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French Bistro Cooking
French Bistro Cooking, featuring more than 80 photographs of the principal dishes, is more than a cookbook. It is a down-to-earth account which makes French food what it should accessible to everyone.There are definitive recipes ranging from such classics as French Beans with Garlic and Moules Marinières to fresh and unusual dishes like Warm Salad of Sweetcorn and Chicken Livers or Snails in Puff Pastry. The different sections cover appetizers (hot and cold), soups, fish and fish sauces, game, meat, poultry, vegetables and desserts. Distinctive recipes for potatoes, pasta and rice are given, and even a short but very French snack section with eggs and cheese. Furthermore, tips and asides give a useful and interesting dimension to the carefully researched recipes.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 14, 2016
This was nothing new but it was an attractive book. The highpoints are the Duck & Game dishes. Roast Duck with Red Wine was the best. Overall, if you don't know french cooking buy it.
April 13, 2021
I’ve had this book for a long time, long enough that I don’t know when I bought it. I “only” started keeping track of where and when I bought a particular cookbook in 1997. Recently I’ve been going through my cookbooks deciding what to keep and what not to, and I rediscovered this gem of a book. It’s a good example of why too many books can be as bad as too few. I should never have lost track of it.
The recipes are mostly, explicitly, simple. While Varnom’s definition of what makes for Bistro cooking is complicated, some mix of quick, simple—once prepared—and more economical. Varnom’s introduction buries Caesar more than praises him on all of these points, but they basically hold true.
Most of the recipes are one page, with a well-staged photo above and/or to the side. The back describes basic techniques, such as béchamel, bouillons, pastries, stocks, hollandaise, and so forth.
One of my go-to recipes probably since I bought this book is the “French Beans with Garlic”. Cook the beans. Melt the butter. Add garlic to the butter and turn the heat up. When the garlic starts to “spit”, toss in the beans and fry for a minute or so. I will also put the beans on a plate rather than in the butter (olive oil also works) and sprinkle Parmesan on top, then pour the hot garlic butter over the beans to fry the Parmesan on the plate. The notes say that you can do Brussels sprouts this way; I expect you can do just about any vegetable you like this way.
The “Roast Chicken Stuffed with Bacon and Chicken Livers” is similarly simple, though it takes longer due to having to roast the chicken. Make a simple stuffing with breadcrumbs, bacon, onions, and chicken liver. Stuff the chicken. Roast it.
More recently, I’ve made the “Thick Carrot Soup Crécy Style”. Crécy style apparently means, “with bacon” and this is pretty amazing. The carrot soup is blended, with the bacon, giving it a smoky flavor along with the bacon flavor.
The “Green Lentils with Carrot, Onion and Garlic”, on the page facing the French Beans, are a bit different than most lentil stews. The lentils and vegetables are prepared separately and then mixed together—leaving any water from the lentils behind. This allows you to make the stew the consistency you want by adding only the amount of lentil water necessary to reach that consistency.
The “Gratinée of Scallops” are done similarly, because “when the scallops cook, they shrink and give off water”. So you “simmer gently for 1 minute” and then remove the scallops from the broth and reduce it as desired.
None of these are complicated recipes. Even the béchamel for the scallops is simply done; I had no problems even though it was my first time at it.
But there are even simpler recipes here. “French Scrambled Eggs” uses a double boiler to make scrambled eggs, with butter and cream; it’s dead simple, not even deserving of a recipe—except that I doubt I would have come up with it without one. And the sidebar describes how to add mushrooms or other extra ingredients to make more complex scrambled eggs. I had a quarter-carton of mushrooms and a third of a red bell pepper in the fridge, so I added that. The eggs were very creamy, very good.
Even easier than that, “Couscous the Quick Way” is literally just melt butter in a frying pan, add couscous and water, and cook until “the cereal holds the shape of a spoon pushed through it”. On the other hand, I would never have thought of making couscous in a skillet rather than a sauce pan.
The weirdest part of the book is that every recipe has its French name and an English translation. The recipe for Crème Brûlée is not translated to its English name, however, at least its American English name. In the United States, crème brûlée is… crème brûlée. It’s translated to “Burned Cream Dessert”. My copy appears to be for the British market; I suspect that I bought it the one time I was in England around 1995 or so, and that burned cream is the British English for the dessert.
“This is the end of the book and you should be learning a little boldness by now.”
The recipes are mostly, explicitly, simple. While Varnom’s definition of what makes for Bistro cooking is complicated, some mix of quick, simple—once prepared—and more economical. Varnom’s introduction buries Caesar more than praises him on all of these points, but they basically hold true.
Most of the recipes are one page, with a well-staged photo above and/or to the side. The back describes basic techniques, such as béchamel, bouillons, pastries, stocks, hollandaise, and so forth.
One of my go-to recipes probably since I bought this book is the “French Beans with Garlic”. Cook the beans. Melt the butter. Add garlic to the butter and turn the heat up. When the garlic starts to “spit”, toss in the beans and fry for a minute or so. I will also put the beans on a plate rather than in the butter (olive oil also works) and sprinkle Parmesan on top, then pour the hot garlic butter over the beans to fry the Parmesan on the plate. The notes say that you can do Brussels sprouts this way; I expect you can do just about any vegetable you like this way.
The “Roast Chicken Stuffed with Bacon and Chicken Livers” is similarly simple, though it takes longer due to having to roast the chicken. Make a simple stuffing with breadcrumbs, bacon, onions, and chicken liver. Stuff the chicken. Roast it.
More recently, I’ve made the “Thick Carrot Soup Crécy Style”. Crécy style apparently means, “with bacon” and this is pretty amazing. The carrot soup is blended, with the bacon, giving it a smoky flavor along with the bacon flavor.
The “Green Lentils with Carrot, Onion and Garlic”, on the page facing the French Beans, are a bit different than most lentil stews. The lentils and vegetables are prepared separately and then mixed together—leaving any water from the lentils behind. This allows you to make the stew the consistency you want by adding only the amount of lentil water necessary to reach that consistency.
The “Gratinée of Scallops” are done similarly, because “when the scallops cook, they shrink and give off water”. So you “simmer gently for 1 minute” and then remove the scallops from the broth and reduce it as desired.
None of these are complicated recipes. Even the béchamel for the scallops is simply done; I had no problems even though it was my first time at it.
But there are even simpler recipes here. “French Scrambled Eggs” uses a double boiler to make scrambled eggs, with butter and cream; it’s dead simple, not even deserving of a recipe—except that I doubt I would have come up with it without one. And the sidebar describes how to add mushrooms or other extra ingredients to make more complex scrambled eggs. I had a quarter-carton of mushrooms and a third of a red bell pepper in the fridge, so I added that. The eggs were very creamy, very good.
Even easier than that, “Couscous the Quick Way” is literally just melt butter in a frying pan, add couscous and water, and cook until “the cereal holds the shape of a spoon pushed through it”. On the other hand, I would never have thought of making couscous in a skillet rather than a sauce pan.
The weirdest part of the book is that every recipe has its French name and an English translation. The recipe for Crème Brûlée is not translated to its English name, however, at least its American English name. In the United States, crème brûlée is… crème brûlée. It’s translated to “Burned Cream Dessert”. My copy appears to be for the British market; I suspect that I bought it the one time I was in England around 1995 or so, and that burned cream is the British English for the dessert.
“This is the end of the book and you should be learning a little boldness by now.”
May 21, 2018
This big book has a lot of blank spaces and the pictures unannotated but the recipes work thanks in great part to the “cook’s tips” for each recipe.
Comments are arrogant, talking down to the reader, in the “chef’s aside” and tips sometimes, but generally speaking the recipes work. The Coq au Vin is a little weird compared to the classic recipe but works. The Entrecôte Marchand de Vin is freaking brilliant.
What I liked is the range of dishes, which is certainly representative of dishes in a French Bistro.
May 10th, 2020. I have taken down this book and decided to do a few recipes during the COVID Isolation ... and I am amazed. I can name the cookbooks that contain usable, practical recipes on the fingers of one hand.
Yesterday I bought a pound of mussels, followed the Uber-simple recipe and feasted on amazing Mussels. Ten minutes (the book says 6 minutes) !
Comments are arrogant, talking down to the reader, in the “chef’s aside” and tips sometimes, but generally speaking the recipes work. The Coq au Vin is a little weird compared to the classic recipe but works. The Entrecôte Marchand de Vin is freaking brilliant.
What I liked is the range of dishes, which is certainly representative of dishes in a French Bistro.
May 10th, 2020. I have taken down this book and decided to do a few recipes during the COVID Isolation ... and I am amazed. I can name the cookbooks that contain usable, practical recipes on the fingers of one hand.
Yesterday I bought a pound of mussels, followed the Uber-simple recipe and feasted on amazing Mussels. Ten minutes (the book says 6 minutes) !
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews