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.
Crème de légumes / Creamy vegetable soup
I concocted this recipe on a blustery, rainy day when I just didn’t feel like going out of the house to shop. Checked the fridge, and I had all the ingredients needed for a classic French vegetable soup, which is always served puréed. Carrot, leek and potato are the basic elements. The soup’s color can differ depending on how much carrot you add — if you use a whole leek and equal quantities of carrot and potato, it tends to turn out pale green. This time, needing comfort, I stirred in extra cream. The result knocked me out of my socks.
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.
Puréed vegetable soup has a special place in the heart of the French, as they are served it from tiniest tot-hood, i.e. well before the age of one. It features often on school menus, and used to appear regularly on Paris bistro menus as a starter — although as tastes have become more sophisticated, this simple dish is seen less often in the capital. In the country, however, where rural people tend to stick to the tradition of having the main meal at midday and a supper of soup and cheese, veggie soup retains its place of pride.
Serve this soup for lunch, with crusty bread and a glass of hearty red (e.g. Côtes du Rhone or Bordeaux), or as the starter of a more elaborate meal. And if you’re having a crowd, double or triple the recipe. I can guarantee that your guests will be asking for more.
Happy cooking.
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.
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…
