To Souffle or Not Souffle

 Just read Friday, January 3, 2023 of the Julie/Julia Project. 

This blog describes how deceitful souffles can be. 

Lying bastards. 

Souffles are tricky on a diet.  They fool you.  You take a bite of a delicious salmon soufflé, perfectly browned, light and puffy, and you can’t help thinking, against all your experience and judgement, “oh, this couldn’t be bad.  This is like eating yummy, moist air.”

Then before you know it, you’ve eaten half a soufflé.

💯 #truth

Prior to preserving a record of #adventuresincooking with images and words, Danyale and I made JC's cheese souffle recipe. 🧀

I have fond memories of cheese souffles. My maternal grandmother had a recipe from the Orillia Junior League (or some other hoity toity group) for an easy peasy cheese souffle. 

It included:

• 4 eggs (or maybe 5, my memory is fuzzy)
• 1 cup shredded cheddar
• 1 can cream of mushroom soup (preferably Campbell's)
• Salt, pepper and some other spice (again, fuzzy memory)
• Some other ingredient that I'm sure I'm forgetting

With this recipe, I learned what stiff but not dry egg white peaks were suppose to look and act like. I learned that a souffle will fall some but not completely if you had gently folded the egg whites into the rest of the mixture. 

I think I started making this on my own around 13-14. I was an expert at cheese souffle! 

Quite an accomplishment for a teen girl (honestly, teen girls should take the wins whenever they can get them but I digress...). 

I made that sucker #allthetime. 

Now, I was making JCs souffle. 

It was more complicated than my grandmother's recipe and but not overly so. I will say there was a lot of warnings about not-doing-this and not-doing-that. I still felt confident.

I was still accomplished at making souffle (even though I hadn't made one in a couple decades).

It was delicious! (I was never worried, much)

 Light, puffy, crispy on the outside and cheesy. Just like eating yummy, moist air, as Julie states. 

And yes, Danyale and I COULD NOT STOP eating it!

We wiped that sucker out and started planning when the next one should be made. 

The moral of the story is: don't be afraid of souffles. Go make one and gorge yourself! 

And forget about a diet.

🦞 murder 🔪 Qu'est-ce que c'est?

 PSA Warning: This post contains links to graphic murder videos. IF you are squeamish, don't click the links.

 I just read Tuesday, December 17, 2002 of the Julie/Julia Project.

This scene is fabulous especially with the Talking Heads soundtrack. Love it! Julie steams lobsters.

However, the Tuesday, December 17th blog post wasn't this recipe. It was the last lobster recipe for Julie and was Homard a 'Americaine. If steaming a living creature isn't bad enough, this recipe requires murdering a LIVE 🦞. 

Yes, I said LIVE. 

I guess the steamed ones are live too but using a 🔪 to cut into it while it is still wiggling. Awwwww. And you can watch Julia do this on the YouTubes. Damn, that woman was truly fearless. I squealed out loud while sitting at my desk (yes, I watched it at work 😜) when she hack the claws off and dismembered a LIVE 🦞. And apparently the girl lobsters are tastier than the boy lobsters. The more you know...

While I was reading Julie's blog post, I was cringing and groaning. And feeling slightly nauseous. 

I love that Julie describes everything so graphically but perhaps I could've passed on this blog.

You know that's a lie because I want to read them ALL.

Then, after I read this, I make the bad decision to watch Julia murder more lobsters.  Apparently, she is THE 🦞 KILLER (que Talking Heads). 

I'm damn sure NEVER doing any of that 🦞 murder. 🔪

So just get over your disappointment. I won't be doing it. EVER. 

Just A Little Obsessed

 It all started with boeuf bourguignon.

As I've mentioned before, I participate in a neighborhood dinner group. It's loads of fun and I get to meet and know different neighbors each year. When it was my turn to host the group, I chose to go with a French theme. My bf is French so it felt like the thing to do. 

Enter Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. 

And then I decided to watch Julie & Julia again since I hadn't seen it in a few years. 

Then came the watching of YouTube videos. It started with just The French Chef, the original PBS shows. Now, I also subscribe to Jamie & Julia because, well, I cant seem to help myself. 

The dinner party came and went and yet, I wanted more. So I bought Julie Powell's book. 

Ok, so I truly expected this to be the blog with perhaps a little extra added in. Julie has great wit and I looked forward to reading more. Alas, the book fell flat for me (it did for many others too).

I still wanted more. So, I went down the interwebs 🐇-hole and found the OG blog on the WayBackMachine.com site. 

I started at the beginning. Sunday, August 25, 2022

It honestly blows my mind to think about this being over 20 years ago. 🤯

And so it started to get serious. I mean, aside from choosing new recipes to try in THE book, I had tracked this down. And I was well entertained. I think I may (or may not) have spent 4-5 hours that first day reading blogs. 

Then I decided I needed to pace myself. 

I had this conversation with myself:

You can't keep reading for a half day at a time.

I know.

You have two businesses to run.

I know. 

You'll get behind.

I know. 

You'll read it all in a week and have nothing to look forward to the following week. 

Alright, I'll pace myself with 1 or 2 a day.

Deal.

Deal. 

I know you have conversations like this with yourself too so don't try and shame a girl. 

Anyway, and so that's how it's been going for a hot second. 

I did have one hiccup when I tried to go to December on the WayBackMachine page. It wouldn't go. I panicked. 

😨 No really, I did. 

I was invested. I wanted to know how Christmas went. 

I wanted to read about the tongue recipe (ok, not really and I'm sure as hell not making that - my mom made me eat 🐄 tongue as a kid and that is disgusting 🤮). 

I had to search the interwebs again and found her site also on the WayBackMachine here. The links to specific months worked.

😅 Whew. Crisis averted. 

I just read Sunday, December 15, 2002 and all is well in the world. 

🐓 au Vin with 🔥

 I'm just little behind but I know you want to see how the Coq au Vin turned out.

Here we go. 

Again, Danyale went on the MtAoFC journey with me. 

We started by watching Julia

Promptly followed by Jamie 

Now fully armed with ALL the information (and perhaps a glass of wine), we dove in. 

First things first, we had to dismember a whole chicken. Let me say that I've NEVER, in my life, dismembered a chicken (or any other animal for that matter). And a more disgusting process I can't imagine. Yes, I've pulled a little bag of giblets (I got ripped off since there was no bag in this chicken) and cooked them for gravy (you know, the whole Thanksgiving thing). 

I'm not as fearless as Julia when it comes to taking apart a 🐓, 🐄, 🐑, 🦞 and so on. The sounds alone were enough to make me NOT want to eat this thing later. 

And this girl didn't finish shaving before arriving at my house. 

After fighting to get this chicken apart, it was time to blanche and saute the lardons. Instead of using bacon, I actually bought bacon ends from the local food coop. So much better. I could have ordered a whole pork belly but glad I didn't (see above about dismemberment). 

Then we browned the chicken (which didn't brown the way I wanted since I took the skin off and I probably crowded the pan - 🤦‍♀️!). While the chicken kinda, sorta browned, it was time to boil the onions to make peeling the skins easier. 

And now we got to play with 🔥. As much as I would like to say that we set things on fire in the most stunning and impressive way.  That didn't happen. The first two tries resulted in nothing. I didn't feel too bad because Jamie had a similar experience (see Jamie & Julia link above). After those failures, I resorted to pouring the booze on while the match was lit. Whoooosh! That worked. 

Now the chicken blushed. A whole bottle of wine into the pot with the chicken and the herb bouquet. 

While the chicken cooked, we finished off the onions and mushrooms (don't crowd the mushrooms). I will fully admit that I somehow read that they needed to be boiled for 10 minutes and forgot all about how I did it with the boeuf bourguignon. It should have been a minute at most. ONE MINUTE! Needless to say, we were puzzled why the onions basically self destructed when we tried peeling them. It was all me. I'll own my mistake. They still tasted good but I won't be forgetting that lesson anytime soon. 

The end result was amazing. Aside from the fact that I never want to dismember a chicken again, I would make this again and again. The sauce is the BEST! Make sure you have a baguette to sop it up because you are gonna wanna do that. You won't want to miss a single drop. 

While we were slightly comatose, I was already looking in the MtAofFC for the next project. 

Postscript: I took this to the bfs this past weekend and he said it was perfect. We had purée de pomme de terre (mashed potatoes) with it. I did invite the younger son to join us and he declined. When he discovered what it was in the morning (apparently his French just isn't), he was disappointed that he passed it up. I took the leftovers with me and Danyale and I polished them off that night. 

More Fancy Pants Chicken

Yup, Danyale and I made some more fancy pants chicken last night.

It was Julia Child's poulet au porto (chicken in port) which required roasting a chicken ahead of time. Which I totally missed that part so had to start that process. Then the chicken that was defrosted in the fridge was stinko. Bleech! Then the question was, 'are we making something or running to the store?' I voted for store, Danyale thought I was nutz to go to the grocery store on a Saturday afternoon. She ain't wrong in that thinking. 

Anyway, we had a plan. I drove. Gave her my cc. She went in to purchase a 3-4lb bird while I readied the car for a quick getaway. 🏎️ It totally worked and we were only delayed about 20 minutes. 

Anyway, after getting the 🐓 in the oven, we watched Jamie cook this dish. 

Then I wondered, what wine should we drink with this and the Google gave me nonsense so I sent a text to Claude for guidance (he was in Miami at the Formula 1 races with the younger son so not joining us on the poulet au porto adventure).

That is the kind of specific answer I needed that Google did NOT provide. Not that I really had any idea what a Sancerre red was but I had plenty of pinot noir and Zinfandel. We busted open the pinot. 

There were then mushrooms and shallots to prep along with letting the chicken rest from the oven. 

Don't crowd the mushrooms!

Did I mention that I bought the port on the way back from a memorial service of one of our band mates yesterday? Well, that happened and I've decided that I shouldn't be trusted in a good liquor store that has many types of port. Or at least, don't let me walk in that section. Very often. 

I say all that because I didn't end up with ONE port but three. Ok, 2 ports and one Maderia. I NEEDED the Maderia since I know that Julia Child will require it in something I'm going to make soon. Guaranteed. And I NEEDED two ports because, well, one is for cooking and one is for drinking. The cooking one was $25 (NOT rotgut stuff) and then I just COULD NOT resist the 20 year Tawny. It was calling my name. So was the 30 year tawny but the $120 price tag stopped me dead in my tracks. So the 20 it was at only $65. 

Now, back to the sauce. With the reasonably priced port. 

The sauce looked and smelled good and got truly interesting when the port went in. Hurray. 

Then it was time for the fire marshall. LOL. No truly, I got to set the deconstructed chicken on 🔥. And if JC could seen the way I took that chicken apart, I know she would have turned in her grave. Oh well, it tasted just fine in that condition.

Now, back to the fire. 

Dump on cognac and get a match! Stand back. Then shake the pan until the flames go out. I think I was a tad impatient for the flames to die down and tried to shut that 💩 down too early. It wasn't done burning! Did I mention that I set the oven mitt on fire? You can watch all the hilarity below or on TikTok. 

After extinguishing the flames without any further mishap, we took the sauteed red potatoes and chicken and enjoyed. And yes, it did go quite nicely with the pinto noir. 

And if you thought I had forgotten about the 20 year tawny, you don't know me very well. Danyale had to bug out after that so I opened the bottle and proceeded to sip away. To say it was heavenly is an understatement and, after tasting that, I WANT to buy the 30 year next time. Maybe if I'm feeling flush that day. 

I'm off to my first class at the meditation center around the corner. I've signed up for the next level of training and looking forward to learning more. I'll spill the tea later.  

--

Postscript: I spoke with the bf last night and when he originally saw the text, he didn't REALLY think I would put port in the chicken. As if, 'Port in chicken? What was Julia thinking?' I said, yes I did and yes it was amazing. The plan now is to make Coq au Vin for him this weekend. 🤞

Soup For You

For the next installment of Julia cooking, I choose something simple. Leek and potato soup. Nothing simpler. My friend Danyale has been going on these adventures with me. Here is how the text messages go. 

Ok, so I originally thought I would make garlic and potato soup and then changed my mind. 

And when going on these adventures, I watch either an original Julia video or Jamie and Julia. 

Yes, I do like watching these videos by Jamie.

My friend Kiri was driving through town so I invited her to join us. A bowl of soup and some French bread and we were stuffed. We wiped out the whole batch. No leftovers. 

I text a pic to the bf and his first question was, 'how much cream is in there?' LOL Ok, so yes, there was some but only 3 Tbsp. 

Gotta run! 

Mastering the Art of French Cooking

Did I mention that I've been on a cooking adventure? Perhaps not and I am.  

In my neighborhood, we have a diner's club during the year. About 190 people show up in February, get put into groups of 10-12, and we have dinner every other month at someone's home. The host chooses the theme, makes the entree and suggests the rest of the courses. Well, I was the first host this year and since my bf is French and I decided that I would make boeuf bourguignon a la Julia Child. I bought Mastering the Art of French Cooking and went on that adventure. 

 

Don't crowd the mushrooms! 

I learned something new about cooking meat (all 6 lbs of it), mushrooms (don't crowd them!) and onions. I'll be honest, whenever I read about browning meat before roasting, I never did it. Wow, what a difference! It's magical! And I put a WHOLE bottle of wine in the dutch oven.

It was a lot of work. And worth every minute of the 5 hours it took to make. My bf, who is a real foodie, said that the dish was perfect. 

Now I want to make more recipes in the cookbook.  

Now, I'll admit that I'm one of those weird people that likes to read cookbooks. I can't be the only one. Tell me I'm not the only one.