Sunday, October 27, 2002

I don’t know if y’all have noticed this, but life is all about food over here at the old Jackson Avenue homestead.  Friday, for instance, I didn’t know what I was going to eat – the next recipes up, in strict Julie/Julia Project terms, were 1) poached eggs in aspic, which sound time-consuming, enormously frustrating, and maybe kind of gross; and 2) chocolate Bavarian cream, which sounds plenty good, but maybe not dinner-appropriate.  Since I found myself at loose ends, I decided to catch up on some vegetables, which make up the single longest chapter.  I chose Chou-Fleur Aux Tomates Fraiches, Cauliflower Gratineed with Cheese and Tomatoes, and Crepes de Pommes de Terre, Grated Potato Pancakes.  Then, because both of these were said by Julia to be good in combination with hamburgers, or Bifteck Hache in the Mastering the Art of French Cooking parlance, I decided to make Bifteck Hache a la Lyonnaise.  And thus does Julie’s attempt to make a simple meal, turn into a multi-hour ordeal. Not really.  It wasn’t as bad as it sounds, though the potato crepes became, after graceful admission of defeat, hash browns.  I started very calmly and rationally, doing everything that could be done ahead – boiling the cauliflower, peeling, seeding and slicing up the tomatoes, grating the swiss cheese.  Mincing the onions, cooking them, making up the meat patties – the onions, ground beef, an egg, seasonings and butter.  I put together the cauliflower dish by placing the cauliflower florets in the center of a casserole dish, the tomatoes along the edges, sprinkling cheese and breadcrumbs over it, and pouring melted butter over all of it, then set it aside while I put together the crepes.  I started by mashing up some cream cheese with flour, then beating that with an egg, some salt and pepper.  (Okay, I had to do this twice, because I fucked up the first time, forgetting for a moment that I was halving the recipe.)  Then I beat in cheese.  I grated the potatoes on a cheese grater, squeezed out the liquid in them with a towel, and mixed it together with the cream cheese mixture, plus some cream.  Around then I stuck the cauliflower into the oven I began melting butter in to pans, one for the crepes and one for the burgers.  Sorry, biftecks.  I fried these up at about 4 minutes per side, while spooning into the other pan the potato mixture.  It became pretty obvious, pretty quickly, that the crepes weren’t doing so hot.  They didn’t stick together in the pan, and what of them browned tended also to stick indelibly to the bottom of the plan.  This has always been my problem with potato pancake type things.  Having a non-stick pan might help with this, but I was raised not to trust the things, and don’t have one.  Oh well.  When it became obvious that crepes weren’t happening, I, as I’ve mentioned, went ahead with the hashbrown theory.  The burgers, once browned, I removed to a plate.  It was the usual deal after that – cooking the juiced down with vermouth, enriching with butter.  The cauliflower came out more or less as it was intended to – a little browned, tender, perhaps a tad watery as a result of crappy tomatoes -- the burgers like buttery burgers, and the crepes like the creamiest cheesiest most finely grated hash browns you ever tasted. The next night I was making Poulet Saute aux Herbes de Provence.  The only slightly iffy part of this was that I was to make a hollandaise-y sauce at the end, and though hollandaise-y sauces have not given my trouble so far, the legend persists.  With it, since it was going to be just me and Eric, I thought I’d get out of the way one of those vegetable dishes I couldn’t imagine wouldn’t suck – Concombres Persilles, or Parslied Baked Cucumbers.  The first step for Concombres Persilles is to peel the cucumbers, seed them, and cut them to lengths a half an inch thick and two inches long.  Then toss them with some salt, a pinch of sugar, and some white wine vinegar, and let them sit for an hour or more.  This is meant to draw out the water and the bitterness.  It was around this time that Emily AW called and asked if she could come over for dinner.  Which was fabulous, except that I’d be serving parslied cucumbers.  Ah well. After an hour I drained and dried the cucumbers and put them in a casserole dish with some melted butter, basil and minced green onions.  That I stuck in the oven to bake for an hour, minus 15 minutes to account for the Julia madness for vegetable cooking.  Even so, I couldn’t imagine that the fuckers would be a dissolved mess at the end. The chicken sauté, it turned out, was a snap; the same old sauté in butter, with unpeeled garlic cloves and dried thyme and basil.   (Though, aside here on Western Beef – I do love the joint, but I have never seen a more bizarre way of cutting up chickens.  Basically, they cut of the legs, then chop the rest of the thing in exact quarters, so you end up with ¾ of a breast with the wing attached, and half the back bone, and thighs attached to back bones too, with tails of breasts hanging off them.  I guess it’s not bizarre so much as just lazy as hell.)  The chicken comes out onto a platter while the unpeeled cloves get mashed, the skins removed, and the juices cooked down with the ever-present vermouth.  In another pan, beat some egg yolks until thick, then beat in lemon juice and – wait for it – vermouth.  Then beat in the juices from the pan, slowly, until creamy.  Heat that over a low flame for a moment to warm and thicken, beat in a little butter, and some minced fresh basil.  Spoon it over the chicken, and you’re done. At some point here, I made some rice. Here’s the kicker – I got dinner on the table by eight o’clock. Here’s the real kicker – parslied cucumbers? (Parslied because I tossed them with parsley when they came out of the oven.)  A fucking revelation.  They don’t melt away, and they actually taste like cucumbers.  Only better, because I don’t like cucumbers.  Unbe-fucking-lievable.  I’m actually looking forward to doing the next recipe – in cream, this time. 5:38:57 PM    comment []