French from the market

One could say there's no such thing as too many French cookbooks; some concentrate on a specific region, while others focus on the freshest ingredients and how best to parlay them. Still others streamline traditional recipes, like ratatouille and clafouti, making them easily accessible to any cook. This is Davis' fifth French cookbook, with previous books focusing on desserts, oven-baked dishes, Niçoise cuisine, and comfort food. Drawing from her experience living in Paris and the South of France, she aims to reinforce the ease, taste, and melding of flavors in these 100 French dishes. Without much preface, she spends her words introducing the provenance, flavor variations, and how the methods differ from traditional U.S. cooking. Recipes include root vegetable hummus, zucchini soup made with Laughing Cow cheese wedges, crunchy carrot salad, sausage-stuffed mussels, chicken chasseur, and cantaloupe sorbet. Directions are fairly uncomplicated, and color photographs portray finished dishes with a zing.

In this quick and approachable collection, Davis (French Comfort Food) draws on her 13 years in Paris and the South of France to present easy and affordable French home cooking. Her casual approach relies on shortcuts, such as a store-bought crust for fluffy cauliflower and cheese quiche, premade crepes for "last-minute" grand marnier crepes suzette, and Laughing Cow cheese to lend creaminess to Laughing Cow zucchini soup. Classic "haute cuisine" dishes are abridged and made less intimidating, including instant pot beef bourguignon, easy whole duck a l'orange (which still requires an overnight marinade), and coq au vin reimagined as a quick chicken bake with a stove-top wine sauce. Though traditionalists may balk, there's no denying Davis's efficiency. Her encouraging instructions make even more complex dishes seem simple, including the festive salad dubbed "A Wreath You Can Eat" and ingenious "beef on a string with horseradish sauce." Other quick takes include a one-pot salmon in parchment with capers and lemon and weeknight halibut in basil cream. This accessible approach to everyday French fare will appeal to cooks at all skill levels. (Mar.)