There's some interest in the specifics of the recipe I used to make my (Nigella's) delectable curry, so here's a link to the recipe on foodnetwork.com.
Nigella Lawson's Thai Yellow Pumpkin and Seafood Curry
Enjoy! And please let me know if you try it yourself, I'd love to know that I've successfully passed on a delicious meal to friends and readers!
The topic of this post is a few weeks old, but I wanted to make sure to give Nigella Lawson credit where it's due, and I have time to blog today, so...I backtrack.
Alright, so a few weeks ago, by dearest best-est friend Po came to visit!! It was very unexpected, and due to very sad circumstances, but I got to see her, for 1.5 whole days, and it was great. I miss her so much, but hopefully she'll be back on the east coast soon!
Anyway, I wanted to cook for her since now I, you know, can, when in the early years of our friendship, I was completely clueless in the kitchen and hated to cook--meanwhile, Po can whip up something suberb out of random stuff she finds in her (or my) kitchen in about 30 minutes (black beans stuffed with french fries, anyone?) <--- this is a very inside joke, which, if anyone cares, I will totally explain, but I won't waste space on it here!
Anyway, Po is a vegetarian who also eats seafood, so I flipped through Nigella's book and found her "Thai Seafood Curry" and gave it a whirl. I had to make some substitutions (the recipe calls for lemongrass stalks and fish buillon, which, believe me when I tell you, are not find-able in this next of the woods), but, OMG, my curry was bangin'. Mmmmmmm, soooooooooo good. So good in fact, that the next morning, I ate a way-too-large portion of it, and kept eating even though I was full, and couldn't put the spoon down until it was gone. And then felt sick for the rest of the day. But it was totally worth it. That's how freakin' good this curry is.
In case you're curious, the curry has a butternut squash base, with bok choy, salmon and shrimp. Hea-ven-ly! (Note: please sing that word as you read it, b/c that's how I'm thinking it as I write this...Kind of like how Oprah scream/sings people's names when they come on her show? Like that. Except about curry.)
Picture:
Conclusion:
We can all relax, Nigella's alright after all! (I know, you were worried...)
I also used our breadmaker for the first time to make a Cottage Cheese and Chives bread to accompany the curry, and it went great with it. Yay, yummy food!
So, I did what I set out to do today: went to the gym and cooked 2 new recipes. Of course, I didn't actually make it to the gym until around 4, and then it took me forever to find everything I needed at the Pathmark (I swear, that store is organized in a perfectly non-sensical way. No matter how many times I shop there, I still can't figure out where anything is...*sigh*). So, quelle surprise, dinner wasn't ready until 8, though I started cooking around 6...oh, how I've missed you, complex recipes!
I was really excited to try out some things out of Nigella Bites, which I poured through last night before bed, and I picked 'Lemon Risotto' and 'Salmon Fish Cakes' as my first forays. They both turned out...okay.
I should have known what I was getting into with the risotto, as Nigella includes the recipe in the "Comfort Food" chapter, partly because preparing it involves a "mindless repetitive activity" that she feels helps her to relax when she's stressed out. Now, according to Nigella, this repetitive activity (i.e. constantly stirring arborio while slowly adding hot broth) is only necessary for 20 minutes to make nice, creamy, al dente risotto. Lies!! I stood at the stove for 40 minutes, willing that rock hard rice to throw me a freakin' bone. It took foreeeeeeeeeeever. Not relaxing, especially when you're hungry, and have salmon cakes to fry. I also dearly missed my Julia as I was making this risotto, as Nigella is very sparing with her instructions. This is a big shock, and completely confusing, after the obsessively precise directions of MAFC, which I apparently had gotten much more used to then I realized. For example, Nigella never specifies the level of the flame under the saucepan as you stir the rice and add the broth. Should it be low, medium, high? Who knows!? This bothered me for the whole 40 minutes I was stirring. But, I can also understand how Nigella wrote her book. It's very casual, full of pretty pictures and funny little stories about why she included the recipes that she did. She often says that the way she cooks something at home, in real life, is actually different than the recipe in the book, and she encourages us all to use her recipes as guidelines, and to tweak things where we want to tweak them. Great, Nigella, thanks for the freedom, but can I learn how to do it the "right" way first? Please?
Alright, enough of my ranting...the risotto turned out pretty well in the end, not uber lemony, though cheesier than I thought it would be (Parmesan is added at the end, in a cream/lemon juice mixture). All in all, very tasty, but NOT worth the time. I won't be making lemon risotto again for a while.
I also made Nigella's Salmon Fish Cakes, which did not go well at all, and there are many potential reasons why. 1) I was supposed to use cold (i.e. left over) mashed potatoes, made of real potatoes. I didn't. I made 2 cups of instant potatoes in the microwave, then stuck them in the freezer for 20 minutes to make them cold. As evidenced by my ridiculously squishy fish cakes, I doubt that this is what Nigella had in mind. 2) Nigella says to make the patties, then chill them for 20 minutes or "considerably longer if that helps." Now, I thought she meant that they can stay in the fridge for however you need them to stay in there before you're ready to fry them, but what I think she really means is that they need to stay in the fridge for several hours if you don't want them to fall apart when you try to bread and fry them. Oh, now you tell me! I had poor hubby dealing with the mushy fish cakes while I labored over my slow-cooking arborio, and the experience left him...miffed, to say the least. Here's what the cakes looked like before frying (please note the mess they made all over the table!):
Very noticeably different than my beloved Julia, Nigella does not tell you when it's best to put something into a pan of hot butter and oil, nor does she tell you how long to cook something in a frying pan, not even an estimate! How rude. So, the fish cakes took a long time, and I didn't know if the inside was supposed to be firm or if just the outside needed to be crunchy, and the things kept falling apart while I flipped them anyway, so it really didn't matter. Blerg. But, ultimately, they were fried, and we ate, and this is what the plate looked like.
Whatevs, right? I know. All that work for rice that looks like macaroni and a fish cake. *sigh*
...I think this post is being tainted by the fact that I'm completely exhausted at this point, so let me be clear that the food did actually taste good, but the road there was vague and soggy. :o)
Tomorrow I'm making Cottage Cheese and Chive bread with our new bread maker, stay tuned!
This week, I am inexplicably and gloriously unburdened by official obligations of any sort, so I've decided that I am going to get back to 1) the gym and 2) the kitchen. The two might cancel each other out, alas, but at least I'll be sweating out some of the deliciousness I put in, for the first time in many, many a month.
For Christmas, I received Nigella Lawson's cookbook, "Nigella Bites" from my Dad and a fancy breadmaker from the in-laws (thanks family!), so I intend, today, to try out both of them. My plan is to go the gym, then to the grocery store next to the gym on the way home. Sooooooooo exciting, yes? I know, I can barely contain myself.
Stay tuned for pictures and overly detailed documentation of tonight's exploits!
I've been mulling over this topic for awhile now, but would finally like to address the very common opinion that cooking/eating a lot of French food is categorically a bad idea. I've felt this way at times myself, as I dump tablespoon after tablespoon of butter or cream into some delectable sauce that I then enjoy immensely, and I actually haven't cooked any recipes out of Julia's tome in the past several weeks--partly due to lack of time, but partly due to my slight fear that I really am setting myself up for a heart attack if I keep enjoying my food too much.
But then, I did a little research...
First thing's first. Julia Child lived to just shy of 92 years old, and plainly stated that her recipes were for those "who can be unconcerned on occasion with . . . waistlines," but she clearly lived by the principle of enjoying all things in moderation. Enjoy fine wines and the decadence of your food, but don't stuff yourself to the point of gluttony, and make sure to eat healthy things too, and get your ass off the couch sometimes. Makes sense, right? And from my experience with French food so far, it's so rich and flavorful that you don't end up eating the huge portions that are, in my opinion, really at the root of the obesity problem in this country. Leah Zerbe, at Rodale.com (a green website), says it better:
It’s no secret Julia Child loved butter, and she used it liberally in her meals...But fat, used in the right way and in the right quantity, is a good thing. "Take a tip from the French. The better the food, the less you need to be satisfied," says Judith Hill, food director at Prevention magazine. "If an extra tablespoon of butter makes something so good that a small portion is satisfying, you’re ahead of the game in taste and waist size." And by savoring every bite, you're relishing in one of the joys of life—and you’re avoiding the weight-gain trap of eating so fast that your appetite can’t keep up with the volume of food your eating.Well said.
Whether those heavy sauces in fact pose much of a health risk remains uncertain. The "French paradox," in which it was observed in the early 1990s that French people stayed slimmer and were less likely to die of heart disease than Americans, despite the former's high intake of fat, has not turned out to be much of a mystery, Bachmann says. Instead, it's now believed that the French consume fewer calories overall than we do and burn more through greater physical activity such as walking, both of which contribute to their better cardiovascular health. We've also learned that consuming dietary cholesterol (as in egg yolks) in moderation doesn't necessarily elevate levels of "bad" cholesterol in the blood (though saturated fat, as in cream, cheese and many cuts of red meat, clearly does). And many nutrition experts now say that eating small quantities of really satisfying, lightly processed foods (even if that means more fat and calories per bite) may be better for us than pigging out on processed and packaged foods. (Think: a few slices of full-fat cheese instead of a jar of Cheez Whiz.)
So what to make of "Mastering the Art"? Well, there's this: At the end of her year-long experiment, Julie Powell noted that she'd gained some weight, but she wasn't willing to attribute that solely to Julia Child's cuisine -- especially since her skinny husband remained skinny throughout, despite eating his wife's French food.
As for Julia Child herself, nobody would accuse her of having been skinny (not that she was fat, either). But she lived to within a whisker of her 92nd birthday. And, by all accounts, she enjoyed just about every minute.
Finally, I stumbled upon an article by British celebrity chef Nigella Lawson, who I think is kind of the JC for our generation (though I don't really know much about her--I plan to remedy this by getting her first cookbook, Nigella Bites
I have never quite understood why there is among us such disproportionate fear of fat and dairy. For one thing, the jury is still out on whether these foodstuffs are indeed harmful to us. (I rather suspect that if we were such fragile creatures, so minutely susceptible to the fuel we choose to run on, we would have fallen out of the evolutionary loop a long, long time ago.)
And for another, the crucial element must be portion size. Ever notice how chic Parisiennes eat pastry for dessert and still fit into their size 6 tailleurs?
They eat a slice of cake at dinner and that's it. They do not, as many of the rest of us do, skip dessert and then, back at home, mooching about the house at midnight, devour half a cake.
Meanwhile, a recipe stipulates a quarter of a cup of heavy cream and every non-Français has a fainting fit. But this recipe may make enough to feed eight ? and really, how much harm could a couple of teaspoonfuls of cream do?
So, after doing all this reading, and accepting that, damn it, I like good food, I think I'm comfortable with cooking and eating rich foods and enjoying every bite. Besides, I do have that gym membership on hand to cancel out some of that butter!
What do you think, dear reader? I'm really interested in what people think about this, so please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.
When I created this blog, I thought there might come a day when I'd feel compelled to post about something that I did not like at all, and I thought I'd title those posts "Opposite Day". Well, folks, that day has come.
It all began with Pate Brisee....Or, should I say, it began with me deciding I would not be attempting Pate Brisee today. Pate Brisee is homemade pastry dough/pie crust. No thank you, Julia!
I'd ended up with a free Wednesday night again, and thought I shouldn't waste the chance to cook another yummy french dish, so I flipped through the quiches and decided on Quiche Aux Fruits de Mer (Shrimp, Crab, or Lobster Quiche). The recipe looked short and simple, I could use store-bought crab, and I already had the eggs. Perfect!
I made my requisite trip to the Stop and Shop for the crab meat (6.99 for 8 oz, not too bad!), the pie crust, and some shallots, which have been an optional ingredient in every recipe I've tried so far (you can either use shallots or green onions, and I opted for green onions up to now, b/c I didn't really know what a shallot was). Turns out, these are shallots, "fresh" from France...
When you cut into them, they're basically little, milky red onions. I'm not really sure what makes them "shallots," but apparently, they're very French, so fine.
I was being very ambitious today, aiming to eat at 6:30. The quiche would only take 30 minutes in the oven, and the prep was really quick, so I did some other work until about 5:15, at which point I minced two shallots and cooked them in butter for a few minutes, than stirred in the crab meat and simmered it all for a few minutes, then added a few shakes of Madeira (red wine), heated it to a boil, then set the mixture aside. Doesn't it already look good?
Then I beat eggs, a lot of cream, some tomato paste (?), and salt and peper in a bowl, and added the crab meat to it.
And that's when the trouble started....
Now, I've seen my mother make countless quiches in store-bought frozen pie crusts and I had never seen her take the crust out of the tin before filling it. And yet, being the goody-goody I am, when the back of the pie crust packaging said to take the frozen pie crust out of the tin and let it thaw for 15 minutes before filling it, I did it, even though I didn't really see how that would work. Well, guess what? It didn't. The first one thawed so much before I even tried to fill it that it fell apart and was just a flat sheet of dough. Oops. You'd think I would have taken this as a sign of the fortitude (or lack thereof) of these pie crusts, but nooooooooooo. I try again, thaw the crust for only a few minutes, then pour the heavy, thick quiche filling into the pan. I quickly realized that this was going to be a problem, as the pie crust immediately started to become oval shaped, buckling under the weight of all that cream. I started hopping around screaming "no, no no!" as I raced to throw some Swiss cheese on top and jam the thing in the oven to start firming it up before it completely fell apart, but as I started shredding the cheese on top, creamy crab started oozing out of the bottom of the pie crust, and I started wailing and shrieking and I'm sure the dog thought I was in grave danger. Crisis was averted by me tilting the whole leaking thing back into the bowl, but, um...this is what I had left of my only remaining pie crust. A moment of silence, please.
*sigh* So I had to go back to the freakin' grocery store and get more freakin' pie crusts. I was pissed. Stupid pie crusts and their stupid lying instructions, what the hell!! Clearly they know good and well at Acme Pie Crust company that their little dinky crusts cannot actually support anything if not in the aluminum pan they're created in! Why must they lie to me and risk the demise of my crab quiche?? Why!??
Needless to say, we didn't eat until 7:30. But the quiche came out beautifully in the end.
I also made my favorite veggies, peas simmered in chicken broth, butter, and green onions. It was super yummy, and made up for the absurdity of the pie crust debacle of '09.
Butter Count: .5 sticks
Cream Count: 1 cup
In Julie and Julia, Julie Powell swears by Oeufs en Cocotte with Sauce au Cari (Eggs baked in ramekin dishes, with Curry Sauce). She claims that it is the absolute best meal to have the morning after a wild and crazy night out with the girls.
Well, I didn't have a wild and crazy night on Saturday, but I did decide that it was time to see what all the fuss was about, and tackle Oeufs en Cocotte myself. This led to me doing another unimaginable thing on Sunday morning: I got up relatively early, much earlier than I had to, to go buy groceries and bakeware so that I could make my eggs. I was ready to leave the house even before most of the stores that could actually sell me ramekins were open! Madness. Have I mentioned that I typically avoid going grocery shopping like the plague, and make hubby do as much of it as possible? My behavior of late is truly bizarre, I cannot stress this enough! I'm realizing, though, that what I really love to do is eat good food, and cooking recipes out of MAFC pretty much guarantees deliciousness, so apparently that's the only motivation I need to get my ass out of bed, get to the grocery store, and get cookin'.
So, I headed to Target for ramekins and curry powder, stopped by Pathmark for the onions and milk, and headed home with excitement for the delightful brunch bounty that awaited.
And oh man, was it worth the wait. Of course, everything took longer than I expected, especially making the curry sauce. I had to chop up onions (using my handy new chopper!) and cook them in butter for 10 minutes, than add tons of curry powder and cook that a bit...
then add boiling milk that I actually had the presence of mind to start boiling ahead of time (proud of myself for that one!)....
Meanwhile, I was heating up water in a pan that would eventually hold the ramekins full o' egg and sauce (oh, and mushrooms, which were left over from the poached poissons. Julia suggests adding pretty much anything you want to the bottom of the ramekin before you add the eggs, so I did!). Here's what the ramekins looked like with curry sauce and mushrooms in them, before I cracked the eggs in, topped them with more sauce, a "dot" of butter, and stuck them in the oven for 10 minutes...
They came out looking like this...
Again, not entirely appetizing, but I swear, they were sooooooooooooo freakin' good!! I'm already looking for a reason to make them again next weekend! Fantastic! The eggs were cooked perfectly, just the right texture, the yolks weren't runny (which grosses me out), though I could have pulled them out a tad earlier to get runnier yolks, and the curry sauce was a perfect complement. Mmmmm, I can't gush about them enough. I made 4, with two eggs each, way too much for hubby and I, but we of course stuffed ourselves because oeufs en cocotte are too good to be denied. Trust me, if you ever want a taste, give me a heads up and I will make them for you at any time. It's a life changing experience, my friends! (Okay, so some of my gushing could be due to the fact that it's almost 1 am and I'm getting a little loopy, but really, these eggs are so good.)
Butter count: oops! forgot MAFC downstairs, will update tomorrow!
Okay, so I lied. All I actually want to talk about is food. Sorry! :)
So, yesterday I decided I was going to tackle fish, primarily because in Julia's memoir My Life in France, she gushes over the french way of preparing fish, which is to poach it and serve it with a delectable sauce. Sold.
So I flipped to Fish, chapter 5, and decided first on Filets de Poisson Gratines, a la Parisienne (Fish filets poached in white wine w/ a cream and egg yolk sauce). Sounds delectable, right? Well, I realized that it was ridiculously unhealthy and artery clogging, and, since Julia says that when serving a "beautifully sauced fish...a salad or vegetable should come afterward, so as not to disturb the harmony of the fish, the sauce, and the wine" I knew that by the time we finished eating the main course, I'd be too lazy to actually prepare a salad, so I settled on Filets de Poisson a la Bretonne instead, which is filets poached in white wine and a julienne of vegetables. (Btw, I just have to say that, though it's very persnickety, I kind of love the fact that Julia makes sure we don't spoil our wonderful fish dishes with pesky things like vegetables. I love her.)
So, I'm feeling a little daunted by the recipe this time around, because I'm really making a combination of 3 recipes, as Julia tends to provide a master recipe, than variations of the master recipe, and then variations of that recipe, so there's a lot of flipping back and forth, and a lot of room for missing steps and screwing things up. But it sounded so tasty, I was willing to take the risk.
First thing I had to do was find a "10- to 12-inch fireproof baking and serving dish, 1.5 to 2 inches deep," which I didn't buy during my cookware spree at Home Goods. But I figured it'd be easy to find, right? Absolutely and utterly WRONG. I went to a different Home Goods, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Macy's, and there were no fireproof baking dishes to be found. So upsetting! I wasted about 2 hours on my hunt, but did pick up some fun kitchen gadgets at BBB, including an onion chopper, yay!!
Anyway! I finally made it home around 5, and was shooting for dinner at 7 again, so I immediately set myself up with 3 lbs of potatoes and the Amazing Race premiere and started peeling. (I was making the Pommes de Terre Sautees again, per Julia's recommendation for good dishes to accompany the fish.) After peeling, I started julienne-ing the veggies (carrots, celery, onions--I sadly realized I would not be breaking in my chopper just yet), and if you've never julienne'd anything before, a word of warning: it's annoying. I hate chopping on the best of days, and making little matchsticks out of carrots will never be my idea of fun...but Julia said julienne, so I said, "how tiny?" and chopped away.
By then, hubby was home, and I thought I'd set him to work actually trying to make "elongated olive shapes" out of the potatoes, which is what you're supposed to do to make sure they cook evenly, but which I was never actually going to try, because it sounded too absurd. But for hubby, it sounded like the perfect task! :p And, as it turns out, I was imagining a lot more work than it actually is, as the measurements Julia gives for the ideal olive-shaped potato are actually about the size of a new potato to begin with, so it wasn't actually that much work after all. Good to know. From that point on, hubby was pretty much in charge of the potatoes, which was nice, but also a bit difficult, since I'm a bit of a kitchen control freak. I also forgot to tell him to dry the potatoes before cooking them, so they didn't turn out as delectable as last time, but now we know how important it is to dry them first! They came out fine, though siginificantly less buttery. They did look pretty though! (Good job, hubby :o) )
I then set to work on the fish. I slowly cooked the veggies for 20 minutes while I prepared the cod filets by lightly seasoning them with salt and pepper and layering them in a buttered casserole dish (which worked out fine in place of the baking dish I needed, but was a little cramped). When the veggies were tender, I layered them on top of the fish. Next, I added the "liquids" that the fish would poach in. Julia offers several options, which I appreciate, and I picked the white wine/clam juice/water option, mainly so that I'd have enough of the wine left over to drink with the meal! (Priorities, people.) I then brought the whole thing to a simmer, covered it with buttered wax paper, and poached the fish in the oven for about 10 minutes. When I pulled the pan out, I really had no clue if the fish was done, since I couldn't actually see the fish under all the veggies and liquid, but I crossed my fingers and pressed on.
Next I drained all the cooking liquids into a saucepan and started making the sauce that was going to make the whole thing so amazing, at least according to Julia.
I boiled down the fish juice (yum), then beat in a "white roux" I'd made earlier out of butter and flour, and some cream. Heated it up again, added more cream, added some lemon juice, gave it a taste, it was great, and dumped it on top of the fish again.
Almost there! I then sprinkled swiss chesse on a top and dotted it with more butter (sigh), and stuck it under the broiler for a few minutes, and it came out like this! Beautiful!!!
We then sat down and watched the new NBC show 'Community', which is actually pretty good, and then a lame episode of Buffy, Season 3, "The Zeppo." I should probably explain here that we are on a mission to watch all 7 seasons of Buffy, due to the recommendations of about a thousand people, and thanks to the fact that one of our friends owns the whole series, so there will probably be lots of Buffy watching as we eat our french food for a long while. (Funny side note: it turns out that Julie Powell is actually obsessed with Buffy, and on her blog from 2002 about cooking the entirety of MAFC, she mentions Buffy a lot. It's really funny how my Julia experience is also linked with Buffy.)
Anyway, I'm rambling, mostly because when I finish this post I need to spend the rest of the day working on internship application essays, which is clearly not that much fun. But I must....I'll leave you with a shot of the plated food. Again, it doesn't look nearly as good as it tasted, but that fish was....mmmm, perfection.
Butter Count: 2 sticks
Yesterday morning, my 6pm client called and canceled his appointment for Wednesday night, gifting me with an entire evening of blissful nothing that I hadn't dared to dream of. So what did I do? I decided to fill it with domesticity the likes of which have rarely been seen in my vicinity. I decided I was gonna cook up a(nother) storm, Julia style.
Last night, I flipped around MAFC, looking for a chicken dish to tackle. I decided on Supremes de Volaille Archiduc (Chicken Breasts with Paprika, Onions, and Cream), with Risotto and my new favorite veggie, frozen peas a la JC. Yum. I scanned the ingredient lists and the instructions, and it all looked pretty straight forward, even the risotto, which I always imagined was something that only first class chefs can cook, but Julia made it seem do-able, and I was feeling brave.
Then I realized that both the chicken and the risotto called for things that were nowhere to be found in our house. Things like cheesecloth, and cast iron pots, and Madeira cooking wine. And, just like that, my otherwise lazy Wednesday became a kitchen-stuff buying spree that I actually really enjoyed!
My first stop this morning was Home Goods, my go-to shop for kitchenware, especially the fancy stuff that I can always count on them having half off. Both the chicken and risotto called for very specific pots: "a heavy, covered, fireproof casserole about 10 inches in diameter" for the chicken, and "a 6-cup fireproof casserole about 8 inches in diameter with a tight fitting cover" for the risotto. Okay, Julia, geez, you're so anal!
I headed for the cookware (after waiting for 10 minutes for someone to surrender one of the 5 shopping carts they had in the freakin' store today, ugh) and straight to the Le Crueset section. Not being a cook, I don't know why I even know about Le Crueset cookware, but I do. I know it's the best out there, and that it's probably what Julia had in mind for me. But something I did not know about Le Creuset cookware is that it is insanely expensive. I mean, wow. $120 for one small casserole. No, thank you! I got the "Palm restaurant" versions instead, which were still pretty expensive, but they're beautiful (see pictures below) and will last a really long time, and make me feel like I'm actually cooking for real. Cool.
So I bought my specifically-diametered casseroles, plus 2 more skillets, a baster, and more measuring spoons (I'm realizing you can never have too many), then high-tailed it back to my 4 hour chunk of meetings that were rudely interupting my day of domesticity. Then I picked up the Madeira and a bottle of Pouilly-Fusse (a White Burgundy that Julia suggested would be perfect with the chickent), went to S&S for a few essentials (and more butter), and then went to, get this, a hardware store for the cheesecloth! So ridiculous, and in the opposite direction from home, but I was gonna make me an herb bouquet, damnit! (More on that in a sec.)
By the time I got home, it was already after 5, and I'd invited a friend over for dinner at 7, and there was a mountain of dishes I had to clear out of the sink before I could start cooking. (To be fair, I could have started cooking with the sink full of dishes, but that always skeeves me out, and I never cook with the sink full if I can help it.) So, even though dishes are hubby's designated chore, I happily loaded the dishwasher, then handwashed stuff I needed immediately, and was amazed all the while that I was voluntarily cleaning the kitchen so that I could cook. So bizarre, but a nice change.
Finally, finally, I started working on the risotto. Aside from the onion chopping (bane of my existence), and almost breaking a sweat trying to get the plastic thingy off the casserole dish so that I could actually take the lid off, the prep was pretty easy. I nervously read and re-read the instructions, though, knowing I was gonna screw it up, and almost did, when I was almost ready to add liquid to the rice and hadn't made the herb bouquet yet! The horror!
(Sidebar: Okay everybody, so this is an herb bouquet. It's basically a bunch of herbs-parsley, thyme, etc.--tied up together in a little cheesecloth bag tied with string. Very cute, very french. And I made one! See?
About a month ago, I "read" (i.e. listened to on audiobook--yay Audible.com!) "Julie and Julia," a memoir by Julie Powell about how she set out to cook every recipe in Vol.1 of Mastering the Art of French Cooking (500+ recipes) in 365 days, all as an attempt to rescue herself from the mediocrity of her soul-sucking cubicle (government) job. Well, I found the book pretty great, though I actually wish I had read the print version, since Julie Powell's voice kind of drives me crazy, but I suffered through. I then saw the movie version with Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, both of whom I love, and I found the movie charming, if a little thin, and then I asked for Mastering The Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1
So, that's how the story begins. It continues with me flipping open MAFC last week and realizing that it is sooo much more than just a cookbook! It is, in fact, AWESOME! (And please note that this is momentous for me to say, as I usually find cooking to be tiresome and annoying. I much prefer the eating part.) Bus seriously, this book is not just a cookbook. It's a how to cook book! Who knew!?
Julia and friends take you through everything, from what kinds of kitchen equipment you need (lots), to the definitions of various fancy terms used throughout the book, like gratine (to brown the top of a sauced dish, fyi), to--get this-- the ideal way to chop a freakin' onion! I've always been a disaster chopping onions, little pieces always fly everywhere and I feel like a complete clutz! Who's with me? Anyway, now, with Julia, I'm well on my way to chopping like Rachael (Ray, whom I actual can't stand, but who does know how to chop things, I have to give her that). She also devotes a whole section, before telling you how to cook anything at all, to one of my favorite things, wine. She explains which types of wines are best to cook with for various kinds of dishes, what kinds of wines you should pair with various foods, and even how to store and serve different wines! Completely unnecessary and marvelous. Theree isn't a recipe in this book until page 37. It's amazing.
Alright, so even before trying any of the recipes, my mouth was watering and I was really starting to see what all the fuss is about re: Julia Child. I decided that I would make my first attempt at French Cuisine on Monday night, one of my usual cooking nights. We had some ground turkey in the fridge, so I looked for something involving ground beef, and found Bifteck Hache a la Lyonnaise, which is really just a hamburger. No biggie, right? (Though, Julia does take time out to tell us that we need not be shocked, as the French do eat hamburgers! I honestly had never given any thought to whether or not the French eat hamburgers, but apparently this was a matter of hot debate back in 1961). Anywho, a hamburger patty's just a hamburger patty, but then...then you add a sauce on top, and that is where it becomes heavenly. I decided to try Bitokes a la Russe (Hamburgers with Cream Sauce). Now, I have to be honest with you--sauce making has always mystified me. I'd always see my grandmother or mom or dad cook some sort of meat and somehow end up with a sauce in the pan afterward, and had always been completely befuddled by the whole exercise, so the cream sauce was actually the scary part for me. But Julia guided me true, and the sauce came out just like she said it would, and it was creamy, buttery goodness, and made for a very fancy (and tasty) burger.
I'm almost done with my gushing, but I have to add another awesome thing about MAFC: at the start of each section, Julia devotes some space to explaining exactly what kinds of ingredients you should buy for each kind of recipe, what kinds of wine you should pair it with, and gives many side dish and garnish suggestions. In the "Meat" chapter, she encourages you go learn about beef cuts "step by step" and tells you how you can tell a good cut of meat. In the vegetable chapter, there are seven different recipes for peas, and you pick which one to use based on the freshness and tenderness of the peas!! And there are then different recipes for frozen peas and canned peas, because clearly you can't cook them the same way. !! Is this kind of care and devotion to preparing perfect food not incredible!? Maybe it's just me, but I think it's freakin' awesome.
I'm getting hungry just writing this post...
Anyway, based on Julia's recommendations, I made Pommes de Terre Sautees (Potatoes Sauteed in Butter) and Frozen Peas (Frozen Peas :o) to go with our fancy burgers, and I actually think I liked the side dishes better than the burger! This could because both were pretty much just cooked in butter, some herbs, butter, and a little more butter, but they were soooo good. (Sorry the picture's blurry!)
I'm planning to try out a chicken recipe tomorrow, and something more ambitious this weekend, though I'm still deciding what to try. If people are interested (are you interested??) I'll keep blogging about my culinary pursuits, though I know it's been done, and been done specifically with MAFC, but...what can I say? I've got the Julia bug. (Proof that this is true: We didn't eat dinner until about 9:45 last night, and I was prepping and/or cooking for 2.5 hours, and I DIDN'T EVEN MIND. Truly mind-boggling.)
Can't wait to taste my next French dish! To borrow from my least favorite TV cook, ooh-la-yum-o!
