I admit it: I’m totally on the Julie-Julia bandwagon. I had heard about the Julie/Julia Project, one woman’s quest to cook all 536 recipes in Julia Child’s legendary cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days, in passing years ago and read the book a few months ago. The whole concept is right up my ally, for a few reasons. First, it combines two things I love, cooking and writing. Second, it resulted in a not-so-secret fantasy of mine coming to life: a normal girl’s blog launching her second career as a writer.
Wipe that smirk off your face and stop laughing. I ask you - what’s so damn funny about that??
Also, as a side note, from someone who has read Julie/Julia, seen the movie and is working her way through Julia Child’s autobiography My Life In France, they are all worth a read/view if you love to cook. Julia/Julia, the book, goes into great detail about the food - from the quest to find marrow bone to the trial/error/error/trial of making the perfect an edible crepe to more information than I ever wanted to know about aspics, it’s all there. The movie goes into much greater detail about the life story of Julia Child, which Julie Powell's book only touches on and is inspiring to anyone who would like to believe her life’s course is not set in concrete by age 30. My Life in France, of course, goes into even greater detail. None of the three are particularly drama-ridden or fast-paced, but I loved them all. You may or may not.
For these reasons and because on Christmas morning I unwrapped my own copy of MTAFC, for my second spot on the Soused Chef, I have decided to step it up a bit, moving on from nuked alcohol-laced cheese to one of Julia Child’s signature recipes, Boeuf a la Bourguignonne - Beef Stew in Red Wine, with Bacon, Onions and Mushrooms.
Some observations I made along the way:
1. First off, I know one of the points of this blog is to post the recipes, but for this one, I highly recommend just picking up a copy of MTAFC if you want to try it. (Available on Amazon for as little as $20.00.) Simply put, there is more to Boeuf a la Bourguignonne than just the recipe.
2. If I were attempting to cook my way through the entire book, attacking BB would’ve enabled me to cross off not one but three recipes, as during the course of the recipe one must also cross-reference and prepare Oignons Glaces a Brun (Brown-Braised Onions) as well as Champignons Sautes au Beurre (Sauteed Mushrooms).
3. This cookbook gives painstaking detail as to not only what you should or should not be doing, but the why behind it. In My Life in France Julia describes her style as one of “culinary exactness” with a “scientific approach”, and the book relays example after example of recipes she went round and round and round perfecting. Much of this painstaking work I will never benefit from, as seen in Exhibit A:
“Through trial and error, for instance, I deduced exactly how much gelatin must go into exactly how much liquid per exactly how much mayonnaise so one can make pretty mayo curlicues on a fish dish.”
But as one who is a self-admitted lover of detail and process, I can appreciate the effort.
One side effect of all this exactness, though, is an almost paralyzing intimidation, the likes of which I have never faced in the kitchen. Most cookbooks do not list the negative consequences of not following the recipe to a T; at times, Julia does:
“Successfully sauteed mushrooms are lightly browned and exude none of their juice while they are being cooked; to achieve this the mushrooms must be dry, the butter very hot, and the mushrooms must not be crowded in the pan. If you saute too many at once they steam rather than fry; their juices escape and they do not brown.”
The implied, unwritten next sentence being, “and you will forever be a miserable failure, whose biggest culinary feats will be undercooked Raman Noodles and anything done on a George Forman Grill.”
Even when a consequence is not spelled out, the premise under which you wind up cooking is that Julia specifies a certain amount or parameter because she’s tried it every other way with inferior results. That being said, imagine my horror when after spending an afternoon crawling all over Charm City looking for a “9 to 10 inch fireproof casserole, 3 inches deep”, I came home only to unpack a dish that upon measurement ended up being eight inches across and four inches deep. In a panic, I placed a call to my parents’ house, where one cook and several individuals with advanced degrees in mathematics were congregated. My mom passed the phone to my sister, to whom I shrieked, “I don’t want to talk to Half-Assed Cook Laurie, I want to talk to Math Genius Laurie - will this casserole dish be big enough??”
Together, we pieced together our learnings from 7th grade algebra:
Still, I proceeded very uneasily.
4. This recipe takes time. I cannot fathom why any sane person would attempt to cook and serve BB on a weeknight. I chose to whip through it on a Saturday afternoon to serve for Sunday dinner, as the recipe states it can be prepared a day in advance, subtly hinting it may even be better that way. I started cooking at 3PM, knowing full well I had dinner plans that evening. Two pieces of serendipity saved me from winding up in the dog house that evening: first, the beef cooked in less time than stated (see below). Second, my dinner companion for that night is a champion who can roll with the punches, not batting an eyelash when I opened the door with crazed look on my face, a spatula in my hand and sweatpants on my bum and acquiescing when I requested we grab a quick drink at a bar on the corner, so I could pop home and throw the cooled stew in the fridge before heading across town to dinner. Well played, sir, well played.
5. The recipe states, “Regulate heat so liquid simmers very slowly for 2.5 - 3 hours. The meat is done when a fork pierces it easily.” Thankfully, I set the kitchen timer for 2 hours, for when the buzzer sounded, I discovered a completely cooked stew, though thankfully, not overcooked. I wondered if it was because the casserole dish I used was cast iron, and this puzzled me tremendously to the point of asking the chef at the restaurant to stop by our table so I could ask (another piece my date took in stride). He thought it much more likely that my oven is not calibrated, something I will need to investigate. Bottom line, check in regularly with yo beef. Saying my life flashed before my eyes is a dramatic understatement of how I felt at the two hour mark.
6. Boeuf Bourguignonne is friggen off the hook good. Right out of the pot, served for dinner the next day (better), and lunch the day after (even better yet). Humina, humina, humina.....
To quote the great Carl Weathers, “Now wait a minute. This is just purely a social call. You know, just two adults getting a stew on, man.”
Getting my stew on,
khop
PS: Some additional pictures from along the way....
