French flair without fuss, by the best-selling author of The Italian Slow Cooker.

With a slow cooker, even novices can turn out dishes that taste as though they came straight out of the kitchen of a French grandmère. Provençal vegetable soup. Red-wine braised beef with mushrooms. Chicken with forty cloves of garlic. Even bouillabaisse. The French Slow Cooker makes all of these as simple as setting the timer and walking away.

Michele Scicolone, who showed home cooks how to prepare extraordinary Italian fare in the slow cooker, now does the same for the French classics, adapting dishes from her travels all across France so they can be made with a fraction of the effort. Scicolone gives plenty of tips for coaxing the utmost out of every dish while keeping the flavors fresh.

And she goes far beyond the usual slow-cooker standbys of soups and stews. How about Slow-Cooked Salmon with Lemon and Green Olives, Crispy Duck Confit, Goat Cheese and Walnut Soufflé, and for dessert, Ginger Crème Brûlée? With The French Slow Cooker, the results are always magnifique.