Submitted by Irene
Re: Boeuf Bourguignon
What a wonderful family project! Cooking has a way of bringing people together - if you can get along in the kitchen, you’re likely to get along anywhere. It seems like we Americans are rediscovering a love for cooking (versus frozen dinners)!
Submitted by Clara
Re: Reine de Saba cake
This is the way i prepare it lil different: In a large bowl cream the butter and add the sugar, creaming until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Then add the melted chocolate and coffee/rum/or brandy. In a separate bowl whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff peaks form, then add a spoonful of sugar and whisk to stuff peak again. Add a spoonful of the egg white to the chocolate mixture to break it up and then add the flour and ground almonds. Add the remainder of the egg white mixture to the large bowl, stirring through with either a large spatula, a la Child’s method, or with a large metal spoon. Use figure of eight motions and fold in the eggwhite to the cake mixture with a gentle motion. If you’re heavy-handed you’ll knock all the air out. Better to have some pockets of flour or egg mixture dotted through the mixture then to be over-zealous about distributing all the ingredients
Submitted by Mark
Pretty amazing that Julia Child, in many ways has brought back cooking at home in the states. Good timing as well with the bad economy! Thanks for the post, I haven’t been able to master Coq au Vin as of yet!
Submitted by Lydia Williams
Truly a master of the culinary art, Julia Child enlightened me years ago and once more now.
Submitted by Ashley
Tarragon might be like cilantro, you either have the “gene” for it or not. I certainly love it, and the way you describe how the chicken came out makes me want to try it myself.
Submitted by Karen
Like so many others, I’ve fallen - once again - under the spell of Julia Child after seeing Nora Ephron’s film “Julie & Julia” {twice so far}. While Meryl Streep said that the charmingly effervescent, larger-than-life Julia she portrayed in the film is idealized, played as Julie Powell might have imagined The French Chef beside her as she cooked through 500-plus recipes, all you have to do is watch Julia to know that she was possessed with a huge, joyful spirit. As she huffs and puffs and careens her large frame around the kitchen, warbling all the while in her distinctive whooping voice, how can you stop yourself from feeling warm and fuzzy all over? Julia has served as my muse in the past; when I watched her appear on WGBH during the 1970’s, on a small black and white television in my mother’s kitchen, and then later in my own apartment when I decided to teach myself to cook, I referred to Mastering the Art of French Cooking {MTAOFC} as I attempted my first pommes Anna and chocolate soufflé. My passion for cooking grew and has taken me along a path. Years have gone by since I whipped my first egg white, and my cookbook collection has grown by the hundreds. After starting out a dedicated amateur home cook, I went on to work in restaurant kitchens, threw dinner parties and then eventually started a personal chef business. I also started a family, and those days of spending a whole weekend making a special dinner are way over. Now I find that I’ve been drawn back to the big, wonderful book, volumes 1 and 2, that took Julia and her colleagues Simone Beck {the third contributor, Louisette Bertholle, had no part in volume 2} more than a decade to produce. After getting reacquainted with them over the past few months, I decided that there’s no time like the present for me to re-master the basic foundations of French cooking that are meticulously laid out in these volumes - sort of like taking myself back to school.
Submitted by Phoebe
Thank you for the apple crisp recipe - it is wonderful and satisfying! I used Granny Smith and Stayman apples which worked well. Regarding Julia’s recipes, however, I choose to regard them as recreational reading!!
Submitted by Eileen Gavin Larsen
Oh,how exciting! I recently finished “Julie and Julia” (the book), have yet to see the movie, and then a free copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vol. I ended up miraculously in my lap just a week ago, whereupon I decided to venture forth… My first choice? Boeuf Bourgignon (spell?!). I feel like I have been shopping for days (lunchtime jaunts, always forgetting something), but I finally have all my ingredients and a date in my sister’s (awesome) kitchen tomorrow afternoon! Now, if I can just keep from sipping too much of the lovely “young and fruity” Beaujolais I bought and leave enough for the recipe…
Will post results later. Am really excited. I like the quote beneath one of Julia’s photos…”above all, have a good time.” I surely intend to!
