Recipe #9: Stuffed duck, baked cucumbers, and blackberry flan

This week’s recipe for the Pâté de Canard en Croûte covers 7 pages in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1. This is certainly not a record for a Julia Child recipe (French bread covers 22 pages) but, based on this alone, the recipe could be considered daunting to any cook. What are we saying? A recipe that requires deboning a duck, preparing stuffing, sewing the stuffing into the duck, making a pastry crust, wrapping the duck in the pastry, and then decorating it with pastry cut-outs, is daunting! However, Julia provides detailed written instructions and clear illustrations so that anyone will know exactly how to accomplish the simplest and most complicated dishes in her cookbooks. “You’ve got all the directions and if you can read, you can cook,” she wrote.

These are some of the trussing needles Julia kept in a drawer along with other small tools and gadgets. Although she used the “French needle and string system” for trussing poultry, she recognized there were many ways to tie a chicken together to prevent it from falling apart during cooking. She advised using any system that appealed, and if cooks didn’t have a proper trussing needle, they could use “a sailmaker’s needle, a mattress needle, or a knitting needle with a hole bored in one end.” From Julia Child’s Kitchen, pp. 219-20.

Kudos to this week’s contributors, project manager Ann Burrola and her friend Lucinda, who not only prepared Pâté de Canard en Croûte (Boned Stuffed Duck Baked in a Pastry Crust), but also made baked cucumbers AND blackberry flan.

READ THE FULL POST ON OUR BLOG for recipe sources

SUBMIT YOUR PHOTOS AND STORIES

—Posted by the National Museum of American History

Recipe #8: Waterzooi

“Four-in-Hand Chicken” was Julia’s seventy-eighth show of The French Chef, in which she demonstrated how viewers could make four distinct dishes from one basic recipe for chicken simmered in white wine and vegetables. One was for Waterzooi, a Flemish recipe that called for a skillful blending of egg yolks and cream at just the right moment in the cooking process. The first step in the basic recipe involves cutting vegetables into thin slices, a task Julia might have carried out with a mandoline. She had two: a simple, inexpensive, Japanese-made plastic tool and one made of heavy metal, a very traditional French chef’s mandoline. Both had multiple and replaceable blades for slicing, waffling, julienning, and making “french fries.”

This week, business program manager Kathy Sklar overcomes her skepticism and lets Julia lead the way to a fabulous waterzooi.

READ THE FULL POST ON OUR BLOG for recipe sources

SUBMIT YOUR PHOTOS AND STORIES of Waterzooi

—Posted by the National Museum of American History

Recipe #5: Turkey Orloff

Buffet for 19 may sound frightening, but it was Julia’s menu created for the television series Julia Child & Company. This meal for a crowd includes Turkey Orloff, this week’s recipe. Based on the traditional Veal Prince Orloff (named for a 19th-century Russian gourmet by a French chef), Julia substituted turkey for the veal. She also used a food processor instead of a knife, freeing herself (and her students) from the tedium of chopping 15 cups of onions and mincing several quarts of mushrooms by hand. Julia introduced the Robot Coupe, the French predecessor to the now-familiar food processor, to her viewers on The French Chef. She was using the food processor pictured here just before she gave her kitchen to the Smithsonian in 2001; it sat on the butcher block near her shears, cleavers, and other sharp tools.

This week, deputy registrar Tom Bower shares his experience with making Julia’s turkey orloff, and some personal notes on making stock.

READ THE FULL POST ON OUR BLOG for recipe sources

SUBMIT YOUR PHOTOS AND STORIES of Turkey Orloff

—Posted by the National Museum of American History

Recipe #3: Coq au Vin

Whether you purchase a whole chicken or use pre-cut pieces for Coq au Vin, you should check out Julia’s detailed instructions on disjointing poultry (not for the faint of heart) in Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume II (pp.312-315). In another example of how she organized her kitchen work spaces, Julia kept her poultry shears, along with other cutting tools, on a pegboard hook near the butcher’s block in her kitchen. She didn’t waste time hunting for a tool in a drawer, but had it right at hand near the surface where it would be used.

This week, education technologist Carrie Kotcho shares her experience with a Julia Child recipe that changed the course of her life.

READ THE FULL POST ON OUR BLOG for recipe sources

SUBMIT YOUR PHOTOS AND STORIES of Coq au Vin

—Posted by the National Museum of American History