François’s Marinated Olives

Makes 4 servings

You can use any kind of olive you want, but I like green olives like Lucques or Picholine the best. The outer colored part of lemon peel (and the peel of other citrus fruits too, like limes and oranges) is called the zest. You can use a vegetable peeler (the kind with a blade that swivels) to make paper-thin strips that are all zest, with none of the inner white part of the peel (or only a little).

1 cup olives

2 to 3 long strips of lemon zest

¼ teaspoon fennel seeds

2 or 3 thyme sprigs, torn into 1-inch pieces

1 tablespoon olive oil

Take the olives out of their brine. Put the olives into a sauté pan and toss with the lemon zest, fennel seeds, thyme, and olive oil. Warm the marinated olives gently over low heat for 3 minutes. Spoon into a bowl. When you serve them, make sure you put another small dish nearby for the pits.

Slow-Roasted Almonds with Sage Leaves

Makes about 2½ cups

Roasting almonds with sage at a low temperature makes the almonds toasty and the sage crispy. Plus it makes the whole house smell good when you do it! The only trick is to watch the almonds carefully, because after about a half hour, they’ll go from golden to burnt in just a few minutes.

2 cups almonds

1 cup sage leaves, loosely packed (about 1 large bunch)

2 tablespoons olive oil

½ teaspoon sea salt

Preheat the oven to 275º F. On a sheet pan, mix together the almonds and sage leaves. Add the olive oil and salt. Toss gently until the nuts and sage are evenly coated. Spread the nuts evenly on the sheet pan and bake in the preheated oven, stirring every now and then.

After about 20 minutes, scoop out a few nuts with a spoon and cut them open with a small knife. If they are golden brown in the center, they are done. If their insides are still white, put the pan back into the oven, checking again after 5 more minutes. You want the nuts to roast fully, but not to burn. I usually find 35 minutes or so does the trick.

Remove from the oven and let cool on the pan. Serve in a pretty bowl.

Oeuf Mayonnaise

Makes 1 serving

This means “egg mayonnaise” and it’s very simple to make. And it’s really good. Making your own mayonnaise takes some practice, but once you get it, you’ll always want to make your own. My mom told me a great secret about making mayonnaise: before you start, make sure the egg is at room temperature. If the egg is right out of the refrigerator, I put it in a bowl of very warm water for 5 to 10 minutes.

For the hard-cooked egg:

1 egg, at room temperature

For the mayonnaise (makes about 1 cup):

1 egg, at room temperature

Sea salt

1 cup light olive oil

¼ teaspoon vinegar or lemon juice

For the oeuf mayonnaise:

3 tablespoons homemade mayonnaise

Sea salt

Fresh-ground black pepper

Chervil and chives to garnish

First hard-cook the egg:

(My mom doesn’t like to say “hard-boiled egg,” because you don’t really boil it; you barely even simmer it!) Fill a small pot with water and bring it to a boil. Turn down the heat to a simmer and add the egg to the pot with a spoon. While the egg is simmering very gently, fill a bowl big enough for the egg with ice water. After 8 minutes, turn off the heat, remove the egg from the pan, and put it in the ice water to chill.

Then make the mayonnaise:

First you need to separate the yolk and the white of the uncooked egg. You can do this by holding your hand over a small bowl and cracking the egg open into your hand. Let the egg white slip through your fingers into the bowl while you keep the yolk in your hand. Put the yolk in a medium-size bowl. Set aside the egg white to use for something else. (You can refrigerate raw egg whites for several days.) Season the yolk with a good pinch of salt and set the bowl on a damp towel so it won’t slip and slide.

Measure the olive oil into a container with a pour spout. With a whisk, mix the egg yolk and salt together with a few drops of warm water. Slowly—and I mean slowly!—begin to add the oil to the egg, at first drop by drop, whisking all the time. You’ll see the egg yolk start to thicken gradually as it absorbs the oil. If you add too much oil at once, the egg and oil will stay separate. You need them to come together at the very start or the mayonnaise won’t work. So it is good to go slowly and be patient.

After you’ve mixed in about ¼ cup of oil, the mayonnaise will start to get thick. If it gets too thick, you can thin it by adding ½ teaspoon of warm water. Then continue to whisk in the oil in a thin, steady stream until all the oil is added.

Finish the mayonnaise by seasoning it: add about ¼ teaspoon of lemon juice and salt to taste. If you’re not going to use it right away, keep the mayonnaise chilled in the refrigerator.

Now you’re ready to put the oeuf mayonnaise together:

When the hard-cooked egg is cool, peel the shell off and cut the egg in half lengthwise. Put the egg on a pretty plate, yolk side down. Spoon a big spoonful of the mayonnaise over the egg. Sprinkle with chopped chives or chervil. Voilà!

Crudités

Makes 6 servings

Crudités is a French word for raw vegetables. You can cut them any way you want, but I like to cut the vegetables so they keep their natural shape. You’ll see when you put the vegetables in salted ice water for a few minutes, they crisp up and some even curl! Besides these vegetables, you can use any tender ones you find or grow, like young turnips, little green beans (haricots verts in French), or my favorite, the first fava beans of spring.

1 celery heart (the tender, inner stalks from a bunch of celery)

1 large carrot

1 bunch radishes, the French breakfast variety, if available

5 cups water

2 cups ice cubes

1 teaspoon salt

Wash all of the vegetables and put them on a cutting board. Put about 5 cups of water and 2 cups of ice cubes in a medium-size bowl. Stir in the salt.

Cut the celery stalks in half lengthwise, from the leaves to the bottom, so that the cut celery pieces look like thinner versions of the whole celery stalk. If you can, keep the pale-green leaves attached, because they’re pretty. Put the cut celery pieces in the ice water to crisp and curl.

Peel the outer skin off the carrot with a vegetable peeler. Still using the vegetable peeler and pressing harder this time, hold the carrot at its top and peel again from top to bottom. You’ll end up slicing off ribbons of carrot! Keep doing this until there isn’t much carrot left. I always like to eat this little leftover portion as a treat. Add the ribbons of carrot to the ice water bath.

Wash the radishes and cut off their stems, leaving a bit of green at the top. If the radishes are too big to serve whole, cut them in half or in quarters. Put the radishes in the ice water.

Once all the vegetables are in the ice water bath, let them sit for 15 minutes. Drain and pat dry on a clean towel. Arrange them on a nice platter with a vinaigrette for dipping.

Vinaigrette

Makes about 3 tablespoons

1 small garlic clove

½ to ¾ teaspoon salt

Fresh-ground black pepper

2 teaspoons red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons olive oil

With a mortar and pestle, pound the garlic into a paste with the salt and pepper. Add the vinegar and let this all sit for 5 minutes. Whisk in the olive oil and taste for seasoning, adding more salt and pepper if you think it needs it.

Variations

You can add a teaspoon of Dijon mustard to the vinaigrette to make it creamier.

You can make an aïoli for a dipping sauce (an aïoli is usually just mayonnaise with a lot of garlic in it). Peel 2 small garlic cloves and pound them with a mortar and pestle with a pinch of salt until they turn into a smooth paste. Stir about half the smashed garlic paste into 1 batch of homemade mayonnaise and add salt and garlic to taste. If you want to add more, do it, but remember that the longer the garlic sits in the aïoli, the stronger it will get!

Gougères (Cheese Puffs)

Makes about 40 small gougères

These are fun to make because they puff up in the oven!

½ cup water

3 tablespoons butter, cut in small pieces

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup flour

2 eggs

3 ounces Gruyère cheese, grated (about ¾ cup)

Preheat the oven to 400º F. In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, heat the water with the butter and salt until the butter has melted. Add all of the flour at one time and stir hard with a wooden spoon until the liquid and the flour are completely mixed together and the mixture pulls away from the sides of the pan. This may take a minute or two, but don’t worry; it will come together. Keep stirring for another minute over the heat, then scrape the mixture into a mixing bowl and let it cool slightly.

Beat the eggs into the batter, one at a time, until thoroughly mixed. The batter will look separated at first, but vigorous stirring will make it smooth and even again. Stir in all but ¼ cup of the Gruyère cheese until completely blended.

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Spoon the dough onto the baking sheets in spoonfuls no bigger than Ping-Pong balls, about 1½ inches apart from each other. The dough will be sticky, so use your finger to help scrape it off the spoon. Sprinkle the remaining cheese on top of each gougère. Bake undisturbed for 10 minutes and then lower the temperature to 375º F. Don’t open the oven door! Bake for 15 minutes more. The gougères should be golden brown and crisp on the outside. Remove them from the oven, and with a sharp pointed knife, poke each warm puff to let out the steam. This will help them to stay crispy. Serve right away!

Tapenade

Makes about ½ cup

There are lots of things you can do with tapenade. You can spread it on toast or have it with eggs, or put it in some pasta, make a sandwich out of it, or just put it on roasted vegetables. You can use green olives if you don’t have black ones.

½ cup black olives (niçoise or Nyon)

1 tablespoon capers, rinsed, drained, and coarsely chopped

1 salted anchovy, rinsed in water, filleted, and chopped

1 garlic clove, peeled and pounded to a paste

1 sprig of savory, leaves only, chopped

¼ teaspoon grated lemon zest

¼ cup olive oil

Sea salt (optional)

You need to pit the olives, and you have to be careful, so you might want to ask an adult to help you. Put the olives on a cutting board. Then, using the flat side of a chef’s knife (with the knife blade facing away from you), one at a time, firmly press down on each olive until you feel its skin split open a little bit. When all the olives have been split, use your fingers to pull the pit out of each one.

Chop up the pitted olives into very small pieces and put them into a medium-size bowl. Add the capers, chopped anchovy, garlic, savory, lemon zest, and olive oil to the bowl of olives and stir it all together.

Let sit for 30 minutes so that the flavors come together. Taste and, if necessary, add a little salt. Remember, all these ingredients are pretty salty, so you might not need to add any. In fact, sometimes if it is too salty, I add a squeeze of lemon.

Variations

Add tapenade to a grilled mozzarella sandwich or a sliced hard-cooked egg sandwich—yum.

Thin out the tapenade with extra olive oil to make a dressing for cooked vegetables like broccoli, asparagus, or even beets.