After 12 years at the helm of the food department of a vegetarian magazine, I would say over half of my recipes are (naturally) vegetarian or vegan. It’s just the way I cook now. While I’m not veg myself, I will always be a staunch defender of plant-based choices…starting with giving them a clear shout-out on this blog.
Quince 101
Quince can be a hard sell because…well, everything about quince is hard. The fruit itself isn’t just firm, like a pumpkin. It is dense and murder-weapon hard. (It could easil [...]
Single-Rise Moroccan Bread
This is the homemade bread recipe for people (like me) who don’t just *love* bread baking. It is easy. It exceeds my expectations for shape, texture, and flavor. The dusky, d [...]
Santiago Almond Cake
Once in a very rare while, a recipe found via internet search resonates in such a way that it seems Fate has guided the algorithms and web crawlers to bring it to you. That’s [...]
Bright, Light Sorrel Soup
Sorrel’s lemony taste makes it a springtime (well, anytime for me) herb favorite. The flavor’s a little like rhubarb (to which it is related) only milder and more palatable. [...]
Rhubarb Tart with Fresh Goat Cheese
I have found the secret to the universe, and it is 8 oz. (200 g.) of fresh goat cheese and 2 eggs. Yes, that is an exaggeration, but when an easy-to-remember ingredient combi [...]
Extra-Buttery Crust Dough
All credit for this ultra-buttery, easy-to-work-with dough goes to my friend Donna Meadows, the best pastry chef I know. In addition to being extra rich and flaky without any [...]
My All-Time Favorite Chocolate Cake
Dense, rich, not too sweet...this is the chocolate cake I have requested for my birthday ever since I can remember. The original version (more on this distinction below) is c [...]
What to Do with Sour Milk
I can’t stop talking about sour milk—and how wonderful it is to bake with. I have been dallying with the concept of cooking with sour milk since reading this line from food w [...]
(Irish) Scones
I’m taking the liberty of calling these ‘Irish Scones’ after they got the ‘Just like my Granny’s!’ seal of approval from my Irish friend Janet. (I also think of them as Irish [...]
Preserved Lemon Yogurt (or Labneh) Dip
When I made a big batch of preserved lemons last spring, I wondered how I’d ever use them all up. Now that I have discovered this preserved lemon labneh/yogurt dip, I worry I [...]
Prasopita (Spanakopita with Leeks)
Here’s a new Greek food term for you (well, for me): Prasopita. Leek (praso) pie (pita). I found it while googling ‘spanakopita with leeks’—which is what I’d just made using [...]
Creamy (Black) Radish Soup
Black radishes may not be the biggest, brightest item on winter markets in Brittany, but nearly every vegetable stand has a small pile of bent, misshapen dark roots with shor [...]
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 [...]
Persimmon Pudding
The recipes for persimmon pudding I’ve come across are all very enticing to food historians. They go on and on about its old-fashionedness, its popularity in Indiana (There’s [...]
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 [...]
Baked (or Roasted) Camembert
Baking camembert in the oven turns it into a tasty fondue for two. When it comes to cheese, I’m with Cole Porter…and camembert is the top. (Scroll to the end of the post for [...]
Sloe Gin Kir Royal
Sloe gin replaces the traditional crème de cassis in the iconic French aperitif. This one falls in the category of ‘Why didn’t I think of it before?’ I love the idea of sloe [...]
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 [...]
Fresh Pasta with Pumpkin Sauce and Crisped Sage
The first pasta dish I remember eating that didn’t involve tomato sauce or tons of cream and cheese was a New York restaurant entrée of fresh ravioli stuffed with pumpkin and [...]
Apple Tarte Normande
The French apple tart most people have heard of is la tarte Tatin, a caramelized upside-down creation that is the stuff of culinary legend. Less attention is paid to la tarte [...]
Sweet Potato Soup with Amchoor
Like kale, sweet potatoes have now made it in France. Not all that long ago, I used to have to hunt for the tubers at Thanksgiving, cruising the ‘exotic’ sections at large su [...]
Quince Cordial (Quince Brandy)
Quince can be a tough sell. Peeling quince (a very firm, sweet-smelling fruit that looks like a cross between an apple and a pear) is wrist-aching work, cutting it open is ak [...]
Whole Apple Applesauce
The very best applesauce is made with whole apples. This I discovered when making apple butter. The process calls for cooking quartered, unpeeled apples—cores, seeds and all— [...]
Just-Sweet-Enough Granola
Most granolas are really just dessert disguised as breakfast food—something I learned when I made granola for the first time in a hipster New York City bakery and saw how muc [...]
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 [...]
Turmeric-Cauliflower Cream Soup
A half of a small head of cauliflower (found in the back of my fridge), some onion and garlic, a potato for creaminess and just the right amount of turmeric and…Presto! A rad [...]
Goat Cheese and Olive Spread
This is one of those recipes to be filed under the ‘Why-didn’t-I-think-of-this-before?’ category. I have loved cream cheese and olive spread ever since I first tasted it in s [...]
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 [...]
Catalan Tomato Bread
Pan con tomate/pa amb tomaquet, literally bread with tomato, is a rustic tomato toast from Catalonia (in northern Spain...Barcelona is the capital) that popped up on my radar [...]
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 [...]
Caprese Polenta Stacks
Caprese salad – that super-simple, utterly addictive Italian combination of tomatoes, mozzarella and basil is such a big part of the French summer food experience that it’s p [...]
Rhubarb Tarte Tatin
Take two classic French tarte recipes and what do you get? This rhubarb tarte tatin, which is so very easy... and effortlessly beautiful. The French are BIG rhubarb fans. The [...]
3-Ingredient Potato and Caramelized Onion Soup
2 weeks away from Cancale and I come home to a bare fridge on a national holiday (May Day). Meaning: any attempt to shop is pretty pointless. There may be a small grocery ope [...]
Chocolate Biscuit Cake
When my friend Elodie asked for a recipe that would use up leftover Easter candy, I knew just what I wanted to make: Chocolate Biscuit Cake. Chocolate biscuit cake got a lot [...]
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 [...]
Teurgoule (Norman Rice Pudding)
What is the matter with Mary Jane? She's crying with all her might and main, And she won't eat her dinner - rice pudding again - What is the matter with Mary Jane? From ‘Rice [...]
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 [...]
Ballymaloe’s Irish Soda Bread
If there is one thing you should make (or learn to make) for Saint Patrick’s Day, it is Irish Soda Bread. In fact, you should make (or learn to make) Irish soda bread, period [...]
Green Rhubarb Lattice Pie
As I do my best to get through the hungry gap, I’ve been digging into my freezer to see what treasures I stashed there last summer. And….score!! Two pounds of frozen rhubarb [...]
Harissa-Spiked (Sunshine) Squash Soup
In Ireland and the British Isles, they call this time of year ‘the hungry gap’ –those turning-point weeks when winter vegetables have passed their prime but spring produce ha [...]
Homemade Ginger Beer
Two ginger beer bottles. On the right, a heavy, well-worn, barnacled specimen dredged from the deep off Saint-Malo... a little research showed to be a ginger beer bottle from [...]
Zhoug (It’s better than pesto!)
No, that’s not pesto slathered all over a baked sweet potato, it’s zhoug, a spicy Yemeni herb paste made with parsley and cilantro that’s popular throughout the Middle East. [...]
Secret Soup Saver
Another blustery day, another batch of soup. Tout simple: leeks, squash, some garlic, and a single potato. That combo usually works just fine for a weekday soup, but this tim [...]
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 [...]
Vegetable Pot-au-Feu
Pot au feu, the French version of pot roast, is eaten in two stages. First, the cooking broth is ladled into bowls to be sipped or spooned as a first course. Then, the meat a [...]
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 [...]
Caldo Verde
Caldo verde, a Portuguese soup made with sausage, potatoes, and collards (or kale, in my version) is peasant food at its finest: simple, fragrant, and filling. I cannot stop [...]
Chestnut Bisque
This soup is born out of a restaurant disappointment. It was a fancy restaurant, too, one of those places in the US where they charge over $10 for a bowl of what is basically [...]
Spice (Nutmeg) Crinkles
Tender and buttery, this old-fashioned snickerdoodle cookie recipe is ideal for trying out new flavors like nutmeg in baked goods. Cardamom, long pepper, and black pepper can [...]
Lemony Lemon Cake
...because you can never have too much lemon in a dessert. Little motivates me more than a dessert that should have been better than it was. It wasn’t even a complicated cake [...]
Le Financier (Almond Tea Cake)
Everybody’s always going on about macarons and madeleines, but if you ask me, the real superstar of the small pastry world is “le financier." Financiers (pronounced fee-nahn- [...]
Wine-Poached Pears
Now that I've worked out this recipe, my goal is to have wine-poached pears in my fridge all winter long so that I can serve them and cook with them regularly, the way I did [...]
Almond Croissants
There is nothing worse—and nothing better—than day-old croissants. Nothing worse, because each chewy, slightly stale bite of a day-old croissant is a reminder of how good the [...]
Homemade Apple Butter
Each year, I make more. I have not yet reached the apple butter output of nearby villages in Brittany where le pommé (the local term for apple butter) is simmered and stirred [...]
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 [...]
Breton Buckwheat-Apple Cake
It is so very, very rare that a recipe one imagines turns out just right the very first time that it’s important to call it out, celebrate it, tell everyone about it. ‘Cause [...]
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 [...]
Creamy 3-Ingredient Zucchini Soup
It has been a week of last-of’s. The last of the garden peaches. The last of the cherry tomatoes. The last of the shell beans. And now, the last of the eggplant and zucchini. [...]
Sunflower Seed Pesto
Looks like it’s time to harvest the basil in my container garden before the bugs do. This is the first year in Cancale that I’ve actually had a crop of basil worth harvesting [...]
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 [...]
Soupe au Pistou (Bean and Vegetable Soup with Pistou)
This is it…the spectacular, seasonal window when summer intersects with fall, tomatoes are still tasty, fresh basil is still abundant, and the evenings have turned cool enoug [...]
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 [...]
Spiced Puff Pastry Twists
Since Cancale is the hometown of chef and master spice blender Olivier Roellinger, I end up with quite a few of his spice mixes blends in my cupboard at any given time. Some [...]
Real Brownies
I would have KILLED to have had this brownie recipe when I first arrived in France. Back in the dark ages before internet shopping gave expats access to Reese’s Peanut Butter [...]
Homemade Fruit Jam
I have a little problem with large quantities of fruit for sale. I see them, and I must have them—for jam, natch. Nevermind that a 5-pound flat of strawberries will make thre [...]
Zucchini Ribbon Salad
For the past four summers, I’ve been doing cooking demonstrations at a local farmers’ market. The conditions are lovely—extraordinarily good produce, cheese, meats, and cider [...]
Wild Plum Compote
I have been wracking my brain for a way to make ‘compote’ sound sexy. Exciting. Like something you want to jump out of your chair and make immediately. And I keep coming up w [...]
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 [...]
“Gin Martini” Green Olive Tapenade
Southern France, meet the American South, or at least the South I know where summer evenings smell of heat, humidity, freshly-mown grass…and gin. When I was little, the gin s [...]
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 [...]
‘Simple, mais bon’ Summer Tomato Sauce
Simple, mais bon. Simple, but good. This may just be my new favorite food expression in France, because it beautifully, succinctly, and even poetically embraces the joy of un [...]
Fresh Pea and Herbed Goat Cheese Tartines
With weather so good it makes me want to spend every last minute I can outside, my meals tend to be foods I can carry to one of the benches on the boardwalk by the water. (Th [...]
Farfalle with Fresh Peas and Zucchini
Pasta, fresh peas, and lashings of grated cheese…that’s the kind of supper you want on an evening when the rain blows in and brings with it a 20-degree temperature drop at th [...]
Strawberries and Cream Tiramisu (with Elderflower Liqueur)
So pretty. So tasty. So simple…and with a secret ingredient that knocks the socks off everyone who tastes it. What else could you want from a summer dessert? All I’ve done he [...]
Savory French Toast Tartines
It has been a busy couple of weeks since I was last able to shop for food. Good-busy, with lots of eating out and seeing friends, but bad-busy in the sense that a lot of food [...]
“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 [...]
Homemade Custard
This is the pitcher I picked up at an antique gallery (Christian La Brocante) in nearby Saint-Coulomb. I say ‘picked up’ because when I went to pay for it (for a mere 2 euros [...]
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 [...]
Marc’s Chocolate Custard Tart
One of the bright spots during an otherwise dark time in my cooking career was working with Marc, a pastry chef from Tours. Marc had been brought into the French bakery/resta [...]
Wild Garlic Spanish Tortilla
How can so few people in Brittany (or at least my part of Brittany) know about three-cornered leeks? Until my recent (as in, 2 minutes ago) internet search I’ve been calling [...]
Rhubarb Muffins
Still reeling from the jacked-up rhubarb prices in the US, (FIVE DOLLARS A POUND! That’s almost as much as organic strawberries—for a perennial that grows like a weed whereve [...]
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 [...]
Spicy Gingerbread
When and why did gingerbread get pigeonholed as a *strictly* holiday treat? Sure, I get that all things gingerbread are a holiday tradition, but must that mean that they vani [...]
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 [...]
Red Pepper Soup with Crispy Chickpeas
Perhaps it is my straitened circumstances after losing my job when my longtime food editing gig ended in December. Perhaps it is the exorbitant prices I am paying for only h [...]
Cooking Laurie Colwin
"If you do not have insomnia, fussy eaters in your social orbit will give it to you." Laurie Colwin “Feeding the Fussy” Home Cooking Oh, how that line of Laurie Colwin’s spea [...]
Gingery Pumpkin Bread
The first time I made pumpkin bread in France was for an English class I taught in a sunny ground floor room of a small town community center. The class ran from 2:30 to 4 in [...]
Tempest Day Tomato Soup
There’s a tempest blowing out there and since the winds are from the South, the whole house fairly shakes with it. “Blustery” doesn’t even come close to describing a true Bre [...]
Bruschetta Toasts
I have something of a reputation for accepting—nay, wanting—food items my neighbors would otherwise throw away or not know what to do with. Bruised apples, overripe plums, be [...]
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 [...]
Chocolate Chip Cookies Fit for a Marquis
My Fourth of July weekend was quite the Franco-American extravaganza. It started on Friday with a trip out on the high seas to go meet the Hermione, a replica of the frigate [...]