Recipes

This section is dedicated to recipes tried and tasted chez nous (our house). Enjoy and Bon Appetit!

RECIPES Click on RECIPES to See Excerpts of Posts Published Here

an example of a French soup that is easy to prepare and delicious to eat:

Soupe de Bonne Femme or Old Wives Soup

SOUPE DE BONNE FEMME (Old Wives’Soup)

from cookbook Françoise Bernard, ma cuisine d’aujourd’hui

This is really a super easy and super delish soup that you can make with very little effort and ingredients. There is a secret on why this tastes so good. Keep reading.

Ingredients:

3 Leeks, 3 Tablespoons Salted Butter, 8 Ounces of Potatoes (about 2-3 medium), 6 cups & 1 Tablespoon of Water, 4 Toasted Bread Slices, Salt and Pepper to taste

1. Cut off larger green endings of leeks and dispose.  Wash tender white part of leeks well and cut into small circles.
2. Cook leeks for 1 minute with 1 Tablespoon of salted butter.
3. Add 1 Tablespoon of water and cook for 5 minutes more on low heat.
4. Peel potatoes and cut them into circles.
5. Add them to leeks with 6 cups of water, salt and pepper to taste.  Let soup boil very slowly for 45 minutes.
6. Butter the toast (with salted butter!) and put one piece in the bottom of each soup bowl.
7. Pour the soup directly on top of the toast and serve immediately.

The secret on why this easy soup tastes so good is due to the toast that sits in the bottom of your soup bowl!  Using good bread (like a French or Italian “baguette,” smeared with salted butter adds the delicious touch to this dish.  Never mind that the aroma is amazing but tasting this soup with the toast that is just starting to soften in your bowl. The combination of tasting the bread, the salted butter, leeks and potatoes, yummy, I promise! Make sure you use enough salt to taste for your liking.  Using salted butter on the toast also adds salt to the dish.  You can adapt this soup by cooking a bit of bacon in the soup pot before the leeks.  Serve with a green salad for a light meal or before a main dish for a bigger meal.  Bon Appetit.

If you like easy French cooking, here is one of Françoise Bernard’s cookbook translated to English, geared to the anglophone audience.  Here is the direct link to buy this cookbook on amazon.com:

I use her French version and the recipes are easy and delicious.  See the link to the French version below.

About Mary Brighton

Mary Brighton MS, RD is a registered dietitian in America, France and United Kingdom. She received her Masters of Science in Nutrition and Exercise Physiology from Colorado State University. She currently lives in France, is learning Italian and loves to travel, eat, be a mom.

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