Greenspan - Around my French table: more than 300 recipes from my home to yours

Copyright 2010 by Dorie Greenspan
Photographs copyright 2010 by Alan Richardson

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Greenspan, Dorie.
Around my French table : more than 300 recipes from my home to yours / Dorie Greenspan ; photographs by Alan Richardson.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-618-87553-5 (hardcover)
1. Cookery, French. I. Title.
TX719.G758 2010
641.5944dc22
2010014232

Book design by George Restrepo
Food styling by Karen Tack
Prop styling by Deb Donahue

For Michael, who made my dream of a French life come true, and with whom I am so lucky to share the joys of that life.

For Joshua, who makes life even sweeter.

For my French friends, who have shared their lives and their tables with me.

And in memory of my mother, Helen Burg, who visited Paris just once, but who cherished the pleasures of that city for the rest of her life.

T HIS BOOK IS SPECIAL TO ME in every way. Special because I got to write about the food I love in France, a country that means so much to me, and very special because I got to work with an extraordinary group of people, many of whom I've been fortunate enough to work with for years.

From the day I met my agent, David Black, he told me that this was a book I had to do. Now that it's written, I know he was right, but I also know that it would not have been the book it is without his constant encouragement, his wise eye, and his warm heart.

Anyone who knows me is probably tired of hearing me say this, but I was so very lucky to have Rux Martin as my editor. As she did with Baking: From My Home to Yours, Rux, with her sharp intelligence; profound appreciation of food, writing, and writers; and ever-ready blue pencil made this a better book than it was when it arrived on her doorstep. She also made me laugh, and when you're racing a tight deadline for a big book, the benefits of laughter can't be overestimated.

At Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, I got to work with the A-team. Many thanks to George Restrepo, for his beautiful book design; Eugenie Delaney, for carrying it out; Teresa Elsey, who saw the book through production; Jacinta Monniere, who once again "translated" scribbles into type; and Rux's ever helpful and always patient assistant, Tim Mudie.

When photographer Alan Richardson, food stylist Karen Tack, and prop stylist Deb Donahue signed on to work on this book, I was so happy that I actually burst into tears. It had been my dream that we could work together againthis is the team that made Baking so gorgeousbut I hadn't dared to imagine that it would happen. As an author, you trust your food to those who will illustrate itnever has there been a more trustworthy crew.

This book, my tenth, marks the twentieth anniversary of my working with the best cookbook copyeditor ever, Judith Sutton. We've worked together on all my books, and I hope we always will. Thanks also to proofreaders Jessica Sherman and Susan Dickinson, whose sharp eyes made this book better.

I am grateful to Jennifer King, a founder of Liddabit Sweets, for testingand retestingmy recipes. Jen has all the qualities you want in a tester: skillfulness, meticulousness, a love of food, and an appetite for learning.

Barbara Fairchild, the editor in chief of Bon Apptit, has encouraged me for years, and with each year, I appreciate her support more and more. I'm also deeply appreciative for the enthusiasm and support of Janice Kaplan, who was my editor at Parade.

More so than any other book I've written, this one depended on and was made infinitely richer by the generosity of friends. In America, I had great help from Eric Render, Beth and Michael Vogel, Laura Shapiro, and Stephanie Lyness. While I was in France, among the friends who were at my side or with me around my table or theirs were Martine and Bernard Collet, Hlne Samuel, Juan Sanchez, Drew Harr, Christian Holthausen, Simon Maurel, David Lebovitz, Alec Lobrano, Paule Caillat, Patricia and Walter Wells, and my friend and mentor in all things sweet, Pierre Herm, and his wife, Barbara.

Many people shared their wonderful recipes with me, among them: Bertrand Auboyneau; Marie-Hlne Brunet-Lhoste; Yves Camdeborde; Batrix Collet; Marie- Claude Delaveau; Jacques Drouot; Danielle Easton; Sonia Ezgulian; Didier Frayssou; Latitia Ghipponi; Sophie-Charlotte Guitter; Rosa Jackson; Pierre Jancou; Grard Jeannin and his wife, Sylvie Rougetet; Anne Leblanc; Nick Malgieri; Franoise Maloberti; Sonia Maman; Claudine Martina; Olivier Martina; Marie Nal; Anne Noblet; Marie- Ccile Noblet; Braden Perkins; Betty Rosbottom; Kerrin Rousset; Kim Sune; Yannis Thodore; Alice Vasseur; Christine Vasseur; and Meg Zimbeck.

Merci mille fois and a thousand times more to France for being the country of my heart and the land where food, wine, friendship, and home cooking flourish.

And, as always and forever, my love and thanks to the men in my life, Michael, my husband, and Joshua, our son.

Introduction

Nibbles and Hors d'Oeuvres

Soups

Salads, Starters, and Small Plates

Chicken and Duck

Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb

Fish and Shellfish

Vegetables and Grains (mostly sides, but a few mains too)

Desserts

Fundamentals and Flourishes

Sources

Index

I WAS RECENTLY MARRIED, JUST OUT OF college, and working at my first grown-up job when Michael, my husband, came into a bit of money, a few hundred dollars that seemed to fall from the sky. He took one look at the check and thought, "Car payments!" I, ever the romantic, saw it and almost screamed, "Paris!"

Whoever said screaming will get you nothing was wrong. A month later, we landed in France.

Somewhere there's a picture of me from that trip. I'm an impossibly skinny young woman with a huge grin. I'm spinning around with arms out wide, and I look like I'm about to grab Paris and hold on to her forever. Which I did.

There were a million reasons I took Paris into my heart. Everything about the city entranced me, from the way the women walked on towering stiletto heels over bumpy cobblestoned streets to how old-fashioned neighborhood restaurants still had cubbyholes where regulars could keep their napkin rings. I loved the rhythm of Parisian life, the sound of the language, the way people sat in cafs for hours.

I fell in love with the city because it fit all my girlish ideas of what it was supposed to be, but I stayed in love with all of France because of its food and its people.

I'm convinced my fate turned on a strawberry tartlet. We were walking up the very chic rue Saint-Honor, pressing our noses against the windows of the fashionable stores and admiring everything we couldn't afford, when the tartlet, a treat within our means, called out to me. It was the first morsel I had on French soil, and more than thirty years later, I still think it was the best tartlet of my life, a life that became rich in tartlets.