Dinner Chez Moi

February 6, 2017
Bard’s inspiring cookbook explains how to cultivate French-style eating habits that encourage healthy thinness along with essential joie de vivre. Bard (Lunch in Paris), raised in an American home where processed cheese and bottled salad dressing were staples, has the enthusiastic zeal of a convert to her French husband’s ways. The true secret of her 50 secrets is really a willingness to apply self-discipline to ingredients, equipment, rituals, and family—the categories into which she’s divided her hints. Olive oil is number one, and hardly revelatory; wine and dark chocolate are equally unsurprising, though her advice to combine a square of the latter with herbal tisane to hydrate and curb appetite is hard-core insider knowledge. The ingredient-specific recipes are solid, authentic French home cooking, introduced with stories of discovery: one taste of her mother-in-law’s mayonnaise transformed her from mayo hater to firm advocate. How food is consumed is as important as the meal content. Sitting down to eat together and not snacking through the day are approachable goals; conquering American portion sizes will be the real French revolution.

April 15, 2017

Bard follows her memoirs Lunch in Paris and Picnic in Provence with this cozy collection of recipes such as ham and rosemary cheese puffs, broiled sea bream with lemon and herbs, and classic cherry clafoutis. She pairs these with 50 secrets to living and eating a la francaise, each of which sheds light on an ingredient (almond flour), tool (crepe pan), or habit (drinking wine) gleaned from her years of living in France. Throughout, Bard compares French and American culture, offering cheery observations that will engage fans of Mireille Guiliano (French Women Don't Get Fat) and Pamela Druckerman (Bringing Up Bébé). VERDICT Bard's simple home cooking will tempt your inner Francophile. Readers who expect glossy food photography will prefer titles like Rachel Khoo's The Little Paris Kitchen and Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2017
American memoirist Bard, who's previously chronicled her experiences falling in love with a Frenchman (Lunch in Paris, 2010), living in Paris, and raising a son in Provence (Picnic in Provence, 2015), puts her French cooking secrets and recipes at the fore of her new book. Her secrets (homemade mayo is amazing, for instance, and a bouquet of fresh herbs in the fridge will enliven any meal) are organized into four parts Ingredients, Rituals, Equipment, and Family and provide the book's basic structure. Recipes themselves (for quiche, croque monsieur, soups, perfectly prepared seasonal vegetables, crepes, a tagine made for entertaining, and lots more) are creatively interspersed between Bard's secrets and other interludes about her culinary, expat life, making for a book readers will enjoy cover to cover. (Though the index means they won't have to.) Her easy-to-follow, narrative instructions reflect the tone readers of her previous books will look for as well as the French home-cooking style, emphasizing simple, fresh ingredients, that she's clearly mastered.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)