Crème de la crème, Part I

Posted on September 16, 2022 by Meg

This week marks the 10th anniversary of The Everyday French Chef. When I started the site, back in 2012, I could never have imagined that readers would check out my recipes more than a million times. Thank you!! I’d like to celebrate by sharing a personal ‘best of’ list of recipes for autumn (I will post similar ‘best of’ lists this year for winter, spring and summer as the seasons change.) And by saluting the site’s most popular recipe…

Salade verte à la française / Green salad, French style

This salad of Boston lettuce bathed in a mustard vinaigrette is a French classic. Elegant in its simplicity, it’s is an unpretentious dish that can grace any meal, from picnic to gala dinner, and that can please omnivores, vegetarians and vegans alike. Yet the traditional version is becoming increasingly hard to find in French restaurants, where what is often served is an ersatz version with iceberg lettuce and – horrors! – a creamy sauce out of a bottle. Making it all the more useful to know how to create it at home.

The recipe for green salad, French style, has been viewed 42,444 times since it was first posted in May 2013 — more than any other recipe. And it’s not just the all-time favorite. It comes top in recipe views over the past year, quarter, month and week. What accounts for this popularity? It could be longevity — like five other recipes among the all-time top 10, it was posted during the site’s first year, giving readers more time to check it out. Or it could be that it’s hard to find an authentic recipe elsewhere for this very authentic French salad.

Other French classics among the top 10 include oeufs durs mayonnaise (hard-boiled eggs with homemade mayonnaise), assiette de crudités (French raw veggie plate), foie gras, escalopes de veau à la crème (veal scallops with cream and mushrooms)  and profiteroles (cream puffs with ice cream and chocolate sauce). You can view the list of the site’s 30 most popular dishes at the bottom of this post.

But first, as we head into autumn, I’d like to share some of my favorite seasonal dishes from among the 475 recipes that have appeared on this site to date. I’ve chosen three dishes from each of the site’s categories — mix and match as you like. Many feature foods that come into season in autumn: figs, walnuts, wild mushrooms, butternut, mussels and so on. Others are end-of-summer dishes taking advantage, for example, of the last of the season’s tomatoes. And others are simply dishes I like to serve at this time of year.

Starters
Aubergines farcies aux noix / Eggplant with walnut sauce
Jambon de pays aux figues / Cured country ham with fresh figs
Poêlee de champignons des bois / Wild mushrooms with herbs

Soups
Soupe au fenouil braisé / Braised fennel soup
Soupe aux betteraves à l’ukrainienne / Ukrainian borshch, French style
Velouté de butternut / Butternut soup

Salads
Poires au parmesan en salade / Salad of pears roasted with parmesan
Salade de l’ambassadeur / Salad with bresaola and late summer fruit
Salade vigneronne / Winemaker’s salad

Eggs
Omelette à la sauge / Omelet with fresh sage
Omelette aux cèpes / Mushroom omelet with porcinis
Soufflé au potiron / Pumpkin soufflé

 

Savory tarts
Pissaladière / Pissaladière
Tarte aux champignons sauvages / Wild mushroom tart
Tarte chèvre-figues-romarin / Goat cheese tart with figs and rosemary

Fish and shellfish
Coquilles saint-jacques aux girolles / Pan-seared scallops with chanterelles
Cabillaud au chorizo / Cod with chickpeas, spinach and chorizo
Moules marinière / Mussels steamed in white wine


Poultry and game
Cailles rôties / Roast quail
Fricassée de poulet aux figues / Chicken with fresh figs
Magret de canard au cassis / Duck with black currant sauce

 

Meat dishes
Entrecôte bordelaise / Pan-seared steak with shallots
Filet de porc au romarin / Roast pork filet with rosemary
Sauté de veau / Veal stewed in white wine


Vegetables
Gratin de potiron Georges Blanc / Georges Blanc’s pumpkin gratin
Purée de céleri rave / Puréed celeriac
Tomates provençales / Roasted tomatoes, Provence style

Pasta and grains
Gnocchis à la sauge / Gnocchi with fresh sage
Penne au potiron et aux noix / Penne with pumpkin and walnuts
Risotto aux champignons sauvages / Wild mushroom risotto



Desserts
Poires au vin et cassis / Pears in red wine and cassis
Tarte aux noix / Walnut tart
Tarte Tatin / Tarte Tatin

As an everyday French chef, how would I combine these dishes? Here are some examples:

For an everyday lunch, country ham with figs followed by a porcini omelet and a green salad. For a vegetarian version, butternut soup followed by wild mushroom risotto. For a vegan version, sautéd wild mushrooms with herbs followed by the winemaker’s salad (tender greens with grapes and walnuts).

For an everyday dinner, the ambassador’s salad (tender leaves, late summer fruit and bresaola) followed by mussels steamed in wine. For a vegetarian version, a salad of pears roasted with parmesan followed by penne with pumpkin and walnuts. For a vegan version, Ukrainian borshch, French style, followed by pears in red wine and cassis.

For a weekend dinner, pan-seared scallops with chanterelles followed by roast quail with celeriac purée and winemaker’s salad, and finishing up with a walnut tart. For a vegetarian version, pumpkin soufflé followed by wild mushroom tart and winemaker’s salad, and concluding with tarte Tatin (upside-down apple tart). You could add a cheese plate to either of these menus before dessert. For vegans, eggplant with walnut sauce followed by roasted Provençal tomatoes and, for dessert, pears in red wine and cassis.

And now for the nitty gritty — the top 30 all-time favorites of readers of The Everyday French Chef. The recipes most consulted over the last 10 years come from every category except savory tarts. Some, like couscous royal and coulibiac (elegant fish pie), made the list because they were tweeted by someone with a large following (when this happened with the coulibiac recipe, there were so many hits that it crashed the site). Given its bad rep in parts of the world, foie gras is surprisingly popular. One dish, roast turkey, French style, came about when I was invited to contribute to a Thanksgiving lunch prepared by Georges Blanc, one of France’s most celebrated chefs (he made the turkey). Here’s the list:

1 Salade verte à la française / Green salad, French style
2 Porc grillé aux herbes de Provence / Grilled pork chops with rosemary and thyme
3 Foie gras / Foie gras
4 Rôti de boeuf / Roast beef, French style
5 Escalopes de veau à la crème / Veal scallops with cream and mushrooms
6 Oeufs durs mayonnaise / Hard-boiled eggs with French mayonnaise
7 Assiette de crudités / French vegetable plate
8 Aubergines au four / Oven-roasted eggplant, Mediterranean style
9 Couscous Royal / Couscous with lamb, chicken and merguez
10 Profiteroles / Profiteroles

11 Coulibiac / Coulibiac
12 Julienne de champignons / Mushrooms julienne
13 Pavé de cabillaud tout simple / Pan-seared cod with thyme
14 Soupe de légumes / French vegetable soup
15 Gratin de courgettes / Zucchini gratin
16 Cerises à l’eau de vie / Cherries in brandy
17 Oeufs mimosa / Eggs ‘Mimosa’
18 Sole meunière / Sole meunière
19 Coq au vin / Chicken stewed in red wine
20 Cailles rôtis / Roast quail

21 Artichauts vinaigrette / Artichokes with mustard vinaigrette
22 Poule au pot / Poule au pot
23 Omelette à la sauge / Omelet with fresh sage
24 Steak au poivre / Steak au poivre
25 Omelette au saumon fumé et épinards / Smoked salmon omelet with spinach
26 Sauce vinaigrette à la moutarde / Mustard vinaigrette
27 Soupe paysanne / French peasant soup
28 Turbot au four beurre blanc / Baked turbot with creamy butter sauce
29 Steak maître d’hotel / Pan-seared steak with parsley butter
30 Dinde à la française / Roast turkey, French style

Happy cooking!

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Soupe glacée aux courgettes

Posted on August 5, 2022 by Meg

What could be better when the temperature soars than a zingy cold soup? This one combines zucchini with tiny lentils, Indian flavorings and mint, and can be topped with coconut milk and/or any number of embellishments. The idea for it popped into my head as yet another heatwave loomed in Paris. With the mercury due to hit 100 degrees – that’s around 40 Celsius – I wanted to make something cool ahead of time…

Soupe glacée aux courgettes / Cold zucchini-lentil soup

As I like Asian food when the weather is hot, I turned to Madhur Jaffrey, my favorite Indian cookbook author. But I didn’t find the kind of soup I had in mind. So I improvised. First I cooked some Indian red lentils with ginger and turmeric, turning them yellow. Then I briefly sautéd zucchini rounds with onion, garlic and ginger, adding ground cumin, coriander seeds, turmeric and cayenne before covering it all with water. I let it simmer for 15 minutes, then puréed it, stirring in the lentils and finely cut fresh mint at the end.

The soup had chilled for just over an hour when my daughter came in from the sweltering heat and found it in the fridge. She helped herself to a bowlful, swirled on some coconut milk, added a couple of cucumber slices and sat down with it in front of the fan. I couldn’t have been more delighted when she pronounced it a success. She was happy, I was happy, and that’s one of the reasons I love to cook – it gives pleasure to other people. But even a dedicated everyday chef needs a break from time to time.

On that note, dear readers, here’s wishing you a lovely conclusion to your summer. The Everyday French Chef will be on vacation until until September, when I plan to mark the 10th anniversary of this site with a special ‘best of’ post. In the meantime, bonnes vacances and…

Happy cooking!

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Confiture de groseilles

Posted on July 1, 2022 by Meg

When summer strikes, it’s time to head to the market for red currants — or, if you’re lucky enough to have them in your garden, to go on a picking spree. These jewel-like berries make a fabulous jam that is remarkably easy to prepare. Unlike cherries, plums or apricots, red currants do not need pitting. And unlike red currant jelly, the jam does not require the tricky step of squeezing the cooked berries through a cheesecloth (étamine).

Confiture de groseilles / Red currant jam

I’ve been making jam for many, many years, and red currant is one of my favorites. It’s not just the ease of preparation. It’s also the delightfully tangy flavor. Beyond the obvious uses for red currant jam — on toast, buttered bread or croissants — it also marries well with roast beef or chicken, much like cranberry sauce as a condiment with roast turkey.

And here’s another thing. You can use the same recipe with black currants (cassis), which make perhaps my all-time favorite jam. I would have included it today but black currants haven’t come on the market yet. We should start seeing them around mid-July.

In the good old days, when I still had my country cottage in Burgundy, I had both red and black currants growing in the garden in profusion. Every year there was a tense moment in early summer when the berries started to ripen. I could only get down to the cottage on weekends. Who would get the ripe berries first, me or the birds? Sometimes the birds won, but I usually managed to pick enough for a batch or two of jam. And once the jam is in the jars, you can keep it for months or years.

Which brings me to another thing. How much jam is enough for a batch? If you set out to make a dozen jars, the process can seem overwhelming. Well, dear readers, sometimes I only make a jar or two at a time. So far this year I’ve made three pots of strawberry jam and two of red currant. Still to come are apricot jam, plum jam, blackberry jam and fig jam, and maybe some others as well. Preparing a batch of 2-4 jars takes less than an hour. By making small batches, you won’t get exhausted — and by the end of summer, you’ll have a lovely collection of jams in your cupboard.

Now for the good news. Making jam used to be a tedious process that involved melting paraffin to seal jam jars with special lids. I remember my mother, a great jam maker, standing heroically for hours over boiling pots of fruit and wax in the steamy heat of a Wisconsin summer. No more. As I learned upon arriving in France, paraffin is not needed to seal the jars, and no special jars are needed. Here’s how it works.

During the winter months, as you finish a jar of jam — store bought or homemade — you can remove the label and wash it. By the time jam-making season rolls around, you should have a collection of jars ready to go. On jam-making day, you sterilize the necessary number of jars and their lids for ten minutes in boiling water, then set them upside down to dry on a clean dish towel. When the jam is ready, you ladle it into the jars and screw on the lids. A vacuum will form as the hot jam cools, and this will preserve it perfectly.

Finally, I’d like to address the relative merits of jam vs. jelly. Fruits with a high pectin content, like red currants of quince, are often used to make jelly. But while jelly has its charms, making it at home can prove challenging. I learned this the hard way one year when a friend with a quince tree in his garden brought me a huge bagful. Fine, I thought, I’ll make quince jelly. I boiled them up with sugar, as the recipe specified, then attempted to squeeze the fruit through a cheesecloth to obtain the juice. Next thing I knew there was quince all over the ceiling and walls of my kitchen. Never tried that again…

Jam is a different matter — easy to make, and so rewarding in the bleak midwinter when you open a jar and dip in a spoon. The intense burst of flavor as you taste the fruit will transport you back to blissful summer days. And you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you did it yourself. With just fruit and sugar.

Happy cooking.

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Tomates farcies

Posted on June 17, 2022 by Meg

Stuffed tomatoes are one of the glories of French country cooking. This is peasant food at its finest, and fillings differ considerably. The traditional recipe, which hails from Provence, uses sausage meat, often in combination with beef or veal, and flavored with onion, garlic, herbes de Provence and fresh parsley or basil. In a lighter, vegetarian/vegan version, the tomatoes are stuffed with a filling similar to ratatouille, with a little bulghur added for heft.

Tomates farcies / Stuffed tomatoes

It’s not known who first had the brilliant idea of stuffing veggies with meat, rice or another filling, but the practice goes back a long way, at least to the ancient Greeks. Related dishes include stuffed vine leaves, stuffed zucchini, stuffed eggplant, stuffed cabbage leaves (coming soon), stuffed sweet peppers and even stuffed zucchini flowers.

Fillings for tomatoes have evolved over the years in France. In the old days, leftover meat from boiled dishes such as pot au feu was often chopped to create the filling. Roast beef or chicken were also used. These days recipes generally call for ground meat. For the pork, use a high-quality sausage, such as Italian sausage or saucisse de Toulouse, simply removing the meat from its casing.

For the veggie filling, you can follow the recipe given here — with eggplant, zucchini, onions and garlic — or use your imagination. I’ve seen recipes that use combinations including potatoes, carrots, mushrooms, corn, pine nuts, raisins, goat cheese or olives. In all of these, the tomato pulp is also incorporated.

Both the meat and the veggie fillings presented here are flavored with herbes de Provence — a comination of dried thyme, rosemary and other herbs, for example marjoram, savory or basil. Snipped fresh herbs such as parsley or basil are generally added. If you like a bit of bite, you can also include cayenne.

There are many other French versions of stuffed tomatoes. In one, tomatoes au nid (‘tomatoes in the nest’), the tomatoes are hollowed out and an egg cracked into the center before being roasted. In another, tomates farcies à la reine, the tomatoes are stuffed with poached chicken, mushrooms — and sometimes truffles — in a cream sauce. In cold versions, the tomatoes may be stuffed with tuna or with crème fraîche and fresh herbs.

In other words, you can create the stuffed tomatoes of your choice. And with summer looming, this is a great time to try your hand at this classic French dish.

Happy cooking.

Posted in 8. Vegetables | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Soufflés aux framboises

Posted on June 3, 2022 by Meg

If you’ve never experienced a raspberry soufflé, it’s like tasting warm, fluffy, raspberry-flavored air. Sweet, light and ephemeral. And the good news is that this elegant dessert is remarkably easy to make. I’m not an expert on dessert soufflés, but when I saw Michel Guérard, one of France’s most venerated chefs, whip up a couple of small raspberry soufflés during a television feature, I knew I had to try to make them myself. Instant success!

Soufflés aux framboises / Raspberry soufflés

Michel Guérard is one of the fathers of nouvelle cuisine, the lighter, fresher version of French cooking that became a sensation in the 1970s. He’s had three stars in the Michelin restaurant guide for more than 40 years, a rare distinction. He’s a genial man — in the France 2 broadcast, he held a freshly picked raspberry in his hand and said it felt like caressing a woman. Back at his kitchen, he showed viewers drawings he’d made in cocoa for Queen Elizabeth when she visited Versailles on her first trip to France.

But Michel Guérard was careful in the broadcast not to give away all of his secrets. For example, he didn’t say how much sugar to add to the soufflé batter and how much to use for coating the cups. I had to wing it. He also omitted to say how to make the sugar adhere to the cups. With butter? With egg white? I asked around — it’s butter.

Another thing. The soufflés go into the oven for just 4-5 minutes — so that the inside stays creamy, he said. I found that astoundingly brief, but guess what? The recipe works. I’ve made it three times now, to resounding applause. And it takes no more than 10 minutes to prepare. You purée the raspberries and push the purée through a sieve to remove the seeds, you add sugar and an egg yolk, you butter and sugar your soufflé cups, you beat three egg whites, you fold the whites and the raspberry mixture together and — here’s the master coup — when you pile the mixture into the cups you even it off with the edge of a spatula. In the oven, they pop up ever so nicely. And they are a treat to eat.

Happy cooking.

Posted in Desserts | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Brochettes de porc grillé

Posted on May 20, 2022 by Meg

It’s only May and it’s already summer in the city in Paris — a great time to enjoy grilled pork brochettes with tomato, cucumber and red onion, even if you don’t have a barbecue. Today’s recipe adds a French twist to a Russian summertime favorite, shashlik. The secret is marinating the pork in — wait for it — red wine vinegar. I couldn’t believe this when a Russian friend first gave me the recipe. In France we mainly marinate in wine. But it works.

Brochettes de porc grillé / Grilled pork brochettes

Shashlik, which is popular across the former Soviet Union, may also be made with veal, beef or lamb (favored in Central Asia). It is usually grilled over an open fire or barbecue, but may also be cooked tandoori-style in the oven. It differs from shish kebab in that no onions or peppers are threaded onto the skewers, only meat.

The French version adds olive oil and herbes de Provence to the marinade, which also includes sliced onion and minced garlic. But this recipe is highly adaptable. You can easily produce versions redolent of Greece (with tzadziki), the Middle East (with cumin) or Southeast Asia (with lime juice instead of vinegar and satay sauce alongside).

I first encountered shashlik while working as a reporter in Russia in the 1980s. The occasion was a yard party on June 21, the longest day of the year. In Moscow that means the light lingers until around 11 p.m. and is back just three hours later. The party was held in the courtyard of my building, a foreigners-only residence guarded by the KGB. Journalists, diplomats and a few bold Russians danced through the night to the strains of a Russian dixieland band. Beer, wine and vodka flowed as the genial U.S. ambassador to Russia, Arthur Hartman, manned the barbecue. It was a grand evening.

But normally shashlik is dacha food, prepared in the country in quiet, leafy surroundings. So when I returned to France and found a ‘dacha’ in Burgundy, it was only a matter of time before I wanted to try making it on my backyard barbecue. This happened when my friend Debby and her Siberian husband, Kolya, came for a visit. My daughter was about five at the time. She watched with rapt attention (I watched in horror) as Kolya poured vinegar over the meat. A few hours later we lit the barbecue. What came to the table was, well, perfect — tangy, juicy, tender. By the time Debby and Kolya left, my daughter had learned some Russian — podnimi menya (‘pick me up’), and shashlik.

Grilled pork on skewers has been back by popular demand many times in our home since then. As I no longer have the dacha, I now make it in a very hot oven. To be honest it’s best over charcoal, but it’s pretty darn good that way too.

Happy cooking.

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Fusilli aux courgettes

Posted on May 6, 2022 by Meg

A culinary delight on a recent trip to Italy was an innovative pairing of twisty pasta and zucchini. This dish — the creation of my friend Gisella, a superlative cook — is not as simple as it sounds. The zucchini is cooked two ways so that the pasta is both bathed in a silky zucchini sauce and embellished with strips of sautéd zucchini. Grated parmesan, small squares of dry-cured ham and snipped fresh basil are added at the end.

Fusilli aux courgettes / Fusilli with zucchini

This dish can be made with any pasta but works best with the twisty form known as fusilli in Italian, torsades in French and rotini in the United States. Why? Because the spiral shape makes it easy for the sauce to cling to the entire surface. The sauce is made by sautéing grated zucchini with onion and then blending the mixture. Separately, julienne strips of zucchini are fried in olive oil until golden. This may all be done in advance.

The next stage involves immersing pasta cooked until it is just short of al dente in the (reheated) zucchini sauce. This technique, known in Italian as la mantecatura, binds the sauce to the pasta and produces a creamy, homogenous dish. The same method may be used to excellent effect with tomato-based pasta sauces such as arrabiata or bolognese — the results are far superior to simply placing the sauce on top of the pasta.

When Gisella made zucchini con fusilli, she added small squares of prosciutto, but apologized, saying that speck was better but she didn’t have any on hand. There was no need to apologize — the dish was spectacular. But when I made it at home, I made a point of using speck, a lightly smoked Italian cousin of prosciutto — not to be confused with Germany’s speck (pronounced SHPEK), which is closer to bacon. I honestly can’t say which I preferred, so if speck is unavailable in your area, not to worry. Just use prosciutto. And for a vegetarian version, simply omit the ham.

This dish is worth a try if you’d like to add a touch of green to your table in the midst of what, at least in Paris, is turning out to be a glorious spring. We’ve had a run of mild sunny days, the roses are in bloom and the little herbs out on my balcony are flourishing. Everything would be perfect if we could forget about climate change and war.

Happy cooking.

Posted in 9. Pasta, Rice, Grains | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Radis au beurre

Posted on April 22, 2022 by Meg

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.

Posted in 1. Starters | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Poulet au paprika

Posted on April 8, 2022 by Meg

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.

Poulet au paprika / Chicken with paprika

So I did a little more research and came up with a French version of chicken paprikash, a dish served across central and eastern Europe. The chicken is sautéd with onions, paprika, seasonings and a spritz of lemon juice, then water is added and the dish is simmered to tenderness, with cream stirred in at the end. Topped with fresh herbs and served over tiny pasta or rice, it’s a simple, satisfying dish that can be made in about half an hour.

Like so many people around the world, I’ve been horrified and heartbroken by Russia’s unprovoked war on Ukraine, all the more so because I’m attached to both cultures in one way or another — I worked in Russia for five years as a journalist and I also have Ukrainian roots. For the last month or so I’ve dealt with my personal distress by working with the French Red Cross to help Ukrainian refugees as they arrive at Paris train stations. Last week a high school classmate asked me to write about this for his newsletter. If you’d like to see my thoughts on the situation, I posted the piece online. Click here.

My Ukrainian roots come from my father’s side of the family — Jews who emigrated to the United States in the 1890s. My father’s paternal grandmother, Sarah Bortin, always said she came from Odessa. Only much later in life did I learn that when she said she came from Odessa, she meant that the boat for America sailed from Odessa. That branch of the family actually came from a small Jewish village near Berdichev, about 120 miles west of Kyiv. My father’s maternal grandparents also came from various parts of Ukraine. It is to my father’s mother, my Grandma Anne, that I owe my familiarity with Ukrainian cuisine.

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 — borshch and potato pancakes.

If you’d like to make an all-Ukrainian dinner during these dark weeks, you could start with potato pancakes (often served with applesauce on the side), follow with borshch and have the chicken with paprika as the main dish. For dessert, although not strictly Ukrainian, you could serve mini cherry cheesecakes made with goat cheese.

Happy cooking.

Posted in 6. Poultry | Tagged , , , , , | 11 Comments

Salade de concombre sichuanaise

Posted on March 25, 2022 by Meg

I discovered this spicy peanut-topped cucumber salad just as Sichuan cuisine began making it big in Paris. It’s on the menu of Deux Fois Plus de Piment (‘Twice as Much Hot Pepper’), a small Sichuan joint in my neighborhood that the chef Shaun Kelly once named as his favorite Paris restaurant. This was back in 2012. Fresh, crunchy and piquant, the salad had me going back for more on a regular basis — until the pandemic struck.

Salade de concombre sichuanaise / Spicy cucumber salad with peanuts

With only a couple hours’ notice, France shut down all restaurants in March 2020 and it was some time before home delivery was allowed. Suddenly I was cut off from Sichuan food. What to do, what to do? I had become hooked not only on the cucumber salad but also on Deux Fois’ Sichuan ravioli, spicy chicken and fabulous spicy beef soup. I had already found a first-class Sichuan cooking site, but their version of the cucumber salad wasn’t the same. So I improvised and started making it at home.

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.

Which is not to say there’s no fire in this salad, which also includes cayenne. How much heat to add is up to you. At Deux Fois, diners may choose their level of heat on a scale of 1-5. I once made the mistake of choosing Level 2. Oops! Level 1 is already plenty fiery.

Preparation of the salad is easy and may be partially done in advance. The cucumbers are half-peeled and chopped, then mixed with a dressing of soy sauce, sesame oil, vinegar, garlic and the two kinds of pepper. Crushed peanuts and snipped cilantro are added on top. It’s both light and filling, and perfect for warm weather.

Once Sichuan cuisine debuted in Paris, Deux Fois became so popular that it spawned two offspring — Trois Fois Plus de Piment and Cinq Fois Plus de Piment (that’s Three Times and Five Times as spicy!). But visiting the original, a modest hole-in-the-wall around the corner from my place, was not my first encounter with Sichuan cooking. That event took place in Manhattan in the 1970s at a place whose name I no longer remember.

A large group of friends had invited me along one summer’s evening. We were seated around a long table and handed an even longer menu. One item intrigued me, so I inquired about it when the waiter finally got around to me. The conversation went like this. Me: ‘What is a sea cucumber?’ He: ‘What do you mean?’ Me: ‘Is it a fish?’ He: ‘No.’ Me: ‘Is it a vegetable?’ He: ‘No.’ Me: ‘Well then what is it?’ He: ‘What is a hot dog?’

Happy cooking.

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