One of the most popular dishes in France is spaghettis bolognaise, aka spaghetti in meat sauce. The dish takes its name from the city of Bologna, Italy’s renowned center of great cuisine, where the sauce is known as ragù alla bolognese. Ground beef is simmered in olive oil with pancetta (Italian bacon), finely diced carrots, celery and onion, minced garlic, red wine and tomatoes to create a great comfort dish as we head towards winter.
Spaghettis bolognaise / Spaghetti in meat sauce
One difference between today’s recipe and the Italian original is the use of herbes de Provence (a mixture of dried rosemary, savory, oregano and thyme), which is a personal favorite and the way it is often done in France. The Italian recipe may also involve milk, but that is omitted here. But the main difference is the cooking time.
I asked my friend Gisella — who is Sicilian but lives in Bologna, and who is an absolutely fabulous cook — to send me her recipe for ragù alla bolognese, and she said the following: ‘Cook for at least three hours.’ That’s the classic method. In my recipe, the cooking time once the sauce comes together is about half an hour, which is fine for Everyday French Chef-style cooking. If you’d rather do it Gisella’s way, add a little water to the sauce, cover the pot and stir frequently, adding more water if the sauce dries out.
Another difference in Gisella’s recipe is that she uses a mixture of ground beef and ground pork (instead of pancetta). And she uses no herbs at all. She also uses white wine instead of red. Otherwise, the recipes are virtually identical.
One key element of making pasta à l’italienne is to reheat the cooked pasta in its sauce over a low flame before serving — and not simply to plop the sauce onto a bowlful of pasta. This is true for most other pastas in sauce as well. It produces a more succulent dish.
The bolognaise sauce may of course be served with other forms of pasta than spaghetti. Good choices would include fusilli (aka rotini), tagliatelle, rigatoni or penne rigate.
Interestingly, the French never use the word ‘spaghetti’ in the singular. It’s always spaghettis, despite the fact that this is redundant because, in Italian, spaghetti is already plural. Never mind. It makes sense in that one never serves a single strand of spaghetti. This French logic is also applied to words like ‘hair’ (les cheveux), except if you’re talking about a single strand of hair, as in, ‘Waiter, there’s a hair in my soup.’
Linguistics aside (and btw linguini — ‘little tongues’ — would also be a good choice), bolognaise sauce will brighten even the dreariest November day. And the good news is that, if you have extra sauce, it may be frozen for use on another occasion.
Happy cooking.
This melt-in-the-mouth leek dish is a favorite in France in the cooler months, although I’ve never seen it served anywhere else. And the beauty of the dish is that it is not only supremely comforting but also extremely quick and easy to make. The leeks are tenderly sautéd in butter, then cream is added, et voilà. The dish is most commonly served alongside fish, but also marries well with 
And what about fondue of leeks? I believe the term is attached to the venerable veggie because the chopped leeks are ‘melted’ to tenderness in butter, and the addition of cream makes the dish all the more meltingly delicious (fondant). Along the same lines, one of the most popular desserts in Paris is called fondant au chocolat. It’s a rich chocolate cake that is removed from the oven before the center has set, leaving the heart fondant (melted).
To make a long story short, I went out and bought a new sheet pan at 
Happy cooking.
Fresh sage adds an element of surprise and delight to this American classic, cornbread, which can be made on this side of the Atlantic by substituting polenta for cornmeal. And although cornbread is traditionally served mainly on Thanksgiving in the northern United States, it makes a great addition to any meal where roast chicken, duck or game is on the table. So you can wait for the holiday, or you can fire up the oven and try it right now.
In my case, this involved the 1943 Normal Rockwell painting called 
What to do, what to do? I called Nancy, who explained to me about using polenta instead of cornmeal. I got up the next morning at 6 a.m. and set to work. My first attempt was an abject failure, but I tried again and produced a reasonable semblance of cornbread. Then I raced to the train station with cranberry sauce and cornmeal in tow. On arrival, I found that Georges Blanc’s version of Thanksgiving turkey was minuscule but delicious.
Happy cooking.
In the midst of this summer’s Paris heatwaves I decided to go Greek — the latest iteration of which, now that it’s a bit cooler, is moussaka. With its richly spiced meat sauce nestled between layers of tender eggplant, and its creamy topping, this is comfort food at its finest. Moussaka can be a one-dish meal or the star of a Greek dinner, preceded perhaps by 
But getting back to moussaka, today’s recipe makes about six portions, depending on the appetites of those at your table. If there will be fewer people, not to worry. You can cut the baked moussaka into individual portions and freeze them. Allow to defrost before reheating, and voilà — you’re back in Greece.
Almost every year towards the end of summer I find myself piling plums into jars, covering them with eau de vie (clear brandy), adding some sugar and sealing them up to be ready in time for the holidays. The jars need to rest for at least two months. When you open them, the flavor of the fruit has infused the alcohol, creating a heady, heavenly concoction that may be served after dinner in pretty little glasses, as you’d serve a digestif, for example Cognac.
This year I used two types of plums — small, sweet yellow mirabelle plums, which are grown across France, particularly in Alsace-Lorraine in the northeast, and small blue plums, known here as quetsches, which are a bit more tart. In the past I have also used greengage plums (Reine-Claude), but they tend to be larger, which is a consideration as you want to be able to fit a plum or two into each little glass.
When I still had my farmhouse in Burgundy, I had many hilarious evenings with friends when dinner ended with cherries or plums à l’eau de vie. It was all the more fun because our garden had fruit trees, so I was able to pick the cherries and plums myself before having my way with them in the kitchen. You can use jars of any size for this recipe — a couple of large ones to keep at home, and smaller ones to give away. They make great Christmas presents.
Sometimes a new recipe just pops into my head. This happened the other day with this zucchini-red onion tart. Often it’s a visual thing. I open the fridge, spot an ingredient or two and think, Oh! That could be good. As you may know, it’s been incredibly hot in Paris this summer — too hot to spend much time in the kitchen. So I had a store-bought pie shell in the fridge, plus eggs, cream, milk and cheese, and fresh thyme growing outside my veranda.
When I go into the kitchen at lunchtime, I don’t always know what I’m going to make. The other day it turned out to be egg salad with radish and onion, a dish I picked up long ago while posted in the former USSR. I had the ingredients on hand (including fresh herbs), it was broiling hot in Paris and I didn’t want to spend a long time cooking. As I’d boiled a couple of eggs the day before, the salad was ready in less than 10 minutes.
Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that this is my first post in a while. The reason is that I’ve been busy on other fronts, notably helping to produce a special 50th anniversary issue of 
When spring comes to Paris, I tend to feel like spending less time in the kitchen – which is a good reason to make roast chicken thighs with thyme. It’s a supremely French dish and supremely easy. The chicken is coated with olive oil and sprinkled with thyme leaves. While it’s roasting, you can make the side dishes of your choice – or go read a book or look out the window at the budding leaves. Within a short while, your dinner will be ready.
In the meantime, I’ve been enjoying the annual rites of spring, repotting the strawberries on my balcony and going down to the quais along the Seine to buy a new cherry tomato plant. There are pansies, nasturtiums and campanula in bloom along the veranda rail and narcissus inside, and a I set a pot of muscari (grape hyacinth) in the bathroom. It’s all very lovely.
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.
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.
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.
