Julia Child Blog

You may want to head over to my Julia Child blog for the time being. 

I practiced de-boning a duck. (Actually a chicken.)

Confront the duck!

Julia Child

I realize I haven't been blogging much lately, but there's a reason for that.

Recently, I entered a contest of sorts in which 24 food bloggers would be selected to prepare an "over the top" meal and blog about it -- and I was selected. So, my attention has been directed toward my Julia Child blog lately. My meal will feature recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking and the title of the blog coverage will be, Mastering the Joy of Julia. It will take place on February 25 and will feature the following menu:

Amuse Bouche: Beluga caviar, Stolichnaya vodka

Appetizer: Pâté de Canard en Croûte -- the infamous boned, stuffed duck in pastry featured in the movie, Julie and Julia.

Wine: An Uruguayan sparkling red. 

Soup: Soupe a l'Oignon -- French onion soup.

Wine: 2010 Bin 36 Monterey Chardonnay

Entree: Sauté de Boeuf à la Parisienne -- beef filet with mushrooms in a port and cream sauce.

Sides: Asparagus with beurre blanc, pommes Parisienne, petit choux au fromage. 

Wine: 2009 Domaine Chêne Bourgogne Pinot Noir

Dessert: Bavarois aux Praline -- Almond praline Bavarian cream. 

Liqueur: Sortilège -- A maple syrup and whiskey liqueur
 

I'm already in preparation. For this meal, I'll need a quart of heavy cream, at least two pounds of butter and fourteen egg yolks. 

And a defibrillator.

To Master The Art . .

I was assisting two friends of mine in hosting a Thanksgiving dinner for about thirty people here in Chicago when I was introduced to David. By the time I was introduced, he already knew that I was a Julia Child cook and blogger, so he asked if I'd been to "the Julia Child play."

"The what?" I queried.

The play about Julia Child. "I think it's called 'Mastering the Art' or something like that". He said it was a play about Julia Child and her husband when they lived in postwar France and her discovery of cooking.  "But it's been sold out for a long time," he said.

"To Master the Art"

However, the theatre might be adding a couple of performances and that I should call the Timeline Theatre the very next day. Maybe I could get a ticket. . . . By that time, I was really excited. . .

I called the theatre the next day, the very minute the box office opened. All performances were sold out, alas. . .But! . . .They had added one more performance on December 15th and had only two tickets left. . . "Did I want them?"

"Yes . . . two tickets . . . I WANTED them."

Implicitly. . . .

My bestie foodie friend, Liane, accompanied me on a blisteringly cold night to a performance of "To Master the Art".  Within the first thirty seconds of this performance, I had tears streaming down my face. The performance was that stunning. Liane was, hopefully, not embarrassed by my reaction; I doubt that she was surprised by it. (After all, that's why I brought my bestie foodie friend to accompany me to the world premier of this performance.)

Needless to say, the performance was brilliant. Whenever there was a scene in a restaurant, a kitchen, or the Cordon Bleu, the audience was permeated with exquisite different aromas: roasted chicken in tarragon, and, (I swear) the smell of beurre blanc blasted the audience.

Please know that "To Master the Art" the stage performance was written BEFORE the movie "Julia and Julia" - - that abominable, trite thing. 

I'm truly sad that I saw the last performance of "To Master the Art."  During the next two-and-a-half hours of the performance, I laughed, was surprised, cried some more and continued to be overwhelmed  - - - at how much joy can be obtained from food. . . . Such joy from food! 

But, you know, . . . . the same thing happens whenever I prepare any one of Julia's recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Whenever I follow Julia's precise instructions, pure unalloyed joy -- and some euphoria - - are always the results. How many endeavors such as that can one claim?

"To Master the Art" conveyed precisely what I've felt about Julia's work all along. That's why I wept within the first thirty seconds.

"To Master the Art" will be a huge hit, mark my words.

My only frustration was this - -

 - - that everyone I truly love didn't get to see it with me.

Dinner

Sunday night, I made a full-on Julia Child meal for six. All recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Chicken Sautéed with Herbs and Garlic, Egg Yolk and Butter Sauce
Roast Potatoes (including purple ones)
Baked Tomatoes Provencale
Braised Asparagus
Petit Choux aux Fromage (which we call Cheesy Poofs, a specialty of my friend, Steve.)

Dessert: Almond Praline Bavarian Cream

Needless to say, Julia Child was a supernatural being.

A Julia Blog

I am toying with the idea of creating a separate blog just for my Julia Child forays. I fully realize that that’s been done already by that Julie person who got her blog published and made into a movie – a blogger’s dream, really. Congrats to her.

IF I did do a Julia blog, mine would be different.

First of all, I’m a boy, so there’s that.

Next, I’m not cute and perky like Amy Adams.

My Julia blog wouldn’t be peppered with references to a spouse, a cat or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I want none of those things in my apartment.

If I screw up a recipe, (which I have), I’ll simply figure out what I did wrong, acknowledge that Julia Child is, indeed, a supreme deity, and fix it.

Case in point. Coq au Vin with mistakes and shortcuts:

Coq au Vin, second attempt, after following Julia’s Inerrant Word:

If I do create a Julia blog, I seriously doubt that I’ll prepare any recipes with liver, kidneys or brains. I’ve tried liver, kidneys and brains and I don’t like them. They make me gag and I doubt even Julia could make them appealing enough for me to enjoy.

When I was a kid, my grandmother used to make a tomato aspic that contained scallions, peas and celery. To me, it was like eating a giant, cold, blood clot. With peas. So, the aspic section will probably be skipped as well.

I’m pretty adept at boning chickens and turkeys, so I doubt that the boning of a duck will intimidate me as was portrayed in the Julie movie.

Sure, I would hope that lots of readers would enjoy my Julia blog, as I really would try to make it as entertaining as possible. A book and a movie deal would be nice, too. Jeff Daniels can play me. (See? Not cute and perky.)

I may have mentioned this before, but back in my thirties, I was a real live monk in a real live monastery. Although monastic life was extremely monotonous, there’s a part of me that misses it; I was surrounded by beauty and holiness and something bigger than myself.

Holiness, beauty, something supernatural:
Julia’s work could bring all that back.

What have I got to lose?

Coq au Vin - Reprised

Today after church, I got bored. Being that it was Sunday, I reached over for the Good Book to meditate upon it. (i.e. Mastering the Art of French Cooking.)

I was re-reading the recipe for Julia's Coq au Vin and realized that I had left out a couple of steps when I made it previously. She calls for boiling the bacon, rendering out the fat and then frying it in butter. I had simply fried it like we would for breakfast. She had also called for a half tablespoon of tomato paste and I forgot to put that in.
Dang it! 

I was bored. I missed doing the Julia thing. So I made another batch of Coq au Vin. This time, I followed her instructions explicitly; even boiling the bacon, rinsing it under cold water and frying it in butter. (Sigh - - I'll even admit that in my last attempt, I didn't saute the mushrooms in butter properly. I just moved them around in the pan, not letting them brown.) I was a bad, evil person, thinking I could tamper with the literal meaning, the intended interpretation of the Holy Scriptures.

This time, I took my time.

I got to flambé the Cognac again. That's always fun.

Another thing I noticed is that Julia wrote that Coq au Vin could be made with any wine: red, white, even Riesling. Normally it is made with red, but I got to thinking that the bitter taste may have come from using all that red wine.

It was just as well. I didn't have the requisite 3 cups of red on hand, but I did have two of the red and a cup of the leftover Sauvignon Blanc from the fricassee.
Bingo! That worked.

Can you believe this turned out even better than the last time? It just goes to show you that Julia Child has done her homework. No matter how good of a cook you think you are, follow her inerrant word.

I think this is the best thing of hers I've made thus far. 

Coq au Vin

After last week’s big Julia Child meal, I thought I might feel the need to take some time off. After all, that was a pretty heavy-duty Julia encounter. But would I want to quit the Julia endeavor?

I did not! By Wednesday, I was really anxious to see what Julia had in store for me.
Turns out, it was her famous Coq au Vin. (Rooster cooked in wine sauce)

Mind you, I’ve done the Coq au Vin thing before. Bacon, wine, chicken. Been there, done that. It often ends up tasting bitter and the sauce, limp.  Not a fun game.

So, let’s start over with Julia’s Coq.
Trust me, when you taste it, you will go

“Oh .  .  . My .  .  .  . 

GOOOODD!!!!!

I’m sorry, but you will take the name of the Lord in vain. It’s a given.

Here’s how you do it:

Read the recipe thoroughly. Reverence it.

Remember my pet peeve about bay leaves? One bay leaf does not add any flavor whatsoever. Buzz two handfulls of bay leaves in your coffee grinder. You will suddenly realize what bay leaves smell like! Use a quarter teaspoon in this recipe.

Stir 2 Tbs of flour into 3 TBS butter and set aside.  (Butter & flour = easy as pie.)

It calls for six ounces of bacon.  A packet comes to 16 oz, one pound. Each slice equals one once (My God, when will we ever switch to Metric???) Really, just divide the packet into three portions.  Freeze two.

Fry the bacon. Meanwhile, boil the pearl onions so you can de-oinion them.

Saute the chicken in the bacon fat. (Julia’s recipe calls for a 3-lb chicken cut up. Yes, this tastes wonderful, but I really don’t like dealing with chicken skin, bones, and gristle. Opt for 2 lbs of boneless, skinless, chicken thighs instead.) Although this recipe was originally developed to use an old rooster past his prime, it's not like likely any of use live in a French farmhouse. Use store-bought chicken.

Saute the onions in butter, then cook them down with chicken stock until syrupy.
Saute the mushrooms in butter.

After the chicken has been fried in bacon fat, flame that sucker with ½ cup of cognac. Don’t be afraid! Flames are fun. Flames make food taste good!

After you have spoken with the building's automatic alarm people assuring them you're not on fire, add the onions to the chicken.
Then the mushrooms.

Then the wine

Bring to a boil and stir some of it into the butter-flour slurry. (This is so that it won't go lumpy when added to the rest)

Add the butter-flour slurry to the simmering chicken. Lower the heat and simmer for about 30 minutes.

Serve over white rice or noodles. Be prepared to exclaim totally inappropriate things when you taste this at the dinner table.
It's that good.

The Julia Meal

Julia Child still continues to amaze me. After preparing six recipes from her book for a dinner party yesterday, I cannot begin to comprehend the amount of work that went her opus, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Composing the recipes, testing, re-testing, perfecting them -- that amount of work boggles my mind.

Here’s a recap of last night’s meal.

First, I stopped by Best Buy and purchased a new camera on my way to Jack and Steve’s place who were hosting the dinner. Steve, ever the electronic guru, promptly programmed the camera for me. (I didn’t know they had internal dates and clocks -- imagine that.)

Our friend, Karen, brought some lovely Roquefort and Wisconsin Gruyere along with champagne for us to enjoy while everyone arrived. She also supplied some incredible wine pairings for the meal.

I got to their place at noon -- dinner was at 7:00 pm. Steve was a wonderful kitchen-angel, cleaning up behind me and keeping things organized. I would put down and balloon-whisk and within minutes, Steve had it washed, dried and returned to the balloon whisk-section of the appropriate drawer. The kitchen would have probably looked like a meteor crater had he not been there.

He also sets an incredible table. Thank god -- it's something I've seldom enjoyed. 

Since this was a Julia Child dinner and a French one at that, it seemed that I was constantly at the sink separating egg yolks.

Two dozen yolks were used in this meal.

Dear, sweet Portia was at her usual post by the kitchen door, ever ready for a treat.

First, Fonds d'Artichauts au Mayonnaise (Steamed artichokes with mayonnaise) 

Julia’s mayonnaise is made by hand, whisking oil into egg yolks, drop by drop at first. Then in her page-long instructions, part of which she instructs you to whisk at the rate of two strokes per second, she lets you know that “the crisis is over” and you can whisk in the oil a bit more rapidly. The stuff is amazing.

Here is a serving of the main meal:
Fricasée de Poulet a La’Ancienne  (Old Fashioned Chicken Fricassee) Chicken cooked in white wine and a cream-egg-yolk sauce.
Tomates á La Provençale (Baked tomatoes with fines herbs)
Asperges au Sauce Maltaise (Asparagus with orange-flavored Hollandaise)

Steve made Julia's Petit Choux au Fromage (Cheese Puffs) which were passed around.

The dessert was really a showcase.
Bavarois aux Fraises (Bavarian Cream with Strawberries)

It involved making an egg-yolk and cream custard, then whipped cream, then egg whites, then a strawberry puree, adding some gelatin to the puree, folding it all together and letting it set up in the fridge and serving it with the strawberry puree. Again, this was one of those recipes that showed off the main ingredient -- strawberries. It really was an incredible dessert.

I didn't take photos of the steps along the way for I really didn't want to mess something up. Custard can curdle in a second if the heat's too high. Mayonnaise has a crisis point while making it. And I'm really not adept at doing two things at once.

One principle of cooking that was reiterated is that you have to continually taste everything as you go along the way. This is crucial.

Case in point: As instructed, I had added some grated orange peel to the hollandaise, tasted it and said, "This tastes rancid!" The oranges I had been supplied with were the most beautiful, juicy, tasty oranges you would ever want, but it turned out that the peelings had absolutely no orange flavor at all; just a burning, acrid taste.

I started to dump the whole thing and make a plain hollandaise or maybe head in a Bearnaise direction. A few drops of lemon juice and a pinch of sugar straightened it out though. But that just goes to show you that you should taste everything as you go -- even grated orange peel.

Again, I have even more admiration for Julia Child. How she found the fortitude to test and perfect the hundreds of complicated recipes contained in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I'll never know. (And that was just the first of many cookbooks the woman created.)

When I see the work that went into this book and the drive it must have taken to produce it, I cannot help but wonder how she did it. As far as I'm concerned, something supernatural was behind it all. . . .

_______________________________________

The next morning -- I awoke in time to get ready for choir rehersal. My stomach was a bit queasy from all the rich food. The plantar fasciitis was killing me from having stood so much. Leg muscles were sore from striking a continual egg-separating pose.
Pepto Bismol with a Valium chaser straightened everything out.