Scallops Baked with Butter and Endives. You must dip the bread into that butter!

Every time Mr. English and I are in Paris, we never miss an opportunity to eat at Le Comptoir, our favorite restaurant, just down the street from where we used to live when I was in cooking school. It’s become a lot more popular than it was back then, but the food remains, in my opinion, the best in Paris. Their scallops with endives is one of the best dishes on a menu packed with best dishes.

The dish is unpretentious, but unexpected: five giant sea scallops from Brittany, still on their enormous half shells, tucked under a blanket of soft, roasted endives, anointed with bubbling sweet butter. The sweetness of the scallops and the butter is gently counterbalanced by the bitterness of the soft endives. Breathtaking! And it only takes three ingredients and about 20 minutes. Paris, je t’aime!

I used red endive for that charred garnet color…

Excerpted from my weekly column French in a Flash on Serious Eats.  Bon app!

Scallops with Butter and Endives

INGREDIENTS

• 8 to 9 ounces sea scallops
• 1 endive
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
• Salt and pepper

PROCEDURE

Chunky Shrimp Puttanesca

I love the flavor of pasta, but sometimes, I don’t want to eat pasta. Do you know what I mean? I get pasta guilt.

I’ve fallen hard for this dish. A super fresh puttanesca sauce, made from throwing olive oil, cherry tomatoes, olives, garlic, a fresh chili, capers, oregano, and lemon zest together, and used to poach a ton of giant, tender, meaty shrimp (I always keep jumbo peeled and deveined shrimp in my freezer for just such an occasion as this). The sauce is spicy and bright, and all those salty classic puttanesca ingredients go so naturally with seafood. I grill up some rustic bread, rub it with garlic, and dig in. Another super easy, slightly different one-pot wonder for you and your beloved after work this week.

From my weekly column Dinner for Two on Serious Eats.  Check it out every Friday!

Chunky Cherry Tomato Shrimp Puttanesca

INGREDIENTS

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic, sliced or chopped
• 1 Fresno chili, seeded and sliced or chopped
• 1 tablespoon capers
• 35 pitted Kalamata olives, halved
• 1 teaspoon anchovy paste
• 1 pound cherry tomatoes
• 1 pound large peeled and deveined shrimp
• Salt and pepper
• 1 tablespoon fresh oregano
• The zest of half a lemon

PROCEDURE

Lamb burger with garlic, oregano, chives, mint, and a chunky tzatziki in warm, soft pitas

I love writing this column!  Because, some lucky weekends, I get to stuff like this.

The best vacation Mr. English and I ever took–and there is some stiff competition–was to the Greek islands.  In terms of a culinary adventure, no other trip has ever matched it.  The gigantes beans baked with tomatoes.  Those deep fried Greek salad fritters (that’s my name for them).  The olives.  The baklava.  The walnuts and yogurt.  The sea bream, every night.  The pomegranates.  The octopus, and urchin, and ouzo.  I was never not hungry on those islands.

Because this column is about what Mr. English and I really eat in our little menage à deux, I take inspiration from what we really love and want.  And that was a little reverie back to swimming in the clear Grecian waters–so different from swimming in puddles under the gray English storm clouds.  These couldn’t be easier.

Start with some ground lamb from the supermarket, and grate in a few cloves of garlic, and add some chopped fresh chives and oregano.  Form the meat into two patties, drizzle with olive oil, and park on a hot grill or sauté pan for four to five minutes on each side.

Meanwhile, make the tzatziki.  Tzatziki is a Greek dip usually made from yogurt, garlic, and grated cucumber.  But we can do better than that.  Because the burgers are so garlicky, I actually omit it here.  Instead, I take a cucumber, and chop it into chunky half moons, add some more of the chives and oregano we used in the burgers, and finish it with whole mint leaves.  Add a small container of Greek yogurt, and an optional squirt of lemon and you have the freshest, most refreshing condiment for your burger.

Finally, a tip for heating pita bread.  Take some parchment paper and run it under the tap.  Crumple it up, and wring it out.  Seal the pita into the damp parchment as well as you can, and place in a hot over for five or six minutes.  The steam from the parchment softens the bread while it warms, so you can easily stuff the pita with the hot, tender burgers, and the cool, fresh, crisp tzatziki.

So get your Mr. English equivalent, a bottle of Greek beer, and a great show on TV, and get eating.

From my weekly column Dinner for Two on Serious Eats.  Check it out every Friday!

Greek Lamb Burgers with Chunky Mint Tzatziki

INGREDIENTS

• 14 ounces ground lamb
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon snipped chives, plus 1/4 cup chives cut into thirds
• 1 tablespoon plus 2 tablespoons fresh oregano
• Salt and pepper
• A drizzle of olive oil
• 1/4 cup fresh mint leaves
• 1/2 English cucumber, seeds scooped out, skin peeled off, and cut into chunky half moons
• 2/3 cup Greek yogurt
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice
• 2 pita breads

PROCEDURE

Salmon with Thyme and Three-Lemon Crème Fraîche

Salmon is my sit-down-and-be-good food.  The I-ate-too-many-latkes antidote.  And I’ve been doing a zillion variations on this theme this winter: a slab of salmon slow-roasted with olive oil on a bed of herbs.  Traditionally, I do a simple pairing of rosemary and thyme with a good cascade of olive oil.  But this is a lighter and brighter version, roasted over thyme and lemon.  Usually, I roast fish at 400 to 450 degrees–hot and fast.  But with this, I let it go longer at 350–the edges get crisp.  The cooking is more gentle.  The fish soaks up the flavor of the herbs and citrus.  Everyone is just more relaxed.

I serve it hot, for dinner, or room temp, for brunch, with a throw-together sauce of crème fraîche, thyme leaves, and three variations on the lemon theme: lemon zest, lemon juice, and minced preserved lemon (a gift from my Moroccan grandmother, who makes them herself).  It the salmon is hot, the cream melts and pools in the cracks in the cooked fish.  If the salmon is room temperature, it’s like a dipping sauce.  Either way, this feels light and lean, and it pays due respect to the citrus season.

Salmon with Thyme and Three-Lemon Crème Fraîche

INGREDIENTS

• 1 bunch fresh thyme, plus 2 tablespoons thyme leaves
• 1/2 lemon, thinly sliced, plus the juice and zest of the other half
• 1 pound salmon, boneless and skinless
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• Salt and pepper
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped preserved lemon
• 1/2 cup crème fraîche

PROCEDURE

This meal is a show-stopper. An elegant and expeditious way to serve a roasted bird for a small crowd at the holidays. Although, you could make as many of these as you needed to, to serve a crowd.

Buy a couple of poussin (which are essentially what we call Cornish game hens in the United States), and, using some strong kitchen shears, cut out their backbones. Now, you have a flat bird that you rub with olive oil, salt, pepper, fresh garlic and rosemary needles. As the crowning glory, wrap the birds in prosciutto di Parma. As the birds roast, the skin bronzes, the garlic and rosemary perfumes the meat, and the prosciutto crisps to a salty shell. They’re cooked in under 25 minutes.

All that’s left to do is stir creamy cannellini beans into the juices, and let them roast for five minutes while the chickens relax on the counter. Then, you have a hearty but charming Italian roast dinner. Serve a mound of the garlicky beans, and top with the gorgeous poussin.

As I made this, Mr. English kept coming into the kitchen, sniffing around the oven, demanding “what’s in there?!” He wasn’t disappointed.

From my weekly column Dinner for Two on Serious Eats.  Check it out every Friday!

Poussins with Prosciutto and Rosemary with White Beans

INGREDIENTS

• 3 teaspoons olive oil
• 2 poussins, 8 ounces each, butterflied
• Salt and pepper
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 4 slices (around 1.5 ounces) sliced prosciutto di Parma
• 2 15-ounce cans cannellini beans, drained and rinsed

PROCEDURE

Spicy bean cakes, lime slaw, and charred avocado

I think it might have been a chemical reaction triggered by my thirtieth birthday a few weeks ago, but a little nagging voice in my head has been whispering to me: “eat healthy.”

I could stand to take the advice. Between rushed office lunches and the inevitable chocolate craving at four in the afternoon, dinner at home with Mr. English actually becomes the time where we both reset and try to behave like the responsible adults we’re pretending to be.

The cakes are awesome for this purpose. They’re kind of like crab cakes, but a Tex-Mex bean version that are low in fat and brimming with flavor. And the best part is, you can whip the whole thing together in five minutes in your food processor.

Just chuck cilantro, garlic, green onion, jalapeno, and bell pepper into the machine, and blitz it to a rubble. Then add smoky hot chipotle, black and kidney beans, and a bit of flour to hold it all together. You can use an ice cream scoop to mound the cakes onto a lined baking sheet, drizzle lightly with olive oil, and let them bake up in a super hot oven. They come out soft and cream on the inside, and so crisp on the outside you’d swear they’d been fried.

I serve them with a simple slaw of cabbage, cilantro, jalapeno, green onion, and lime. And I char some avocado for a soft, smoky accent on top.

Spicy, Smoky Bean Cakes with Limey Slaw

INGREDIENTS

• 3 cups shredded cabbage
• 1/4 cup cilantro, divided
• 5 scallions, divided
• 1 jalapeno, seeded
• 3 limes, divided
• 1 tablespoon mayonnaise
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/2 red bell pepper
• 1 15-ounce can of kidney beans or pinto beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 15-ounce can of black beans, drained and rinsed
• 2-3 tablespoons chipotle in adobo
• 1/2 cup flour
• Olive oil, for drizzling
• 1 avocado (optional)
• Crumbled mature cheddar, Monterey Jack, or queso fresco (optional)

PROCEDURE

Quiche brimming with Swiss chard, sharp Pecorino, and crispy pancetta

Quiche reminds me of Christmastime because there’s no other time of year (except maybe Thanksgiving) when I would need to make a breakfast that serves more than two people. Being in a full house for the holidays, I find it a whole lot easier to throw together a quiche that serves everyone elegantly than to stand frying or poaching individual eggs in the morning.

I start with a store-bought piecrust because I’m not a pastry chef. You’re more than welcome to go homemade. After that, quiche is really a cinch. This one is stuffed with hearty winter greens and sharp flavors. I start by rendering some cubed pancetta, which is as close as I can find to the fabulous French almost-bacon, ventrèche. In that, I wilt down a grassy mountain of Swiss chard. Scatter that over the crust and top with a quickly-whisked mixture of eggs, milk, crème fraîche, and salty and sharp Pecorino Romano cheese—a filling made for cold winter mornings. The whole thing puffs and browns in the oven.

For me, quiche is all about a full house, and a full stomach on which to unwrap presents. Here’s to big family breakfasts!

Excerpted from my weekly column French in a Flash on Serious Eats.  Bon app!

Chard, Pancetta, and Pecorino Quiche

INGREDIENTS

• 1 prepared piecrust
• 2 ounces cubed pancetta
• 14 ounces Swiss chard, tough ends removed, leaves chopped
• Salt and pepper
• A pinch of ground nutmeg
• 6 large eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup crème fraîche
• 1 cup coarsely grated Pecorino Romano

PROCEDURE

Salt-Baked Bream

Mr. English and I just got back from a trip to France to visit our wedding caterer. The day of our tasting may have been the best day of my life. I’m not sure the actual wedding can beat sitting down to 11 different versions of every possible French menu item. We’ll see if love really does conquer all next fall.

But until then, I decided to recreate my favorite dish of the list: salt-baked sea bream. I’ve made it in cooking school, but I’d forgotten how mind-blowing and inimitable salt-baked fish really is, in addition to being criminally and deceptively simple. Here, a whole bream gets stuffed with herbs (the caterer used thyme, fennel, and tarragon; I use thyme and lemon) and then baked in a hard shell of packed salt. The salt adds only a little salinity to the fish itself, but as the salt shell hardens in the oven it seals in the steam and juices from the fish and the flavor from the herbs and citrus.

To serve, you bring the whole thing to the table—the head and tail of the fish poking out suggestively from the hard salt shell—and you crack it. It’s the seafood equivalent to flambéing a Crêpes Suzette—drama in the dining room as the salt falls away in chunky shards and the steam and scent escape in the air. And then you dine on the sweetest, softest, most perfect fish in the history of creation.

I think I’ve found true love.

Step-by-Step How to Salt-Crust a Fish

Mix the salts with the egg white and water until it looks like wet sand

Press the wet salt mixture into a bed

Pat the fish, inside and out, with paper towel

Fill the cavity of the fish with lemon and herbs. Yum!

Pack the salt mixture up and around and between the fish–everywhere but inside!

It should look like this…

And it will come out in a hard shell from the oven

Lift the shell off the fish, and serve right away

Herb-Stuffed, Salt-Baked Bream

INGREDIENTS

• 2 sea bream, about 3/4 pound each
• 10 sprigs of thyme
• 3 thin slices of lemon, halved
• A drizzle of olive oil (optional)
• 2 cups coarse sea salt
• 1 cup fine sea salt
• 1 egg white
• Water

PROCEDURE

Fennel seed- and thyme-crusted pork tenderloin with sweet roasted fennel and onions

Sometimes, like this year, I have holidays à deux.  And this column is, of course, about eating terrific, but realistic, dinners for two.  So if this year you find yourself celebrating as a twosome, here is one option I propose: a fabulous, easy, lean roast loin of pork crusted in fennel seeds and fresh thyme with fabulous, soft caramelized fennel and red onions roasted alongside.  Instead of gravy, I top it with a light drizzle of simple olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

The whole dinner takes an hour, so slightly long than our usual Dinners for Two, but, it is a holiday meal after all.  But only about ten minutes of that hour require any effort on your part.  The vegetables roast in the oven with some olive oil for half an hour until they start to soften, and then the pork, coated in fennel and thyme, is simply place in the pan alongside for another 25 minutes.  The vegetables come out collapsingly sweet and soft, and the pork comes out juicy—and the seeds and herb around the outside makes up for the fact that we didn’t spend time searing the pork beforehand.  My little vinaigrette replaces a gravy, but it’s far more punchy and appropriate here.  I serve it with a little mache and pistachio salad.  So impressive for absolutely no effort.

From my weekly column Dinner for Two on Serious Eats.  Check it out every Friday!

Fennel-Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Sweet Red Onions

INGREDIENTS

• 3 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons olive oil, divided
• 2 fennel bulbs, cut into sixths
• 2 red onions, cut into sixths
• Salt and pepper
• 2 tablespoons fennel seeds
• 2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves
• 1 1-pound pork tenderloin
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

PROCEDURE

Buttery spiced carrots full of ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and cracked black pepper

One thing (of the many things) I love about French cuisine is the little mixtures of herbs and spices that, together, have become vastly important and common as one ingredient.  Herbes de Provence.  Fines herbes.  Quatre épices.  Blends that are ubiquitous in France, and synonymous with certain ingredients or preparations.

And the great thing is, quatre épices, a simple blend of ground ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and black pepper, is like a savory version of holiday spice.  Put it in anything, and it instantly assumes a kind of medieval banquet air that reminds you of gingerbread or mulled wine—but savory.

For this side, I do a simple glazed carrot.  It’s very traditional in France to cook your carrots this way: with butter and water in a pan, letting the steam evaporate as it softens the carrots, and then letting the butter envelope them.  I simply switch up plain sliced carrots for the charming mini Chantenary variety, and add a pinch of quatre épices to spice things up.  They play so well with the natural sweetness of the carrots—it’s perfect.

Excerpted from my weekly column French in a Flash on Serious Eats.  Bon app!

Quatre Épices Glazed Carrots

INGREDIENTS

• 1 pound baby Chantenay carrots
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1/8 teaspoon each ground ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and black pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup water
• Sea salt

PROCEDURE