Everyday French Cooking: Modern French Cuisine Made Simple

by Wini Moranville

This is it! The everyday French cookbook you’ll truly cook from, night after night.

Grounded in the wisdom of classical French cooking, yet updated for today, Everyday French Cooking emphasizes easy technique, simple food, and speedy preparation of French cuisine without sacrificing taste.

Too often, French cooking evokes images of fine dining at ornate restaurants where a small army of chefs hover over sauces for hours, employing precision technique, special utensils, and obscure ingredients to craft elegant dishes. But this image of French cooking bears little resemblance to the way real French families eat. The French, like their American counterparts, want healthy and delicious food made quickly from easy-to-find ingredients using typical, everyday utensils.

From modern takes on classic French dishes —like fish meunière and boeuf bourguignon— to recipes for the kind of cooking found in typical French homes today , Everyday French Cooking goes beyond a typical cookbook to include engaging anecdotes , local color , and keen insights about French home kitchens, as well as tips , tricks , and shortcuts to make French cooking accessible to any home cook. Dozens of beautiful finished-food photographs will further inspire you to cook fresh, vivid everyday French food any night of the week.

Enjoy making, sharing, and savoring simple French recipes Time-pressed cooks will especially appreciate the entire chapter of main-dish recipes that can be made in 30 minutes or less . Indeed, this book proves, again and again, that the joys of the French table are open to everyone. You can live modestly and cook simply, yet dine splendidly, night after night.

Genres: Cookbooks

272 pages, Paperback

Published May 17, 2022

About the author

Wini Moranville has worked as a food writer and editor and restaurant reviewer for over twenty-five years. She is the author of Love Is My Favorite Flavor: A Midwestern Dining Critic Tells All, Everyday French Cooking, The Little Women Cookbook, and The Bonne Femme Cookbook: Simple, Splendid Food That French Women Cook Every Day. She has also contributed to many cooking magazines and websites.

Find her on Substack at Wini's Food Stories.

Reviews

[Rebecca Reviews · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wini Moranville’s Everyday French Cooking is an amazing collection of delicious and approachable recipes that will bring France straight into your kitchen. I love the huge variety of dishes and Moranville’s personable writing style.

This comprehensive book is divided into chapters featuring an impressively wide range of dishes: Appetizers and Cocktails; Les Salades; Les Bonnes Soupes; Saute, Deglaze, and Serve; Braise, Stew, or Roast; Casseroles and Pasta; French Side Dishes; Sandwiches, Pizzas, and Savory Tarts; Eggs and Cheese; Les Desserts; and Basics.

The book features classics like Gougères, French Onion Soup, as well as Bacon, Chive, and Caramelized Onion Quiche. We also learn how to make favourites like Cherry Clafoutis, Bechamel Sauce, and the Classic French Fruit Tart. Moranville even makes the complicated and time-intensive Bouillabaisse and Coq Au Vin attainable for the busy cook!

I love how accessible and approachable Moranville makes French cooking! The recipes are clearly-detailed and easy-to-follow. Each recipe begins with a writeup. Some are brief while others are lengthy but all are interesting and helpful. We learn about the tasting notes of the recipe, tips, swaps, serving suggestions, an explanation or translation of the name (very helpful if your high school French is rusty!), and even a relatable personal anecdote from Moranville’s life! Several of the recipes are time or labour-intensive while others require knowledge of cookery skills. However, I still believe that the dishes in this book are doable for amateur cooks.

I like the book’s focus on cooking with fresh ingredients and producing homemade food from scratch. But, I also like that Moranville doesn’t shy away from convenience items like canned tomatoes and puff pastry. She also makes previously complicated French dishes accessible by offering affordable swaps. Many of the dishes require common pantry staples or fairly easily accessible items like butter, shrimp, chicken, and wine. Even the specialty ingredients like the many different French cheeses are still somewhat inexpensive and easy to find.

Moranville’s writing is friendly and approachable. I learned so much about French culture, the people, and cuisine! I particularly liked learning about dining in France as well as creating a menu of dishes that work together. I loved learning about the different types of French cheeses (there are more than 350 kinds of cheese made in France!) I also learned a lot about cooking and food in general as Moranville shows us important cooking techniques like how to cook different cuts of meat.

The book’s overall design is clean and simple but boring. There are also several bright full-page and full-colour pictures of a handful of these dishes. They are pretty and simply staged which allow the beauty of the food to shine. However, I am disappointed by the lack of pictures because I like seeing how a dish should look. Furthermore, Moranville regales us with so many personal stories that I really expected to see photos from her French travels or at least a few photos of daily French foodie life.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group – Harvard Common Press for this book in exchange for an honest review.


🥖🥖🥖🥖 ½ out of 5 baguettes!

[Karen Hancock · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a fan of everything French, I was excited to review Wini Moranville’s Everyday French Cooking: Modern French Cuisine Made Simple
. This excellent cookbook did not disappoint; rather, it has been moved to the top of my personal list of favorite French cookbooks (out of several dozen on my shelf). Moranville is not afraid to put her personality in the notes at the beginning of each recipe, and that adds to the charm of the cookbook as well as the understanding of specifics of the recipes. The recipes are excellent, and are for dishes that almost everyone will actually want to make and eat. Moranville has included classic French dishes (many made easier than the classic techniques), as well as some new, unique dishes that are distinctly French, but are not as well known or have been created by her using French ingredients and techniques.

Most of us use boneless, skinless chicken breasts for quick dinners – they are inexpensive and good – and Moranville has included enough recipes for them to keep us making them for weeks. Of course there are also exceptional recipes using pork, beef, lamb, beans, lentils, and other favorite ingredients. Moranville are also mouthwatering recipes for pastas, soups, stews, salads, mains, and desserts. Readers will want to try new French recipes for the next few months.

The only drawback to this cookbook is that there isn’t a photograph of each dish. The photographs that are included, however, are beautiful and will make for mouthwatering reading. The prose is well-written and makes this book worth curling up in a corner and reading cover to cover.

The recipes are organized and easy to follow. Even beginners will be able to prepare picture perfect dishes. Highly recommended.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.

[Wini Moranville · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of course, I'm biased, as I'm the author of this book! But I wanted to let readers know a few things:

To be clear, this book is a revised, paperback edition of The Bonne Femme Cookbook: Simple, Splendid Food That French Women Cook Every Day.

For this new edition (Everyday French Cooking), I scrupulously pared down the recipe list to only include only recipes that were truly everyday in nature — recipes French home cooks (who are just as busy as we are) would truly prepare any night of the week, whether feeding the family on a Tuesday night or casually entertaining friends on the weekend. And I added a some fresh, contemporary, and simple recipes I’ve discovered since the first edition was published.

Best of all, the new book has photos — dozens of great photos that I hope will further inspire you to bring a slice of France to your table.

I hope that clears up any confusion about this book versus the earlier edition. Thanks — and let me know if you have any questions.

[Leith Devine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent cookbook with a lot of French classics as well as more modern recipes. The recipes are well written and easy to follow, and there’s nothing too difficult among them. I loved the section on braising, and there are some outstanding and different casseroles as well. I’m definitely looking forward to cooking some of these for my family. 5 stars.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed as in this review are completely my own.

[Afterglow Earring Co · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is perfectly organized- all the sections make sense. Beautiful photos for easy to follow recipes. I definitely can’t wait to try all these amazing recipes! Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC of this beautiful cookbook!

[Alicia Bayer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a nice book on French cooking that did nothing to dispel the ideas I already had about the subject. I was hoping to become more enamored of French food and wasn't. The recipes are fine, typically with French titles, and don't seem much like everyday cooking to me at all. There were photos for about 1/3 of the recipes but I would have liked more. There is no nutritional information. Honestly, most of the recipes reminded me of something my mother's professor friends would have made up in the 80's for a dinner party more than something I'd imagine a modern young, busy French mom making for dinner in 2022. These may be many French people's everyday recipes but they didn't really inspire me. I'm sure it would be much different if I were trying to emulate the food and lifestyle of classic French cooking. Still a solid book that has lots of recipes.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.

[Juli Rahel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost a year ago I bought my first French cookbook and since then I have been slightly obsessed with French cuisine. But not all the meals are equally feasible on a normal day, so I was very excited to see Moranville's cookbook promising to help me make delicious things every day.

'Everyday French Cooking' feels personal, as if you have a friend in the kitchen with you, adding their own humour and fun to the whole cooking process. The recipes vary between classics made easy and contemporary, fresh takes on French cooking. While I don't know if I'm ready to attempt braising meat, not least because I currently live with a group of vegans, I nonetheless enjoyed reading all the recipes. I do know that the Melty Goat Cheese Salad with Honey and Pine Nuts is going to become a favourite with me on summer days! I also appreciated the chapter on dinners taking less than 30 minutes. While half an hour is still quite a lot of time to dedicate on some days, it does get you delicious meals.

My only "gripe" is that I would have loved to see more pictures of the food. I always struggle envisioning new dishes if there are no photos so having the visual helps me make sense of what I'm doing. But I'm definitely going to be adding some of Moranville's recipes to my favourites!

[Lori Alden Holuta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jacques Pepin taught me long ago that French cooking doesn't have to be difficult or complicated. Fresh, wholesome ingredients are the main requirement, along with a sense of adventure. A sense of humor doesn't hurt, either. Fast-forward to this week: when I saw "Everyday" paired with "French Cooking", I just knew I had to give this cookbook a try.

Author Wini Moranville has a quarter of a century of experience cooking everyday French food. At the beginning of this cookbook there's a half-dozen chatty, anecdotal pages filled with her memories and experiences, which makes a pleasant read and helps set the mood for what's to come.

The food photography is as unpretentious as the recipes. Appetizing-looking helpings of food are featured without the photographer feeling the need to show off every special effect in the toolbar (the "Vignette" feature is great for landscapes but please, let's keep it off the dining room table, folks!)

Many of the featured meals take 30 minutes or less to make—and that's precisely how long I allow in my busy days to make dinner! I'm anxious to try the Beef Stew with Orange and Balsamic Vinegar first. I have all the ingredients and those flavors certainly sound as if they will play well together.

And for breakfast tomorrow, I'm thinking about Baked Eggs with Ham and Gruyere. Again, these are ingredients I already have, and it sounds like a fine change from scrambled eggs.

My thanks to author Wini Moranville, Quarto Publishing Group – Harvard Common Press, and NetGalley for allowing me to read a digital advance review copy of this book. This review is my honest and unbiased opinion.

[Leyla Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Want to cook basic French food you will like these recipes. The book is beautifully photographed and the information and ingredients are easy to understand.,
The book is divided into sections which include Appretizers, Salads, Soups, Side dishes, Egg and cheese, Desert to name a few. But my favorite is the section which includes Saute, Deglaze, Braise. Roast and Casserole dishes.
A lovely basic cook book, with easy recipes, each with a touch of French style and good eating

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a French teacher and francophile, I'm always looking for good French cookbooks both to use with my family and with my classes. This is such a fantastic addition to my bookshelf! The recipes are clearly written and full of all my favorite simple (and some fancy) home style French dishes, all of which look delectable and doable. I can't wait to get cooking! Everything you need is here, from tapenade and cocktails as a starter to the boeuf bourguignon. This is a really solid entry into (relatively) simple French cooking and it's beautifully photographed as well.

[Jodi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book brings France into your home. Normally many people think of French Cooking as pompous or difficult, but this book with its vibrant pictures brings the ease of French cooking into your home. You see a variety of recipes with extensive soups and salads section as well as a way to round out your meal with desserts. This cookbook will bring the recipes to life and paint the cook as an expert in delicious flavors. If you like to travel whether it be through books, cooking or actual visits this cookbook will provide the reader an opportunity to visit or revisit the country though food. Pick this one up to enjoy a cultural experience within reach.

[April · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group- Harvard Common Press for giving me access to Everyday French Cooking by Wini Moranville.

I love looking at cookbooks but wish this one had more pictures. The instructions are well written, which makes me think I can make some of the entrees, drinks, or desserts that caught my eye.

#EverydayFrenchCooking #NetGalley #amreading #allthebooks #nonfictionreads #cookbook #tryitall

[Aiste · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm very impressed with the book. More than 250 pages of recipes with beautiful pictures- I wanted to try every of them. Salads, main dishes, sandwiches, sauces, deserts. As the person, who thinks that french cuisine is the winner in creating perfectly balanced blends of flavours, I am genuinely grateful for the chance to be the owner of this book.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyday French Cooking is well-organized with clear directions. The photos are beautifully done and the recipes are mouthwatering. I can’t wait to make Bouillabaisse Ce Soir and Chocolate Pots de Crème.
Thank you to Netgalley and Harvard Common Press for the arc ecookbook in exchange for an honest review.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

To be honest, I am less interested in French food than Italian or Latin or Japanese, etc. It seems very complex and stuffy and expensive. This book was a great guide to tackling those basics and bringing interest to French cuisine.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to thank Netgalley and the author for gifting me the ebook. Such a beautiful book! The recipes are easy and sound way to delicious! Pictures are very beautiful also!

[Nita Ankrom · Rating 4 out of 5]

This cookbook is beautiful to view, as well as having recipes that make French cuisine less daunting. The recipes are written in an easy to follow format and appear to be simple enough even for the inexperienced cook. This is a book that I will definitely consider buying.

[Joni Owens · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven’t ever really cooked French food because I thought it was difficult. After reading this cookbook I’m excited to try. These recipes are easy but beautiful. Most ingredients are easy to find. The recipes are well written.

[Polly Krize · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book presents French cooking in a simple way, making it easier for cooks to follow classic recipes. The soups and salads alone make it worth a look. Great resource.

[Theediscerning · Rating 3 out of 5]

This gave off the vibes of a French cookery book from ten years ago, dusted down and retitled, and put on the list because the publisher didn't have a current French cookbook to their name. It's certainly ten years old and has a new name for this publication – and throughout gave me a little edge of irritation. It wanted to be a thorough guide to the French culinary lifestyle – what the large country does regionally as per aperitifs, when the French eat salads during a large sit-down meal, and so on – and so had lots of verbose box-out asides instead of leading by example and putting that information in with the recipes. Designed for American use, it might well fire up the dinner party to say "this is how they do it en France", but I wanted it to be up to me what I ate and when, and for the book to just give ideas to the relevant cuisine.

All told, then, it was not until a middle chapter where my interest was piqued – the promised range of simple ideas for bunging meat in a pan, sauteing it, taking it out and making a sauce for it from what you throw at the left-over oils or fats. Always a stickler for a simple, low-maintenance bit of flavour, here I got up close with chicken marsala-ish, tarragon chicken, pork with apricot and sage together, and so on – and then the database for the essential basics – you know, the ones you should turn to first.

Overall it does what it wants – it is everyday cooking (and the photos are everyday, unsexy things too). It doesn't demand any ridiculous attempts at this or that, any bizarre equipment, or any unique ingredients – bar what you'd expect, on account of it giving off a specific French flavour. You're not making your own pasta when fusioning with Italian cooking, f'r instance, and the truffles, Mediterranean-accented overnight marinades and andouilettes are left over for the more pretentious. But it all lacked a certain spirit, a je ne sais quoi, that made me engage with it all. The best recipe books from one country or region can make me feel friends with the cuisine, this just left me feeling a little lectured at instead.

Also I kind of had trust issues with a book that said 4-5 minutes poaching gives an egg that is still yet to go firm. A turkey egg, perhaps...

[(a)lyss(a) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a nice recipe book!

I wish there were more pictures - I like seeing pictures of the finished recipe in cook books. There's a variety of French recipes in this book including mains, sides, and desserts. Some of the recipes are more labor intensive than others, but the book breaks them down and makes approaching French cooking seem feasible.

Overall an interesting find!

[Kathi Brennan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well organized cookbook for any home cook wanting to tackle some French recipes. The recipes seem easy to follow, and while not all recipes include a photo, the pictures that are included are beautiful.

This foodie thanks Wini Moranville, Quarto Publishing Group – Harvard Common Press, Harvard Common Press, and NeGalley for the opportunity to review this ARC.

[Mirandia Berthold · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully done cookbook. The photos are fantastic and the directions to each recipe are so well explained but not overly done. I love the personalized notes from the author and creator of this cookbook, as well. I will be going back to many recipes, and making them again and again. Every foodie, home chef, or just cookbook collector needs this on their shelf.

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have really liked everything I’ve made and also its simplicity. The only gripe I have is my book pages coming loose, but repaired well with some Gorilla tape 😉

[Valerie Thirkettle-Kayser · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a French reader, I am always curious when it comes to books about French cooking.

I enjoyed this book because it brings a series of French style recipes to everyone’s kitchen. It is simple, well explained and illustrated and contains many lovely French classics.

I understand that the author wanted to write for American cooks and base her choice of recipes and ingredients on what is used most in America. She has achieved a great result in this respect. But one of the essential elements of French cooking is the broad range of ingredients we use and I think this did not come across so well for me in this book which gave a bit too much space to chicken dishes.

The French attitude to food nicely comes across in the book. Taking the time to cook and enjoy, making it an opportunity to socialise and enjoy sitting with friends and family, In the old days, many hours would have been spent in the kitchen to prepare for these meals. But the French are looking for a simpler and faster way of cooking these days, without giving up on the quality and the classics. This books captures this very well, building on the author’s many years of enjoyable times spent cooking and eating in France with her friends.

A good way to get started with French cooking.

[Jodi Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Making French food easy and accessible. The pictures are plentiful and beautifully done. The recipes use easy to find ingredients and are simple to make. The Alsatian Bacon and onion tart is perfect for a party or small brunch. I will be reaching for this book regularly to make weeknight dinners and special occasion meals.