European Home Cooking Recipes

This is European home cooking the way I actually make it. French, Baltic, and always for real kitchens. Browse by where the recipe comes from or by what you feel like eating.

I lived in France for fifteen years and the thing that surprised me most was how simple the food actually was. My French mother-in-law made Quiche Lorraine without a recipe, started most meals with something like this Cauliflower, Potato and Leek Soup, and always had a simple cucumber salad on the table. Simple ingredients, not much fuss, and somehow always delicious.

I grew up with Latvian cooking. Dark rye bread, dill and chives in almost everything, cottage cheese and sour cream every day. Hearty savory breakfasts and lots of raw vegetable salads. You will find all of that here: asparagus soup with dill, crispy red cabbage salad with dill, radish salad, cottage cheese avocado toast with various toppings and more. There is almost nothing like these recipes in English, which is part of why I keep writing them.

Or Browse by What You Feel Like Making

Growing up in a Latvian household, breakfast was never just toast and jam. My grandmother put raw vegetable salads on the table in the morning without thinking twice, alongside open-faced sandwiches with cottage cheese or whatever was in the fridge. That savory instinct stayed with me.

The French side of my kitchen leans sweeter. Try my Nutella overnight oats, banana cottage cheese muffins and lemon ricotta blueberry pancakes.

I try to plan dishes so the work is done before everyone sits down. A quiche made ahead and served warm, a roast that looks after itself in the oven, or a pasta that comes together in twenty minutes on a Tuesday. The French idea of staying at the table starts with not spending the whole meal in the kitchen.

In both France and Latvia, vegetables are roasted, dressed, and seasoned properly. Not boiled until they give up. A little honey, some seeds, good olive oil. The flavor is the point. Try the honey roasted beets and carrots, the roasted asparagus and carrots, or the cottage cheese mashed potatoes that go with almost everything.

In France, soup is usually the start of a meal. A small bowl, something light, before the main course. At our table it often becomes the main course, especially on nights when something simple and warm is exactly right. Try the cauliflower, potato and leek soup, the Baltic asparagus soup with dill, or the pumpkin and cauliflower soup for something heartier.

The food that comes out while dinner is still in the oven. In our house that means an avocado cheese dip with bread, a little toast with Latvian chicken liver pâté , maybe some maple roasted nuts. Nothing that takes long to make, but always enough to keep everyone happy and talking until the meal is ready.

European desserts use less sugar so you taste the fruit, the chocolate, the butter. Not just sweetness. These are not diet recipes. They are flavor decisions. Try the raspberry banana muffins with a lemon drizzle in summer, the cottage cheese frosting that goes on almost everything, or the chocolate chestnut yule log — one of the few exceptions to my less sugar rule, and worth every bit of it.