French

Clafouti is a rustic, simple French dessert that's a cross between a pancake and a custard. You can use other fruits, but cherries are traditional—and summer is when they're at their best.

This textured spread is great served with cured meats. If you wind up with leftovers, use it on sandwiches.

If using skin-on hazelnuts, rub them inside a clean kitchen towel after they've been toasted--the skins will slip right off. Serve the fish with a lightly dressed butter lettuce and herb salad.

At the Lambs Club in New York, chef Geoffrey Zakarian dusts the chicken with flour and lets it cook skin side down--keys to a juicy cutlet under a super thin, crackly layer of skin. If you can find boneless, skin-on chicken breasts, they'll save you a step.

This recipe makes enough mignonette for a dozen oysters.

This kir royale recipe doesn't take much—just some crème de cassis and sparkling wine. So what are you waiting for?

Throughout France, these traditional fried cookies are called "marvels" for good reason. For crisp, golden results, be sure that the oil is hot enough before you begin.

Layers of buttered and sugared phyllo pastry are molded in muffin tins to form the crisp crusts for these mini apple croustades.

This streamlined, somewhat lighter cassoulet employs French green lentils, bacon, and smoked sausage.

Simmer butter until its milk solids brown to unleash its nutty alter ego. Use it to bring deep flavor to baked goods, like these financiers, or as a sauce for fish or pasta.

If you can’t make it to Paris to taste Fabrice Le Bourdat’s glazed madeleines (the best in town) you might as well learn to make them at home.

The cream puff is the Eiffel Tower of Parisian pastries: iconic, beloved, and displayed everywhere. The recipe is so irrefutably timeless that even Pierre Hermé, France's most famous (and endlessly innovative) pastry chef, still uses the formula he learned as a 14-year-old apprentice.

You'll need a special mold for this canelé recipe.

Here's a soufflé recipe by Michel Richard of Citronelle in Washington, D.C. that can stand up for itself. Whip the whites until firm, but stop before they get too stiff.