Tarte flambée is a specialty from Alsace, thinly-rolled bread dough topped with crème fraîche, thinly sliced raw onions, and lardons, then baked in a very hot oven. It resembles a thin pizza, and like pizza, the toppings can be varied infinitely. Here we take an approach suited to a quick weeknight dinner: start with a frozen base, add some tasty toppings, then quickly blitzed in a hot oven.
This salad is crisp, juicy, and fresh-flavored, a perfect antidote to the Winter blahs. White-green fennel in matchstick dice, punctuated with polka-dots of hot-pink radish and emerald-green scallions. Tarragon mustard echoes the licorice tones of the fennel, adding a snappy note to complement the peppery radishes. If the fennel bulb includes branches with tender, feathery little leaves, use them to garnish the salad for a final touch of flavor and texture.
A very easy recipe for a very elegant entrée. Vary it by using lump crabmeat, lightly sauteed shrimp, or other seafood instead of scallops.
When roasted at high temperature, broccoli develops nutty sweetness and delicious crispy bits here and there, while still retaining a slightly crunchy texture. Garlic and Maldon salt roasted with the broccoli deepen its flavor; a little lemon zest and juice add freshness and color, and pungent freshly-ground pepper adds the finishing touch.
Foie gras is not difficult to cook, but it must be cooked quickly otherwise it will dissolve into a puddle of expensive melted fat. Its unctuous richness pairs nicely with sweet, juicy pears and nutty mâche leaves.
A Charlotte is a classic French dessert composed of a mold of liqueur-soaked ladyfingers and filled with a Bavarian cream or mousse filling. Delicious, but fiddly to make, what with trimming all those ladyfingers to fit and getting (and keeping!) them positioned in the mold just so. This recipe solves that problem brilliantly: fuse the components of a decadent chocolate-rum Charlotte with the assembly technique of an English trifle.
Chestnut purée (also called crème de marrons) is a delicacy from the chestnut-growing regions of France, Spain and Italy. It is available in two forms: one plain, the other sweetened and flavored with vanilla. Its delicately sweet and nutty flavor pairs beautifully with chocolate and dark rum.
Pavé is a French word for [...]
Fast, tasty, and beautiful — what more could one want from a dessert? A galette is a rustic, freeform tart. Sweet apples such as Golden Delicious or Gala work better than tart ones such as Granny Smith in this recipe, but be sure the apples are fresh and crisp rather than mushy, or they will be too soft when cooked. Using a mixture of red and gold apples makes an extra-handsome tart.
Vanilla sugar is ridiculously simple to make, and ridiculously good. It makes a great gift: fragrant, unexpected, keeps forever, and can be used in any recipe in which you’d use vanilla extract. Buy plump, slightly soft vanilla pods for this recipe — it’s harder to get them chopped up properly if they are hard and dried up (they will still flavor the sugar nicely, though).
All too often, amaretti recipes are based on commercial almond paste, producing a gummy, overly-sweet, lifeless cookie with an overpowering marzipan flavor and no crunch. These are nutty, crunchy morsels with a chewy, almond-y center. They are delicious as-is, but if you are the sort inclined to gild all passing lillies on [...]