Healthy French Recipes

These fantastic healthy French recipes include Gwyneth Paltrow's hot Niçoise salad, a knife-and-fork shrimp stew, ratatouille spirals and more.

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French Onion Soup with Whole-Grain Cheese Toast

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For this lighter version of the classic French onion soup, freshly grated Gruyère cheese is melted over whole-grain toast and served on top of the soup.

How to Make French Onion Soup

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Hot Niçoise Salad

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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.

Main-Course Salads

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Provençal Fish Soup

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

Recipes from French Masters

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Scallops with Fennel Grenobloise

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

F&W's Best Healthy Recipes

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Seared Cod with Spicy Mussel Aioli

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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.

Recipes from French Chef Eric Ripert

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Marseille-Style Shrimp Stew

Johnny Valiant

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

More French Recipes

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Ted Allen's Lobster Bouillabaisse

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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.

More French Dishes

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Chilled Fennel-Grapefruit Velouté with Lemon Olive Oil

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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.

More Healthy Soups

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Ratatouille Spirals

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This is ratatouille imagined as beautiful little rolls of eggplant, zucchini, bell peppers, mozzarella and anchovy, all baked in a tangy, fresh tomato sauce.

Healthy Vegetable Dishes

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Lentils with Red Wine and Herbs

Jan Baldwin

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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.

French Picnic Dishes

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Vegetable Ragout with Fresh Herbs

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This recipe was inspired by the time chef Jeremiah Tower spent cooking with culinary genius Richard Olney in France. The vegetable combination here is only one of many, though Tower never uses more than seven vegetables and never uses tomatoes unless they are sweet cherry tomatoes.

Modern French Cooking

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Black Olive Tapenade with Figs and Mint

David Malosh

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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.

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Fallen Toasted-Almond Soufflés with Poached Pears and Prunes

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These soufflés collapse gracefully in their molds, so there’s no need to rush them to the table; they are more like a light cake than a fragile whipped-egg-white confection.

Best French Classics

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Summer Blackberry Custards

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Alain Coumont makes these ethereal, citrusy custards with wild blackberries gathered from his property. Try them with blueberries, raspberries or pitted cherries, too.

French Desserts

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Fennel Mussels with Piquillo Rouille

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Before Chris Kronner makes this dish, he forages mussels from the nearby coast. "You have to climb down a 75-foot rock face on a rickety ladder; it's intense," he says.

French Main Courses

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Crêpes with Strawberries and Muscat-Yogurt Sauce

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Nichole Birdsall tops these crêpes with strawberries, a superfruit high in vitamin C and potent antioxidants, and a creamy, orangey sauce sweetened with a splash of Bonterra Muscat dessert wine instead of sugar.

Delicious Desserts

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Halibut and Summer Vegetables en Papillote

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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.

Healthy Fish Dishes

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Caramelized Endives with Apples

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More Recipes from Jean-Georges Vongerichten

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Creamy Anchoïade with Crudités

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Anchoïade, a Provençal puree of anchovies, garlic and olive oil, is often slathered on grilled bread or served as a dip. Use any combination of crudités—from thin shavings of spicy black radish to florets of broccoli romanesco, a relative of broccoli and cauliflower.

More Provençal Classics

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Poached Eggs with Parmesan and Smoked Salmon Toasts

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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.

Great Brunch Recipes

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Healthy French Recipes

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French Onion Soup with Whole-Grain Cheese Toast

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Hot Niçoise Salad

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Provençal Fish Soup

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Scallops with Fennel Grenobloise

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Seared Cod with Spicy Mussel Aioli

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Marseille-Style Shrimp Stew

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Ted Allen's Lobster Bouillabaisse

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Chilled Fennel-Grapefruit Velouté with Lemon Olive Oil

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Ratatouille Spirals

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Lentils with Red Wine and Herbs

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Vegetable Ragout with Fresh Herbs

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Black Olive Tapenade with Figs and Mint

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Fallen Toasted-Almond Soufflés with Poached Pears and Prunes

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Summer Blackberry Custards

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Fennel Mussels with Piquillo Rouille

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Crêpes with Strawberries and Muscat-Yogurt Sauce

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Halibut and Summer Vegetables en Papillote

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Caramelized Endives with Apples

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Creamy Anchoïade with Crudités

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Poached Eggs with Parmesan and Smoked Salmon Toasts

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