Barb and I made an awesome dinner tonight (if I do say so myself)! We put our own spin on two recipes from Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”: Suprêmes de volaille aux champignons (chicken breasts with mushrooms and cream) and gratin de chou frisé aux oignons (kale braised with onions). Nicely complementary, and even Caitlin loved it!
I’m not going to post the entire recipes, only our modifications. I’ve written before (and I’ll write it again) — if you’re even moderately interested in cooking, you need to buy a copy of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”! We got the two-volume hardback edition from Amazon for about $40 IIRC. Probably one of the best bargains ever.
Here are the changes Barb made to Suprêmes de volaille aux champignons, MAFC vol 1 pg 269:
- “at least four times” the mushrooms called for (Barb really likes cremini mushrooms, can you tell?)
- substitute lemon pepper for black pepper
- use garlic salt instead of plain salt
- add a bit of Tabasco sauce to taste
I made Gratin de chou frisé aux oignons based on the gratin d’épinards (spinach) recipe, MAFC vol 2 pg 360:
- obviously use kale instead of spinach
- added a dash or two of Tabasco with the salt and pepper
I didn’t take the time to cut the stems out of the kale, and this was a mistake. It didn’t taste bad, but the texture of the stems was a bit odd. Next time I’ll take a few minutes to trim the kale before blanching it.
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!
