Easy French cooking

At about this point each winter, the urgency of finding ways to cook lighter gives way to the fervent search for something, anything, novel to whip up in a slow-cooker.

The answer to that was the long awaited book The French Slow Cooker, author Michele Scicolone's follow-up to her 2010 Italian Slow Cooker, which became a bestseller.

You'd be right to expect versions of cassoulet and choucroute among the 125 recipes in the book, but you might be surprised to find souffles, country pate and far Breton, which is a kind of clafoutis.

Some "French Slow Cooker" recipes call for a little fussing before or after the allotted cooking time.

The author's tips are sound and can be applied to a wider field of slow-cooker recipes, and novices might be happy to find directions that in many cases take up less space on the page than the list of ingredients. The effort amounts to French cooking made easy.