If you have ever considered putting together a French meal for your dinner guests but the thought of all the time and effort and running around stores looking for unusual ingredients has prevented you, you might want to know that there are plenty of delicious French recipes available that are relatively easy to prepare and are quite scrumptious.

If you prefer, you can add a single French dish to your American-style meal such as tian of Provincial vegetables or chick pea soup with cumin or perhaps avocado with sesame and soy. You can choose to serve a tasty coq au vin with a loaf of bread and ice cream or a simple chocolate cake for dessert.

Ingredients

If you are considering cooking French food at home there are a wide variety of French dishes that don’t require fancy ingredients or fancy cookware. If you want to occasionally cook French food without having to run to the store, here are some items you might want to keep in the house: fluer de Sel, a  French salt which is excellent for garnishing purposes. While cooking French food at home, add a little pizzazz to your meals by adding some anchovy paste to foods. When combined with butter it adds a delicious flavor to a piece of toasted French bread.

Crème Fraiche is a thick cream with a distinctive tangy flavor and is a wonderful ingredient to use when cooking French food at home and makes an excellent substitute for sour cream. Lardons are simply very small pieces of bacon that can enhance your pasta dishes, salads and can help you make a delicious stew. When you are making a French dessert its important to have some bittersweet chocolate in the house.

French Cookware and Utensils

A Cocotte is a variation on the Dutch oven and is an excellent choice when preparing French food at home such as stews or meats. A sauté pan is an essential cookware item for French cooking and is quite useful for meats as well as vegetables. You might want to purchase a rasp or grater which is useful for parmesan cheese as well as lemon zest. If you don’t already have one you might want to add a strainer to your collection.

Don’t be intimidated by cooking instructions such as deglazing when preparing French food at home. Deglazing is simply the process of adding water, wine or other liquids to a hot pan that has been used for preparing your meal. Deglazing removes some of the tasty bits of food that have become stuck to the pan and adds them back to the meal you are cooking.

If the recipe asks you to reduce, this is simply the process of boiling away some of the liquid. Sautéing is the process of cooking with just a little bit of fat. If the recipe suggests you refresh something you simply place it in very cold water. Cooking French food at home can be relatively easy and will provide you and your family some scrumptious meals.

Tags: anchovy paste, Cocotte, Crème Fraiche, French Cookware, French Food

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