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.

Flying on Memorial Day Weekend = DOOM! Seek Shelter in Awesome Food!

(Be forewarned that the first half of this is mostly ranting and raving but somehow segues into a culinary review of some of my favorite places to eat in Atlanta – nom nom nom! Read on to find out how!)

So obviously within the first week of blogging, I’ve already failed at updating daily. But I have a good excuse, I swear! I have to say that I rarely ever have problems flying. Moreover, the only times I’ve had problems flying have been with U.S. Air which was a disaster trying to get home after a grad school interview. It was their plane that needed maintenance so they bumped me to the next day but did zero for me. No food voucher, no stay at the hotel at the airport, nothing. Nada. Zippo. Instead it was, “Well, you should go back into the city and stay with someone…” which of course was impossible considering I didn’t KNOW anyone in Boston at the time. Since then, I’ve had several people tell me that U.S. Air has a very corporate attiude when it comes to their customers and flights – “You’ll fly when it’s convenient for us, and you’ll like it!” Thanks a bunch U.S. Air. Your one-time stunt helped me never to want to fly on your craptastical airline ever again.

That being said, this weekend wasn’t really any better. After spending a week on the Isle of Palms in lovely Charleston, SC with my parents (who have found a house that they like, though I don’t really see it as a vacation home but as more of a second home - if they want to do that, I suppose it’s fine, but I would never justify spending that kind of money for the house that they’re considering) I was all set to fly back to Boston. Although the trip was technically a vacation, I was actually looking forward to getting back to Beantown. Thanks to my existential crisis as of late, I actually prefer not to be left alone with a lot of time to myself and to my thoughts. All that seems to accomplish is to get me started on an endless loop of what-ifs and maybes about life that only provoke and self-perpetuate anxiety. Apparently throwing myself into work is now my mental vacation – FML. At any rate, as I was saying before I pulled a little raincloud overhead, I was good to go to fly back to Boston, had a nice seafood lunch, got to the airport, said goodbye to my family, and headed through security.

From the time that I checked-in to the time that I got to the gate, the flight had been delayed by 30 minutes. Although irritating, it wasn’t the end of the world. I’d left a little over an hour for my layover at the Atlanta airport, and although Atlanta can be a madhouse, it should have still been easy enough to make my connecting flight. Until of course, the storm of DOOOOOM appeared (extra letters and caps lock have been added here for emphasis and may not be suitable for those under 13). As we were sitting on the runway to take off, we were informed that due to bad weather in Atlanta, incoming flights were having their departure times scheduled from Atlanta to control incoming traffic. While the delay there would have made me miss my original connecting flight, I had already checked to make sure there was another, just in case. So, off we went to Atlanta – whoosh! – only to be forced into a holding pattern (over the city once we got there, mind you) until the weather cleared. The problem then became (as if there weren’t enough already) that the plane was too small to hold enough fuel to circle for too long. Apparently the storm hovered just long enough to force us back to Charleston. That’s right. I was actually OVER the city of Atlanta and had to fly BACK to Charleston where I started from. Oy.

Now, at this point, the trip had already turned into a bona fide fiasco. How could it possibly get any worse you might ask? What could it possible take to make the day into a certified debacle? After getting back to Charleston, there was an entire plane full of people waiting to talk to two gate agents about moving and getting on different flights. Halfway through that line, they announced that all 3 of the Atlanta flights for that evening would now be able to back to Atlanta since they’d been refueled and the weather had let up. That sounds great right?! Except, oh wait, by that time, I would have gotten to Atlanta 15 minutes after the last flight to Boston would have left for the evening. At this point, I found the whole thing too ridiculous to be angry at. I just had to laugh and walk in circles for about 2 minutes while I tried to figure out how to remain sane. Then, I got to talk to the gate agent. Joy. What did that all-knowing, all-powerful gate agent have to tell me? I couldn’t get on a flight to Boston until at least Sunday. That’s right. It was Friday night at 8:30 p.m., I was back in the place I’d started after circling around the city I was supposed to be in, and now I couldn’t get back until over 48 hours later.

Because of the nature of the Charleston airport, Delta really only services two major cities, Atlanta and New York at LaGuardia. The flights to Boston out of those cities, though, were all booked. Fan-fucking-tastic. Even worse? I thought I’d turn the layover into a chance to see some people in Atlanta – and the gate agent told me it wasn’t possible to do a layover that wasn’t on the same day. This is, of course, preposterous. Although making the layover more than say 8 or 9 hours is unusual, I’d seen people change their flights to have 2 or 3 days layover in front of my very eyes. And here I was unable to get home for at least 48 hours, and a huffy, blonde gate agent was going to try and tell me that I couldn’t do something that I’d seen other people flying on Delta do right in front of me? Oh. Hell. No. You better know that I went on all-out only-child-gay-guy-bitch fit. And it worked. Don’t mess. Got it?

Basically from there, I went back to the condo for the night with my parents and got up less than 6 hours later to catch my flight to Atlanta. I booked a pretty nice hotel downtown for a relatively cheap amount (Hyatt Place in case you’re interested – I booked it through Travelocity and it was about $100 a night with a king-sized bed, giant TV, couch, and the staff was great)


I also rented a car through Enterprise and ended up with a new black Mustang convertible. Suhweet!


Now that I’ve plugged various travel establishments in Atlanta, I shall cover some of my favorite restaurants that I went to while I was there. First, Saba (note that the picture is before they finished their remodel).


Although it may seem unassuming and the Emory kids have probably come to hate it after eating too much of it, I loved this place when I was there two summers ago and I love it even more now. They recently renovated the inside and it’s awesome! It has an actual bar area and everything else is updated and modern. If you happen to ever go and like seafood, I highly recommend the Penne Grecco. It has shrimp and kalamari in an awesome, slightly spicy sauce, over penne along with feta cheese, kalamata olives, tomatoes, and peppers. AWESOME!

Next is Café Intermezzo.



While I enjoy dinner here as well (the tortellini is great and I did ok with the seafood risotto, though the shrimp either seemed slightly undercooked or were cooked with the risotto in such a way that they turned out slimy), Intermezzo should be most noted for their drinks and desserts. When you can get your own tour guide for the dessert section, you know you’re in the right place. I enjoy their cheesecake mostly, but the others are all worth a go. They also have a drink book that’s about as big as the menu at the Cheesecake Factory. And if you know anything about that menu, all I can say is that you could probably come to Intermezzo every day for a year and not get through half of their drink list.

Continuing on our tour of culinary Atlanta, the Flying Biscuit is the ideal place for breakfast, no matter what time of day.


My favorite is the Clifton omelet which is stuffed with mushrooms and goat cheese. Also, I don’t care whether or not you THINK you like grits, you have to try the grits here. They are completely amazing! There’s cheese melted in them along with being perfectly cooked and seasoned. It’s like a party in your mouth and you’re invited!


Simply put - SHOUT.



I wasn’t actually able to eat there this time around – sad panda =( - but it’s worth mentioning because if it hadn’t been for Memorial Day, I would have eaten there for lunch today. There are a couple of restaurants, including SHOUT, which are all owned by the same people and serve tapas. It wasn’t until I came to Atlanta 2 years ago that I was introduced into the wonders of tapas. If you haven’t experienced the fun and awesomeness of a tapas restaurant, do yourself a favor – go find one and pig out. It helps to go with a friend to pick a variety and share, but you could easily make do by yourself. SHOUT, along with it’s sister restaurant TWIST and third-wheel Noche, all have an all-you-can-eat tapas night (I know Noche is on Monday and I think that the others are as well) for $10 before a certain time. It’s a special chef-prepared menu and only lasts while the food does, but it’s well worth it. Although I like all 3, SHOUT has the better atmosphere in my opinion. Located in Midtown, it has two stories, the upper of which has an outdoor area that, so I’m told, tends to turn into a big dance party. The inside is definitely modern and well done, if not slightly crowded in the front. Either way, there’s something on the menu for everyone and it will be nom-a-licious.

Where DID I go to eat lunch, then, you might ask? Another awesome place – Alon’s.



While Alon’s isn’t really a restaurant per se, you can get restaurant-type food. Mostly, it’s more of a deli/market/bakery, but you can get sandwiches along with pre-made sides. My sandwich favorite is the Asian Salmon. It has an awesome glaze on it and is topped with cucumbers and sprouts. MMMM! Although they didn’t have them this time, I usually get the garlic roasted red potatoes as a side. When they’re in season though, don’t hesitate to go for the cherry tomato and mozzarella salad. You won’t be disappointed! It’s not just tomatoes and cheese as you might expect – there’s a light coating of something that I can’t quite place (it’s not just olive oil unless it’s super high quality but seems to also have some kind of herb or seasoning) that really makes it. They also have desserts, cheese, and bread that you can buy just for your own home.

Now that we’ve been down culinary lane, I’m sitting on a plane, in a tight, cramped seat, doing some writing and actually looking forward to being back in Boston (even if I’ll be starving when I get there now), if only to be distracted. From here on out, the month of June will be my first year paper on the differences in the instantiation of psychological essentialism in natural kinds versus social categories. Sounds like a blast, right? Well, if you’re a nerd like me, then yes, it is. If not, I apologize in advance as you’ll probably here about it at some point. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll get back into the swing of things with blogging. The next topic to come up out of my bag of tricks is most likely to be the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal so you’ll get to see my political side. I don’t guarantee that you’ll agree, but if you decide to read it and you have an opinion, you're more than welcome to share it, just at least keep it civil ;-).

Until then, have some good eats and nom nom nom!