Monday, February 03, 2003

Now when I’m feeling sad and blue, I look to my Sauce Ragout.  It’s bubbling along happily.  It’s looking just fine. I can do this. I dump the cauliflower and watercress out into a bowl.  I mash it up best I can with a potato masher.  I make up as béchamel.  NO problem.  Butter.  Melt in pan.  Stir in flour.  Cook a minute.  Pour in boiling milk.  Boil.  Season with salt and pepper.  I put the cauliflower-watercress stuff into my brand-spankin-new, beautiful, All-Clad Braiser, gotten for Christmas, beautifulest thing I ever did see.  I mix it up with the béchamel.  I stirred in some cream.  I stirred in some Swiss cheese.  I sprinkled the stuff with some more cheese, and breadcrumbs.  And melted butter. Okay.  I got the chicken ready to broil – salt & pepper, a bit of oil.  The stove is heated.  Heated to broil, and I got no separate broiler, so I move a rack up to the highest level, and but the cauliflower puree on that.  Stick the chicken in the broiler.  Drain the sauce.  Throw out all the chicken wings and gizzards.  I sauté some shallots in butter, then boil down a bit of vermouth.  Then I pour in the strained sauce, let that simmer a bit.  Throw in a bit (a lot) of black and cayenne pepper, and let that simmer a bit too. I’ve turned the chicken a couple times.  I’ve also, somewhere in here, made rice. Dinner is quite good.  The Sauce Diable is fabulously delicious – good long cooked French sauce with chicken.  Peppery.  Fucking godawful delicious.  The cauliflower and watercress also fabulous.  Creamy and rich, without being so ungodly carbo-y.  Mmmm   Good. I am cook here me roar. We ended the evening, very happily, watching, first, the Prime Minister’s Questions.  Can you imagine having a president that has to stand up once a week and answer every fucking thing that any bumble-fuck regional politician has to ask him?  Tony Blair turns me on.  But you know who turns me on more?  Giles.  We watched “Band Candy” from “Buffy”, third season, where Giles reverts to his punk teendom, and my God, I am hopelessly in love with Giles as Sid Vicious.  Uuuuuhhhhhhh…….. Two retractions: Helen swears she did not put the wine vinegar on top of the refrigerator (see 2.1.03).  She also says that, undue pressure from myself and her boyfriend Andy notwithstanding, she gave in to the irresistible power of bacon on her own accord. Everyone -- thank you for your concern.  But I can do this thing!  I will take a break soon -- not a week, probably, but a couple of days.  Anything more would break my little heart.  Because I'm the one who needs you, my friends.... 10:39:57 PM    comment []

Over the weekend, my friend Hannah left a couple of odd comments here, you know those comments you get from your friends sometimes, very solicitous and kind and you can tell they’re really worried about you but you can’t figure out why?  She seemed to think this whole Julie/ Julia Project was getting me down.  Pshaw!  Then Eric spoke to his folks on Sunday, and they were also “concerned” about me.  Stuff and nonsense!  I couldn’t figure out what everyone was all worried about.  That is until eight o’clock on Sunday night, after three hours in the kitchen, when I began crying uncontrollably.  I guess you guys know something I don’t know. It started out okay, if a scenario in which one has to go to work on a Sunday to do data entry can be considered “okay.”  The work got done – well, no, I’m lying, but I put in my six hours.  Helen came over, dropped over the wallet I’d left at her house, stuck around to chat for awhile, which nicely got me out of a chunk of work time.  On my home I went by the pharmacy, the Odd-Job for some cheap-ass cookie sheets, and the grocery store, and it all went relatively smoothly.  I even had a moment of what you might call happiness, getting off the subway at a stop I don’t usually, an above-ground station.  It was late afternoon, a beautiful afternoon, and as I looked out over Queens and a tender blue sky, I thought, “see, New York ain’t so bad.” I went home and started to cook.  I knew that dinner would take a long time, but I wasn’t too worried, it didn’t seem hard.  I was making plain broiled chicken with Sauce Diable and Chou-Fleur en Verdure (Puree of Cauliflower and Watercress with Cream).  The sauce I was excited about, because I’ve been rather slacking off in the sauce department, and Sauce Diable is basically an enrichment of a classic Sauce Ragoût, so I’d be doing something good and French.  The Cauliflower and Watercress Puree also had the whiff of authenticity.  In addition, I planned to attempt the Charlotte Malakoff aux Fraises, with real homemade ladyfingers. I started with the sauce, as I knew it would have to cook for at least two hours.  I’d gotten some chicken wings and gizzards, because I had no chicken carcasses lying around.  I began by browning them, with some chopped carrot and onion, in a pot in a combination of clarified butter and lard.  I’d put too much in the pot, so they didn’t brown really well, but when they’d gotten kind of yellowed all over I took them out and sprinkled in four tablespoons of flour.  Another roux, but unlike all the other JC rouxes (plural?) I’d done, this I let brown for a little bit – it was still no Prudhomme roux, but I got it a golden color before pouring in several cups of boiling beef broth, 2/3 cup of vermouth, and a bit of tomato paste.  I put the meat back in, along with thyme, a bay leaf, and a few sprigs of parsley.  I was now going to just let that simmer for a good long while. Smelled great.  No problem. Decided to move on to the Biscuits a la Cuiller (ladyfingers) next.  They didn’t look like a problem either, though JC, without ever saying it in so many words, seemed to find it important that I move quickly.  She specifically said to prepare and measure out all my ingredients beforehand, which I did.  Buttered and floured my cheap-ass cookie sheets, measured out powdered sugar, granulated sugar, cake flour, separated three eggs.  I beat the sugar into the egg yolks, then vanilla.  I beat the egg whites until stiff with a pinch of salt, then sugar.  Then I scooped a quarter of the egg whites on top of the egg yolks, and sifted a quarter  of the flour on top of that.  Folded until partially blended, making sure to keep it light and airy.  Continued on until all the flour and whites were folded in.  This is where it got tricky.  I spooned the batter into a pastry bag.  Pastry bags generally don’t like me, and this batter was quite sticky, so I promptly fell into a mess.  I squooshed out lines of ladyfinger batter onto the cookie sheet – I was supposed to make them four inches long and 1 ½ inches thick.  But something was wrong.  The batter was too loose or something, it spread out on the sheets until the lines were nearly three inches long.  And though the recipe was supposed to make 24 ladyfingers, I only ended up with maybe fifteen.  I was getting a very bad feeling about this.  I sprinkled on a thick layer of powdered sugar.  JC said I could tap off the excess by turning the pans upside down and tapping gently, that the ladyfingers would stay in place.  Which they didn’t of course, as well as you’d hope.  The powdered sugar however stuck on like a charm.  I stuck them in the oven – was supposed to cook them for 20 minutes.  Well, I checked them at 12 and they were a mess.  The cookies themselves weren’t burnt, but the sugar on the pans had caramelized and blackened, screwing up the bottom of the cookies, and soldering them to the cookie sheets.  So much for cheap-ass cookie sheets.  I was ready to give up on the whole dessert thing, but Eric, cheery fucking Eric, was all – “I’ll bet they’ll still work.  They’ll be fine!  Don’t give up!”  And we’d just been talking about how I needed to be kicking this Julie/Julia Project up a notch, so fine, okay, I’d try it anyway.  I managed to pry loose some of the ladyfingers.  I set them on a rack, hulled the strawberries, made up the mixture of orange liqueur and water I was supposed to dip the ladyfingers in before laying them in the soufflé mold. By this time it was getting late, and I needed to start on the cauliflower and watercress puree.  I put a pot on to boil.  I trimmed my caulflower and my watercress.  I read the directions for fitting ladyfingers into molds.  It involved cutting the ladyfingers into little puzzle pieces so they’ll fit precisely inside the bottom and sides.  I didn’t have enough ladyfingers.  This wasn’t going to work.  I started doing it anyway.  After I’d managed to get the things sort of stuffed in there, I took the pieces back out again and dipped them in the orange liqueur mixture.  They got soggy.  They fell apart.  No matter.  I started looking at the recipe for the Malakoff itself.  It involved a stick and a half of unsalted butter. I had no unsalted butter.  In fact, I was running out of butter, period. That was the end of the Malakoff attempt.  I stuck the strawberries in the fridge, and the ladyfingers too, lost cause though they were. Threw the cauliflower in to boil, then, after a few minutes, the watercress.  Drained them when the cauliflower was tender. Many, many dishes.  Each one causes me a pang of guilt. Got the food mill out.  How do you put the damned thing together?  Oh, there we are. No.  No.  This is wrong.  The food mill is not milling food.  Not at all.  I dump the cauliflower and watercress back out, mussing another dish.  I try to put the food mill together.  I can’t make it fit.  Just. Can’t.  Make it.  Fit. Insert hideous collapse here. Insert Eric’s saying, “The Project is over.  We can’t do this anymore.” Insert my considering the bright prospect of just quitting.  Quitting all of it. Insert my realization of the black hole my life would be if I quit. (You think I’m exaggerating for dramatic effect, but I’m not – not really.) Is this the end of the Project?  Will Julie and Eric never experience sweetbreads?  Find out tonight on… …The Julie/ Julia Project! 8:01:46 AM    comment []