Healthy French Recipes

Gwyneth Paltrow transforms one of her favorite salads, the Niçoise, into a hearty one-dish dinner by roasting tuna steaks on a tangle of beans, tomatoes, anchovies and olives.

Chef Sara Simpson flavors her lush seafood soup with port, red wine and the usual dash of licorice-scented Pernod.

Quick-cooking scallops are excellent with sweet fennel and a buttery lemon-caper sauce.

From Eric Ripert of Manhattan's Le Bernardin comes this simple, sophisticated dish that relies on store-bought mayonnaise to enrich the sublime garlicky mussel sauce.

Large shrimp make this a knife-and-fork stew. Melissa Clark spreads a garlicky French rouille on toasts for dipping in the stew.

A classic bouillabaisse often contains six or more different kinds of fish. "But for my money, you really just need lobster, a firm fish and either mussels or clams," says Ted Allen. Even in a simplified version of the Provençal seafood stew, Allen still thinks it's important to make a broth; here, he uses the lobster shells. "For a stronger seafood flavor, add a bottle of clam juice to the finished stock," he says.

Chef Hiroki Yoshitake cleverly uses grapefruit oil to boost the flavor in his chilled four-ingredient soup. Lemon olive oil is a terrific alternative, and easier to find in the US. The citrus oil is used in two different ways: for sautéing fennel before pureeing it with grapefruit juice, and for garnishing the soup before serving.

Sophie Dahl fondly refers to this dish as Paris Mash because she used to make it in Paris while visiting an artist friend, Annie Morris. With herbs and a scattering of mâche (a sweet and tender green), the stewy lentils become a perfect combination of soup and salad. French green lentils work best here, because they hold their shape when cooked.

What makes this tapenade special is the clever mix of oil- and brine-cured olives and the surprise of sweet, fresh and tangy notes from the dried figs, mint and capers.

Nikole Herriott's blog, Forty-Sixth at Grace (fortysixthatgrace.blogspot.com) has some of the web's best food photos, styled with kitchen tools she sells online. Here, her pretty halibut in parchment.

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 Jean-Georges 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.