Download Our Spring Menu Collection

This collection features 19 recipes, with seasonal ingredients such as artichokes, asparagus, lamb, and strawberries. We hope these recipes inspire you to curate menus for dinner parties, luncheons, cocktail parties, and family meals.

 Chef François de Mélogue

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François de Mélogue grew up in a very French household in Chicago. His earliest attempts at cookery began with the filleting of his sister’s goldfish at age two and a braised rabbit dish made with his pet rabbits by age seven. He eventually stopped cooking his pets and went to the highly esteemed New England Culinary Institute, where he graduated top of his class in 1985.

Chef François has over 30 years of cross-cultural culinary experience and brings an impressive culinary history and a unique Mediterranean cooking style. After graduating top of his class from the notable New England Culinary Institute, Chef François began his career in a number of highly acclaimed kitchens across the country, including Chef Louis Szathmary’s restaurant The Bakery in Chicago, Old Drovers Inn, a Relais and Chateaux property in New York and Joel Robuchon Gastronomie restaurant in Paris, before opening award-winning restaurant Pili Pili in his hometown of Chicago, rated in the Top Ten new restaurants in the World by Food and Wine magazine in 2003.

Chef François resides in St Albans, Vermont with his wife Lisa and ten-year-old son Beaumont, who has proclaimed himself the family saucier. Chef François' latest publication French Cooking for Beginners: 75+ Classic Recipes to Cook Like a Parisian takes you on a culinary journey well beyond the streets of Paris. Francois is a professional photographer specializing in food/product photography, real estate photography and shooting rural landscapes of Vermont and France. Explore his work on https://www.francoisdemelogue.com/.

Take a look at his website Simple French Cooking filled with delicious recipes and beautiful photos. Also follow Francois on Medium for more tempting dishes Pistou and Pastis.

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Dessert · François de Mélogue · Pastries · Provencal Recipes · Taste

Delicious Recipe Rum and Orange-Scented Beignets for Dessert

February 19, 2025
While I cannot promise that these feather-light beignets are low-calorie, they are delicious. A traditional French recipe for rum and orange-scented beignets that most likely got their nickname pets de nonne (literally “nun’s farts”) from a slight bastardization of the earlier term paix-de-nonne (“nun’s peace”). They are delicious dipped in ...
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François de Mélogue · Provencal Recipes · Seasonal Menus · Taste · Winter in Provence

Winter in Provence a Seasonal Menu For Dinner with Good Friends

December 18, 2024
Winter in Provence unveils a serene, understated beauty. The villages quiet down—tourists have departed, fields lie fallow, and root vegetables are tucked away in cool, shadowy cellars. The land rests after autumn’s final harvest while the frost-kissed garrigue glimmers in the winter light. Tendrils of smoke curl from chimneys as ...
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