French

You can make this stew 1 day ahead to allow its flavors to mellow and mingle.

Traditional rémoulade is made with mayonnaise. We have lightened this traditional side dish with a lemony yogurt dressing.

You can easily double this recipe and refrigerate leftovers in airtight containers for up to 3 days. The soup can also be frozen for up to 3 months. We used French lentils, but other types of lentils may also be used.

This chilled soup is traditionally garnished with fresh chives. We added the peppery snap of watercress and the tang of buttermilk to give it bite.

This dish can be prepared several hours ahead and served chilled or at room temperature. Peel and slice the cucumbers just before serving.

We used morel mushrooms, a spring variety known for its nutty flavor and pitted flesh, but any wild mushrooms, an assortment, or even cultivated mushrooms will also make a nice sauce. You can prepare the popover batter in advance, and refrigerate it for up to one day. Let it stand at room temperature for 20 minutes before baking. The sauce can also be made one day ahead. Let it cool completely, then refrigerate. Reheat over medium-low heat, adding heavy cream to thin, if necessary. If you have leftovers, keep them in an airtight container for up to one day.

Fill a tiered platter with just as much seafood as it can hold comfortably; refrigerate the rest until you are ready to replenish the platter.

Allow this robust dip to mellow overnight in the refrigerator. Before serving, bring it to room temperature, or reheat it gently in a saucepan.

You will need a metal brioche pan that measures 8 inches across the top and 3 1/2 inches at the base. Be sure to fit the plastic wrap into the curves, smoothing it as much as possible before filling.

Bernard Ganachaud, in the early 1960s, made the poolish baguette the first legitimate alternative to the 60-2-2 baguette of the Parisian masses. When he retired thirty years later, his la flûte Gana was a licensed commodity, and bakers who paid for the right to make it were allowed to charge an extra franc above the government-controlled price. In the Coupe du Monde bread competition, the poolish baguette is now the standard that all countries must replicate. In my visits to the boulangeries of Paris, the poolish baguette made at the original Ganachaud Boulangerie was the second best baguette I ever had (the first being the pain à l’ancienne of Philippe Gosselin). Ganachaud has a special medium-extraction flour (with his name prominently displayed on the bags, naturally) from which he makes his baguettes, and there isn’t any flour quite like it in America. It is slightly higher in ash content and bran than regular bread flour, more like clear flour (whole-wheat flour that has been sifted only once instead of the usual twice to remove the bran and germ). The closest I’ve come to replicating that flour is described below and it makes a wonderful baguette, perhaps as good as can be done outside of the magical environment of Paris and without true Ganachaud-endorsed flour. Some people prefer it to the Gosselin baguette. See what you think.