Tuesday, November 12, 2002

Sauce Bâtarde. Gelée (attempt #1) My Veterans’ Day got off to a grand start, in high Julie/Julia style.  I was up with the dawn, scrubbing calves feet and rinsing pork skin.  While Eric and I stood around the kitchen island eating Nutella on bread and reading the paper, I boiled each of these items by themselves for a few minutes, presumably to get rid of the stink of them, since the boiling filled the kitchen with a fairly repulsive, hairy smell.  Then I rinsed them off and threw them into a soup pot with the rest of the brown stock I’d made over the weekend, and set that to simmering. Then Eric had to go away.  Journalists don’t get Veterans’ Day off.  Poor journalists.  I had a big dinner planned – Lobster aux Aromates, braised celery, the eggs in the aspic and almond Bavarian.  Or at least I did, until I did a little online banking.  Er.  Lobster’s a little rich for our blood, as it turns out.  Okay, so something cheap, braised lettuce, eggs in aspic, almond Bavarian.  The gelee was bubbling away.  JC says to make sure to test it before starting with aspic, by putting a bit of it in a chilled bowl and sticking it in the fridge to see if it sets.  I did so.  I was getting a bit nervous about time – I had to get into the city and back quickly if I was going to do all this.  I needed “tender, practically stringless celery about 2 inches in diameter.”  This did not sound like any celery I’d ever seen, but I figured if anyone would have it, it would be (Devil spawn!  Devil spawn!) Dean & DeLuca.  So I headed over there.  They’re celery looks like everybody else’s celery, but they charge two bucks a head for it.  And their fresh tarragon sucks, dude.  I bought some anyway, had to, for the eggs in the aspic.  Three bucks a bunch.  No celery though, because just then I realized I had a head of cauliflower at home I needed to use.  So, cheap main dish – I was thinking London Broil – cauliflower, the eggs in the aspic and almond Bavarian.  When I got home with my goodies, the gelee was not gelling. I boiled it some more while I made cookies for David (daviddaviddaviddavid…)  I had tried to pick something out of MtAoFC, but JC is not big on pecans, and is very big on cold desserts.  Not practical.  So I fell back on an old Martha standby, Pecan Cornmeal biscuits.  A recipe typical of Martha in that it is very good but needlessly complicated.  When I was (finally) done with those, it was getting a little late in the day to make the almond Bavarian, but what the hell.  I opened the book to look over the recipe, and found that the recipe called for strongly brewed coffee.  Shit.  We got no coffee.  (Actually, we did, but I forgot about it entirely.  In retrospect, I think that was most likely a subconscious act of self-defense.)  So no Bavarian, I guess.  I tried setting the gelee again.  I was by this time pretty sure nothing at all was going to work this day.  The gelee set a little this time, but not enough.  Fuck it.  So for dinner we had London broil and chips and salsa and cauliflower with Sauce Bâtarde.  Which is good and all.  Sauce Bâtarde is just a beurre manie (butter made into a paste with butter) beaten into some chicken stock, and then that beaten into an egg yolk beaten with cream.  I had second-guessed JC on the proportion of flour to butter in the beurre manie, because I’ve been having so much trouble with her rouxes lately, but she must have been right, because when I put the sauce back on to boil, it didn’t thicken at all.  I had to throw in some cornstarch.  Then at the end, once the steaks were done and the cauliflower steamed, I heated the sauce back up and stirred in four tablespoons of butter, which made me feel better about everything.  It was good and buttery, and tasted good with the cauliflower, which you know I really do like cauliflower, I don’t serve it that much because it’s so white you know, not very pretty on the plate, but I do like it.  Anyway the dinner was fine, but it certainly wasn’t Julie/Julia fine.  And tomorrow I won’t cook at all, seeing as how I’m going to see David (and Al Pacino) in an intimate reading in Brooklyn.  What’s wrong with me?  What a waste of a Veterans’ Day. 7:38:22 AM    comment []