This is real traditional French bourgeois cooking. To be truly authentic, it should be served with plainly boiled white rice to soak up the sauce, but pasta or steamed new potatoes are also possibilities.
[note for purists — strictly speaking this should probably be called Fricassée, not Blanquette, as the meat is browned before cooking]
For 4 people:
A summery Catalan recipe for those days when it’s too cold to eat in the garden.
Yet another recipe for sea bass, one of my favourite fish. Where bass is concerned, simple is best — and the success of the dish depends entirely on the quality of the fish. Serves 2.
A good warming soup that remedies the sometimes rather bland taste of pumpkin.
A classic French soup … delicious if carefully made.
An Elizabeth David mushroom soup. It doesn’t sound terribly exciting but it preserves all the flavour of the mushrooms — whether they are humble champignons de Paris or rustic cèpes.
Here is a quick-to-make soup which sounds implausible but is actually very nice. It can be eaten hot, warm or cold. As a variation, you could use Boursin or similar instead of vache-qui-rit.
A summer recipe par excellence, and very quick to prepare. You might need to adjust quantities, according to taste and the size of the tomatoes.
Courtesy of Nick Nairn via ChasingDaisy.com. A simple and delicious soup that makes a light meal with bread and some cheese.
Bourride is a classic Mediterranean fish soup which is somewhat less complicated and expensive to make than bouillabaisse. There are various local variations. In Sète they make it with monkfish on its own, but in Marseille they use a mixture of firm white fish. Some people serve the broth on its own, followed by the fish and vegetables with boiled potatoes and aioli. You can put the slices of bread in bowls and pour the soup over them. However this version is restrained and elegant – you could serve it as a first course at a dinner party. It is said that when the Greek gods got bored with Olympus they came to Marseille to eat bourride, this being the only food that was fit for the gods.
Note: don’t be put off by the amount of garlic that goes into it. The soup itself tastes creamy rather than garlicky, and it’s up to you how much aioli you spread on your bread.
This quantity serves 6-8 people.