My Paris Classes are 15% off until mid-February. Take advantage of this very special offer and sign up now! The other night I caught T-Bone Burnett on the Colbert Late Show and felt as if I’d heard truth for the first time. “If you want to know what’s good about the United States, listen to our music. In our music all the promise of the

There is hardly a dish more significantly French than roast chicken.  It's a universal favorite at home, in the restaurant, at the market.  For us, a Saturday market lunch often includes roast chicken that I buy from a farmer who roasts them "sur place,".  It's hot when I buy it, it's still hot when I turn it, crisp

My Paris Classes are 15% off until mid-February. Take advantage of this very special offer and sign up now! The days are getting longer and today, tiny birds were tweeting throughout the city which is normally a sign of spring. This is impossible, of course. Galettes des Rois are still on pastry shelves, and the scent of fir from ground up Christmas trees, which are

Bonne Année and Bonne Santé for 2025! The year made it, and we will too! To celebrate, I’m offering a special discount of 15% on classes if you sign up before February 14, 2025. Join me in my new Paris cooking studio, where we will make the absolute most of the season to prepare mouth-watering dishes from the French classic and contemporary repertoire. My focus

My schedule of cooking classes for 2025 is on the website. I will be offering them in my new cooking studio and I cannot wait!!! As I watch the studio come to life, I am already there with you, creating dishes with gorgeous ingredients from the market around the corner! Please, visit the site, find dates that suit you, and make plans. If you cannot

My thoughts lately have been about chambres de bonne, those rooms in the rooftops of the Haussmanien buildings that line the streets of Paris. As I cycle through the city, in neighborhoods I once lived in, I remember with fondness being an occupant. Everything about Paris was exotic to me when I first moved here in my mid-twenties, to become a cooking apprentice. I had

If ever a person feels untethered, confused, isolated, gob-smacked or uprooted, a palliative is available: come to France and read a menu.  As the world changes and governments, borders, countries, opinions and beliefs swirl like oil on water, there is always oeuf mayonnaise.  And confit.  Quiches crowd patisserie shelves while café tables are populated with fat cups of espresso and shattery croissants in the morning,

You will forgive my silence, I do hope, as I continue to pack and remove myself and my family from our house. It’s a process that is leading me to comprehend the true meaning of the word overwhelm, an odd double-word I didn’t really understand until I looked it up.  It turns out that whelm is the feeling; “over” just hammers it home.   No matter.

I’m in the process of moving out of my house of thirty years, which involves, among other things, battling with packing tape that always wants to corkscrew (what is it about packing tape??), numbering boxes quickly before I forget what is inside, and any number of other details that are too boring to detail.  You have all been there at one time, and you know

I grew up going to junk and antique shops with my mother, first in the English countryside where we lived, then in the U.S. As we entered the dark, sometimes dank shops, treasures always awaited.  My mother had a fine eye, and we would fill the trunk of the car with everything from a stack of white Spode plates lined with gold, ancient kimonos, rugs

I just ate the best mussels of my life.  Tiny, plump, juicy, redolent of the sea with an overlay of bay leaf, pepper, and a little touch of hard cider, they stopped conversation, and a sacred hush floated over the table.  Later in the week at the market I told the fishmonger, Xavier, how extraordinary they were, and he concurred.  “Oh, la la, chèrie,” he

I am moving from two places at once.  It’s a saga, an ordinary one you might say.  But moving is never ordinary to the person who is experiencing it.  Read more

I had a class this week, and the blend of flavors, textures, and colors that results from this season was amazing.  There were many reasons for this, not the least the nature of those who attended.  But a cooking class during this season is always a delicious success, because we’re in a shoulder season: we still have summer produce, which is as good as it

So many emotions come into focus around a birthday, gratitude being the major one.  After all, every year that goes by without a major hiccup is a great year!  And I’ve been lucky all my life.  Minor hiccups, yes, a few things I’d rather not have experienced, of course, but mostly the sun has shone with brilliance and I have my health, my children, and

I am in awe of people who document their every waking moment. How do they, I ask myself, muster up the courage, have the energy, the conviction that people want to know? But, people do want to know. I first became aware of this at my cooking school. Already I was stretching my own boundaries by inviting students into my home, introducing them to my

Go to the Recipe Greetings and many apologies for my absence the last couple of weeks. I’m blaming it on the Olympic Games which will start this coming Friday.  Why not, I figure, everyone else is blaming everything on them.   The truth is that Paris is in a state of “zizanie” or chaos, and it seeps into everything, including life and accomplishments.  The sound

God bless Victor Hugo.  I cannot count how many times this author, poet, and statesman has brought me back from the abyss with his thoughts and images.   We’re plunged into political chaos here right now, so I turned to M. Hugo and he’s come through again:    “However strange the present moment may seem, however bad it may look, no serious soul should despair. Surfaces

I love living in France, holding French citizenship, and enjoying everything that a life in France comprises. I’ve written much about this of course, most of it involving the procuring and preparation of food and those behind this valiant and noble effort.  I will mention that this love affair is eternal, despite the current roller coaster of politics we are enduring.  Now and then, though,

This morning on the radio (France Culture, a French national treasure), I listened to two women debate the various economic proposals from parties running in the hastily called French elections. I’m no economist but I understand the basics, and it is horrifying to learn how weak so many of the proposals are. And unrealistic. I also learned that 400,000 voters designated others to vote for

Yesterday was voting day for European elections. We had 38 official parties to choose from, and we all know who won. Pretty much throughout Europe. The wind is blowing to the right. My voting station is the nearest public high school, a five-minute walk from where I live, and I headed there mid-afternoon on Sunday. I expected a long line and wished I’d gone earlier,

The small Dutch city of Wageningen was crackling with excitement recently, or so it seemed from my perspective amongst a group of master’s students that included my daughter Fiona, about to participate in their graduation ceremony. Because the pandemic had robbed them of their bachelor’s ceremony, the event took on epic proportions.   The University of Wageningen is a renowned agricultural university dedicated to exploring

It didn’t take me long once I’d moved permanently to France to figure out the French schedule of life. It helped having a little boy in school, because thanks to him, I learned that every six weeks he would have two weeks off school.  I remember a sense of terror at learning this, however, for I worked for myself and had ferocious deadlines .  We

I worry a bit that news of Paris 2024 is on overkill, yet it’s just all so much fun and exciting that I have a final episode for you, from my personal Paris 2024. I’m not much of a sports fan, which is the understatement of the century, but when I was invited to the Team USA House Saturday by a friend of mine, Brian

I almost regretted driving out of Paris at 5 a.m. the morning of the Opening Ceremony for the 2024 Olympics, to begin a trip planned a long while ago.  Reason had told me not to stay in the city, but I was like the kid looking backwards as we left, catching my last glimpses of a city dressed up for a huge party Thus, when

There have been times when, whether I was making dinner for my family, or preparing for friends to come to a dinner party, I just didn’t “feel” it. I was tired, usually a state I don’t like to admit to, but it happens to everyone. A normal person would just resort to pasta; not me. I would persist with whatever amazing dish I’d decided to

Georgia, You're on My Mind And your luscious ingredients are in my kitchen. From toasted sunflower oil to chewy black wines, everything in Georgia is to savor. A Road Trip in the Republic of Georgia I was invited to join my daughter-in-law’s family there on a road trip into the Svaneti region, which boasts the highest continuously inhabited village in Europe, Ushgouli, at more than

Speculoos is the golden spice cookie that comes wrapped in plastic and sits on the saucer of your espresso cup in nearly every cafe throughout the Hexagon.  In the past decade, a single, plastic-wrapped speculoos has replaced the chocolate-dipped almond or malted milk ball that was the typical sweet treat alongside a cafe exprès. So, in that light the speculoos might be considered a newcomer,

I planted my fig tree about seven years ago, to replace an ancient apple tree which was the "apple of my eye".  She (or he?) was such a lovely part of the garden, planted at least eighty years ago by the nuns who once occupied On Rue Tatin.  She was just the perfect sort of tree for climbing,

My recent visit to Maine was a patchwork of memories and a blossoming of experiences to add to them. I moved there two minutes before my son was born, nearly 29 years ago. I fell in love with the town the minute I saw it, mostly for the spare, lovely homes that were placed so elegantly along its streets,

  I was strolling down the high street in Drogheda, Ireland, and suddenly my friend Trish Rogers, internationally known wine and food expert and author of the Zing!thing    yelled "Hughie will ya look a that!," and went over to embrace an elderly gent who was sitting on a bench playing the spoons.    "Aye and howerya goin','?" she said then