Oh My! The journey started in February 2016 has come to an end. For the past three-plus years, I’ve been cooking my way through David Lebovitz’s My Paris Kitchen with my friends from Cook the Book Fridays. Though I have virtually disappeared since April, this week the group is cooking the FINAL recipe in the book, the cover recipe, so I had to join in.

Fortunately, this recipe is really easy and quite delicious. You start out cooking some bacon, then sauté onions in the bacon fat. Then, you brown chicken thighs which have been coated in Dijon mustard. Everything is mixed into some white wine, simmering until the chicken is cooked through. The final touch is stirring in more mustard, both Dijon and seeded, and some crème fraiche to make a creamy sauce.

This week has been hot, so I didn’t have patience to make the recommended homemade herbed pasta to go with the chicken. Wide egg noodles were a good stand-in.

While Chicken in Mustard isn’t a “height-of-summer” recipe, it is definitely a winner. It made a wonderful weeknight meal, but it’s company worthy too.

As I reflect on the journey of cooking through David Lebovitz’s My Paris Kitchen, the list of recipes (or their components) that have become part of my standard repertoire come to mind. Here are my top 5 (in no particular order):

1. The roasted cherry tomatoes from the Cherry Tomato Crostini – These are a summer favorite, and when the cherry tomato crop seems overwhelming, I make this and freeze it for a breath of summer when the weather turns.
2. Green Beans with Snail Butter – The garlicky sauce is one of my favorite ways to dress up green beans (second only to the Green Beans Amandine from fellow CtBF blogger Mardi Michels’s wonderful book In the French Kitchen with Kids).
3. Apricot crumble tart – The crust and crumble combination works just as well with other summer fruits like peaches or nectarines.
4. Raw vegetable slaw with creamy garlic dressing which I particularly like with kohlrabi.
5. Multigrain bread – I’ve incorporated David’s crunch mixture into my own version of sourdough multi-grain.

I also enjoyed the company along the ride. I’ve been cooking with many of the home cooks in Cook the Book Fridays for almost a decade when we met through French Fridays with Dorie in 2010. I continue to enjoy the friendships through the internet and in-person connections.

This isn’t the end for Cook the Book Fridays! Or, for me, My Paris Kitchen. I still have a handful of recipes that I haven’t made yet. I intend to finish those off. And the group will continue with Dorie Greenspan’s newest book Everyday Dorie, which we started when it came out last October. From here on out, it’ll be two Dorie recipes a month. And I’ll try to stay on track.

Until then….