We are living through a great age for vegetables (to purloin an expression from Jane Austen’s Persuasion.) Local growers expand their crops to include both heirloom and exotic vegetables, clever cooks are coming up with things like cauliflower rice, and star chefs (Alain Passard!) are treating them as more than just side dishes or garnishes.
Bring Back Le Bricolin!
Long before kale got its cult following in France, Brittany had le bricolin. Also called cow or rabbit cabbage (chou à vache, chou à lapin) because it was mostly grown to fee [...]
Sautéed Sea Beets (Wild Spinach)
On a gray low-light winter day, the only thing that stood out on my regular walk were the deep green tufts of sea beets that cluster around a certain curve of the coast. The [...]
Caramelized Fennel and Carrot Soup
Carrots for color, fennel for flavor, this five-ingredient soup tastes like braised fennel in a bowl. Fennel is a vegetable I find hard to describe to those not familiar with [...]
Butternut Squash Spoonbread
This is one of those recipes that defied all my hopes and expectations—mainly because I defied just about everything I read about how to make it online. While doodling around [...]
Basic French Potage
If there is one French recipe that everyone in the whole wide world should learn to make, it is potage, the blended vegetable soup that was once the start to every supper in [...]
Roasted Carrots with Toasted Cumin and Coriander
Why Cancale? Because grocery store produce here can be really, really good. Generally speaking, I do not shop at the local grocery store for produce. (There are farmers' mark [...]
Persian Cucumber Soup with Mint
I have been making this soup for exactly twenty years. Exactly. How do I know this? Because I made my first version for it during the 1998 World Cup (when France also won). I [...]
Elodie’s (Easy) Tian
The tians (pronounced tee-ahn) I’ve tasted in France have all been simple, meltingly tender swirls, rows, or stacks of summer vegetables cooked with some garlic, a few herbs [...]
Preserved Lemons
All winter long (and it was indeed a long winter), I meant to preserve some citrus. I had grand schemes for jars of curds and grapefruit jam, homemade marmalade if I could fi [...]
Ranch Dressing Chez Moi
Living abroad for an extended period of time inevitably means missing—and craving—many foods you once took for granted. Many wouldn’t even make your top ten list of favorite [...]
Why is my rhubarb green?
I will never dispute the superior quality of the rhubarb I buy from *my* vegetable stand at the farmers’ market in Saint-Malo, but I’ve always found its color disappointing. [...]
Mushroom Broth (with stems and ends)
Why toss out the brown ends and tough stems of those mushrooms you use when turning them into a rich, flavorful broth is as simple as setting them to boil in some water for a [...]
How to dry wild (or shiitake) mushrooms
Before.... After successfully drying a surplus of chanterelles (shared by a neighbor) by setting them on top of a warm radiator, I thought the same technique would work for [...]
Brothy Shiitake Soup with Ginger and Garlic
There is nothing to this soup. Seriously. Literally. Ridiculously. (Well, no, not ‘ridiculously,’ but since I was going with the flow of overused (and misused) adverbs, I fig [...]
Sizzled Spinach with Crispy Shallots
One vegetable that has seem to have fallen by the wayside in the US is fresh spinach. I’m not talking about baby spinach which is ubiquitous enough. I mean the deep-green, la [...]
Roasted Whole Cauliflower, Miznon-Style
Ever since I first read the hyped-up reviews of whole, roasted cauliflower from Miznon, an Israeli eatery in the Marais district of Paris, I’ve wondered: Just how good can pl [...]
Leek Green Champ
Because leeks are so very costly per pound in the US, it pains me, PAINS ME, to throw away leek tops the way most French cooks do. I’ll do it if I absolutely have to—say, whe [...]
Heirloom Tomatoes Provençal
The last of the heirloom tomatoes deserve a special send-off, something that sets them smack in the center of the plate and showcases them in all their funny-shaped, juicy gl [...]
Sautéed Escarole with Capers and Crispy Garlic
September is strange in Cancale this year. Instead of the glorious post-season weather I've grown to love more than summer, it has been chilly, blustery, wet—more like Novemb [...]
Herbes de Provence
In France, I swear by Ducros, the supermarket brand of herbes de Provence. The balance of herbs is nigh on perfect—not too pungent, not too bitter, not too floral (the occasi [...]
Slow Cooker Ratatouille
I know, I know, I just posted a ratatouille recipe earlier this week, but why wait to share another one when we’ve ALL got gobs of summer vegetables around right now? (A neig [...]
Really Rustic Ratatouille
—So, how do you make your ratatouille? This is the question I ask anytime anyone in France tells me they’re making ratatouille (a vegetable dish from the South of France made [...]
Quick-Pickled Samphire
For as much as foragers and foodies seem to love samphire, there isn’t a whole lot of choice out there when it comes to preparing it. The same two methods always seem to turn [...]
“Pièce de Résistance” Artichokes
An 80-year-old neighbor in Cancale introduced me to a revolutionary concept: Eating a whole, steamed artichoke as a main course, not just an appetizer. We were chatting about [...]
Soy-Sesame Marinated Asparagus
Oh…the happy discoveries a lazy cook can sometimes make! I put together this sauce to go with steamed asparagus for a radio segment I did on Saturday morning. (If you want to [...]
Asparagus Avgolemono Soup
It all started with trying to find a way to use the woody, fibrous ends of the asparagus I’ve been getting at the market in Saint-Malo this spring. The tips and stalks are in [...]
Tender, Tomato-ey Braised Radish Tops
Here’s how much I love the way I’ve found to prepare radish leaves (and turnip and any other leafy-topped root vegetable): I actually bought FOUR bunches of radishes at the m [...]
Wild Nettle Soup
If ever there was an easy plant to forage in France it’s [stinging] nettles. They are EVERYWHERE—and often where you don’t want them to be, like just under a flowering apple [...]
Okra à la Cross Creek
"Have ready boiling, lightly salted water. Choose only tiny, very young fresh okra pods. Do not cut off stem end because you trust me. Drop whole pods in rapidly boiling wate [...]
Orecciette with Collard Stem Coins and Crispy Prosciutto
If I were giving this post the serious clickbait treatment, the tag line here would be, “Not cooking your kale stems? You’re missing out!” Or maybe: “The kale technique no on [...]
Braised Celery Hearts
When I get into a work groove on the computer, I often crave something to munch on to…um… “fuel” my inspiration. Or that’s the excuse I give myself for my at-the desk nibblin [...]
Artichoke Tapenade
1 13.75 oz. can artichoke bottoms or frozen artichoke bottoms prepared according to package directions 1 10-oz. jar artichoke hearts preserved in oil, drained, oil reserved 2 [...]