Friday, November 15, 2002

Ha HA!  I can perform thirteen straight hours of shit secretarial work for the good of my country, then shop, then prepare a delicious French meal, and still manage to drink too much!  And never let you forget you’re a man!  W-O-M-A-N! I will cop to skipping the Bavarois Praliné, and to neglecting to get up before dawn to make it this morning, as I had tipsily fantasized I would do.  But everything else went pretty damned swimmingly, if I do say so myself.  On the menu for the evening was Soupe à l’Oeuf, Provençale, garlic soup with poached eggs, and Gratin de Poireaux, gratin of leeks with ham.  I got home around 8:45, pumped.  Life had been kicking the Julie/Julia Project around in recent days, but tonight, we’d kick back. I started with the leeks and a vodka tonic.  I’d bought twelve of the suckers (the leeks, I mean) at the nifty-yet-overpriced Zeytuna grocery near my office.  (I also bought there a small bottle of almond extract for seven dollars.  Sheesh….)  I always like going in there, because it’s never too crowded, and they’ve got all this great produce and meat, but all the customers are buying tiny containers of ice cream and prepared sandwiches and bottles of French lemonade.  So I get to feel all superior buying my real food, my twelve leeks.  Using only the white parts – I should save the green tops for soup or something, but I never do – I chopped them into two-inch lengths, then rinsed them carefully under running water.  Rinsing leeks is not my favorite activity, but no matter – I am Julie, hear me roar!  I put the leeks in a saucepan with some butter, salt and a cup of water, boiled the water down to almost nothing, then stewed the leeks over low heat for twenty minutes. While the leeks stewed, I got the soup ready.  I briefly boiled 20 unpeeled garlic cloves, drained them, and peeled them.  Then I threw them in a pot with 2 quarts of water, salt and pepper, sage (using the dried sage Joe D’Agnese sent me, which I’ve got hanging in our “front hall”, as I call the part of our strange-o open-plan apartment immediately to the left of our front door, and which smells just goddamned wonderful when you crumble up the leaves to put in Soupe à l’Oeuf, Provençale…), thyme, bay leaf, parsley and some olive oil.  It is amazing to me that you can make an intensely flavored soup with nothing but garlic, water and some seasonings, but you sure can do it.  Just simmer the ingredients for half an hour while sipping on a second vodka tonic, and you got it.  Meanwhile, I drained the leeks and – this is where it gets all embarrassingly Frenchified – wrapped each piece with a strip of ham.  So cute!  I put the adorable leek-and-ham packages in a buttered casserole dish, poured over them three eggs beaten with a cup and a half of cream, then grated some cheese over it and dotted with butter.  Then I stuck it in the oven.  I strained the soup, pressing the soft garlic cloves through (soft garlic cloves, mmmm….), and put it back in the pot.  Now it was time to poach the eggs in the soup.  In the interest of not going insane (the time was now 10:45, the time had gotten away from me, what with the vodka tonics, plus Eric and I had been watching “Mission Kashmir” between kitchen duties.  This is Bollywood cinema at it’s best, I HIGHLY recommend it), I chose to use the French egg poachers LisaLisa so kindly gave us.  I cracked an egg into each of them, and put them in the simmering soup.  They seemed to be working very well, though the soup pot was too wide, so the soup didn’t come completely over the eggs, so I had to gently ladle some over them.  The only problem was that the eggs wouldn’t come out of the poachers.  I should have sprayed them with some Pam.  I had to sort of hack at them to get them out, and then I had garlic/egg-drop soup.  Which is fine, actually.  I ladled it into some bowls. Then I went to get the leeks!  Ah, the leeks!  What a thing of beauty!  The gratin was impossibly puffed, impossibly golden brown.  It was like the jock in junior high everyone was in love with – perfection! We ate our perfectly lovely French dinner in front of the TV, watching “Mission Kashmir.”  The soup was great as only things primarily composed of garlic can be.  And the leeks tasted as good as they looked.  I really cannot emphasis enough how good these leeks were.  The eggy gratin, the leek-y leeks, the saltiness of the ham, all came together divinely.  THAT’S what I’m talking about.  THIS is the Julie/Julia Project.  Boo-yah!  Now I gotta go to bed. 8:10:58 AM    comment []