Traditionally on Christmas Day we have my parents over for dinner. This year we made boeuf bourguignon for them, and it was fantastic!
Anybody who’s seen “Julie & Julia” knows that boeuf bourguignon was one of the uncredited stars of the show. It wasn’t terribly difficult to make, although it took almost four hours — some of the most excruciating time of our lives, while we smelled it cooking! This one recipe is totally worth the cost of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”.
I don’t see how we can possibly make every recipe in this book, because we’re going to be making this one pretty often! Barb just finished the last of our Christmas leftovers, and she’s already hinting that she’d like me to make it again, preferably tonight.
I was feeling a bit ambitious tonight, so I made three new dishes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking: suprêmes de volaille archiduc (paprika chicken w/ cream sauce), risotto, and petits pois étuvés au beurre (buttered peas).
I had been planning on making a longer-cooking chicken dish, so I started cooking that first. Big mistake! The chicken was ready quite a while before the other two dishes. I should have started the risotto first, then got the water boiling for the peas, then started the chicken.
I made the chicken with hot paprika, which was a bit too spicy for Caitlin and even Barb to a lesser extent. Next time, I’ll try half hot paprika and half normal.
Barb suggested trying shallots instead of onions for the chicken. And the risotto. And the peas. (Barb really likes shallots!)
I used 2 cups of chicken stock and 1 cup of white wine in the risotto, came out pretty well I thought.
We got “Julie and Julia” via Netflix a week or two back. Good show, definitely worth watching. But the food really got our attention! We started looking for a copy of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”, (hereafter MAFC), and found the 2-volume set available at Amazon.com for a very attractive price! (If I recall correctly, the 2-volume set was cheaper than either of the individual volumes separately.) Volume 1 is a great introduction to French cooking, while Volume 2 has an extended section on vegetables (along with plenty of other material).
Last night we made our first two recipes from MAFC, and they were both fantastic!! I made supêmes de volaille aux champignons (chicken with mushrooms and cream sauce) while Barb was busy with gratin mornay de brocoli (broccoli with cheese sauce). Our timing was off–the chicken was done long before the broccoli, and it smelled too delicious for us to wait until both were done. Barb took pictures of each dish, which I’ll post later.
I’ve added “mafc” as a tag on this blog, and I’ll be posting our adventures with these books under that tag. I won’t be posting any of the recipes from MAFC, so do yourself a favor and buy these books!
I finally finished my first antenna tonight! I made a twinlead slim jim and tried getting on the air. Unfortunately, there aren’t many people on this late on a holiday evening. I was able to make one contact with a gentleman up in Placerville. He reported me 5×5, so I must have been hitting the repeater fairly strong. I’ll try again tomorrow, during the noon net at least.
The only difficulty I found with this design is the feedpoint. Stripping the insulation mid-cable is a little fiddly, but a sharp knife does wonders. When I soldered the coax (RG-58), I should have done the shield first–it was a bear to solder the (stranded) shield once the center conductor was already attached. A pair of “third hands” may have helped.
This is a recipe we got from Carol Hopfe.
- 2 cans (~14 oz ea) non-marinated artichoke hearts, drained, rinsed, and chopped
- 1.5 c mayonnaise
- 1 can (~5 oz) diced green chiles, drained
- 1.5 c parmesan cheese
- (optional) 4 jalapeños, seeded and chopped
Mix all the ingredients and add to a buttered casserole dish. Bake in a 325˚ oven for ~30 minutes.
Thanksgiving Eve! 
Things to do today:
- Make stuffing
- Get mac-n-cheese ready for the oven
- Make pie crust(s) dough
- Hard-boil the eggs for deviled eggs
- Make another pumpkin roll (Barb thought the first one would disappear too quickly)
And finish cleaning up the house!
Two days until Thanksgiving, time to start preparing our feast! Today (Tuesday) is when we:
- De-bone the turkey (which has been defrosting in the frig since Saturday)
- Make turkey stock with the bones
- Make the cranberry sauce
- Mix up the spinach dip
- Try the pumpkin roll recipe (in case it doesn’t work out, we have time to do something else tomorrow)
- Cornbread (for our stuffing tomorrow)
We also be making mashed potatoes with our dinner tonight, since we need some leftovers to make poppy seed rolls.
It’s just about time for my favorite holiday of the year, Thanksgiving! My daughter thought I was going extreme geek last year when I wrote up our notes from Thanksgiving 2008, but a few weeks ago when we started planning for this year’s feast she admitted how useful those geeky notes are.
We’re holding steady at around 30 people, although some of them are only showing up for appetizers or dessert since they have other commitments for dinner itself. Some folks from last year aren’t coming this year, but we have some new people joining us! My cousin, Kevin, whom we haven’t seen for many years (decades?!?), will be bringing Robin to join us this year. The Benjamins, our friends from Caitlin’s gymnastics team, will be joining us for the first time, along with Emily (a friend of Caira’s).
Based on our experience last year, we’ve tweaked the menu a bit:
Appetizers
Dinner
- Roast turkey
- Cornbread stuffing
- Mashed potatoes
- Gravy
- Cider baked ham
- Macaroni and cheese
- Cranberry sauce
- “Awesome strawberry stuff” (Nora)
- Cranberry relish (the Benjamins)
- Sweet potato casserole (the Benjamins)
- unspecified veggie dish (the Benjamins)
- Jellied cranberries (Nana)
Desserts
- Pumpkin pie
- Pumpkin roll
- Apple-cranberry pie (Emily)
- Mincemeat pie (Nana)
- Apple pie (maybe)
- Whipped cream and ice cream
Here’s a recipe for spinach dip from one of Barb’s co-workers.
- 1 c sour cream
- 1 pkg (1/2 lb) cream cheese, softened
- 1 pkg ranch dressing mix
- 1 pkg (10 oz) frozen spinach
- green onions
- parsley
- dill
- salt
- pepper
- garlic, minced
- 1 can (8 oz) water chestnuts
- 1 red bell pepper, minced
Combine all ingredients and refrigerate overnight.
A few nights ago we watched “Jet Lag“, starring Juliette Binoche and Jean Reno. With those two in the leading roles my expectations were pretty high for this movie, perhaps too high. It was decent, worth watching, and the score (by Eric Serra, who also did “Subway“) was pretty good. But the real reason for this blog post is the recipe that was tucked into the credits, Veal Mignonettes. This is the dish that Félix (Jean Reno) prepares for Rose (Juliette Binoche) near the end of the movie.
Veal Mignonettes (serves 2)
- 3/4 lb veal
- 1/2 lb carrots
- 4 small zucchini
- 6 tomatoes
- 2 leeks (white part only)
- flat-leaf parsley
- pepper
- coarse salt
- 1 Tbsp olive oil
- armagnac (cognac?)
- 1 tsp balsamic vinegar
- 1 pinch sesame seed
Cut the veal into 1-inch slices. Julienne the vegetables.
Heat olive oil in a skillet and saute the vegetables over low heat until al-dente, about 5 minutes.
Add a pinch of coarse salt, the parsley, and pepper.
Remove the vegetables from the pan, add the veal and armagnac (~1 Tbsp?) and flambé for about 1 minute.
Return to the burner and add a pinch of sesame seeds and the balsamic vinegar. Serve with the al-dente vegetables.
There were some errors in the recipe which I’ve done my best to correct. For instance, the veal and carrots were given in “ld”, which I presume was supposed to be “lb”. Also, the armagnac is never referred to in the instructions. A 1-inch thick slice of veal seems a bit much — in the movie, it looks more like 1/2 or 3/4 inch.
I’ve never been successful with flambé. For some reason the pan never lights for me. Anybody have a suggestion as to what I might be doing wrong?
