Recipes Comfort Food Our Favorite French Recipes By Food & Wine Editors Updated on May 9, 2017 Share Tweet Pin Email Trending Videos Photo: © David Prince Don't fear French cooking. These fantastic recipes, from the classic pot-au-feu to buttery pistachio financiers, are full of essential cooking techniques — and you'll be serving show stoppers. 01 of 16 Porcini Mushroom Tartlets © David Loftus Most of this recipe by Jean-Georges Vongerichten can be prepared up to one day ahead of time. Get the Recipe 02 of 16 Double-Baked Cheese Soufflé with Parmesan Cream Johnny Valiant This dish pairs especially well with a fresh sparkling wine. We prefer a green apple-inflected version. Get the Recipe 03 of 16 Choucroute Garnie © Quentin Bacon Families in Alsace generally eat choucroute garnie during the wintertime, because it's such a hearty, filling dish.; Jacques Pépin has adapted the recipe to make it quicker and easier — calling for store-bought sauerkraut instead of the homemade kind, for instance, and suggesting peanut oil as a substitute for duck or goose fat, which may be less accessible. He always serves two or three types of mustard with the choucroute — a hot Dijon, a grainy Pommery and often a tarragon-flavored mustard as well. Get the Recipe 04 of 16 Pork Rillettes © Antonis Achilleos Rillettes is a rustic pâté made from meat that's been poached in its own fat, then shredded and stored in some of that fat. Writer Oliver Strand makes pork rillettes in a slow cooker; the recipe works equally well prepared on the stovetop over low heat. The quick pickle of dried apricots is an ingenious sweet-tart accompaniment to the rich meat. Get the Recipe 05 of 16 Provençal Fish Soup Chef Sara Simpson flavors her lush seafood soup with port, red wine and the usual dash of licorice-scented Pernod. Get the Recipe 06 of 16 Poached Eggs with Parmesan and Smoked Salmon Toasts Dipping a crispy toast finger (the French call it a mouillette) in a soft egg yolk has to be one of life's great pleasures. "When I was a kid, I loved it," says Vongerichten. Evidently, he's still fond of it because he has created an adult version that's elegant enough to serve as a first course at a dinner party: He wraps smoked salmon around half of the toasts and sprinkles the rest with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, so it melts and forms a salty crust when baked. Get the Recipe 07 of 16 Gnocchi Parisienne James Baigrie These very tasty gnocchi are made with pâte à choux — the same dough used for profiteroles, cream puffs and éclairs — that is poached and then baked. You don't need a light hand to make these, as you do for other forms of gnocchi; in fact, the dough comes together quickly in a saucepan and requires vigorous stirring. Get the Recipe 08 of 16 Blanquette de Veau Chef Daniel Boulud prepares this classic, creamy veal stew with veal stock, sometimes adding sweetbreads and finishing the dish with shavings of black truffle. To simplify the recipe, omit the sweetbreads and truffle and opt for store-bought vegetable broth — or even salted water — over veal stock. Get the Recipe 09 of 16 Provençal Grilled Lamb Mathilde Dalle and chef Patrick Thibaud use the quintessentially Provençal combination of rosemary, thyme and garlic to flavor this lamb. Get the Recipe 10 of 16 Classic Pot-au-Feu © P-A Jorgensen For this dish, David Duband braises two cuts of beef — shank and rump roast — with marrow bones and then separately cooks leeks and carrots with more marrow bones until everything is deeply flavorful and tender. When serving, you can mix the horseradish with the sour cream to make a tasty garnish. Get the Recipe 11 of 16 Cassoulet with Duck Confit Chef Laurence Jossel created this stripped-down version of the classic French stew, with creamy white beans, luscious store-bought duck confit, smoky French garlic sausage and slab bacon. Letting the beans rest overnight develops their flavors. Get the Recipe 12 of 16 Pistachio Financiers © Earl Carter These absurdly easy-to-make buttery French cakes can be stored overnight in an airtight container at room temperature. Get the Recipe 13 of 16 Bouillabaisse © Tina Rupp When Cathal Armstrong was growing up in Ireland, his father (a travel agent and avid cook) made all kinds of Spanish and French dishes, including a great bouillabaisse. Now Armstrong serves his own phenomenal bouillabaisse, packed with shrimp, mussels, clams and monkfish. When he began offering the dish at his restaurant, one of the first customers to order it was his mother, who was visiting from Ireland. She loved it, Armstrong reports, adding wryly, "Why wouldn't she? She's my mother." Get the Recipe 14 of 16 Beef Stew in Red Wine Sauce For many Americans, the quintessential French stew is boeuf bourguignon — beef cooked in Burgundy red wine. The stew, featured regularly at Jacques Pépin's mother's restaurant, was made from tougher, cheaper cuts of beef, which had to be braised a long time to get tender and to stay moist. Get the Recipe 15 of 16 Chilled Zucchini Soup with Purslane Alain Coumont's cool vegan soup gets its creaminess from pureed zucchini, sautéed onion and garlic. It's brightened with purslane, a lemony weed that Coumont plucks from his Languedoc country garden; if purslane is not available at your local farmers' market, substitute baby arugula leaves instead. Get the Recipe 16 of 16 Alsatian Rhubarb Tart © David Prince Vongerichten bakes the raw rhubarb in the raw pastry shell, rather than blind-baking (precooking) the crust. But the cooks in the F&W Test Kitchen discovered you can use Vongerichten's method only in a convection oven; in a conventional oven, the shell didn't bake through. That's why the recipe here calls for cooking the tart shell completely before adding the rhubarb. However you make this dessert, it's irresistibly tangy, creamy, and frothy. Get the Recipe Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Tell us why! Other Submit