French

This recipe is (very slightly) adapted from the second St. John restaurant cookbook, Beyond Nose to Tail (if you don't already have both the St. John books, buy them now as not only are the recipes brilliant but the turn of phrase is a joy). I would recommend you buy one or two 12-hole madeleine pans for this, if you don't already have one, as once you've made these you'll be sure to make them again. You can serve the first batch while the second batch is in the oven; you'll need both.

This traditional French sandwich is topped with a classic Mornay sauce (a béchamel sauce with cheese).

If you like, save one tablespoon of the butter for the celery root puree .

Bourguignonne refers to any dish cooked in the style of Burgundy, France. This dish is similar to classic boeuf bourguignonne (French beef stew), which is beef braised with red wine and mushrooms. Although oxtail was once the tail of an ox, these days the bony cut is beef or veal. Mashed potatoes would make the perfect side dish.

To create patisserie-perfect macaroons, Sandra Holl uses very finely ground almond flour. To remove the larger pieces, sift the flour before using.

This classic French bread is rich and slightly sweet, with a soft, golden crust and a yellow, buttery, cakey crumb. It is widely eaten in France – with coffee for breakfast, as a roll with dinner, or as a base for any number of desserts. At River Cottage, we like to toast brioche and serve it with a smooth chicken liver pâté and a little fruit jelly. Contrary to popular belief, as bread goes, brioche is pretty straightforward. The dough is very soft to handle though, so kneading in a stand mixer is easier. You can make and bake brioche all in one day, but it benefits from sitting overnight in the fridge – the very soft dough stiffens as it chills, making it easier to shape.

A thin layer of frangipane, a rich almond pastry cream, elevates this simple, classic French dessert into something special. It's made in the style of many French fruit tarts: thin-crusted and only lightly sweetened to let the fruit truly shine. Americans have eagerly adopted French-inspired freeform tarts, even giving them a French name, galette, a word that the French generally use to describe a round, squat pastry, cookie, or buckwheat crêpe. The most famous galette is Galette des Rois, two disks of puff pastry filled with frangipane and eaten on Epiphany. I considered calling this dessert a tart, but decided against it because that term can put off people who are worried about dealing with fussy doughs and trying to achieve picture-perfect results. This pastry is intended to be rustic, and for that reason, it's often my go-to galette. Or tart. Speaking of tart, if your apples are particularly tart, you could sprinkle a bit more sugar on top of them before baking, but if you serve a sweet accompaniment alongside, as I usually do, additional sugar probably won't be necessary.

Making a parchment envelope in which to steam a fillet of fish surrounded by aromatic vegetables may sound a bit fancy for just one, but cooking in parchment is actually one of the simplest and most effective ways of steaming, because it seals in the flavors. What a treat it is to have that golden-tinged, puffed-up half-moon of parchment on your plate, and then to tear it open and breathe in all the heady aromas. Moreover, you’ll have no cleanup afterward; just wipe off the Silpat mat and throw away the parchment after you’ve scraped and scooped up every last delicious morsel and its jus. If you want just one meal out of this, get about a 6-ounce fillet of flounder, halibut, salmon, red snapper—whatever looks good. Or, as I did recently, try tilapia, which is quite readily available these days and at a reasonable price. But bought almost twice the amount I needed, so I could play with the other half of the cooked fillet a couple of days later. I learned from Katy Sparks, whose book, Sparks in the Kitchen, is full of great cooking tips from a chef to the home cook, the trick of pre-roasting several slices of new potato so they can go in the parchment package. This way you have a complete, balanced meal-in-one cooked all together.

Quiche for one? That sounds ambitious, but the truth is, it’s a cinch to make yourself a small quiche if you have an individual tart pan, about 4 inches in diameter, with a removable bottom, and some excess tart dough in your freezer. And what a treat it is.

Make this rich stew on a leisurely weekend. You’ll probably get a good three meals out of it, if you follow some of the suggestions below. When buying stew meat at a supermarket, you don’t always know what you are getting, so ask the butcher. If it’s a lean meat, it will need less time cooking (in fact, it will be ruined if you cook it too long), but the fattier cuts can benefit from at least another half hour.

This casserole is based loosely on the French home-cooking standard, le miroton. If you fear goatiness, please turn the page. This dish celebrates the sweet carnality of the goat with abandon.

This tropical twist on the French classic moules marinières serves up briny mussels in a tangy coconut broth enhanced by ginger and lemongrass. You'll find the pretty green stalks of fresh lemongrass in the produce section of many fine supermarkets and specialty-food shops, alongside the brown knobby fresh ginger rhizomes, or roots. Both aromatics need to be peeled before using, and both have dense, stringy flesh that can be difficult to mince. Grating is a good solution for ginger; include the juices that are extruded when you scrape. For lemongrass, peel and use only the tender midsection of the slender, bulblike stalk. Smash it with the flat side of a chef's knife to make mincing easier.
Increase your dining pleasure by sipping, as an accompaniment, any bright, fresh white wine that offers good acidity. Think sparkling wine, unoaked Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, or Sauvignon Blanc.

The simple addition of orange zest adds a delightful dimension to this French classic, with tangy citrus notes enhancing the creamy-sweet custard. Home cooks who don't have a chef's blowtorch can easily use their broiler/grill to caramelize the sugar topping. But remember to leave the oven door slightly open and keep watch. A golden sugar crust can quickly turn black if left too long under the flame.
This dessert was born of a collaboration between the cellar and the kitchen. Some years ago during the creation of Chandon Riche—our off-dry sparkling wine, which has a hint of sweetness—our winemaker recalled the aromatics issuing from the orange tree that grew not far from the wine cellar. He ran to the kitchen with a bottle of the new wine and asked if the chefs could produce a dessert that evoked the same citrus impression. Bitter Orange Crème Brûlée is now a signature dish at the restaurant.
For a nice pairing with this dessert, add the classic ladyfinger sugar cookies, if you like; they bring a crisp element to join the silky custard and the crunch of the sugar. Make them in advance of the crème brûlée.

THIS SABBATH RICE DISH, typical of Provence, reveals the history both of pilau or pilaf, as it is called in French, and of Persian Jews who settled in the area near the Camargue, the rice-growing area of southwestern Provence located on the triangle of land between the two major tributaries of the Rhône River. Jews, first by barge and later by boat, used the river to bring goods here from the Mediterranean. The word and the dish pilau come from Persia, taking various forms as the dish traveled around the world. In India, it became pulao; in modern-day Iran, it is called polo; and in Provence, pelau or pilaf. Rice, and therefore pilaf, traveled with the Jews to Provence, where many Persian Jewish merchants and scholars settled and lived until the end of the fourteenth century or even later. These Jews, who traded rice, cooked it for the Sabbath with fragrant spices like nutmeg, garlic, cumin, cinnamon, and saffron. Some scholars believe that Jews brought saffron to Europe from Asia Minor for their Sabbath rice. The late Karen Hess, author of The Carolina Rice Kitchen, repeatedly told me that Jews first brought rice to the Camargue. In their Inventory of the Culinary Patrimony of France, Philip and Mary Hyman relate that emigrants from the Piedmont paid a dîme of rice to noblemen in the year 1497. And although pilau and riz au safran are no longer particularly Jewish dishes in Provence, they are clearly rooted in the Sabbath tradition. This simple recipe is typically eaten on Rosh Hashanah, alongside a symbolic whole roasted fish with a Sephardic sweet-and-sour greengage-plum sauce.

Brandy, cinnamon, and lemon zest combine to give this tart unbelievable aroma and wonderful flavor.