Thursday, February 27, 2003

Foie de Veau Sauté avec Sauce Crème à la Moutarde [Sauteed Calf’s Liver with Cream and Mustard Sauce] and Épinards Gratinés au Fromage [Spinach Gratineed with Cheese], or Eric attempts to Master the Art of French Cooking  Hello folks, Eric here on Day 187 of the Julie/Julia Project. Since things are pretty hectic for Julie in the government these days, it seemed to make sense for me to try my hand at cooking this week. And not just some lame spicy hamburger, but the real stuff, something my lovely bride could check off the list. If you want to skip the rest of the entry I’ll go ahead and tell you now that it wasn’t as easy as it looks, plus I made a whole shit load of dishes, which I’ll note Julie has still not washed.  I needed to pick something easy. I’m not as good with high pressure situations as the wifey. And what could be easier than spinach with baked cheese and sautéed calf’s liver? It’s the classic Luby’s combination after all. Julie still has a problem with liver, but she’s coming around on it. Perfect. Plus, it looks like it will take like maybe forty minutes to cook.  I make the shopping list at work, and set off to the commie butcher in Astoria. At the butcher’s, I’m stuck behind eight firemen getting their steaks for the night. This takes a while, especially since they keep razing the apprentice butcher behind the counter. “Where’d you go to butcher school?” “Hey, watch it, we don’t like fingers in our meat” “Don’t listen to him, fingers have protein.” Then they start talking about how unit 259 delivered a baby at the entrance to the Holland tunnel today, which they all seem kind of envious of. Everyone in the butcher’s is very charmed, but I’m getting nervous, the last Mishal Husain Show is on in forty minutes.  Finally I get my pound and a half of calf’s liver, which looks remarkably good raw. Then I speed around Astoria getting cream, parsley, mustard and booze. Only twenty minutes till Mishal. I get to the subway and wait, and wait. An express train comes through the station. Damn it. Ten minutes. Finally a train comes and actually stops. Its slow going though. I jog home from the station and I’m still ten minutes late. I’ve missed Mishal’s round up of the big events of the day and the London anchor is on. This is not going well.  I do catch Mishal at the bottom half of the half-hour. But she looks pale, wan. Is she OK? Maybe she’s working extra long hours these days.  Anyway, its now seven thirty. Julie doesn’t come home until 9:30. I figure I start cooking at 8:30 and everything is done by the time she walks in the door. I putter around the house. Suddenly its 8:40. Time to clean the spinach. I use a big knife to trim the stems, so this goes quicker than usual. Still, its easily 9:15 by the time I start sautéing the spinach. Only something’s wrong. I’ve got this mass of spinach leaves and I’m trying to stuff it into this pan. Suddenly it dawns on me that I’ve picked up the recipe in middle. I was supposed to boil the spinach and chop it before sautéing it. I realize sautéing raw spinach leaves makes little sense. Back to square one, only now, a good quarter of the spinach is soaked with butter. Oh well. What could go wrong?  So I put a big kettle of water on to boil the spinach. 9:30. In walks Julie. The water for the spinach isn’t even boiling yet.  Julie doesn’t seem surprised. We sit down in front of Dan Rather’s interview with Saddam. Julie’s full of all kinds of interesting Lower Manhattan Planning gossip, most of which is probably covered by her confidentiality agreement, so we don’t watch much of the interview at all, though we agree that Arabic is a really pretty language.  With the water boiling, I throw the spinach in, let it cook for five minutes. Then I use Julia’s suggestion of draining the spinach, which I don’t have time to go into except to note that it hurt my hand really bad, and resulted in the loss of much spinach. OK. Drain the spinach, don’t cut it up. Throw it into a pan, and sautee with butter. Now I’m at the step I thought I was at about an hour ago. Its well past ten.  Add cream to the spinach and let it cook for about ten minutes. Then I stir in about a cup of swiss cheese, which I actually grated earlier, whilst listening to Julie talk about a certain governor and a certain mayor and how a certain architect should have been a little less aggressive in his presentation.  So then I pour the spinach into a baking dish and cover it with two tablespoons of bread crumbs and another 1/3 of a cup of swiss cheese. Then its into the oven which is preheated at 375. Its supposed to cook for thirty minutes. Its now 10:30. Time for the liver.  This actually goes much better. I dredge the slices of liver in flour. Salt and pepper. And throw onto the pan to sauté in butter and oil. Liver cooks fast. Too fast. Its all over inside of three minutes and I think I’ve probably overdone them. They smell damn good though.  Time for the sauce, this takes a little longer and I screw up. I’m supposed to put a cup of beef broth in the pan and let it reduce by half before I add cream. I didn’t read this part so good though, and put the cream in first. I realize my mistake and add the broth, but that’s a mistake you can’t take back. Julie says its Ok. What could happen?  After the broth/cream is reduced by half it looks a little soupy, but Jesus Christ its well past 11:00, time to get the show on the road. So I take it off the heat and add two tablespoons of butter and one tablespoon of mustard. Stir it around. It looks less soupy.  Hot damn. Time to eat. The spinach was done about thirty minutes ago, so its been warming in the oven. Take it out and pile it on a plate with the liver and mustard sauce. Julie looks about ready to fall over. We have to eat quick.We take our plates into the living room. It’s a little past 11:30. The British Commons is on C-Span. Jack Straw is up there making the case for invading Iraq, getting shouted out by all the right honorable gentlemen. I’ll let Julie describe what the food tasted like, maybe in a comment baby? I’m late for work. But I think she liked it. She had seconds and said “You made good liver baby” Then she fell fast asleep. 8:53:39 AM    comment []