I took my first French cooking class more than a year ago. That started me off baking, after I realised how easy it was to make a delectable chocolate lava cake. Actually there were some issues there with the outcomes because my actual oven temperature was well below the stated levels and I had to deal with underbaked cakes, but the process was easy enough. So I tried out a few recipes from Chocolate and Zucchini and went on baking from there. But where French cooking was concerned, that's as far as it went.
So fast forward a year and a bit. I'm flying back after a holiday, the in-flight entertainment hangs for the umpteenth time. I borrow my cousin's copy of "My Life in France" (MLiF), Julia Child's (JC's) story of her introduction to France, French food and the art of French cooking. I read Chapter One, end of flight, return book. Interest definitely piqued. A few weeks later, my cousin SMSes: do I want to watch "Julie & Julia", a movie based on MLiF and "Julie & Julia", a book by Julie Powell, a blogger who cooked her way through all the recipes in Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" within a year. We go to movie, I walk out and buy "Julie & Julia","Julia's Kitchen Wisdom" (a slim little book which JC describes as a "mini aide memoire for general home cookery") and borrow MLiF from my cousin. That's what Meryl Streep's exuberant, effervescent portrayal of JC can do to a person. I highly recommend both MLiF and the movie.
Going through the recipes, I started with a basic omelette. JC highlights the technique (the ingredients are same old, same old - eggs plus butter, salt and pepper) which her French chef teacher taught her - the "shake-and-jerk" method. You beat the eggs, season them with salt & pepper, put butter into the frying pan and when it's hot, add the eggs. Allow the eggs a few seconds to solidify and then pull the handle vigorously towards you. Somehow Newton's Laws of Motion apply and the egg curls up upon itself in the frying pan till it is a beautiful, neat oval. Then you sort of unmould it into a plate. My unmoulding technique needs work but nonetheless I was very happy with my efforts. Next, scrambled eggs. Beautiful.But making an omelette or scrambled eggs are not something to write home about. I set my sights on making beef bourguignon, a dish which is not easy to spell or pronounce. It was featured twice in the movie and frankly it made me salivate just watching. My brother's birthday provided the occasion. My mother provided the beef. It only took me five hours to turn out a thoroughly delectable pot full of tender beef in an absolutely scrumptious broth, chock full of carrots, onions, mushrooms.
It was a slow, painstaking process which started with my making lardons (streaky bacon boiled for about 6 minutes to remove salt and smoky flavour), then drying the beef with paper towels before frying, to facilitate browning (what Julia doesn't tell you: use good quality paper towels which don't stick to the meat), and then popping beef, lardons, browned onions and carrots, one bottle of red wine plus assorted herbs and beef stock in a pot and cooking till the beef was tender. Whilst the beef was cooking I sauted some mushrooms, and brown-braised sliced white onion. The recipe calls for pearl onions but I couldn't find them in Fairprice so settled for a large white onion. The onions were fried in butter and oil till brown, then added chicken stock, a teaspoon of sugar and salt. They turned out silky smooth and sweet and yummy beyond words. The mushrooms and onions are added to the beef when cooked. But I still wonder how the pearl onions would have turned out.
Reactions: I seem to have gotten good reviews all round. There were leftovers, but I put that down to the rather excessive quantities of beef my mother thought necessary for the occasion. And this gives me an opportunity to eat more of the dish.
For anyone who wants the recipe, the link is here. I should note that there are differences in the recipe and the version in Julia's Kitchen Wisdom. Kitchen Wisdom omits the dredging with flour before the beef stock and wine added. The tomato paste is also replaced with a can of diced tomatoes.
Julia: I'm hooked!
