived in Paris for many years, she breaks with French tradition by serving the spread instead of, rather than ahead of, a first course. There is no other entrée – which confusingly translates from French as ‘first course’ while in English it means ‘main course’. (As an aside, it’s the English translation that’s confusing for those of us who live here because the entrée is the entry to the meal, which makes more sense…)
At a typical French dinner party, cocktails are accompanied only by a few random olives or nuts – the result being that conversation can be rather boisterous by the time guests get to the table. Vera’s reasoning is that serving something more substantial than peanuts allows guests to have a couple of drinks before dinner without getting completely fershnickered (Yiddish for high as a kite). So the wild mushroom canapés replace the first course.
Personally I like serving a bona fide starter ahead of the main course – so much so that there are more than 50 starter recipes on this site. But that’s not a problem, as one can do both. The key is to limit the number of canapés to, say, 2-3 per person. And then move to the table. For example, keeping with the eastern European theme, I might serve the wild mushroom spread at cocktail hour, followed by smoked herring as a starter and chicken with paprika as the main course, finishing up with linzertorte as a dessert.
I learned to make this wild mushroom spread about a year ago when Vera, upon returning from a visit to Czech Republic, kindly gave me a bag of dried porcini gathered by her nephew (at right, with a couple of prize specimens). When I asked her what to do with them, she gave me the recipe, which I immediately tried. Judging by the response, it was a success.
The mushrooms Vera brings back hail from a forest outside the hamlet of Resek in the Krkonoše Mountains on the border between Czech Republic and Poland. The nephew’s family has a shed with drying racks ready to receive the mushrooms, which are first sliced (as shown at left). There’s a lot of competition for these mushrooms, which only sprout when the weather is right. Drying allows the family to enjoy them year round.
The hardest part of this recipe may well be getting hold of the dried porcini if one does not happen to have a nephew living near a Czech forest. I found some in Paris at a store called Naturalia. Elsewhere, they are available for order online.
Happy cooking.
Fend off the last (hopefully) of this winter’s chill with a bowl of elegant, creamy vegetable soup, which is not just comforting and supremely French but remarkably easy to make. All you need is a leek, a potato, a carrot, dried tarragon and some heavy cream, as well as salt and freshly ground black pepper (de rigueur). Add some fresh herbs for garnish — chervil, as shown in the photo, or dill, cilantro, whatever — et voilà. Soup’s on.
You can vary the flavor and look of the soup through your choice of fresh herbs for garnish. I love feathery chervil (cerfeuil), and happened to have some on hand, so that’s what I used (at right). But chervil is far harder to find than dill, which would otherwise be my top choice, or cilantro, basil or tarragon. Chives are another possibility. Or use your imagination.
Clams cooked in white wine with garlic, shallots, olive oil and butter — and sprinkled with parsley and black pepper — make an elegant but simple dish that’s served in winter and spring in France. This is because clams are harvested over here from autumn to late spring. Elsewhere, it’s a different story, as you may know if you’ve ever been on a summer clambake. In New England, people may go clamming all year round.
In France, clams come in many varieties, and even the nomenclature is confusing. Palourdes, for example, is a vernacular word that covers several clam types. Praires, which I used in this recipe, are also known as palourdes sauvages (wild clams). Shown at right, they tend to be about 1-1/2 inch (4 cm) wide. Then there are coques, aka cockles, which are like mini-clams and are often used over here for pasta alle vongole. And finally there are what the French also call clams — a bigger, far less delicate variety.
This is the omelet ‘to die for’ made famous when Emily’s boyfriend Gabriel cooked one up for her in the first season of Emily in Paris. A French classic, it uses a mixture of fresh herbs — parsley, chives, tarragon and chervil — that are collectively known as fines herbes. Unlike most omelets, where the filling ingredients are placed on top of the omelet as it sets, this recipe incorporates the herbs directly into the eggs.
I find that the fresh tarragon (estragon) adds a particularly delightful tang. Tarragon may be grown on your windowsill or balcony, assuring a constant supply (except in winter — the snow in Paris this week had its way with my tarragon, but it will resprout in the spring). Estragon, by the way, was the name chosen by Samuel Beckett for one of the two main characters in Waiting for Godot. Who know why? Estragon, nicknamed Gogo, and his friend Didi spend their time on stage waiting for … well … God.
Parsley needs no explanation, other than to say that the French prefer the flat-leaf variety, which I encountered only after moving here. In the States, we only used curly parsley.
As for the chives, the most delicate member of the onion family, they will give zest to your omelet. But not to overdo it, with any of these herbs.
P.S. Here’s a reminder for readers of this site. I’ve written a recipe booklet to go with my recently published novel, 
Get your holidays off to a delectable start this year with bouchées à la reine — literally, mouthfuls for the queen. This supremely French savory starter consists of pastry shells with an elegant filling, for example sea scallops or mushrooms in a creamy sauce. The shells are made using puff pastry, while the sauce is a Béchamel with a dash of white wine. Preparation is a bit of a production, but it’s fun. Then sit back and prepare for applause.
But culinary fashions evolve and these days bouchées are seen less often, so I decided to try my hand at home. Making the shells is like playing with Play-Doh. You cut out large rounds of pastry, rings of the same size and smaller rounds for the caps. You top the large rounds with the rings and set the small rounds beside them, coat everything with an egg wash and pop them into the oven. You then make the filling and assemble the pastries.
I’ve never found bouchées a la reine to be of a particularly aphrodisiac nature, but who knows? Maybe with enough Champagne… Today’s recipe includes the sea scallop and the mushroom versions. You can make one or the other, or both.
Instead of sending a selfie, Martha provided this view of, as she put it, ‘the far-flung reaches of The Rites of Man‘, with the Shanghai skyline in the background. I’m pretty excited about that! She had pre-ordered the book, so it arrived on publication day, which was Wednesday. She wrote to me on Thursday: ‘Hello hello from Shanghai — just to say your book arrived on my Kindle yesterday as promised and have inhaled it — thank you for a marvelous read.’ I’m even more excited about that!
Sichuan-style sesame noodles are very popular in Paris, but they’re not exactly French. So why am I featuring them in today’s post? Because sesame noodles are among the dishes mentioned in my forthcoming novel, 
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.
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 
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.
