French

This is more than a soup; it is a generous meal fit for a gathering, and it has everything I love about food and flavor. I learned to make it from my French “mother,” Lulu. It’s one of the longest recipes in the book, but taken in parts it is not hard to make. I think of it as several steps: first make a fish stock, then prepare the fish and shellfish; make the rouille (garlic mayonnaise flavored with pepper purée); make the soup base with vegetables and the fish stock; toast garlic croutons; and finally put it all together, cooking the fish and shellfish in the deeply flavored soup base, and serve it with rouille and croutons to pass at the table.

A court bouillon is a quickly made aromatic vegetable broth for poaching fish. (In French, bouillon means “broth,” and court means “short.”)

For a very colorful ratatouille use different colored peppers, squash, and tomatoes. Don’t hesitate to double this recipe, as any ratatouille left over will taste even better the next day.

A panade is a thick soup made of layers of bread, vegetables, and cheese moistened with broth or water and baked until soft and golden. This onion panade is a hearty, homey soup bursting with sweet onion flavor.

This composed salad is based on a recipe from Provence. It makes a delightful lunch or light dinner. The summer vegetables are set off by the piquant anchovies and rich hard-cooked egg.

Béarnaise is a luxurious sauce flavored with shallots and tarragon, which give it a tart edge. It elevates a grilled steak or roast beef from delicious to divine.

Sweet tart dough, or pâte sucrée, is very different from the dough of the previous tarts in this chapter. It is sweet, soft, and almost crumbly instead of crisp and flaky. I use this dough for dessert tarts baked in tart pans with removable bottoms. The pastry is often prebaked so that it will stay crisp when baked with liquid fillings. Some of my favorite tarts of this kind are lemon curd, almond, and chocolate. Though made from flour and butter, sweet tart dough has the additions of egg and sugar. The ingredients are combined in a process closer to making cookie dough than to that of pastry. In fact, this dough makes delicious thumbprint cookies, little rounds with depressions made by the baker’s thumb and filled with lemon curd or jam. Sweet tart dough is soft and tender for a number of reasons. First, the butter and sugar are creamed (mixed until soft and fluffy) so that they combine thoroughly with the flour, inhibiting the gluten and tenderizing the dough. Finally, the dough is moistened with an egg yolk instead of water, making it even more difficult for the gluten to activate. Nevertheless, the dough can be overworked, so the egg is mixed into the butter to distribute it evenly before the flour is added. Soften the butter for 15 minutes at room temperature before creaming. It needs to be soft enough to stir in the egg yolk, but not so soft that it will melt into the flour and make the pastry oily. Beat the butter until it is soft and fluffy with a wooden spoon (or use a mixer) and then beat in the sugar. Add the egg yolk and vanilla and mix until completely combined. The yolk will be much easier to mix in if it is at room temperature. A cold egg will harden the butter around it. (If your egg is cold, put it in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes before separating it.) Mix in the flour, folding and stirring it into the butter-egg mixture. Don’t leave any floury patches in the dough or the pastry will be crackled in these places. The dough will be soft and sticky (sugar makes dough sticky) and needs to be refrigerated for at least 4 hours to firm up before rolling. Gather the dough into a ball and wrap in plastic. Flatten into a disk and chill. The dough can be made and kept in the refrigerator for 2 days or in the freezer for up to 2 months. Let it thaw overnight in the refrigerator before using. When ready to roll out the dough, take it out of the refrigerator. If it is quite hard, let it sit about 20 minutes to soften. Because the dough is soft and sticky by nature, it is much easier to roll out between 2 sheets of parchment or waxed paper. Cut two 14-inch-square pieces. Flour the bottom piece and center the unwrapped dough on it. Dust the top of the dough with flour and place the other sheet of paper on top. Roll the dough, from the center out, into a 12-inch circle. If the dough sticks to the paper, peel back the paper and dust the dough with a bit more flour. Replace the paper, turn the whole package over, and repeat the dusting on the other side. If the dough gets too soft while rolling, put it on a baking sheet, paper and all, and chill it in the freezer for a few minutes to firm it up. Continue rolling, flouring when needed, until the dough is about 1/8 inch thick. Let the rolled pastry rest for a few minutes in the refrigerator before using. A 12-inch circle of dough will line a 9-inch tart pan. (A tart pan with a removable bottom will make unmolding the tart much easier once it is baked.) Peel the paper off the circle of dough and, if it is to be baked blind (or empty), lightly prick it all over with a fork. This process is called docking, and it allows the escape of air that otherwise might cause the pastry to bubble up while baking. Invert the dough over the tart pan and remove the other piece of paper. Press the dough gently into the edges. Cut off the excess dough by rubbing your thumb across the top edge of the pan in an outward direction. Press the sides in and up after tri...

An omelet makes a light, quick, nutritious, and economical breakfast, lunch, or dinner. It is a comforting dish, thanks to its tenderness and the simplicity of its flavors: fresh eggs, a touch of butter, and a little cheese or other filling to add flavor and nuance. For the omelet I make most often, I stir fresh herbs (parsley, chive, sorrel, tarragon, or chervil) into the eggs before they are cooked and fill the omelet with a bit of Gruyère or soft ricotta. There are countless other possible fillings for omelets: the leftover spoonful of last night’s sautéed greens or roasted peppers, for example, or a morsel of braised lamb or sautéed ham. It should go without saying that very fresh eggs from hens fed organic feed and allowed to forage freely outdoors make the tastiest omelets. Farmers’ markets often sell such eggs. At grocery stores, look for eggs that are local, free-range, and, if possible, certified organic. Count 2 to 3 eggs per person. I prefer omelets that are not too thick, are delicately puffed and folded, and are still moist on the inside. To achieve this, I use this rule of thumb for the size of pan: 2 eggs in a 6-inch pan, 3 eggs in an 8-inch pan, 6 in a 10-inch pan, and no more than 12 in a 12-inch pan. The beaten eggs should be no more than 1/4 inch deep. The pan itself should be heavy and smooth-surfaced or nonstick. Preheat the pan over medium-low heat for 3 to 5 minutes before adding the eggs. This is the most important step for quick, consistent, and nonstick cooking. Crack your eggs into a bowl and, right before they are to be cooked, add a pinch of salt per egg (they turn watery when salted ahead), and beat them lightly with a fork or a whisk. The omelet will be more fluffy and tender if the eggs are well combined, but not beaten into a completely homogenous mixture. Put a knob of butter in the hot pan; it will melt and foam up. Swirl it around and, as the foam subsides and the butter starts to give off its distinctive nut-like aroma, but before it starts to brown, pour in the eggs. If you are making a large omelet, turn the heat up at this time to medium (this is not necessary with a small omelet). There should be a satisfying sizzle as the eggs enter the pan. The edges of the omelet will begin to set almost immediately (if they don’t, turn up the heat). Pull the edges towards the center with a fork or spatula, allowing uncooked egg to flow over the exposed bottom of the hot pan. Do this until the bottom of the omelet is set, lifting the edges and tilting the pan to let liquid egg flow underneath. When the eggs are mostly set, sprinkle on the cheese or other fillings. Cook a moment longer, fold the omelet in half over itself, and slide it onto a plate. To make a rolled omelet, tilt the pan down and away from you, shaking the pan to scoot the omelet towards the far edge of the pan and folding the near edge of the omelet over onto itself. Continue to tilt the pan, rolling the omelet towards the downward side. Then fold the far edge over the top and roll the omelet out of the pan onto a warm plate, seam side down. The whole process will have taken less than a minute. Drag a piece of butter over the top to make the omelet shine.

No less than meat and fish, vegetables are enhanced by the smoky perfume and radiant heat of the grill, whether served plain with a simple salsa verde or vinaigrette, stirred into a risotto, or combined into a grilled version of a vegetable stew such as ratatouille or peperonata. Grilled potatoes can be made into an intriguing potato salad that is even tastier when it includes a few grilled scallions. Different vegetables require different grilling approaches, and some vegetables can be grilled in more than one way. In general, grill vegetables over a medium to medium-hot bed of coals; a hotter fire will scorch the vegetables before they cook through. Conveniently, the fire is often at the perfect temperature for vegetables after the meat or fish has been grilled. You can also distribute the coals to create areas with different temperatures, so that one area burns hot while the other is medium-hot, allowing you to grill vegetables at the same time as a steak, for example. Use the hand test. If the fire is medium-hot, you should be able to hold your hand over the grill for about 4 seconds. Clean the grill well and oil it after it has heated up, before putting the vegetables on. Summer squash, eggplant, potatoes, and onions should be sliced 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch thick, as uniform as possible. Cut peppers in half or in quarters and clean out the ribs and seeds. Onion slices can be skewered flat, which makes them easier to turn. (Soak skewers in water for a few minutes to keep them from igniting.) Salt the vegetables. This can be done ahead of time, but note that salting accelerates moisture loss, so don’t be alarmed by liquid around them when you’re ready to grill. Brush olive oil generously over the vegetables before grilling. They can also be tossed with chopped herbs. After the vegetable slices have been on the grill for a few minutes, rotate them a little over 90 degrees to make a nice crosshatch of grill marks. After a couple more minutes turn the vegetables and finish cooking, rotating them once more to make grill marks, and turning them again, if necessary. Take the slices off the grill as soon as they are tender. Check for doneness at the stem end, which always takes the longest to cook. (Again, tongs are my favorite grilling tool; they make turning the vegetables a breeze.) Leafy vegetables such as scallions, small leeks, and wedges of radicchio benefit from an initial moistening before they go on the grill. Oil them, and then sprinkle them with water or mist them with a spray bottle. Turn them often as they grill to prevent scorching, and keep sprinkling or misting them to keep them moist. To accelerate their cooking, invert a metal bowl over them, to steam them while they grill. Some vegetables are better when cooked until tender in boiling water before being finished on the grill: asparagus, for example, and leeks that are larger than scallions, and small artichokes and potatoes, whole or halved. For easy turning on the grill, skewer potatoes and artichokes, taking care that all the cut faces are on the same plane when skewered to ensure equal contact with the grill. Tomatoes can be grilled, but they need a hot fire. Cut them in half and slide them onto the grill, cut side down. Let them grill for 3 minutes to seal the flesh before trying to rotate them. Be sure to clean the grill before you grill anything else, as tomatoes are a bit messy. Vegetables such as eggplants, summer squashes, and peppers can be cooked whole, but because they will take longer to cook through, the fire should be medium rather than medium-hot. Make a couple of deep incisions in their sides to speed up the cooking and to keep them from bursting from a buildup of steam. Corn can be grilled with great success after a little preparation. Peel back the husks, leaving them connected at the base of the ear, and remove all the silk. Season the corn with salt and pepper and a little chile or herbs, if you want; brush with some butter or o...

The basis of many soups is a broth (or stock) of meat and vegetables (or vegetables alone), which provides a foundation of body and flavor. A sufficiently rich and fragrant broth makes a wonderful soup all by itself. I love a bowl of chicken broth garnished with a bit of pasta and parsley or a poached egg. Broth is not only easy to make, it’s one of the few things I freeze so as to have the makings of a soup or a risotto always at hand. I use a whole chicken to make broth, which may seem extravagant, but it produces lots of sweet, fragrant, and full-bodied broth. (After an hour of cooking you can lift the chicken out of the pot, remove the breasts, and then return the rest to the pot. The poached breasts make a great meal, especially with a little salsa verde.) It is the meat that makes the difference in the broth. If you use bones, choose meaty ones, such as necks, backs, and wings. Meatless bones yield a thin broth. The leftover carcass of a roast chicken can also be added to the broth. The roasted meat adds depth of flavor. (Leftover grilled chicken bones are not recommended; they make an acrid, smoky-tasting broth.) When making broth from a whole chicken, include the neck from inside the cavity. Also, remove and unwrap the giblets (usually the heart, gizzard, and liver). Put the gizzard and heart in the broth, but save the liver for some other purpose. Always start the broth with cold water; the flavor is drawn out of the meat and bones as it heats up to a boil. The amount of water you use will determine the intensity of your broth. A chicken barely submerged in water will produce a very rich, fragrant soup. Adding more water will make a lighter, more delicate broth. Bring the broth to a full rolling boil and then turn it down right away. The boil causes all the blood and extra proteins to coagulate into a foam that rises and collects at the top where you can skim it off, ensuring a clearer broth. If the broth is allowed to boil for long it will turn cloudy and the fat may emulsify, bonding with the water and making the stock murky and greasy. When skimming the broth, use a ladle and remove only the foam, not the fat. The fat contributes lots of flavor as the broth cooks and it can all be removed at the end. Add the vegetables after you have skimmed off the foam; that way they don’t get in the way. Add the vegetables either whole or in large pieces so they don’t fall apart and cloud the broth. Salt helps develop the flavor as the broth cooks and makes a much more flavorful stock than if you were to add all the salt at the end. Don’t add too much, though. The stock will lose volume to evaporation as it cooks, so it should start out under-seasoned. Cook the broth at a simmer, which means at a very gentle boil with bubbles just breaking the surface of the liquid at irregular intervals. If by accident the broth is cooking too quickly and has reduced, add some more water and return to a simmer. Broth should cook long enough to extract all the flavor from the meat and bones, but not so long that it starts to lose its delicacy and freshness. For chicken broth allow 4 to 5 hours. Taste the stock often as it cooks and turn it off when it is full of flavor. When you taste, spoon out a little and salt it to get a better idea of how it will taste when it is fully seasoned. Try this at different times throughout the cooking process to discover how the flavors develop. Strain the broth when it is finished cooking. Ladle it out of the pot and pass it through a strainer into a nonreactive container. For a very clear broth, strain it again through a clean wet cotton towel or cheesecloth. If you plan to use the broth right away, skim the fat. I only do this if I am using the broth right away. Otherwise, allow the broth to cool and refrigerate it with its fat, which solidifies on top, helping to preserve the broth and its flavor. The cold, hard fat is easy to lift off. Do not cover the broth until it’s cool o...

Velvety, luscious, garlicky mayonnaise—what the French call aïoli (pronounced eye-oh-lee)—is another sauce I use all the time: on sandwiches; with vegetables, both raw and cooked; with meat and fish; as the binder for chicken salad and egg salad; and as a base for sauces such as tartar sauce. Most children, even very young ones, love aïoli and will happily use it as a dip for bite after bite of bread, carrots, potatoes, and even vegetables they might otherwise refuse. Two or three small cloves of garlic per egg yolk, pounded with a mortar and pestle, make a fairly pungent garlic mayonnaise—depending on the garlic. The strength of garlic’s flavor can vary a lot, depending on freshness, season, and variety. I always pound the garlic in a mortar and pestle and reserve half of it, so I can add it later if the aïoli needs it. (You can always add more garlic, but you can’t subtract it.) It’s important to pound the garlic to a very smooth purée so the sauce will be garlicky through and through, not just a mayonnaise with bits of garlic in it. One egg yolk will absorb up to one cup of oil, but you can add less if you don’t need that much mayonnaise. Whisk the oil in drop by drop at first, adding more as you go. It is much easier to whisk when the bowl is steadied. To help hold it still, set it on top of a coiled dish towel. Adding a small amount of water to the egg yolk before you incorporate the oil helps prevent the sauce from separating or “breaking.” If mayonnaise does separate, stop adding oil, but don’t despair. Just crack a fresh egg, separate the yolk into a new bowl, add a little water as before, and slowly whisk in first the broken sauce and then the rest of the oil. Make aïoli half an hour ahead of time, to give the flavors a chance to marry. As with anything made with raw eggs, if you’re not going to serve mayonnaise within an hour, refrigerate it. Aïoli tastes best the day it’s made.

Dates were always around the house for snacking when I was a kid. Now I absolutely love to use them in both sweet and savory dishes. Large, dark-skinned Medjool dates are grown in the United States, Jordan, Israel, and now in Baja! I think they add a whole new dimension to an otherwise classic crème brûlée.

My very close friend and colleague Elsa Flores, a Baja pastry chef, shared this recipe with me. It’s a wonderful fusion of one very Mexican ingredient, amaranth, with one very French dessert, macaroons. Be sure to let the raw macaroons rest after they are piped. This will dry out the tops and will result in a shinier and perfectly puffed macaroon.

“Hearts of Cream” a lovely, classic dessert and one that takes very little attention or work.

Whether you work by hand or with a blender or food processor, it takes just five minutes to make mayonnaise, and when you’re done you have a flavorful, creamy dressing that is so far superior to the bottled stuff you may not recognize it as the same thing. Next to vinaigrette, it’s the most useful of all dressings, and despite its luxurious nature it contains little saturated fat. If you’re worried about the health aspects of using a raw egg, start with bottled mayonnaise and beat in a little oil and/or any of the suggested additions.

This dish, which often appears on bistro menus in France, fits the need for a good steak served with something powerfully salty and rich (anchovy butter or a combination of butter, soy sauce, and ginger will also do the trick). Some might consider the sauce overkill, but not those of us who crave it. My favorite cheese for this sauce is Roquefort, which is made from sheep’s milk. But it’s entirely a matter of taste—Stilton, Gorgonzola, Maytag blue, or any high-quality, fairly soft blue cheese will work equally well. Don’t bother, however, trying to make this sauce with commercially produced domestic blue cheese, such as that sold precrumbled for salads. Not only will its taste be inferior, but it will not give the sauce the same creaminess. This is a case where the usually too-lean and mildly flavored tenderloin (filet mignon) will do just fine. Its tenderness is welcome and its blandness more than compensated for by the sauce. I’d still prefer a good strip steak or rib-eye, which are chewier and more flavorful, but you will notice their higher fat content when they’re combined with the rich sauce.

The chicken must be well browned before the rest of the dish is cooked, and in this instance there is no hurrying the process. Take your time and brown each piece of chicken well; especially if you’re cooking for eight or more, this will take a while, as you’ll have to brown in batches.