Posts Tagged ‘French Cuisine’
A Quiet Saturday Evening & French Onion Soup
May 15th, 2011 | Rachel
Its the Saturday evening after a busy week.
On Tuesday you listed your apartment on Craigslist during lunch and had a renter for the summer lined up by the time you got home from belly dance class that same night (for $100 more a month than you asked for!). On Wednesday you applied to about a bazillion jobs and went to two “girls’ nights,” and on Thursday you drank an unfortunate mixture of beverages that killed half of your plans on Friday (but you still managed to drag yourself to Ikea to help a friend pick out furniture for her new apartment). And now, you are just a little bit tired.
So what do you do?
Perhaps you meet a friend and her visiting mother for cappuccinos at Stumptown and then spend the evening slow cooking some of Julia Child’s French Onion Soup while watching random movies and tv shows on Netflix On-Demand.
Start with a pound and a half of onions…
Thinly slice…
Sauté in butter for 15 minutes. Then cook over moderate heat for 40 minutes until golden yellow. Stir in three tablespoons of flour.
Add two quarts of your own homemade chicken stock (great use of the leftover carcasses that have been patiently waiting in your freezer since your many roasted chicken attempts).
I think I only used one quart of chicken stock. Or maybe I lost count when I was measuring the volume of my new Ikea food storage containers. Two quarts seemed like it would make the soup too thin.
Let simmer partially covered for another 40 minutes.
Mix in a few shreds of cheese and cover with a round of toasted bread and more cheese.
Then bake in the oven for 20 minutes. Julia says to turn on the broiler for two minutes at the end, but it wasn’t necessary (and my broiler doesn’t work).
Toasted cheese perfection.
In case you don’t have any cute mason jars on hand (or an “onion soup dish” like Julia recommends — whatever that is), a mug is a fine alternative:
Time for the second episode of Cashmere Mafia.
Third Time’s The Charm?
April 19th, 2011 | Rachel
This weekend I finally got to share some french cooking with my favorite dinner companion. I wasn’t planning on cooking this weekend (the highlight of the weekend involved a frozen drink machine and a recipe for a Lemon Whiskey Slush — which is even better with lime juice), but Steve and I decided to brave the crowds at Whole Foods to pick up some dinner ingredients.
For those of you who do not live in New York City, a trip to Whole Foods — particularly on a Sunday evening — is not for the feint of heart. A sign at the check out counter listing the best and worst times to shop adeptly described it as “frenetic.” We managed to navigate our miniature shopping cart through the narrow aisles full pairs and trios of shoppers (Whole Foods is no place to be seen alone on a Sunday evening), and eventually ran into a wall of people dividing the bakery from the deli. That was one of the check out lines. There were three of such lines, each comprised of at least 25 people who were funneled into a color coded holding pen. At that point we waited for a screen to tell us which of the 40 check out counters to go to.
Since this dinner was unplanned, I wasn’t able to reference my copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. However, the upside about making the same dish several times in a row (this was my third roasted chicken in the past month) is you pretty much memorize it. I almost pulled of this roasted chicken from memory without a hitch, but I forgot to pick up some sort of stock to make a light sauce at the end.
And I forgot to put salt on the chicken each time I flipped it.
I also forgot to dry the chicken before I slathered it in butter.
I also forgot to make note of what time I put the bird in the oven and cooked one side more than the other…. I guess I forgot to do a lot of things.
I did not forget to buy cooking twine to tie the birdie’s legs together (although Julia Child prefers to use a mattress needle to sew her chicken into a tight bundle). I also did not forget how to roast the tomatoes, which make an excellent, fresh side dish.
Since several people have asked for recipes, perhaps I will start sharing some:
Prepping the tomatoes for roasting (this photo is from my first attempt… this past time I used Roma tomatoes)
Julia Child’s Roasted Tomatoes (a rough paraphrase): Select tomatoes less than 2″ diameter. Cut out the stems an sprinkle salt and pepper in the cavity. Paint with olive oil and place stem side down in a baking dish (I’ve been using round casserole dishes). Bake in a 400 degree oven for 10 minutes or until skin starts to split. Serve immediately.
Although many of Julia’s recipes involve smothering your main ingredient in butter or cream, others are designed to showcase the essence of the meat or vegetable. If you are ever at a farmers market and come across a table of small, ripe, homegrown tomatoes, this is what you need to do with them.
My sous chef for the evening, Steve
Patiently waiting for the chicken to finish (due to a late start we ended up eating close to 11pm… woops)
One more golden-brown chicken to add to the archives
Third time was not the charm, unfortunately. Although the color was near perfect, the texture of the skin was not. By the time I realized I hadn’t properly dried the chicken, I had already smeared it with butter. I was hoping the oven, which was far more powerful than the Easy Bake Oven in my apartment, would compensate for this omission, but no dice. The inside, thankfully, was still near perfect
And so, after battling the crowds at Whole Foods and schlepping our groceries onto the subway, Steve finally got to try some of my (beginner) French cooking.
Carving the bird
One of these days I’ll get it right. And one of these days I’ll be brave enough to try a French dessert.
Gâteau de crêpes on the web log
April 13th, 2011 | Rachel
I’ve started noticing a few side effects of web-logging (sounds more sophisticated than blogging).
For starters, I’ve become one of those people who talks about their blog. “I was working on an entry for my blog the other day…” or “I don’t know if you’ve seen the latest update on my blog…” or “Please please please visit my blog so my Google Analytics report will make me feel good about myself….”
I’ve also started talking to myself… even more than usual. I find myself constantly having conversations with myself in my head about ideas for posts or what to write about a particular subject or how to say it. This is most prevalent when I am cooking. And, since many of these recipes take four hours to complete, I’ve had plenty of time to hash all of this out ahead of time.
Unfortunately, these helpful voices cease as soon as I turn on my laptop…
… like right now.
Ahem.
Maybe I should just stick to showing you photos of my food.
Tonight I created a savory gâteau de crêpes. I was previously only aware of dessert crêpe cakes, but Julia Child prefers cheese sauces and spinach and ham fillings.
Everything you need for perfect crêpes
According to Julia, the easiest way to make a smooth crêpe batter is to throw it all in a blender. I don’t own a blender, so I used the food processor. The results were excellent.
Set-up for making crêpes
The recipe calls for approximately 25 6.5″ crêpes
The filling begins with a light cheese sauce, part of which is mixed with sauteed ham or blanched spinach
This recipe was definitely a labor of love. I started around 7:00 pm and was still assembling crêpes at 11:00 pm. Julia says crêpes freeze very well, so the next time I have an hour to spare, I just might cook up 30 or 60 crêpes to freeze and use at a later date.
Behold, the gâteau de crêpes. It was magnificent.
Twenty five layers of deliciousness
The cake looks small (its only 6.5″ in diameter), but it is so rich that the servings should be pretty small. This would make an excellent lunch or first dinner course for six people.
Now that this is finished, I am starting to think I should have come up with some great life metaphor about layers. Ah well.
The quest for perfection continues…
April 5th, 2011 | Rachel
I gave the chicken another try. If I hadn’t worked until midnight tonight, I was going to give a third attempt. In fact, I am going to keep roasting chickens until I figure out how to achieve a perfect, crispy skin.
Yesterday, my friend Maria and I attended a wine class at New York Vintners. This wine shop shows up on Groupon every now and then, and they let you stock up on half-off wine classes. Yesterday’s class was entitled “Bad Ass Reds.” We sampled some bold reds from around the globe, and I walked away with eight bottles of wine for my meager collection (an underground wine cellar is on the list of must-haves for my French maison). I also learned that the Bandit (Three Thieves) boxed wine I’ve been purchasing from Fresh Direct is considered to be highly decent and superior to other cheap mass productions like Yellow Tail.
At some point we decided we needed some French food to go with all the wine in our bellies. Maria agreed to be my sous chef, so we schlepped our bottles of wine back to my place and then picked up another bird from the grocery store. The nice part about roasting chickens is the chickens are pretty cheap. Both of the chickens I bought this weekend cost around $8-9 and fed three people. They’d probably be even cheaper if I was open to the idea of eating a chicken that has been fed other chickens. I try and stick to the vegetarian-fed, free-range, comes-with-a-pedigree chickens. The most expensive part of my two roasted chicken dinners was actually the tomatoes on Friday. Two pounds of them cost me ten bucks. I don’t know what the going rate for tomatoes is, but that seems a little steep.
I’m getting up close and personal with our chicken while Maria peels the carrots
We had a fun time cooking, and I managed to remember to do all of the things that I forgot to do the last time (except trussing the bird… I don’t know where to begin looking for a mattress needle). In the end, the chicken was absolutely delicious, but just as before the skin was not crispy. I followed everything I was supposed to do, so I am not sure what the deal is.
I’ll give it a B- this time, although Maria gets an A+ for doing all of the peeling, chopping and dicing. At this rate, you’ll all get a chance to try my chicken before I figure out what is going wrong.
Perfectionism and Poulet Rôti
April 4th, 2011 | Rachel
Julia (Child) says the best way to judge a cook is by his or her roasted chicken. Sure, there are other ways of cooking chicken, like wrapping it in bacon and cooking it rotisserie-style (ummm….yum), but those ways doesn’t require anywhere near the level of oversight as poulet rôti. Julia says it takes a true perfectionist to get it right. You have to hover over it, basting it every 8 or so minutes, and the way to know it is done is by the sounds it makes.
I guess you could say I am a bit of a perfectionist. I particularly enjoy projects that are detail-oriented and that put my obsessive nature to good use. This is probably why baking was such a natural creative outlet to pick up while I was in law school. I first dabbled with cake decorating, but quickly grew bored with making cakes out of a box. Next were cookies and cupcakes, the crowd pleasers. But when that wasn’t enough, I switched to pies. Pies combine the art of pastry-making with the endless possibilities of cooking fruits, custards, and creams.
Even though I am used to dealing with finicky recipes, I was nervous about attempting the simple dish of French roasted chicken. I thought about making it my first dish because it is one of my all-time favorite things to eat, but I got scared I wouldn’t do it justice and my infantile run as an amateur French cook would come to an abrupt halt. Instead I made the more forgiving boeuf bourguignon.
You see, there is a part of me that believes I can get most things right on the first try. Call me egotistical — or at the very least overly sure of myself — but I’ve never started a project I couldn’t finish and I’ve never met a recipe I couldn’t make. When it comes to French roasted chicken, however, that part of my brain was strangely quiet. It was only with great hesitation that I forced myself to attempt this dish this past Friday night.
The other reason I chose this endeavor for this particular evening is the cook time was only an hour and twenty minutes. Even with a full day of work, there would be plenty of time to stop by the grocery store and cook in order to have dinner ready at a reasonable hour for my two dinner guests who so kindly agreed to be my guinea pigs.
Getting started with Julia Child and Edith Piaf on Pandora
The makings of roasted chicken
I was about five minutes into the recipe when I realized I overlooked the part in the recipe calling for a carrot and an onion to flavor the chicken. So, with the oven and chicken ready to go, I ran out the door to the grocery store around the corner. Buying groceries in the city can be expensive and heavy, but nothing beats beings able to run and grab a few forgotten items from the store and getting back before the end of the next song on the playlist.
Although I ended up with all of the correct ingredients, I still took one shortcut…. I didn’t truss my chicken. According to the instructions, I am supposed to use a mattress needle to sew up my chicken into a neat, tight bundle of poultry. I don’t even have string to tie Ms. Poulet’s legs together, much less a six-inch needle. Julia claims this is done for presentation’s sake, so I skipped over the trussing instructions and focused on the salting and buttering.
The secret ingredient is butter
Julia’s recipe for roasted chicken is simple. A little bit of salt and layers and layers of butter. You have to constantly babysit the bird, basting it every 5-8 minutes. Sounds like a pain, but I assure you the hovering is worth it. To accompany this dish, I repeated Julia’s buttered potatoes and added roasted tomatoes and buttered green beans.
Roasted tomatoes and buttered green beans
In the end, the chicken wasn’t perfect. I was running behind schedule, and I quickly learned that trying to entertain guests and cook a French dish for the first time isn’t easy. Between listening to the chicken and listening to my friends’ stories, I chose the latter. Perhaps as a result, the chicken ended up far from crispy, although the inside was still moist and delicious.
Crispy or not, we devoured the 3-pound bird, and the stripped carcass is now sitting in my freezing waiting to be turned into chicken stock.
I give myself a C+ on this one. I am going to have to do some research about chicken skin to figure out why mine wasn’t crispy. I suspect my oven is not as hot as it should it. Also, I was paranoid about ended up with dry chicken (what greater sacrilege could there be than a dry chicken?), so I took it out probably ten minutes too soon. But, like I said, it was still delicious.
