I discovered this dish at a beachside restaurant near Sète in the south of France, and found it so delicious that I asked the chef for the recipe. It is a trilogy of shellfish — mussels, clams and razor clams — that are cooked until just tender and then coated in a persillade sauce of parsley, garlic and olive oil. The recipe is simple, quick and fun to make. The combination, redolent of sun and sea, will knock your socks off.
Trilogie de coquillages persillés / Shellfish with parsley and garlic
The restaurant in question, La Canopée, offers a range of seafood, from squid sautéed with chorizo to octopus salad and grilled gambas. Take a look at the menu to get a sense of the kind of cuisine on offer now at trendy French eateries. I’ve been going to La Canopée for the past three summers. New this year is a poke bowl — marinated raw salmon, avocado, mango, rice, sesame seeds and cilantro.
The poke bowl, which emanates from Hawaii, has taken France by storm in recent months. I discovered it via my 19-year-old daughter, a font of wisdom on the latest food trends. But is this kind of innovation a good thing or a bad thing? I got to thinking about it recently when a friend sent me an article from The Guardian headlined ‘The Rise and Fall of French Cuisine‘.
In this article, the author states that French cuisine became increasingly dull and repetitive in recent decades (he calls it ‘gravied blandness’), but has since been revived thanks to the addition of mojitos, cappucino, Asian food and le hamburger. I beg to disagree. Of course French bistros, like restaurants everywhere, have had their ups and downs, but to pour scorn on an entire national cuisine? Non, non et non!
Only laziness and lack of imagination can have prevented this author from seeking out gems where simple French food is and always has been fabulous, or from visiting the homes of everyday French chefs who have kept tradition alive. I do not see the addition of the hamburger — which is now offered everywhere, including expensively topped with foie gras by leading chefs like Joel Rebuchon — as an improvement of the French culinary repertoire. Ditto cappucino and the poke bowl.
But while purists may decry such deviations from classical French cuisine, we live in a globalized world, and innovation is not about to stop. In fact, I welcome the new arrivals. What I don’t appreciate is a journalist bouncing into Paris and proclaiming that French cuisine has been saved by Cuban cocktails. (To be fair, he offers a detailed and lively look at the history of French restaurant cooking.)
Thank goodness my summer reading has not been confined to this article. In contrast is Save Me the Plums, the wonderful new memoir by Ruth Reichl, who edited Gourmet magazine for ten years. She is a fabulous writer and raconteur whose mouthwatering descriptions of food filled me with admiration and envy. Highly recommended.
I am currently on a hiatus from summer travels and will be back in a few days with another recipe, this time for a salad with fresh figs that I created during the ongoing Paris heatwave. Then I’ll take another break, returning in mid-August.
Happy cooking!
This classic American salad has taken Paris by storm in recent years, although the French have a way of doing things slightly differently. You will never see iceberg lettuce in a French Cobb, and instead of the traditional sweet dressing it will be served with a tangy mustard vinaigrette. The French also don’t worry about lining up the toppings in rows — they prefer to scatter the chicken, tomatoes, avocado, eggs and bacon over a bed of greens.
We’ve got one week left of spring, time enough to get creative with one of my favorite seasonal fruits — rhubarb. Well, to be exact, it’s a veggie, but for culinary purposes rhubarb stars in desserts. This simple, flavor-packed compote can be prepared in 15 minutes. I like to serve it with a dollop of something creamy on top, for example fromage blanc or Greek yogurt. Add a leaf of mint or a strawberry and it makes an elegant finale to any old meal.
I also grew rhubarb at my country place, and as it is perennial the new owners will also enjoy it. Ah yes, my friends, I sold the dacha this week. It’s a major life change, but one that was necessary. I will miss my garden, but will look forward to creating dishes from all of the fabulous garden-grown fruits and veggies on offer in France.
It’s lunchtime, a guest is coming, you’re in a rush. The omelette mixte is a classic of French cuisine that can be whipped up in just 10 minutes, from eggs, ham and grated Comté or a similar cheese. But, you may be thinking, what’s so special about a ham and cheese omelet? Well, mes amis, the art is in the making — the gentle lifting of the edges to create a fluffy concoction, the flick of the wrist to fold the omelet over itself, French style.
The origins of beef Stroganoff are murky but the consensus seems to be that a French chef had something to do with it. I therefore offer you my version of this classic dish of thinly sliced beef and mushrooms in a tangy cream sauce. I was inspired to make it recently after a visiting Russian friend, to my great surprise, asked for the recipe. Further inspiration came from an expert on Russian cuisine who is in Paris doing research for a new book.
Gorgonzola and walnuts, rigatoni and cream, topped by arugula — a perfect dish for a rainy May in Paris. They say April is the cruelest month, but this is not the case in my city. After a couple weeks of sunshine, summery temperatures and chestnuts in blossom, we are back to raincoats and sweaters. Given the weather, a comforting dish of pasta seemed in order the other day, and this recipe came to mind. I whipped it up in 20 minutes.
readers of this site will know, is one of my favorites. If you also enjoy Roquefort, recipes you might like to try include 
This spring in Paris has seen a great profusion of white asparagus. It came onto the market in early March, ahead of the green variety, and at prices so tempting I couldn’t resist. This, plus a request from a Japanese cooking student, has sparked my creativity this season. I have served white asparagus many times, with a wide variety of sauces. For the delicate flavor of this versatile vegetable can be complemented in many ways.
Another sauce I invented combines sesame oil, lemon juice and salt. It is shown here on asparagus spears that have been cut into segments and piled up for an elegant starter. The asparagus is sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds, drizzled with the sauce and topped with fronds of fresh cilantro.
What the article did not mention is another trend in Paris, of young chefs putting a modern spin on classic dishes. The latest such establishment to open is 
A Russian friend was coming over for a cooking lesson. He wanted to learn to make easy dishes he could prepare ahead of time to serve when friends came for supper at his dacha. Top of his list was … beef stroganoff. I found the idea of teaching beef stroganoff to a Russian to be rather fanciful, so I suggested poulet bonne femme, an earthy dish of chicken, bacon, mushrooms and onion that, like stroganoff, is finished with cream.
The other day a friend brought me a humble present — a jar of anchovies. But not just any anchovies. They were from Collioure, a picturesque fishing port on the French Mediterranean coast, which by some accounts produces the best anchovies in the world. I decided to try them out in a tangy salad of potatoes and black olives, set on a bed of baby spinach leaves, with mellow eggs on the side. The combination proved to be a knock-out.
Are French fries the ultimate French food? They may have been, but their quality in bistros has declined so much over the years that their enduring popularity here in France is a mystery. I would walk across Paris for good frites — crispy on the outside, meltingly tender on the inside — but they are not so easily found. There is another solution. Making your own fries is remarkably simple, and they are just as good as the delectable original.
That time having passed, why not try making them at home? French fries marry well with many dishes on this site, among them all the omelets, 
