MainsPan-Roasted Chicken Breast with Pan Sauce
Skin-on breast, started in a cold pan and finished in the oven, with a sauce built from what sticks to the bottom. Dry chicken breast is a timing problem, not a cut problem.
35 minServes 2Medium
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French recipes
Classic technique, most of it simpler than its reputation suggests.
10 recipes found
Mains
BakingCroissants
Two days, three folds, and one rule that governs all of it: butter and dough must stay the same softness. Everything that goes wrong with croissants goes wrong there.
15 hrServes 12Hard
MainsSeared Duck Breast with Cherry Sauce
The fat comes off in a cold pan over a low heat, slowly, until the skin is glass-thin and crisp. Rush this and you get chewy skin over grey meat.
40 minServes 2Medium
DessertsVanilla Custard Ice Cream
An egg-yolk custard churned to something dense and slow-melting. Shop-bought ice cream is mostly whipped-in air; this is the opposite, and you can taste every bit of the difference.
40 minServes 8Medium
BreakfastClassic French Crêpes
A thin batter that must rest for an hour, and a pan you barely grease. Rushing the rest is why home crêpes tear.
1 hrServes 4Medium
BreakfastThick-Cut French Toast
Day-old bread, cut thick, soaked properly rather than dipped. Stale bread is not a compromise here — fresh bread turns to mush in the custard.
25 minServes 4Easy
SoupsMussel and Saffron Soup
The mussels make their own stock in four minutes flat. Strain that liquor carefully, build the soup on it, and you get depth that no fish stock in a carton comes close to.
40 minServes 4Medium
BreakfastThe Perfect French Omelette
Pale, barely set and rolled rather than folded. No colour at all on the outside — a browned French omelette is, strictly speaking, a failed one.
10 minServes 1Hard
MainsCrispy-Skin Pan-Fried Salmon
Skin-side down for ninety per cent of the cooking time, weighted flat so it never curls. You barely touch it, and the skin shatters like a crisp.
20 minServes 2Easy
Hot drinksRich Dark Hot Chocolate
Made with chopped real chocolate rather than cocoa powder, and thickened with nothing but the chocolate itself. Thick enough to coat the spoon.
15 minServes 2Easy