I’m not eating much meat these days, but occasionally I have a major longing for a steak. And since I was recently in Paris and had a version of this nostalgic, delicious dish, I can’t get it out of my mind. A tender filet of beef, with its lean texture, is accompanied by a cheesy, creamy sauce….

View the print-ready version of this recipe. When we think of French desserts, we usually imagine fancy pâtisseries with pyramids of pastel-colored macarons and glossy fruit tarts. But when the French bake at home, they don’t compete with their pastry chefs; they keep it simple. One of my favorite food writers, Dorie Greenspan, wrote of her time…

Traditional ratatouille is a stewed vegetable dish made with zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, and garlic, with plenty of extra virgin olive oil, fresh herbs, and red wine. Roasting the tomatoes and eggplant is a traditional cooking technique that I combine with the somewhat less traditional stewing of the remainder of the vegetables. This…

One stroll through a mid-August farmers market and you’ll find piles of peppers, overflowing milk crates of summer squash and flats of tomatoes that seem to be every color of the rainbow. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the season’s bounty, but if you take just a moment to think, it’s equally easy to get…

This custardy dessert comes from France, where the verb clafir means “to fill.” In other words, clafouti is a dessert filled with fruit. Because a clafouti is basically a combination of a custard and a pancake, it’s important for it not to have too much flour (it would be too pancake-y) or too many eggs…

When I think of French foods I think of french bread, eclairs, and Croque monsieur. I just think that you cannot get any more French sitting in a little cafe for lunch, having a Croque monsieur paired with a delicious spring rosé. It’s simply a quintessential part of french culture! My favorite rosé right now…