A quintessentially French dish that comes into its own in springtime is radis au beurre, or radishes with butter and salt. This traditional bistro fare makes a great start to a meal. I often serve radis au beurre at cocktail hour — fresher and much lighter than chips or nuts, especially if you go easy on the butter. Radis au beurre may also be served as a first course at the table, often accompanied by other back-to-the-land starters.
Radis au beurre / Radishes with butter and salt
As you can imagine, radis au beurre (pronounced rah-DEE oh brr) is ridiculously easy to prepare. You wash the radishes, cut away the root ends, arrange on plates or a platter and serve with unsalted butter and a small cup of salt. It’s both simple and convivial. Guests dip the radishes first into the butter, then into the salt, using the leaves as a handle.
Having lived in France now for nearly 50 years, it’s hard for me to imagine any other way to serve this super healthy veggie. Indeed, my encyclopedia of French cuisine, the Grand Larousse gastronomique, says of radishes: ‘They are served plain, with fresh butter and salt.’ That’s it. Radis au beurre recipes these days may include embellishments, such as adding chopped herbs to the butter or using flavored salt, but I prefer the original.
One thing to note is that French radishes are rosy red with a white tip and elongated rather than round. They also tend to be less piquant than round varieties. (Strangely, they are referred to in English as ‘French breakfast radishes’, although I have never seen radishes served for breakfast over here.) No need to fret if you live elsewhere. Any red radishes would be fine for this dish.
On the health front, radishes are packed with vitamins and minerals and are virtually calorie free. They’ve been around for more than 5,000 years — radishes were cultivated by the Egyptians, who allegedly fed them to the workers who built the pyramids, while the Greeks are said to have dedicated radishes to Apollo, god of the sun — and of healing.
While April in Paris may evoke chestnuts in blossom, as in the song, it is also the month when mountains of radishes appear at farmers markets. The fact that they’re inexpensive, even in these days of spiraling prices, only adds to their attraction.
In fact, radishes with butter are so popular over here that there’s a Paris bistro named Le Radis Beurre, as I discovered while researching this blog post. Oddly, radis au beurre does not feature on the menu they’ve posted online. It seems instead to be a metaphor for the philosophy behind the restaurant, which features dishes made of fresh, seasonal products.
If you’d like to serve radis au beurre at cocktail hour, they’d go well with a chilled white or rosé, a kir or another apéritif. When I serve this dish as a starter at the table, I generally include a couple more hors d’oeuvres, such as pâté, dry-cured sausage or ham (such as proscuitto), tarama, tapenade, or perhaps eggs with mayo or topped with red caviar.
I can already hear the skeptics objecting, ‘What? This can’t be French cuisine. It’s too easy!’ But no, mes amis. For the everyday French chef, simplicity is the heart of the art.
Happy cooking.
This dish of chicken in a creamy paprika sauce came about as a result of current events. I thought I’d like to make something Ukrainian in honor of a besieged nation, and I also wanted to add to the poultry dishes already on this site. My first idea, rather naturally, was chicken Kyiv (suprêmes de volaille à la Kyiv). But a little research showed that this dish, which by the way is quite complicated to make, is actually Russian in origin. Nyet.
Grandma Anne was a good cook, although her imprecision with measurements drove my mother crazy. For example, her recipe for syrniki — little pancakes made with smooth cottage cheese and served with sour cream and jam — calls for ‘one half eggshell water’. I’d like to post this family recipe here one of these days, along with two more, Grandma Anne’s fabulous stuffed cabbages and her wonderful cheesecake. 
Meantime when thinking about today’s post I was surprised to realize that I’ve already posted two Ukrainian dishes on this site — 
Happy cooking.
I discovered this spicy peanut-topped cucumber salad just as Sichuan cuisine began making it big in Paris. It’s on the menu of 
The key ingredient in this salad, as in many Sichuan recipes, is Sichuan peppercorn. It looks different from black peppercorn in that it’s a reddish brown and more wrinkled. Unlike hot red peppers (piments in French), Sichuan peppercorn is described as numbing rather than fiery. And its flavor is just unbeatable. You can find it at Asian grocery shops.
The other day I decided to try to recreate a dish I vaguely remembered — cod with chickpeas, spinach and chorizo chips. It felt just right for a brisk, pre-spring sunny day. I checked my favorite Spanish cookbook, couldn’t find it. Ditto my Portuguese cookbook. Then I looked online, and found not a single recipe for this precise combination. So I winged it. Well, dear readers, my guest was happy. And in fact so was I.
So whatever the origin of this particular dish, the flavors blend well. And, as I discovered, it is not just easy to make but has the significant advantage of being able to be prepared in advance. If you cook the chickpeas yourself — highly recommended — it’s best to start the evening before you plan to serve the dish. Tips on cooking chickpeas may be found 
Flamiche is a savory tart from Picardie made of leeks and cream encased in puff pastry. This is comfort food at its finest, perfect for cool days or nights as we wait for spring. Flamiche can stand on its own as a lunch dish or may be served as a starter in the evening, accompanied by a fruity red. Its versatility makes it a winner. Yet this pie from Picardie is rarely encountered in other parts of France, not to mention the rest of the world.
This light, refreshing dessert of orange slices in a flavorful syrup is best in winter, when large sweet oranges are in season. I first tasted it at the home of my neighbor Manuela, a superior cook. But on that occasion she barely cooked. The main course was a platter of oysters and langoustines straight from the market. She followed up with the sliced oranges, which were so delightful I had to have the recipe. The star ingredient was star anise.
Hiding beneath its rather grand name, potage Parmentier is familiar to every child in France as potage poireaux-pommes de terre, or creamy leek-and-potato soup. It takes its name from Antoine Parmentier, who won royal approval of the potato (seriously!) on the eve of the revolution that toppled the kings of France. The soup — which unlike vichyssoise is served hot — makes a satisfying, and some would say elegant, winter dish.
Bourride is a Mediterranean fish dish bathed in a sauce infused with garlic and inflected with hints of orange and sunshine. If you’ve been to the French Riviera you may have had the luck to encounter it. Elsewhere there’s little chance you would have run into this undeservedly lesser known cousin of bouillabaisse. I’ve rarely seen it in restaurants in Paris. Which is why, shortly after tasting it for the first time, I learned how to make it.
Stuffed eggs topped with red caviar make a simple yet elegant dish that’s perfect for special occasions. Do I hear New Year’s Eve, anyone? Or brunch on the morning after? Most French takes on this dish call for the eggs to be scrambled. This recipe, with hard-boiled eggs, has a more Russian flavor. In the old days, Russians often served the eggs topped with black caviar — but with the sturgeon now an endangered species, red caviar is used instead.
On occasions like New Year’s Eve, the eggs may be served as part of an hors d’oeuvre spread. They would marry well with 
If you’d like to serve something different this holiday season, why not consider côte de boeuf? A bone-in rib of beef that is served as steak, and not as a roast, côte de boeuf is a popular cut is France. It is ultratender, flavorful and easy to prepare. If you can convince your butcher to cut the meat as the French do, then this elegant dish would make a lovely centerpiece to a festive meal, perhaps accompanied, as shown here, by a cauliflower gratin.
A côte de boeuf is the equivalent of an American ribeye steak, with the bone included. It is prepared in two stages. First the meat is pan-seared to seal in the juices. It is then roasted for a relatively short time in a very hot oven, allowed to rest briefly and sliced off the bone. Nothing is added until the very end, when the meat is salted and peppered. When buying the rib pictured here, I asked Marie Pacaud, who presides over the excellent Boucherie du Marais, whether to rub the meat with garlic. I received the French equivalent of fuhgeddaboudit: the Gallic shrug. ‘That would distort the flavor,’ she said drily.
