Cooking Under the Watchful Eye of Julia Child

So, once again, I've already failed at keeping up with the blog. The past week has been about trying to get back into the swing of things now that my two week (and somewhat unplanned) vacation is over. That being said, even though I'm no longer on vacation, I've been trying to treat myself to a few things to make my non-work life more bearable/enjoyable/exciting. We'll start with Thing 1 because it'll be easier and quicker and we'll get to Thing 2 tomorrow (and no, it's not the Cat in the Hat).

Thing 1:


That's right. It's Julia Child, bitches. That is, Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking: Vol. 1. And it's not JUST volume 1, oh no. It's the whole box set... BAM!


Didn't see that coming did ya? Well, actually, considering how much I love food (a la the last blog post) it may not be THAT big of a surprise. However, I've always been fairly content to let other people cook for me instead of going to the trouble of cooking for myself. Let's be honest, especially in grad school after working anywhere between an 8 to 12 hour day, an hour train ride each way to school, along with anything I have to do when I get home, who really wants to go through the trouble of prepping and cooking a meal that's mostly just for yourself? It's so much effort for so little payout. Ok, well, if you're cooking Julia Child's food, maybe it's a lot of payout and well worth it, but still, her food is aimed at a target audience of 1950s and 60s housewives as opposed to the poor, working grad student. That being said, all it took was watching Julie & Julia to rekindle a love of cooking which stretched back to my childhood cooking with parents.


Let's be honest, if you didn't like Julie & Julia you may be one of the following: Oscar the Grouch, anorexic, anti-Amy-Adams (how dare you?!), anti-Julia-Child (really? you'd go there?), living under a rock. I didn't include anti-Meryl-Streep because this is mostly a universal contradiction. Mostly Julie & Julia is a feel-good culinary soiree that isn't worth missing. Moreover, it made me, like I'm sure it made many other gays and/or women, run out and rediscover the joy of Julia Child (well about a year later anyway when I finally had the money to afford her books =P). This is not to say that I didn't know something of Julia already. She's shown up in popular culture quite a bit, including a skit on SNL back in the day. Also, once the promotions for the movie started, I had to go out and learn more. It was Julia who taught me how to really make an omelette on YouTube before I moved into my apartment in Boston. Talk about invaluable advice.



I think what makes Julia Child such an icon is not necessarily her recipes or even her unique stature and voice or the fact that she was one of the first real TV chefs. It's really about her no-apologies attitude to cooking. In an age where we have Top Chef, Iron Chef, Bobby Flay on the Food Network 5 hours a day, and have access to more kinds of awesome food than ever, it can be intimidating to step into your own kitchen and think that you can come out with something like Julia or any chef mentioned above could make. But when you go in with an attitude of, "I'm going to make what I think tastes good and it may or may not work out right or perfect but I'll cook with passion" then it's hard to go wrong.

Keeping all of that in mind, I had to try out one of Julia's recipes as soon as I got the book. What did I make you might ask? No, it wasn't the boeuf bourguignon, at least not yet. However, I was inspired by one of the recipes from the movie. So, I went for artichokes with hollandaise sauce along with rosemary, thyme, and garlic roasted red potatoes. This all sounds really fancy and complicated, but it actually wasn't. It did take a while, but that was mostly to allow for boiling the artichokes and just letting the potatoes cook. The actual prep time and time spent over the stove was really minimal.

Now, I don't mean to steal Julie Powell's thunder (note: if you want to take a trip through the Julie/Julia project just be mindful that navigating through it is a bit difficult thanks to its age), though perhaps given some of the criticism she's received over the years from both other bloggers as well as Julia Child herself I might not want her thunder (note: I recommend clicking the links here for some viewpoints on the subject), but I do like food. This will never be a tried and true food blog, but you're going to hear about my cooking and you're going to like it! Ok, maybe you won't like it, but maybe you'll be entertained by it. No? Not entertained by it? Sorry =(.

The nice thing about Julia Child's cookbook is that it really is an all-in-one resource guide for cooking. It's not just about the recipe like so many cookbooks are, but Julia took the time to talk about the things you were cooking with. For instance, there's a full page and a half on the anatomy of artichokes, when they're in season, and the best way to go about preparing them for cooking. This, I think, was part of Julia's quest to make cooking a science that would produce awesome results every time. Sure there was room for some messiness in the execution (don't be afraid to put that omelette back together!) but consistency was ultimately the name of the game. That being said, it's not that hard to boil artichokes once you know how to cut and clean them (thank goodness... they're so intimidating!). Hollandaise on the other hand is an entirely different matter.

It's amazing what you can do with eggs and butter, but they say that the sign of a true chef is in how they handle eggs. Getting eggs to do what you need them to do, especially when heat is involved is not so simple. The problem with eggs is that when you add heat, you can scramble them really quickly if you're not careful. Of course, if you're cooking breakfast, this isn't a problem. However, if you're trying to make an amazing sauce, you don't want it to come out all scrambled. How do you get around this? Well one of the ways is similar to what you do with chocolate by creating a kind of double-boiler. Basically you simmer/boil some water (depending on how hot you need to be) and then place a bowl over the sauce pan so that the heat is indirect. That all sounds well and good, right? RIGHT?! Too bad that eggs are still ridiculously finnicky. The first time I tried, I totally scrambled them and didn't really realize it until I'd started to add the second round of butter to the mix. At that point, I realized it wasn't looking very saucy, but instead it was looking kinda looking like pancake mix or something. So, I tossed it out and started over. The second time around, armed with a whisk, cold butter, and my steely resolve, I whipped those eggs and the butter into a frenzy that resulted in one of the most awesome sauces I've ever tasted. How did I accomplish this feat? Julia.

Will I ever be a chef, much less attain the level of cooking someone like Julia did? Not in a million years. But I don't think that's what the point of the cookbook was ever really about. Sure, we in America tend to think of French cooking as haute cuisine, but for the French, it's simply the way you cook. There's no reason it can't be the same way for us. That means we can make it work for us without having to be gourmet chefs.

The final ingredient to the dish was the potatoes. I have to say I had a bit of an affair here. My rekindled dedication to cooking this past week also led me to another cookbook by another person that I really love - Ina Garten.


Ina's show on the Food Network, Barefoot Contessa is easily one of my favorites. Although I don't think a lot of her food is practical for your everyday person cooking for everyday eating, it all looks so delicious! Last summer I made her seafood stew and it turned out ok, but probably would have been better with practice and fresh seafood (I mean, the woman lives in the Hamptons, how can you compete with that level of freshness when I was cooking in Kentucky at the time?). So I recently bought Barefoot in Paris and I like to think the potatoes that I made from it only mildly cheated on Julia. Julia does have a recipe for potatoes but they're more sauteed in butter which was close to, but not exactly what I was looking for. Instead, I did a play on Ina's herb-roasted new potatoes. The great part? They're SO EASY! I substituted red potatoes for golden new potatoes just because I like them better and used what herbs I had as opposed to the ones called for in the recipe. They were still classic herbs, though (the recipe called for parsley and some other stuff, I just used rosemary, thyme and garlic). Basically all you do is melt some butter in a pan, put in the cleaned potatoes, toss, cover, and cook for 20 minutes. No, really. That's it. Although Ina's recipe says to add the herbs at the end for about 5 minutes, I felt that this really defeated the purpose. I mean, we cook chicken with all of the herbs, why not the potatoes? So I tossed in the rosemary, thyme, and garlic at the beginning (note: putting in the garlic was a risky move as it can burn or overpower pretty easily). The only important thing is to shake the pan as you go to keep the potatoes from burning and sticking.

So, artichokes, hollandaise, and herb-roasted potatoes. How did it turn out you might ask? Well the artichokes were ok. I think I might try artichokes Provencal one day to just amp up the flavor. The hollandaise sauce definitely made the artichokes, but the problem with it is that it's quite rich - after all, it's eggs and butter with a splash of lemon juice and that's it. So the artichokes were pretty good, but the potatoes? Oh. My. God. I will commit that recipe to memory forever and ever because I pretty much had a foodgasm. And here is picture to taunt you with:


While we're on the make-your-mouth-water-with-food-that-I've-cooked train, here's something else that I made a while ago that I'm pretty proud of - Cajun-rubbed tilapia over Cajun-spiced rice with a chickpea salad:




Now that you're all thoroughly hungry (as am I) I shall only wrap up with this: between Julia and Ina, my love for Paris and the French have been rekindled. After all, if they can bring us food like this, then they have cooked their way into my heart. Not to mention the fact that if Paris doesn't touch you're heart, then you're a Grinch. That being said, may you dream of food in the City of Lights.