Well, this is it! The French Market Cookbook, my new book of vegetable recipes, is coming out today.

[Scroll down to see how you can enter to win a copy!]

It is an exciting day for me, one I’ve been looking forward to for three years, ever since the idea for the book first popped into my head. (I know the exact date because I have the email I sent my agent that very day to share!) It has been a pretty smooth ride since then — the planning, the proposal-ing, the writing, the recipe testing, the shooting, the editing, the correcting, the naming, the designing, the waiting — and I am most grateful that I’ve had such a great team at Clarkson Potter on my side all along.

And now the book is finally ready — and dying! — to start its own life in your hands and on your kitchen counter. It is my most ardent hope that you and it enjoy each other’s company, and that perhaps you’ll write and tell me about it from time to time.

The French Market Cookbook is available wherever books are sold, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and IndieBound.

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Every once in a while, I develop a fixation on a particular sauce or condiment that makes everything taste more interesting.

I’ve had a pretty intense tahini sauce phase, which I haven’t quite recovered from, and a ginger and scallion sauce phase as well, both of which have left lasting marks on my repertoire.

But my current favorite is a sauce I now think of as my magic sauce. It’s a super simple combination of sesame oil, lime juice, and fish sauce that you add to your dish — any dish! — just before serving, and gives it a most rewarding depth of flavor.

The inspiration first came from a dish of cold, roasted cauliflower that I had in early May at Le Mary Celeste, a great little bar in the Haut Marais that serves shellfish and fabulous small plates cooked by Canadian-Chinese chef Haan Palcu-Chang.

It was served in a soup plate with roasted hazelnuts and fresh cilantro, and the dressing that pooled at the bottom reminded me of the typical dressing for bun bo, the Vietnamese noodle salad that Parisians love love love. And like most things I’ve tasted at Mary Celeste, where the menu changes daily, it was stop-you-in-your-tracks good.

It is with that idea in mind that I made up the formula for my sauce a few days later. Bun bo dressing, or nuoc cham, is typically a runny dressing made with fish sauce and lime juice, sugar, garlic, and chili, but I chose to make something more akin to a vinaigrette, using just the fish sauce and lime juice, and adding sesame oil.

I first served it over roasted cauliflower, but have since enjoyed it over all kinds of sautéed vegetables as well as steamed fish, and it is astonishingly good in a vegetable stir-fry with a little ground beef and lemongrass. It is the kind of sauce that instantly raises the flavor bar by a few notches, and I am so glad I have it on my team now.

Depending on my mood and time resources, I sometimes add peanut butter to make it creamier (this version is particularly good over sautéed zucchini), and some chili sauce and garlic to make it even more complex, but the basic trinity of sesame oil, lime juice, and fish sauce is really all you need in a pinch.

What’s your magic sauce, and what do you use it with?

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During our recent trip to Corsica, we chanced upon U Salognu — “the sunny place,” in Corsican — as we do many of our happiest discoveries: by following a roadside sign.

“Traditional Corsican cuisine,” the sign promised from a grassy shoulder off the road that leads from Cargese to Piana. We hadn’t had lunch yet, the hour was creeping dangerously into mid-afternoon territory, and we pulled over hopefully.

It was an old sheep pen made of stone, like there are thousands of abandoned ones across the island, but this one had been restored and turned into a tiny restaurant: six tables inside, and maybe twice more on a terrace outside, overlooking a deep, untouched valley with a waterfall in the far distance.

On the door, another sign announced, “Our menu is composed of ingredients from local sheep breeders and our own farm.” We looked at each other with mirror twinkles in our eyes.

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Camille Labro with Cléo, 6, and Noé, 8.

Camille Labro is a French cook and food journalist who writes for M, the weekly magazine published by Le Monde. On her blog, Le Ventre libre (“the free belly”), she shares her gastronomic adventures and joys, and explores ways to eat better in an urban environment.

She is the mother of two children, and I am delighted to have her as a guest in my Parents Who Cook interview series. Read on for her many inspired tips! (Interview conducted in French and translated by myself.)

Can you tell us a few words about your children? Ages, names, temperaments?

Noé, 8, loves to read, eat, bike, and roller-skate. Cléo, 6, loves to read, eat, dance, and draw. They are both very sociable, adventurous with flavors as with experiences, full of existential questions, and very jealous of the gastronomic meals I eat without them: they devour the pictures while calling me every name in the book.

Did having children change the way you cook?

Not really, but it has given me structure, and has forced me to cook more regularly and to think of the nutritional qualities of the meals. I’ve set a rule for myself ever since they started eating more or less everything: I prepare balanced meals with a small first course (usually a raw vegetable), a dish (protein + carb + vegetable), and a simple dessert (yogurt or fruit).

Do you remember what it was like to cook with a newborn? Any tips or saving grace for new parents going through that phase?

When my children were very young and I was still breastfeeding them (I did for nine months each), I wasn’t working very much, so I had time to cook. I would place the baby in the bouncy chair next to me and talk about what I was preparing. In general, he/she was very attentive and liked the movements, the noises, the smells (better than a mobile!). And if he/she was getting impatient, I would give him/her a stick of carrot to suck on or a crust of bread to gnaw on.

Otherwise, for parents who work, I think the main tip is to prepare lots of things in advance. Pick one day a week, Sunday for instance, to go to the greenmarket and cook lots of dishes that you’ll freeze: stews, soups, gratins…

And there are other simple things you can do, like wrapping small steaks or fish fillets individually for freezing (you can transfer however many you need to the fridge in the morning and have them thawed by dinnertime), freezing pesto in ice cube trays (one ice cube per person for a dish of pasta), washing and drying all your fruits, vegetables, and greens in advance so they’ll be ready to use. It takes some logistics to alleviate the workload for the rest of the week.

As for dinner parties, it’s hard to pull them off when you’re a young parent… But you can always invite your friend over to cook dinner! I’ve done that often when I was feeling overwhelmed: you like to cook ? Come eat at my place. I’ll take care of the shopping and set the table; you’ll cook while I take care of the baby. It can be done as a group, too, with other young parents, and you take turns playing the different roles. It’s fun, convivial, and a good way to show solidarity!

Camille Labro photographed by her son in her kitchen.

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