Julia Child and All of Us: Our First Anniversary & Seventh Meeting

The Lovely Ladies who braved Mastering the Art of French Cooking in February, from left clockwise: Liz Mortensen, Crystal Armstrong, Catherine Fleming, Sharon Baker, Christine Valada, Laura Brennan, Julia Roberts, Susan Avallone, Michelle Resnick, T Valada-Viars, and Lisa Klink (photo by Kerry Glover.)

Being brave souls and encouraged by the fact that we made it through a year of meetings, the Cook Book Book Club celebrated its first anniversary by turning to the feared Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child on February 4, 2017.

Menu 

Pan Francais

Pate

Aigo Bouido (Garlic Soup), v.1, p. 47
Quiche aux Fruits de Mer, v. 1, p. 149
Camembert Quiche, v. 1, p. 148
Coquilles St. Jacque a la Parisienne, v. 1, pp. 216-218
Filets de Poisson a la Bretonne, v. 1, p. 211 

 Pommes de Terre au Basilic, v. 2, p. 388
Poached Chicken in White Wine w/Provencal, v.1, p. 261 

 Duck with Cherries, v. 1
Vegetables a la Grecque, v. 1, p. 537
Reine de Saba (Chocolate & Almond Cake), v.1, p. 677
Clafouti aux Poires (Pear Flan), v. 1, p. 656 

I find this book somewhat intimidating, not because the instructions are complicated, but more because they are laid out in such an exacting manner that something that should only take a page runs to six, or a recipe that could be done in a matter of hours takes days. We've come to the conclusion that this may be because when the book came out, there were not chefs all over television doing demonstrations, making home cooks far more sophisticated in their cooking skills and much less likely to need such elaborate instruction.

But take the French Bread for example. It is less complicated than Nancy Silverton's bread recipes which begin with creating your own starter from the grapes you have growing on the trellis outside your kitchen in your potager. No kidding. I did this, since how else could I know that my grapes were untreated by pesticides. And I will also add that it is the only time my attempt at making a sourdough starter actually worked the way it was supposed to. What I did not know was how much flour would give up its life to keep the starter alive over the course of about 18 months, because there's no way three people could eat as much bread as would be required to use all of it. The dogs were very happy with the resulting dog biscuits which became the go-to when overwhelmed by the Blob That Grew in My Kitchen and I did pretty much work my way through the entire Breads from the La Brea Bakery cook book. But I digress.

The recipe for bread spans pages and pages. It suggests a time-table of around 18 hours. I started the night before, and I let one rise take place outside on a cold night--I had no room in my refrigerator for that particular proofing of the dough. I decided not to do baguettes because I did not have the cloche or a metal pan to hold the narrow loaves in the manner described. I did, however, have a pair of bannetons, left over from the above mentioned affair with Nancy, that I may never have used. Julia gave me the instructions I needed to be able to use them without the dough sticking to the baskets: a spray of Pam and rice flour. Worked like a charm. 

Shaped loaf before putting it in a banneton.

Finishing the baking.

I did the final rise in my oven at the "proof" setting, which was a setting I knew I wanted once I heard about it. I can use it while the other oven (I have a double electric wall oven) is preheating my baking stone to 550 degrees. (The new oven, which was installed days before Thanksgiving, makes it easier to add a pan of water to produce steam for the desired crisp crust on French bread.)

After the final rise, the dough was carefully rolled out of the banneton onto parchment paper, scored, and slid into the oven onto the baking stone. I added cold water and ice to the heated metal pan on the bottom of the oven to create steam. The bread had plenty of oven spring and it was soft on the inside while crunchy on the outside. I served it with unsalted Kerry Gold butter (because I couldn't find any French cultured butter) and we also ate it with Julia Robert's pate. Needless to say, everyone loved the final product and I fully intend to make it again (although I am now working on wet-batter Pullman loaves for sandwiches since I finally broke down and bought a Pullman pan.)

Chicken liver pate.

Liz Mortensen made Aido Bouido, or garlic soup. It was actually light and not overly garlicy (not that that would have been a problem with our group.) I think that one of the pleasures of these meals is that someone almost always makes soup and we get to serve it in the cute cream soup bowls that go with the Aynsley Cottage Garden soup tureen. (I also just acquired the most wonderful replacement for the plastic ladles we've been using. I can't wait to show it to everyone next month.)

Aido Bouido

We then moved on to two different quiches. Michelle Resnick made Quiche aux Fruits de Mer while Catherine Fleming made the Camembert Quiche.

Quiche aux Fruits de Mer

Camembert Quiche

I know that Michelle had done a dry run on her quiche a week or two before our lunch because she sent me a text mentioning she had a date with Julia that night. Catherine's choice reminded me of the time my husband and I were watching Food Network one Saturday night and there was a show on all about camembert. When it finished, we looked at each other and proclaimed "must have cheese!" We raced out into the San Fernando Valley darkness at 8:30 on a weekend night, looking for any place that might be open and would have the cheese and bread we sought. Trader Joe's let us down, but we were able to get to Whole Foods where the large cheese display did, in fact, have camembert and some other excellent French cheeses that we consumed for our supper. Both quiches would make an excellent meal with a side salad. I always forget how relatively easy quiche is to make and that it is a good way to incorporate leftovers into a different dish.

We were treated to two different fish preparations for our next course, Coquilles St. Jacques a la Parisienne made by Kerry Glover and Filets de Poisson a la Bretonne made by Lisa Klink. 

Coquilles St. Jacques a la Parisienne

Kerry decided to make the scallops in a casserole, rather than in individual dishes, because it would be easier to transport. I let her know that if she wanted to make them in individual ramekins next time, I had more than enough for everyone. Somehow, I became obsessed with the Cottage Garden ramekins and I now own more than two dozen of them. Unfortunately, I only have half-a-dozen ramekin forks. (First World problem, indeed.)

Though I may have forgotten to process the photos, I don't seem to have any pictures of Lisa's dish, or the Pommes de Terre au Basilic that Sharon Baker made, which we ate with the fish dishes. If I find the photos, or if anyone else has them, I will add them to this post later.

We moved on to a poultry course with Poached Chicken in White Wine with Provencal, made by Crystal Armstrong, and Duck with Cherries, which I made.

Poached Chicken in White Wine with Provencal

Duck with Cherries

Crystal's chicken looks like a good choice for a large group of people and tasted very good in its tomato-based sauce. While there was enough duck to go around for a tasting meal, as this obviously was, I think that there's really never enough duck which really is a stretch if there's more than 3 people eating. I would definitely consider two ducks to be the minimum for six people if it is the main course. The cherry accompaniment is made separately and spooned over the duck portion when it is carved and plated. I would definitely consider spatchcocking the duck to help it render the fat and cook a little faster.

We ate Laura Brennan's Vegetables a la Grecque with the poultry course and they could almost serve as a European salad course prior to dessert. She made one version with eggplant and a second with mushrooms. Both were finished with an oil and lemon juice dressing, which was good for cutting the fat from the bird dishes.

Vegetables a la Grecque (Eggplant).

Vegetables a la Grecque (Mushrooms).

Also missing from the photographs is the braised red cabbage with chestnuts I made, which was the book's suggested side for the duck. It was very popular with everyone, but it is another of those dishes which take a lot longer to make than even the cook book indicates. It is definitely a winter dish.

There were two desserts, a pear clafouti and Reine de Saba. My sister T Valada-Viars made the Clafouti aux Poires, which the cook book translated as "pear flan." It was a very light dough, but not so creamy as a flan which is more like a pudding.

Clafouti aux Poires on the range.

Clafouti aux Poires after it finished baking in the oven.

The Claflouti started on the stove-top but finished in the oven. She cooked it in a 10" Le Creuset braising pan.

Susan Avallone, who always looks for something to bake, took on the Reine de Saba, one of Julia Child's favorite recipes. It is a very rich, chocolate and almond torte with a chocolate glaze. Susan tried it two different ways, with different textured almond meal or flour.

Two versions of Reine de Saba.

Either way, it was delicious.

I might very well suggest we revisit Julia sometime in the future. There are so many more recipes to try and we did such a good job with it the first time around, it will be far less intimidating when we go back to it again. However, so many cook books, so little time. Bon appetito!

Cook Book Book Club Meeting #5

In October, the Cook Book Book Club met to take on Classic Indian Cooking by Julie Sahni. I've own the book since it came out in 1980, but I am on my third copy. The first, I lost in our house fire in 2009. The replacement was eaten by my dog Ginger as we prepared for this event.

I used to cook a lot of Indian food. Unfortunately, my husband can't eat it, so I reserve it for dinner out with my sister or my friend Melinda Snodgrass. Choosing it for CBBC meant a real treat for me. (As it happened, the spousal unit was in the hospital when we did this meeting, so he didn't even have to smell the spices in the kitchen.)

The menu:

Hyderabad Lime Soup--p. 141

Spinach Bread--p. 410

Cucumber and Tomato Salad/Raita-p. 343

Smoked Aubergine (Eggplant) with Herbs--p. 305
Kabob Patties Laced with Ginger & Mint--p. 109 (sadly, no photos)

Fragrant Stuffed Tomatoes--p. 106
Cauliflower & Scallions w/ Black Mustard Seeds--p. 301
Green Peas and Indian Cheese in Fragrant tomato Sauce--p. 266
Chick-peas in Ginger Sauce--p. 274
Chicken Kabuli-- p. 219
Cashew Nut Fudge-- p. 478
Lassi--p. 488

The Table

The table setting was Aynsley Cottage Garden with Libbey cobalt glassware and Oneida Act 1 flatware. Aynsley is a discontinued English bone china pattern that has so many kinds of pieces that one rarely sees any more. I started my collection many years ago with a teapot, a sugar bowl, and a small serving dish. I then fell in love with the strawberry "basket" which has a small sugar and creamer. It has slowly grown into a full set of dishes to go with the vases and serving pieces. Most recently, I became obsessed with the double-handled cream soup bowls and now I have enough for our meetings.

Sweet Lassi

I am a big fan of sweet lassi drinks. Julie Sahni's book was the first one I found which actually had a recipe for the drink, which consists of yogurt, cream, sugar, ice, and rosewater put through a blender. It is the perfect accompaniment for spicy Indian food, since dairy cuts the fire from chiles. I made almost a gallon of it. It's a drink I love having available in the refrigerator, even if it needs a quick run through the Vitamix before serving.

Hyderabad Lime Soup

Lunch started with Hyderabad Lime Soup which I also made. It was a two-day process to make the soup, since I made the vegetable broth base first. It was mild despite a number of spices like cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, and turmeric. Coconut milk smoothed the puree of potato and onions that are cooked in the broth and kept it vegan. A final splash of of lime made it a very refreshing soup.

Palak Raratha and Kheere ka Raita

 Amie Brockway-Metcalf made spinach bread and raita. She said the bread, a variation on paratha, was very easy to make. The raita was a cucumber and yogurt salad with tomato. Raita is

Murgh Kabuli

Laura Brennan made the chicken kabuli, and is a great example of how far she's come as a self-described non-cook when she agreed to be part of the CBBC.  Unfortunately, the photograph does not do justice to how good the dish was. Almonds thicken the sauce, which is fragrant with cardamom, cumin, coriander, and fennel.

Safaid Channe

Michelle Resnick made the chickpeas in ginger sauce. The lunch had a number of dishes good for our vegetarian and pescatarians.

Bharta

Eggplant is always a safe bet with the Cook Book Book Club (not so much with my husband and son, however), so I always look forward to checking out new ways to cook it. The smoked aubergine/bharta Mary DeLongis made had peas as well as eggplant.

Matar Paneer

Liz Mortensen went with the classic India combination of cheese and peas in a tomato-based sauce called Matar Paneer. Really good, and it reaheats pretty well.

Bahare Tamatar

The fragrant stuffed tomatoes that Catherine Fleming made were rather fragile, and did not transport as well as she would have liked. That didn't stop us from finishing them off.

Gobhi Kari

My sister made this cauliflower dish, which cooked up amazingly quickly. She was afraid she had burned the mustard seeds when she had  a momentary distraction, but it was really quite good. She also got the kari leaves for free from the nearby Indian grocery--I guess the two stems she needed was too little to worry about.

Once again, my friend Susan Avallone was without a real baking challenge for the lunch, so she decided to give the fudge a try instead. Like many Indian snacks, it was very sweet, but it did disappear.

Kajoo Barfi

Cook Book Book Club, Meeting #3

The Cook Book Book Club got together today to prepare recipes from the James Beard Award winning Every Grain of Rice by Fuchsia Dunlop.

The focus of the book is Chinese home-style cooking, which turned out to be relatively easy to execute once we were able to get our hands on the proper ingredients. Fortunately, we live in a city where exotic ingredients are relatively easy to acquire. I have rapidly become familiar with the layout of the 99 Ranch market in Van Nuys.

We had thirteen women at the table today, which added up to fifteen dishes, plus rice and tea. The daughter of one of our members recently returned from China, of which she said, people basically eat rice with small bits of dishes to flavor it, and when we started going through the cookbook, we realized the portions were too small for everyone to get a taste. We suspended one of our rules for this session and everyone doubled recipes to make sure there would be enough to go around. 

The menu:

 Hot & Sour Soup,(vegetarian), P. 242
Northern Style Boiled Dumplings w/Ginger Pork Filling in Schuanese Chili Oil Sauce, P. 298
Xian Pot-Sticker Dumplings (non-vegetarian), P. 308
Tuzi's Slow-Cooked Ribs w/Red Fermented Tofu, P. 102
Slippery Wood Ear Salad w/Cilantro, P. 60
Stir-Fried Garlic Stems w/Bacon & also vegetarian version w/Mushrooms, P. 206
Schuanese Dry-Fried Green Beans (vegetarian), P. 150
Smoky Eggplant w/Garlic
Pock-Marked Old Woman's Tofu, P. 76
Spinach in Ginger Sauce, P. 64
Chinese Broccoli in Ginger Sauce, P. 182
Cold Chicken w/Spicy Sichuanese Sauce, P. 48
Mussels with Black Bean Sauce, P. 146
Bear's Paw Tofu, P. 80

I was able to use my new "summer" dishes, Coastal Breeze Blue from 222 Fifth. I found the dishes a few months ago at HomeGoods, but my initial decision to purchase only eight place-settings was a mistake because we usually have at least 10 people over for dinner on Sundays. With the help of Replacements, Ltd., I got the balance of dishes to make sixteen place-settings.

The pattern has shells and sea horses, and will look very nice with my Rogers Bros. antique flatware pattern called Columbia.

The menu for lunch:

Hot & Sour Soup (vegetarian version) made by Laura Brennan

When I first invited Laura to join the cook book group, she indicated that she didn't do much cooking. She said the Hot & Sour Soup was definitely outside her comfort zone, but she did a great job with it and her son enjoyed it as well.

Slippery Wood Ear Salad with Cilantro made by Nan Cohen

 I'm familiar with Slippery Wood Ear Fungus as ingredient in Hot & Sour Soup, but this salad, with its very spicy chile, did awaken the mouth for the rest of the meal.

Northern Stye Boiled Dumplings with Ginger Pork Filling in Schuanese Chili Oil sauce made by Catherine Fleming

Poor Catherine had a spill on her way to the house, and I can only imagine how her car must smell with the sauce sloshing out of the dish, but the dumplings were delicious.

Xian Pot-Sticker Dumplings made by Lisa Klink

Tuzi's Slow-Cooked Ribs with Red Fermented Tofu made by Christine Valada

On a day when there was a lot of last-minute finishing going on in my kitchen, the Slow-Cooked Ribs were finishing up in the oven and only needed to be put on a platter at the last minute.

Stir-Fried Garlic Stems with Bacon made by Mary De Longis

Mary was kind enough to do both the bacon version and the vegan mushroom version of the Stir-Fried Garlic Stems. Most of us enjoyed both versions, but it was especially nice for our resident vegetarian to have a version she could eat. The garlic stems look a lot like string beans.

Stir-Fried Garlic Stems with Mushrooms by Mary De Longis

Schuanese Dry-Fried Green Beans (vegetarian version) made by T Valada-Viars

Smoky Eggplant with Garlic made by Michelle Heinig Resnick

Pock-Marked Old Woman's Tofu made by Liz Mortensen

Bear's Paw Tofu made by Julia Roberts

Chinese Broccoli in Ginger Sauce made by Sharon Baker

Spinach in Ginger Sauce made by Liz Mortensen (foreground)

Cold Chicken with Spicy Schuanese Sauce made by Laurie Perry

Mussels with Black Bean Sauce made by Amie Brockway-Metcalf

Laurie Perry was so happy with the Cold Chicken with spicy Schuanese Sauce, she's planning to make it a staple for picnics at the Hollywood Bowl. It was very refreshing and is a good choice for a summer meal.

I was delighted that Amie decided to make the Mussels with Black Bean Sauce. I love mussels, but the cleaning takes such a long time. She told us that her vendor provides them already scrubbed. They were terrific and I would have been happy to make a whole meal of them.

We had two tofu dishes, plus fermented tofu was used to flavor the ribs. The Pock-Marked Old Woman's Tofu contained fermented black beans while the Bear's Paw Tofu was fried. The Pock-Marked Tofu got better and better as we sampled leftovers after lunch was over. Lunch was actually heavy on vegetarian dishes with the string beans, broccoli, spinach, and eggplant.

All of us agreed that it was a particularly good cookbook. I am likely to try more of the recipes because it makes Chinese cooking very accessible and the portions are good for the three or four of us on a weeknight.

Back to the Kitchen

Where did the summer go? The last vestiges are sitting in a box on my counter: peaches waiting to be made into a cobbler or sorbet if they last until the weekend. I've been enjoying one an evening as dessert and I will be sad when they are all gone.

We traveled only as far as San Diego, celebrated a major birthday (mine), and then it seems like I was in tax-prep hell for all of August and September. That's done, and I'm well on my way to making up for all of the backlog of statement reconciliations I've avoided doing for YEARS, as statements got lost or misplaced during the various moves because of the fires. I find reconciling bank statements somewhat zen, and I have a permanent spot to work on bookkeeping now, which will encourage me to work on this stuff during the year.

Right now, I'm looking outside at gloom and cold and all I can think of is how wonderful it would be to be at home making huge pots of soup: butternut squash for me and chicken for my son Michael. We're both going through dental work right now and soup is easy to eat.  Len's been in New York for a week and he sounds like he'll need that chicken soup as well when he gets home tonight. It's been raining in New York and he was sneezing when we spoke on the phone last night.

It isn't as if I haven't been busy cooking for the Sunday Super Supper Squad. It's just that I usually forget to grab the camera before the chow hounds chow down. I've done some new recipes and some old reliable ones. In one case, I made a beer bread that my friend Melinda Snodgrass insisted I had made for her one winter that caused her to go out and buy the Silver Palate cookbook it is in, but I had no recollection of ever making it. It was a big hit, and went well with the pot of vegetarian chili I made that night.

Another recent evening, I did make pots of butternut squash soup and chicken with rice soup for the gang, along with an old favorite recipe for a no-kneed rye bread. The stock for the chicken soup came from all of the pieces left over from when I fabricate whole chickens. Eventually, you need to empty out the freezer, and it was a good time to do it. The resulting meal was food that looked like October, in a very good way. Plus there were leftovers for lunch at work.

With Len out of town last week, I took the opportunity to make a dish with an ingredient he doesn't like: wild salmon. I used a variation on Marcella Hazan's baked fish and potatoes, and it was a huge hit. The leftovers were delicious as well.  When I started making the recipe I lived on the East Coast, and I was able to use blue fish filets, but I can't find them in California. The wild salmon is a good West Coast substitute. There were 10 of us for dinner, so I needed two large filets of salmon and I used 5 pounds of the small red, white, and blue potato mixed bag that Costco sells.  They fit nicely down the center feed tube of a large Cuisinart, so slicing them all thinly took very little time.  Marcella says to peel the potatoes, but, unlike my friend Mark Evanier, I like the skins, so I kept them on.

The potatoes are coated with a mixture of minced garlic, olive oil, and parsley.  I mixed them together in a large bowl, adding additional olive oil so the potatoes were all covered. I added some salt and pepper. Then spread the potatoes out in as thin a layer as possible in a large pan (in this case, two half-sheet pans), sprinkle with coarse salt, and put into a 450 degree oven for 15-20 minutes.  Then they are turned and I left them in the oven for another 10 minutes before I took them out to lay the salmon on the top, skin-side to the potatoes.  Spread more of the olive oil, parsley, minced garlic, salt and peper mixture over the top of the fish.  Bake for approximately 12-15 minutes, until the salmon is almost cooked through. Take it out of the oven and let it rest for a few minutes to continue cooking and then serve.

I made a salad of butter lettuce, radicchio, and thinly sliced fennel tossed with a lemon-garlic-olive-oil dressing and plenty of salt and pepper to go with it. Plus I cut up a couple of butternut squashes and roasted them for a side. Dinner was colorful and delicious.

Lunch at TGI Fridays

Len called me yesterday to see if I'd like to meet him and Bob Skir for lunch. They get together for lunch every Wednesday and then head off to the comic book shop for their weekly fixes. The TGI Fridays was a bit out of their way, but close to my office and I agreed (even though it would never be my choice for a meal.)

I am pleased to report that TGI Fridays makes an excellent tomato basil soup, almost as good as the tomato soup I had at Angeli Cafe last year. It was the soup of the day and I had it as part of the Endless Lunch special, which included soup, salad, bread, and beverage for less than $10. I don't know if the tomato soup is served every day or every Wednesday, but it is definitely worth considering the next time you go to TGI Fridays.