I am a huge proponent of pictures in cook books. They provide inspiration and give you a visual goal to aim for. As a home cook, I find it enormously rewarding when my finished dish looks like the picture in the book, as happened with this week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe, Warm-Weather Vegetable Pot-au-Feu.
The best word to describe this week’s recipe is “nourishing”. It was low in fat, high in vitamins, and way higher in flavor than the simple list of ingredients would suggest. That said, I added all of Dorie’s “optional” touches, including lemongrass, home-made cilantro coulis, and a poached egg, and I can’t imagine the dish without each and every one of them. The lemongrass and herb coulis added depth of flavor, and the egg turned a simple soup into a hearty meal.
All is all, this recipe was a winner and I will definitely make it again.
one expat's life 
Your egg looks like it poached perfectly. I over-cooked mine, so it didn’t ooze at all. Bummer. I love your bowl!
Beautiful bowl of soup! So glad you enjoyed this one – I know I can’t wait to make it again. 🙂
Ooh, cilantro coulis….I bet that was wonderful…great looking dish!
We loved this at our house. I definitely felt like I was eating something healthy, but oddly, it still tasted delicious!
Yes, very nourishing and delicious. I love it when a dish turns out like that. I’ll be making this dish frequently.
I agree that the optional items per the book really make the meal. I also tried to copy the illustration from the book when I did my plating, down to the wine glass 😛
Great idea! Your photo is absolutely beautiful. I need to work on my food photography. Actually, I need to work on remembering to take a picture of the food before I eat it all!
It looks beautiful – it feels good when you make something that you know is good for you and still tastes pretty good, isn’t it?