The French Chef

The basic recipe for layer cakes, wedding cakes, and petits fours, and the professional French recipe for butter cream. This versatile cake can play many roles, depending on how you choose to dress it.

How to turn sugar and water into white fondant icing, and all about using fondant to ice and decorate your own petits fours.

How to make mayonnaise by hand or by machine; the do's, the don'ts, and the pitfalls. Once you've found how easy it is to make your own, you'll find a thousand uses for home-made Mayonnaise.

Swordfish steaks baked in wine and diced green beans make an unusual main course for this three-part dinner in half an hour. And when you precede it with Tapenade a la Provencale, and follow it with Bananas Flambee, you have a quick dinner that tastes anything but quick.

Veal stew of Italian origin. braised veal shanks with a succulent brown sauce, pungent with the flavor of orange and lemon peel - a delightful main course for an informal dinner.

For a menu change-of-pace, try Sweetbreads and brains; Cervelles au Beurre Noir, sauteed brains in brown butter; and Ris de Veau a la creme, sweetbreads braised in butter and served in a delicious cream sauce. Delicate and different.

When you prepare asparagus the French way, you have more of it to eat, it cooks faster, stays greener and tastes fresh from the garden. Delicious plain or served with a buttery orange sauce for a change, and most unusual in a soup, custard, or a quiche.

A mushroom, rice, and herb filling replaces the boned-out breast of a fine roasting chicken, which is then re-assembled. This ingenious French method combines the elegance of presenting a whole bird with ease of serving.

A delicious and tender method of cooking a whole roasting chicken with wine and herbs in a covered casserole. Serve it plain, or use its juices to produce any number of fine sauces.

Make your refrigerator work for you to produce these delicious soft French ice creams. Serve them in coupes, flutes, or cannelated molds - ambrosia to end the meal.

The famous Mediterranean fish soup, served with garlic mayonnaise. A fascinating and unexpected combination born under the hot sun of southern France.

A French poached egg is not for breakfast. It makes its appearance later in the day; it goes into a souffle, it is served with Bearnaise Sauce and mushrooms in a buttery tartelette, or it comes shimmering to the table cloaked in aspic.

Here is a sophisticated French twist that makes carving roast leg of lamb a pleasure; remove the leg bone from inside and replace it with a stuffing. As an added fillip, slather on an herbal mustard coating, then roast to a juicy pink.

An especially good recipe for this famous dish of lobster meat sauced and baked in its own shell, or in a reasonable facsimile.

Blanching, skinning, braising, saucing, serving, and eating a fresh beef tongue.

A robust open-faced omelet from the Basque country, featuring ham, onions, tomatoes, peppers, and herbs; followed by a fresh idea in strawberry desserts.

A delicate fish mousse baked in a ring of filets of sole - an intriguing mixture of textures and flavors.

Poulet Saute Marengo is a delicious saute of chicken with fluted mushrooms, shrimp and French fried eggs, croutons and olives, glazed with cognac. Invented on the battlefield after Napoleon's victory at Marengo.

How to make friends with an old enemy: a spinach turnover and a spinach roulade filled with mushrooms. Demonstrated by Julia's colleague, Simone Beck, in Provence.