Around My French Table: More Than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication Date: October 2010
Featured Recipe: Roasted Salmon and Lentils
Dorie Greenspan’s Around My French Table has landed on nearly every “Top Cookbooks of 2010” list. Why? “Dorie captures all of the excitement of French cooking today, with disarmingly simple recipes gathered over years of living in France. Around My French Table includes superb renditions of the classics: a glorious cheese-domed onion soup, a spoon-tender beef daube, and the “top-secret” chocolate mousse recipe that every good Parisian cook knows but won’t reveal. Other recipes are completely unexpected, liberating, or radically simple including roast chicken for “lazy people.” And as you would expect from a James Beard Award-winning author acclaimed for her baking books, Dorie has selected the very best desserts from France’s home-cooking tradition. Packed with lively stories, memories, and insider tips on French culinary customs, Around My French Table will make cooks fall in love with France all over again, or for the first time.
Cooks&Books&Recipes Featured Cook Katie on Around My French Table:
Although I love a cooking challenge, I am sometimes intimidated by cookbooks from the French culinary tradition. These large tomes often read like textbooks with few pictures and long lists of ingredients that are difficult to find. Therefore, I was very pleasantly surprised, upon opening Around my French Table by Dorie Greenspan, to find a cookbook full of sumptuous photographs and easy-to-follow instructions. As the title suggests, this cookbook reads like a collection of well-loved recipes that Greenspan serves in her own home and this makes for a wonderfully varied selection of dishes. Along with more traditional fare (eclairs, quiche, roast chicken), Greenspan includes some recipes inspired by other culinary traditions (Vietnamese chicken noodle soup, Dressy Pasta “Risotto”). If you are up for a challenge, she has included some complicated French dishes, but the book also contains many recipes that would be great for quick, mid-week meals.
Herb Speckled Spaetzle. Photo credit: Katie Lew
I have had this cookbook for only a few days, but I have already tried a couple other recipes from it, including the Herb-Speckled Spaetzle, and each one has been a delight to prepare and to eat. I have a feeling I will be making recipes from Around my French Table for years to come.
If you’re ready to dig into some of the recipes yourself, we suggest starting with Dorie’s recipe for Roasted Salmon and Lentils.
Around My French Table
I’m *thrilled* that you’ve been cooking from my book and even happier that you’ve been enjoying what you’ve made. It’s so funny that you made the Salmon and Lentils — it’s what my husband asked me to make for dinner tonight!
A word on the lentils: Â I can’t tell from the picture (or maybe it’s my browser) if you used French Lentils de Puy or not, but the French lentils usually hold their shape a little better than other varieties. Â That said, there are lots of people who like their lentils really soft.
Again, brava and merci for your enthusiasm.
Editors, Cooks&Books&Publishers replied: — June 8th, 2011 @ 10:15 am
Thanks so much for the comment, Dorie! I’ll be sure that Cooks&Books&Recipes Featured Cook Katie, who made this dish for the review, sees your note on the lentils du Puy. I’m glad to know about the French lentils as well. Your cookbook is gorgeous — congratulations on the well-deserved Cookbook of the Year award from the IACP.
The lentils I used just said green lentils so they were probably not the same kind called for in the recipe. I didn’t realize there was a difference so I will definitely look for French lentils the next time I make this recipe. I have already made this same dish several times and it is becoming one of our favorites!