Monday, September 30, 2002

Wednesday, it turned out, was more or less a wash on the old Julie/Julia front.  I was meant to make Tournedos Sautes aux Champignons, Filet Steaks with Mushroom and Madeira sauce, only I fear sometimes that I have early onset Alzheimers, because I completely just missed the old shopping boat completely.  I’d bought steaks on the weekend, but they were the wrong kind, and anyway I didn’t get either the mushrooms or the Madeira.  What was wrong with me?  I didn’t figure out that I was completely lacking in ingredients until I’d gotten home, and although Long Island City is great and all that, it is not awash in fancy amenities like grocery stores, so my planned dinner was pretty much just shot to hell.  I considered collapsing into guilt- and anxiety-fuelled hysteria, but was too exhausted, so just decided to say the hell with it.  I made the first steak recipe in the book, Bifteck Saute au Beurre.  I had made up over the weekend some tomato sauce to go into Sauce Aurore, a béchamel enriched with, um, tomato sauce.  So I went ahead and made the sauce, then, because Julia doesn’t make any specific suggestions regarding what to serve it with, I just tossed it in with some boiled potatoes. Pretty good.  The potatoes were good and creamy and kind of pink.  The steak too was pink.  And buttery. The kind of thing I really am learning from JC is about really paying attention to the food as it cooks.  Instead of depending just on time or heat, she instructs me, for instance, to watch for “a little pearling of red juice beginning to ooze at the surface of the steak.  Another test is to press the steak with your finger; it is medium rare when it just begins to take on a suggestion of resistance and spring in contrast to its soft raw state.”  You know what?  She’s right.  Those things really happen, and when I pay attention, and my attentions result in a perfect medium rare steak, I feel like I’m really beginning to be a cook. For two nights after, I totally slacked on the whole Julie/Julia thing.  Thursday I went out to an Indian place with the alleged Helen, and we’d been sitting down for about half a minute when she said to me, “are you hungry?  You seem really hungry.”  Must have had something to do with how I’d already inhaled half the pappadum, dipping it into the incredible green sauce they’d brought to the table.  Oh my god.  Spice!  It’s like a drug I’d been attempting to kick.  Maybe when the Julie/Julia project is done I’ll do Diana Kennedy or something, get my taste buds pumped up again.  My folks were coming into town on Friday.  I love my parents, especially when they’re coming to try to save my ass when I’m neck-deep in moving hell, but I worry.  Would mom burst into tears when she walked into our “loft”, like she did when she walked into the New Mexico schoolhouse-cum-vintner’s storage shed that Eric and I lived in when we were first married?  I was a tad tense.  On top of that, and I’m not going to go into this, but work is a living hell, the most excruciating non-self-imposed stress I have ever suffered.  On Friday night we were having Emily A-W over for dinner, and I was going to make something or other, but after being at the office until eight for the fifth night in a row, I found I just couldn’t face it.  Getting soft, I guess.  We decided we’d bring something in, only as I may have mentioned, Long Island City is not awash in fancy amenities, like, say, pizza joints.  Our choices turned out to be Domino’s and Mister Wok.  It was a difficult decision – crap pizza made by a bunch of right-wing fundamentalist crazies, or crap Chinese food made by some probably perfect nice people in a place that smelled strongly of mouse shit?  We followed the strength of our convictions and went with the Chinese food, then took it back to the apartment and ate it on the floor in front of the TV while drinking vodka tonics and watching the first three episodes of Buffy on DVD.  It was far from the worst meal I’ve ever eaten. The next day the parents arrived. Eric and I spent most of the day out and about – going to Bay Ridge to straighten up, then into the city to buy mussels and fish and wine and an air mattress.  Eric had not taken his Prevacid or whatever it’s called the night before, which always turns him into a little vomiting girly-man, so he stayed in the car, occasionally leaning out to puke, while I did the shopping.  Jefferson Market, we went to.  (Have I mentioned I really, really like Jefferson Market?)  Astor Wines.  K-Mart.  (I have not mentioned that I like K-Mart, I feel almost certain, and there’s a very good reason for that….)  Then home, where Eric, slowly coming out of his gastric funk, cleaned the house while I started the cooking.  (One lovely side effect of the Julie/Julia Project is that I find I am doing much less house cleaning….) I made the Crème Plombieres aux Fruits – this plombieres shit’s getting almost too easy to even talk about, except that it’s very satisfying to mix together some egg yolks and sugar and milk and flour and come up with a thick, smooth, yellow custard.  It’s like magic!  I stirred in Kirsch and raspberries and whipped egg whites and stuck it in the fridge.  Then, it was already getting late and I had to both clean the mussels before they soaked and prepare the Mousseline de Volaille, Mousse of Chicken.  I started on the mussels, picking through for old ones whose shells had fallen open.  Then I began to scrub them, but holy Christ this was going to take forever, so Eric got pulled off bathroom cleaning duty.  As he scrubbed uncomplainingly away, I sauteed shallots in butter then added chicken stock and gelatin soaked in vermouth.  I put that in the blender with some torn up, cooked chicken and sautéed chicken livers (I could also have used fois gras, but a third of a cup was going to cost me $39.99, and I work for a living….) and pureed it.  I stirred in some Madeira, salt, pepper and nutmeg and put it in the freezer (I was running very very late by this point) to chill. My parents got to the apartment about fifteen minutes after their plane was supposed to land, and here I was filthy and with dinner about a million miles away, and with the folks in, cooking is pretty much going to go by the wayside anyway.  I gave them the tour, then luckily Dad and Eric had to go to the liquor store, and my designing mother was able to amuse herself wandering the house gasping at the shoddy workmanship and plotting how to fix it.  I made myself busy soaking the six heads of Boston lettuce for Laitues Braisees – that’s right, I’m talking about braised lettuce folks, and when I say braised I mean it – an hour and a half of bacony oven cooking.  Emily A-W and the alleged Helen toddled on in over then next hour or so.  The cooking was coming very slowly.  I managed to get the fish and the mussels and the shrimp cooked.  (Overcooked, I’m afraid, sometimes.) Okay, aside on the mussels here.  I was supposed to toss out the open ones, but sometimes it was unclear whether they were open because they were long dead, or because they were gasping for air (water).  A couple of times Eric or I picked up one that started out open then closed up tight.  Kind of creepy. I recruited Helen to parboil lettuce, while I boiled the bacon.  This truly horrified my father, though he tried to put a game face on it.  The cocktails came out, as they always do where my parents are concerned.  We squeezed water out of the wilted lettuce, cut them in half, arranged them in a casserole with sautéed carrots and onions and boiled bacon, then poured in some beef stock and vermouth and stuck them in the oven.  I had stirred whipped cream into the mousse some time before and put it in a loaf pan to set.   Said setting had not occurred, but it was nine thirty and people were starving, so it became a perfectly serviceable chicken spread on bread.  Everybody’s crowded into the kitchen, chatting and ravenously eating uncongealed mousseline.  I made up the sauce Parisienne for the fish – a white roux base enriched with milk, egg yolks and cream, and then enriched with another stick of butter.  The butter went in and I knew I had to hurry.  Fish, mussels, shrimp on plates, sauce on top, some lettuce – fuck this course thing I’d thought I’d do – and eat up, guys.  The reason for the hurry, I mean besides the it being 10:30 at night part, was that the sauce parisienne can only hold a stick of butter for so long.  Soon it was separating out again, even as I was spooning it up onto the plates.  Go go go!  Everyone gets to the table, somebody opens a bottle of wine, and we’re eating. My family and my friends and I are eating together.  So my eyes are drooping shut and I occasionally cant over a tad.  Don’t mind that.  I’m happy. 8:00:06 AM    comment []