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.
Veau braisé aux épices / Slow-cooked veal with spices
Vera must have served ten dishes that evening, including another meat dish and many sides. It was a spectacular meal. I asked her for the veal recipe the next morning, but it took me all this time to get around to making it. It’s not exactly everyday cooking, as it takes … three days. And you need to have a crowd to consume it. But the effort is worth it.
How did she come up with this recipe? Vera is a multi-culti, multi-lingual person whose culinary knowledge spans the world. Born in Czechoslovakia, she came to France for university, and when the Russians invaded Prague in 1968 she decided to stay. That’s when she met her husband, a Canadian who became a TV correspondent for the CBC. His career took them to Beijing, Montreal, Jerusalem, Paris, Moscow (where we met), Berlin and London. From these cities, Vera traveled to other spots in the region, from the farflung outposts of China to Georgia, Uzbekistan and Iran. In each of these places, she picked up and elaborated on the local cuisine, adding her own personal touch.
She tends to favor rich, spicy dishes, and indeed uses many spices in this recipe: cumin, coriander, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, fennel seeds, curry powder and saffron. Instead of using store-bought ground spices, she smashes the whole spices with a hammer! She swears this produces better results than a spice grinder or mortar and pestle. Besides, she says, ‘C’est plus jouissif’. Loose translation: ‘It’s more fun.’
Serving the veal is a pleasure, since everything is done in advance, including slicing, and it merely needs to be heated through before coming to the table. But what to serve alongside? I would recommend seasonal veggies and grains. As it’s autumn, I served the veal with a purée of pumpkin with parmesan, braised finocchio and spicy lentils with onions. The starter was a salad of tender leaves with red grape halves and walnuts, dressed with a mixture of olive oil, walnut oil, balsamic vinegar and garlic. For dessert we had ricotta with lavender and figs. My guests did not complain.
For my next post, I will return to a simpler style of cooking. But even everyday French chefs branch out from time to time. I hope you will try this recipe and enjoy it.
Happy cooking.
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.
The humble lentil comes into its own in this simple, earthy dish flavored with gently sautéd onions, ground spices and fresh herbs. Lentils prepared in this way can be served as a flavor-packed side dish with meat, poultry or fish, or as part of a vegetarian meal. I served the dish recently with grilled guinea hen with walnut sauce, with a spinach salad alongside, and my guests were very happy. The full meal, with recipes, is described below.
Fusion is hot in Paris at the moment, with Asian, African and Latin American-inspired dishes popping up on menus created by French chefs at trendy bistros. And among the popular dishes, raw fish — served as tataki, ceviche or simply tartare — might well top the list. In this version, raw tuna is marinated in a mixture of Asian flavors and set atop a bed of black rice, another new-ish addition to the Parisian culinary repertoire.
But before I got around to attempting to replicate that dish, I was treated to dinner at another, pricier restaurant, Le Comptoir du Relais, where a ceviche of mulet noir was the first course of a five-course, fixed menu (no choice). The fish, mixed with tiny bits of Granny Smith apples, avocado, celery and cucumber juice (!), was served in a shallow bowl with a smear of tapenade alongside, as shown in the photo snapped by my friends.
Fruit became a major issue this summer down in Burgundy, where a great year for fruit of all kinds — cherries, plums, apples and pears — turned my garden into a paradise for fruit-loving wildlife of the alarming variety (more on that later). Now that I’m back in Paris, where I can safely gather fruit from the market, I decide to try my hand at a salad featuring pears topped with parmesan and roasted to mouth-watering succulence.
Cheese stands as a course of its own in France — and why not, in a country with more than 400 varieties to choose from? It is usually presented between the main course and fruit or dessert, with the number of cheeses ranging from one to many depending on the occasion and the number of people at the table. But which cheeses to choose and how to present them? A reader wrote in to ask this question. The subject is vast. Here goes.
With so many cheeses to choose from, where to begin? Cheeses are seasonal, varying according to the time of year when the milk is at its best and the amount of time needed for the cheese to mature. Cheeses at their best in spring include all types of chèvre (goat cheese, seen at right) and soft cheeses like Camembert, Brie and Epoisses. Cheeses that take a bit longer to mature, like Reblochon or Saint-Nectaire, come into their prime in summer. Autumn is the time to choose cheeses that have acquired character through longer maturation, like Roquefort, Ossau-Iraty (a hard Basque cheese made from ewe’s milk), Maroilles or Livarot. Winter is when cheeses needing the longest maturation come into their own: Comté and Beaufort, Cantal and Laguiole, and the unmatchable Mont d’Or, a meltingly delicious cheese eaten out of its round wooden box with a spoon.
Harmony becomes more important when assembling a cheese plate for fewer people. As I’m partial to goat cheese, sometimes I’ll compose a plate with two or more types of chèvre, as seen at left. The plate includes Pouligny-Saint-Pierre (from south of the Loire) and two Rocamadours (from the Périgord). 
Sometimes I’ll go regional, selecting cheeses from, say, the rugged Auvergne region of south central France. The board at right includes Laguiole and Fourme d’Ambert, both made from cow’s milk. By the way, since blue cheeses, including Roquefort, are not to everyone’s taste, I usually include at least one non-blue cheese in the assortment. (An excellent site for taking a look at French cheeses is 
I first discovered tarama in France, where it has been popular as a starter for decades or possibly longer. It is traditionally made from bottarga — cured and salted roe that has been pressed and sealed in wax. But, as I learned when shopping for this blog post, it is more often made these days with fresh salted roe, which is a fraction of the cost of the cured variety. The other ingredients are oil, bread, milk and lemon juice, and preparation is easy.
I decided to experiment for this post and bought both kinds of roe — fresh and cured. The fresh roe cost 2.80 euros for 100 grams (about 1/4 pound), while the bottarga cost 14.50 euros for the same quantity. I also experimented by using sunflower oil with the fresh roe and a half-and-half mixture of sunflower and olive oil with the bottarga. You can see the results in this photo.
It’s that strawberry time of year. So when friends were coming to dinner the other night I couldn’t resist the temptation to make a strawberry tart. This involves a little work, but the results are well worth it. And the assembly is fun. The strawberries are placed in concentric circles on layer of French pastry cream that you’ve spread over a delectably crumbly, pre-baked sweet tart shell. A bright red glaze produces the brilliant sheen. Sweet and fresh.
I’ve been serving a medley of seasonal vegetables this spring — asparagus, young carrots, peas and red spring onion — and wanted to try it out in a salad version. So here it is, bathed in lemony homemade mayonnaise and served alongside steamed salmon on a bed of tender greens. The veggie combination is a fresh take on macédoine, a classic French dish of chopped vegetables in mayo that today feels decidedly old-fashioned.
Pho, the remarkably fragrant, herb-topped Vietnamese beef and noodle soup, is ubiquitous in Paris. I never considered preparing it at home until a recent day when my daughter asked me to make it for dinner. As one who enjoys a challenge, I looked into the matter and informed her that we could have it the next day — as preparing the broth for pho takes several hours. I went ahead and made the soup, with moderate success, then consulted an expert.
