Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It. I'm Kousha Navidar in for Alison Stewart today. The Olympics are finally here. Well, not here in the New York area, but the Games have officially begun in Paris. Some events like archery, soccer, and rugby are already underway, but most will begin after the opening ceremonies. If you want to watch that, it'll start around 1:30 Eastern time tomorrow, which is Friday. The ceremonies are going to take place on the river with each country's athletes in their own boats making their way down the Seine.

Reportedly, this is the first time that the athletes won't be introduced in an arena, and it'll also be the first time that the ceremonies will begin with the parade of athletes. It's also the first time in recorded history that America's own Snoop Dogg will be among the last people tasked with carrying that famous symbol of the Olympic Games, the torch. We trust that he's been practicing to avoid dropping it like it's hot. So with all of that coming up tomorrow in gay Paris, we know that some folks will be struck with the fear of missing out if you can't make it to the Games this time around.

If you want to watch the Games and you can't go to the city of lights yourself, we wanted to help you bring a little Paris to your own Olympic swatch party with some French cooking. Joining us now to share some recipes, hosting tips, as well as her love of all things French, please welcome back to the show New York Times food writer Melissa Clark. She's the author of over 40 cookbooks, including Dinner in French, Melissa, Bonjour and merci beaucoup for coming on the show.

Melissa Clark: Oh, bonjour, Kousha. It's so great to be here. Great to talk French food and the Olympics. This is exciting. Are you excited?

Kousha Navidar: I am très excité, as I would say in my seventh-grade french class.

Melissa Clark: Love it.

Kousha Navidar: Listeners, we're talking about French cooking ahead of the Paris Olympics. If you've got plans to watch the opening ceremonies tomorrow and you're looking to bring a little bit of Paris to your table, give us a call with your cooking ideas, your questions. We've got food writer Melissa Clark here. She'd be happy, she'd be excited to take your questions and your calls. Give us a call. We're at 212-433-9692 that's 212-433-WNYC. So, Melissa, you're a Francophile. What are you hearing from the french people in your life about what it feels like on the ground in Paris right now?

Melissa Clark: Well, actually, it's funny because no one really knew what to expect. I think a lot of Parisians, a lot of my friends who live in Paris really got out, and they were like, "Okay, we're going to the country or we're going to travel. We don't want to be in Paris during the Olympics." But there is a core group who are there. They're on the ground. They're sort of watching what's happening, and it seems like it's chaotic, but it's surprisingly not as crowded as they thought it was going to be, which is good.

Life is, it's interrupted because it seems to be hard to get places. Certain streets are closed, certain restaurants are closed. Some restaurants are empty. Some are overfilled. So everything takes a little more planning. But as far as crowds go, it's not as bad as they thought, and they're happy to be in Paris and happy to be right there with the Olympics starting in the opening ceremony tomorrow. So I think it's a thrilling place to be.

Kousha Navidar: I can imagine. On Tuesday of this week, we shouted out some good food pics for folks who will actually be in Paris for the ceremonies, and we'll get into some Parisian home-cooked with you. Before we do that, I was wondering for you or for your friends that you were talking to off the top of your head, are there any restaurants in Paris, in the City of Lights, that you would want to shout out?

Melissa Clark: Oh, gosh, I don't know what's open. I haven't done my research on what's open in Paris, so I would be afraid to misspeak. I can tell you where to celebrate here. I can tell you what to cook, but I feel like I didn't do my what's open in Paris research, so I'm sorry.

Kousha Navidar: No worries.

Melissa Clark: I don't want to send listeners to a place and it be closed.

Kousha Navidar: Well, it's a great excuse to use the collective power of New York City as a part of this segment, so if you're listening and you have a restaurant, you want to shout out, give us a call or send us a text. Text us for this, 212-433-9692. Melissa, what would you cook that would both show off French cuisine but also provide the sort of unique nutritional requirements that'll help athletes perform at their best? Because I'm thinking that the athletes, they're going to have Michelin-rated chefs cooking for them to showcase French cooking. What would you cook if you were in that position?

Melissa Clark: Well, first of all, of all the places to be an athlete right now, I feel like being in Paris is the luckiest because you really have chefs who just, they are out there to make you happy as well as make you fit and make you feel good, so it's just a great place to be. Spectators can also eat at these restaurants, which is actually, that is something I can shout out. I know that the restaurants that are open to athletes are also open to a lot of spectators. That's where to go right now because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to eat where the athletes are eating, so I would say go there.

You need to eat. I think it's interesting, I was doing a bunch of reading on it, and it seems that vegan and vegetarian restaurants, very vegetable-forward, plant-based cuisine is a big part of it. It's actually 60% of what they're serving. They're thinking of the health of the athletes. Of course, you need your carb-rich foods. You need your potatoes, you're in France, and you need your baguettes and you need your croissants because you're not going to be in Paris and not enjoy all of that.

For all of us couch potatoes at home, I feel like we don't necessarily need to worry about getting our diet just right. What we need, when you're sitting at home watching the Olympics, you need food that is easy to eat, easy to reach for, easy to snack on. Everything needs to be made in advance because you don't want to get up in the middle-- You're watching Simone Biles, you don't want to get up and miss something and try to find a dish on the stove. You want to have it all in front of you, ready to go.

At the New York Times, at NYT Cooking, we did a lot of recipes that are perfect for what the French called the Aperol. So the Aperol, it's an aperitif. It's a cocktail or glass of wine that you have with a bunch of little nibbles right in front of you, and setting up an Aperol is the perfect way to take in the Olympics. You can have a few little bites, like olives and nuts and cheese and baguettes, or you can make just a few things and bulk it out. One of my favorites is gougère. Kousha, have you ever had a gougère?

Kousah Navidar: I have had a gougère, in fact. Tell us about it.

Melissa Clark: Are they not delicious? They are so good.

Kousah Navidar: It depends on the cheese, but yes. It depends on the cheese, I'll say that, but tell us about it a little bit.

Melissa Clark: Well, actually, it's interesting that you say that because you can make-- Gougère is a French cheese puff. It's a fancy French cheese puff. It is easy to make. You can just whip, you make the batter in a saucepan. If you were a pastry chef or a fancy French chef, you would use a pastry bag and a star tip to make these beautiful little puffs. But I use a spoon. You can actually use two spoons. You just take the batter, you whisk it together in a saucepan, add lots of cheese. Gruyère is traditional, but you could use Parmesan, you could use cheddar. What is your favorite cheese, Koush? What would you do? Are you a Parmesan person?

Kousah Navidar: I would definitely choose Parmesan over gruyère. I don't know if that's not French enough for me.

Melissa Clark: Well, don't forget the Olympics is an international event, so there we go, we'll have Parmesan.

Kousah Navidar: Absolutely. So does Mozzarella County. Do you have recommendations for things to accompany with gougère? Like you mentioned, when you can nibble around the board, you have a glass of wine. What do people normally serve along with it?

Melissa Clark: Yes. Gougère would be, and again, we have recipe at NYT Cooking, and it's fabulous. That's what you serve with your wine, and you serve those either hot or room temperature. If you want to have something out, Dorie Greenspan has a-- Dorie Greenspan, for those of you who don't know, lives part-time in Connecticut and part-time in Paris, so she's the perfect person to tell us what to eat while we're watching the Olympics in Paris. She has a recipe for salmon rillettes.

Now rillettes are nutritionally made with pork. It's like a pate, basically. It's like shredded pork in pork fat. It's so good. You spread it on your baguette or your crackers. Her version uses fresh and smoked salmon, so it's much lighter. A little honey mustard in there for tang, some herbs, and it's just a delightful, delightful, light, fresh thing. You can make it a few days ahead. It gets better if you make it a few days ahead. Just pop that out in a little bowl and have your crackers. I would also have olives with that. I would have little cornichon, which are these little sour French pickles, which are delicious, and they contrast really nicely with the rich salmon.

You want to have some crudités. You just want to cut up some crudités, fancy way to say cut-up vegetables in French, because here we are, and you don't even need a dip for those. One of my favorite simple things to do with a plate full of cut-up vegetables, take some flaky sea salt, sprinkle it on top, and then take your favorite spice mix, whatever spice mix you have in your cabinet that you love. If it is going to be like a garam masala, a baharat. I have a Persian black lime spice mix, whatever spice mix, or even just ground cumin right on top with the flaky sea salt on top of your cut-up veggies. No dip necessary. You'd be surprised the platter will just go because they're so crunchy and fresh and spicy and salty.

Kousah Navidar: Melissa, I don't know if you know this, but I am Persian, and hearing somebody talk about the lime, which I know exactly what you're talking about, to pair with this, it's so fun to think of the international angle that you can do with this. I was wondering, to get back to the salmon rillettes, like you said, traditionally made from pulk and poultry. When you change up the protein to a fish like salmon, what else has to be updated to make the most of that change? Is it the pairings or is it something else in the recipe itself?

Melissa Clark: Well, pork or poultry, yes, you can do duck. Duck rillettes is, actually, you're right, is a perfect rillettes because duck and pork have enough fat intrinsically in the meat. So when you're making it, you're basically taking the pork or the duck, confiting it in its own fat, and that fat is what makes it creamy. Salmon does not have that much fat. It is a rich fish, but you need to add more fat. Dorie uses a combination of, I think she uses olive oil, butter, and mayonnaise, but you could use just olive oil if you wanted to. The point is you need to be able to have enough creaminess and fat so that you can basically spread the fish onto a cracker or onto a piece of bread. So that's a big difference.

Kousah Navidar: Oh, interesting to make up for the fat, like pork, for instance, definitely has an abundance.

Melissa Clark: Exactly.

Kousah Navidar: Listeners, we're talking about French cooking ahead of the Paris Olympics. We're here with Melissa Clark, the New York Times food writer. If you've got plans to watch the opening ceremonies tomorrow and you're looking to bring a little bit of Paris to your table, give us a call with your cooking ideas or your questions for Melissa. What would you love to learn more about how to cook? What are some of your favorite French foods to prepare for a party, or what would you love to try while you are at a French-themed Olympics game-watching party? We're taking your calls on French cooking and your Olympics watch party. Hit us up at 212-433-9692 that's 212-433-WNYC.

Melissa, I understand you also want to shout out an extremely French classic, the quiche, particularly the quiche Lorraine, which, from reading the recipe, I thought sounds like an Olympic event in itself. Here's how you describe it, and I'm quoting, "There are plenty of opportunities in cooking to riff and freestyle and many dishes that you can legitimately set and forget until mealtime, but this quiche Lorraine is definitely not one of them. If you aren't in the mood to build, stone by stone, the most classic, tender, custardy, haunting quiche you've ever had in your life, continue on and come back another day." Wow. Melissa, unpack that for us. Where does the word haunting come from?

Melissa Clark: Well, I think a quiche, a perfectly made quiche is an alchemy of things, right? It's not just one ingredient. It's the perfect balance. When you taste a perfect, I mean you know there's a lot of bad quiche out there. We've all had a broccoli quiche or spinach quiche and sort of wondered, why are we even bothering? But when you make a quiche Lorraine, because you've got enough eggs, and you're using heavy cream, you're not using milk, you're not using yogurt, you're just diving into the full French heavy cream, egg, custard. You've got your cheese, your gruyère cheese, you have your bacon, and that combination of ingredients gives you something that you will remember for the rest of your life, and it will haunt you. Every time you see another quiche out there that looks maybe kind of dubious, and you're thinking, that's not my quiche, you will remember the true quiche Lorraine. So that is why I use the word haunting.

Kousah Navidar: The recipe--

Melissa Clark: But they're not--

Kousah Navidar: Go ahead.

Melissa Clark: I was going to say it's not that hard to make. It really isn't that hard to make. The hardest part, I think, the custard is easy because making a custard is just whipping together, whisking together some eggs and some heavy cream. The hard part is the pastry is making a homemade pie dough. If you are comfortable making pie dough, this is really quite easy. If you're not, that's where the stretch comes in and that's where you might think, okay, I'm going to challenge myself and I'm going to make this beautiful crust. You know what? If you buy a ready-made pie crust, none of your guests will know and I will not tell on you. There's so many ways to get this onto your table, and I highly recommend it.

Kousah Navidar: Melissa Clark, can I put you on the record? It's okay to get pre-made pie crust.

Melissa Clark: It is okay to get. I mean, what is the choice? Let's see. I'm not going to make this beautiful quiche Lorraine because, so buy the pie crust, make the dish. It is a great recipe. Again, NYT Cooking has it for you, and your guests will love it and love you.

Kousah Navidar: If you do try to make that pie crust, if I'm understanding it correctly, there's two items that might be a little less common for people that you mentioned. One is a false-bottomed fluted tart pan, and then there's also baking beans, which are not to be confused with baked beans. Can you talk about these kitchen tools a little bit, why they're so important for the recipe?

Melissa Clark: Yes. It's funny because the tart pan is if you're going to make a really classic one and you want be able to take it out of the pan and serve it in this really beautiful way, you need the false bottom quiche pan. Basically, it's like two pieces, and you lie the pastry in the pan, and then when the pastry is firm and baked and golden brown, you can just lift it right out so you don't have the edges of the pan anymore. You just see the crust. But you can also do it in just a regular old pie pan, nine-inch pie pan, whatever you have. That will work, too. It's not going to be quite as beautiful when you serve it, but it's going to taste just as good. So don't let that be a barrier.

However, you do need what we call either baking beans or so you can use rice, dried beans, or I use pennies. I have a big jar full of pennies that I have washed. They're clean, and I keep them in a jar, and I reuse them for my pastry crust. Because what happens when you make pastry, when you make a pie dough, if you don't have the filling in it, you're doing something called blind baking it, which means you're baking it first so it gets golden before you add the filling.

The butter in the crust, imagine a croissant. Right? What happens in the oven when you have a croissant with all that butter? It puffs up. The butter makes it puffy and flaky, which is great for the sides, but you don't want that on the bottom. You want the bottom to stay flat so it holds your filling. So you take a piece of foil or parchment paper, lay that on the pastry, pour in your beans or your pennies or your dried rice. That weighs it down, keeps it from puffing. You have more room for custard, more room for bacon, more room for cheese.

Kousah Navidar: We just got a text coming in that says, precook the pie crust before you add the filling, which is exactly what you're describing here, right Melissa?

Melissa Clark: Exactly.

Kousah Navidar: We have another text here that just says ratatouille. And I'm going to take that to mean that this listener wants to know more about ratatouille. Can you tell us a little bit about ratatouille, which I personally love, both the movie and the food?

Melissa Clark: Oh my God, both are fantastic. Best watch the movie while you're eating a big plate of ratatouille. That's the perfect thing. Ratatouille is a summer dish from southern France. It is the essence of summertime. It's eggplant, tomato, zucchini, peppers and onions, and all of these beautiful summer vegetables are cooked separately. This is the thing about making a true french ratatouille.

Julia Child taught me this, and I've gone with it ever since. You cook the vegetables separately in the same pot. Start with one. You cook your onions until they're golden, nice and soft, and your peppers, and then your eggplant and your zucchini and your tomatoes, and then you combine them. By doing that, you make sure that each vegetable is cooked until it's soft but not too mushy. It's not falling apart. You want the integrity of the vegetables, and then you combine them and then their flavors mingle.

Of course, there's garlic because it's southern France, and tons of herbs and lots of olive oil. It's such a delicious main dish, side dish, breakfast, lunch, dinner. I love ratatouille. You could put it in a pie crust. You could put it in a quiche.

Kousah Navidar: Wonderful. I think we have somebody that called in last segment here that might have called back. Hey, Howard, did you call in last segment or you were talking about vanilla sky? We didn't take you, right?

Howard: No, no, this is about food now because I go to a lot of French bistros.

Kousah Navidar: I love it. Hey, Howard, give us your recommendation.

Howard: Okay. The person being interviewed will know about them. One is a croque monsieur and another one is a croque madame. Right?

Melissa Clark: Love it. Yes.

Kousah Navidar: Howard, what do you love about those two? Tell us a little bit.

Howard: They're basically hot sandwiches with cheese, and one is with ham, and the other one is with turkey. You can find them at Bistros here in New York and in France. They're very tasty, very simple.

Kousah Navidar: Awesome, Howard, thank you. We're going to have to pause it there, Howard, just for time, but I want to say thanks for hanging with us. I know we couldn't get to your call last segment, so I appreciate you calling back. Melissa, let's talk about these croque monsieur, croque madame. Seem like a good way into French cooking, right?

Melissa Clark: Yes, actually, thank you, Howard, for that because those are great suggestions that I hadn't thought of. So what they are, it's basically ham and cheese sandwiches. The croque monsieur is just the ham, the cheese, and then instead of it just being a toasted sandwich like a grilled cheese, you take bechamel, which is a creamy white sauce with even more cheese, pour it on top, and bake it in the oven. It's just this bubbling, golden brown, cheesy, delicious sandwich that you must eat with a knife and fork. This is not a pick-up and eat with your hand sandwich.

Then a croque madame has an egg, fried egg right on top. So you have the runny egg yolk on top of all of that bechamel on top of that cheese. They are just so good. Also, of course, we have recipes at NYT Cooking. We have a lot of recipes at NYT Cooking, and you can get them in bistros. Every French cafe has a croque madame or a croque monsieur. They're really easy to find, and they supercharge your grilled cheese. So if you want a special french grilled cheese, this is the way to go.

Kousah Navidar: And I'm thinking for listeners that are trying to host a party here, they might hear a sandwich and think, well, do I have to make many sandwiches to entertain, like, 15 to 20 people? You can probably just make one and slice it up, right? Is there an easy way to make croque madame and croque monsieur for large groups of folks?

Melissa Clark: Yes, we actually, I don't know, I'm pretty sure we have a recipe. It's think croque monsieur casserole. Think of it like a gratin. Instead of doing individual sandwiches, you take your bread, you put it in your casserole dish. You put your butter, your ham, your cheese, more bread. You pour the bechamel on top, more cheese, and you bake it. So it's basically like a giant casserole of sandwiches. Then you slice and bake that. It's such a good recipe to serve to a crowd. Everybody loves this. Also, you can assemble the entire thing the day before, keep it in your fridge, and then just pop it in the oven right before you want to bake it, like a half an hour before. Thank you, Howard. This was a great idea, and it goes really, really well with gymnastics.

Kousah Navidar: We got another text that I might have to show off my French accent here, but pissaladière, is that a food that you would recommend for folks that want to make food for a French party?

Melissa Clark: Yes. Actually, you should just make pissaladière for every party because it's one of my favorite things to eat in the entire world. Okay, so we're back in southern France. I love the listeners. We're all in southern France together here in New York right now. Pissaladière, it's like a pizza, but instead of tomato and cheese, it's got caramelized onions and olives. Then the best part of it for me, tons of anchovies right on top. And, yes, you can skip the anchovies, but why would you because they are the best part.

This is actually where you want to buy pre-made puff pastry. You want to just get a thing of puff pastry or some bread dough. You can buy like a pizza crust or some pizza dough, roll it out, caramelize your onions and put them on top, your black olives, your anchovies, pop it in the oven, and then you cut it up. You can eat it warm, you can eat it at room temperature. It is great for an Aperol. It's great with white wine, with red wine. It's convenient because out of this one recipe, you can get 15, 16 little squares, so it's good for a crowd.

Kousah Navidar: Wow. Well, we'll have to pause it there. I'm already pretty hungry. It's one o'clock, I cannot wait for lunch to come. I've been speaking with Melissa Clark, the staff writer for the New York Times food section and author of Dinner in French and 40 other cookbooks. Melissa, thank you so much for joining us today.

Melissa Clark: Thanks for having me.

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