Simple starters are having a moment in Paris, and today I am featuring one of my favorites, cucumbers in cream. This tasty dish may be enhanced with the herb of your choice – cilantro, dill, chives or chervil – and served on its own, with another simple starter or two, as part of an assiette de crudités (mixed veggie plate) or alongside smoked salmon. And best of all for the everyday chef, it takes no more than five minutes to prepare.
Concombres à la crème / Cucumbers in cream
The trend toward simple starters began at Paris bistros a couple years back with the revival of another classic, oeufs durs mayonnaise (hard-boiled eggs cut in half and bathed in sumptuous homemade mayo). It gets star billing at Le Desnoyez, a terrific bistro in the Belleville district, and many other establishments with young, innovative chefs. This is good news. Once a menu standard, the dish had fallen in stature to the point of becoming inedible, with cafes serving up overcooked, rubbery eggs with commercial mayo squeezed out of a bottle. No respectable restaurant would serve it this way. But now it’s back.
Another popular simple starter is avocado toast, a relatively recent arrival in Paris. A bistro down the street from me, Café Pola, serves it in the form of avocado and horseradish purée on toasted country bread garnished with slice radishes and cucumber ribbons, with or without smoked salmon alongside. Pola recently scratched oeuf dur mayonnaise from its menu in favor of a warm poached egg, but plans to restore it when summer arrives.
While we’re on the subject of starters, I’d like to mention the fact that they are known in France as entrées, which is confusing for Americans since ‘entrées’ in the States are main dishes. The French version is the accurate one, since entrée translates as ‘entry’, as in entry to the meal. How did this confusion arise? My understanding is that, back in the old days when elaborate meals featured many courses, the entrée was generally a warm dish, like a soufflé, that followed a soup or a cold hors d’oeuvre, for example radishes with butter or pâté, and preceded the main dish (plat principal). Over time, as menus simplified, hors d’oeuvre and entrée got conflated to mean any starter.
Returning to concombres à la crème, preparation involves simply peeling and slicing the cucumber, adding cream, salt, pepper, herbs and perhaps a dash of lemon juice. It is best prepared just before eating so that the cucumbers remain crisp. If you’d like to serve the dish with another simple starter, I can recommended grated carrots with lemon and olive oil, beet salad with walnuts, sliced hard sausage (saucisson sec) or cured ham, smoked trout or salmon, herbal tomato salad, warm lentil salad or … oeufs durs mayonnaise.
Happy cooking.
When the French are asked to name their favorite dishes, couscous invariably comes near the top of the list. And why not? This import from North Africa is delicious, economical and healthy. The fluffy semolina grain forms a bed for veggies and chick peas cooked in a rich broth flavored with mildly exotic spices. Then along comes your choice of meat, poultry, spicy sausage, fish or a combination, as in this ‘royal’ version.
Smoked herring and potatoes bathed in a gentle vinaigrette is a classic French bistro starter. In this rendition, two types of beets are added to the plate — cooked red beets and raw, striped heirloom beets — along with onion and cilantro. I was inspired to prepare the dish this way after encountering it last winter at one of my favorite Paris bistros, Le Desnoyez, where presentation is an art form and the food is modern and delicious.
With the holidays behind us, it’s time for simpler fare. Rustic and wholesome, French white bean soup makes a fine January meal. Begin or follow with a salad, add some cheese and fruit, open a bottle of red and voilà. In this version, the soup is flavored with garlic, onion and rosemary. When I cooked up a pot of it on a recent gray Paris day, I topped the soup with a drizzle of herb-and-garlic infused olive oil and some freshly baked croutons.
Tartiflette
Endives gratinées au jambon de pays
Linzertorte is one of my favorite desserts, and when better to serve it than over the holidays? This classic cake, which takes its name from the Austrian town of Linz, is now enjoyed worldwide. The nutty shortbread-style pastry is filled with jam — typically black or red currant or plum — but in Alsace, where it is often served over the Christmas season, raspberry jam is preferred.
Roast goose was a traditional Christmas dish in France for many years, probably for centuries, but it is rather rare on holiday tables these days, having ceded its place to turkey, capon or duck. Nonetheless, roast goose is delicious. This year I decided to roast a goose well before Christmas in order to post it here in time for you to think about it, and perhaps make it. But getting the goose proved harder than anticipated. In fact it was a bit of a feat.
If you’ve never roasted a goose before, there are tips on the 
This is a versatile salad featuring two types of greens that come into their own in late autumn and winter: mâche (aka lamb’s lettuce) and Belgian endive. Mustardy vinaigrette sauce and plenty of garlic turn the leaves into a zesty salad that may be served as is or enhanced with walnuts, Alpine cheese and/or country ham. This adaptability will allow you to enjoy it whatever your culinary proclivity — omnivore, vegetarian or vegan.
While either mâche and Belgian endive may be served on its own as salad, they pair nicely and can form the basis for a quickly prepared and tasty salad at lunchtime, with or without extra ingredients, or a salad course to precede or follow a main dish. The garlic adds zing, as does the homemade mustard vinaigrette, a French classic that also harks back to days of yore.
This dish gives an interesting twist to pumpkin that may be of interest as the holidays approach. Yes, I’m thinking Thanksgiving. The combination of pasta and pumpkin is popular in both France and Italy, and the walnuts add depth. This version also has a touch of Meg thanks to the spicing — not nutmeg, as my childhood friends delighted in calling me, but cumin which, combined with a spritz of lemon juice, adds a welcome zest.
My friend Vera, a superlative cook, served this spicy slow-cooked veal dish on the occasion of her husband’s birthday last year. It was summer, and the birthday dinner was in the garden of their country house in Provence. There were many guests and many speeches, much wine and much merriment. Cheery lanterns hung from a mulberry tree over trestle tables festooned with patterned cloths. I loved it all, but what blew me away was the food.
One of the delights of autumn is the baked apple — pomme au four in French. Served with cream or without, it’s a classic dessert that’s both healthy and easy to make. But is it so totally basic that it doesn’t belong on a French cooking blog? I thought it over, called a couple of friends and, with their hearty encouragement, decided to go for it. I’ve been wanting to add pommes au four to the desserts on this site for a very long time. Et voilà.
However, as the summer was very hot and very dry, they were smaller than usual. Although in the past I’ve tended to use large apples for this dessert, I decided to give it a try with the small ones, serving two or three per portion, as shown above and, with caramelized sauce but no cream, here.
There were a few big apples left on another tree, however, and I gave that a try also. The first one I baked exploded (i.e. its skin popped off) — see the recipe page for a photo. When I tried again, I took care to score the apple skin before baking, and it turned out perfectly, shown here with a dollop of crème fraîche.
