French recipes
The French dishes worth cooking at home are mostly bistro food rather than restaurant food: a quiche, a gratin, a salad built around one warm thing. They are plain by design, and the plainness is where the technique lives.
Six French recipes, written for a home kitchen, with a note on how to cook each one cheaply.
The recipes
Gratin Dauphinois
Potatoes, cream, garlic. No cheese — that is a different dish.
Poulet Basquaise
Chicken braised with peppers and tomato from the Basque southwest.
Quiche Lorraine
The real one: eggs, cream, lardons. No cheese, no vegetables.
Salade Lyonnaise
Bitter leaves, bacon, croutons and a poached egg — a bouchon in one bowl.
Soupe au Pistou
Provencal summer vegetable soup finished with a basil-garlic pounding.
Tarte aux Pommes
A flat apple tart with no custard to hide behind.
The Bistro Ledger
The free recipes are the cooking. The guide is everything around it: what the menu is telling you, what the bill must show, and what the labels on the cheese counter legally mean.
The language, law and labels of the French table — with six bistro recipes to cook at home.
- Six French recipes with metric and US measures
- Regional food context across France
- Menu and ordering language
- Dining and consumer guidance — what service compris means, when a bill must be issued, how prices must be displayed
Travelling more widely? The Complete European Table holds all seven expanded guides — 495 pages across 7 guides, one-time purchase.
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