Thursday, March 06, 2003

Okay, let me just start with my disaster of the day – humor me.  I had decided to bring the leftover Charlotte Malakoff au Chocolat, which is after all pretty good and which I could have just sitting around in my refrigerator to work, for my colleagues to enjoy.  Cuz I’m just nice that way.  I wrapped it in wax paper and set it in my soufflé dish, and put the dish, along with a serving plate, in a big paper bag. It was a very rainy morning, and you can probably guess how this ends, right?  I come out of the subway in lower Manhattan, I’m starting across the street to my building, and yes, of course, the bottom of the bag give abruptly way, and there tumbles my Charlotte Malakoff.  The soufflé dish is, of course, toast.  It is raining very, very hard.  I pick up my wax paper-covered Charlotte Malakoff, and the piece of my soufflé dish, and retreat in humiliation.  The upside being that this one of the few days that didn’t get much worse as it went forward. Of course I still gave my colleagues the Charlotte Malakoff.  What they don’t know can’t hurt them…. Now -- Moules en Sauce. It is the end of the little fishies.  Here we are, at Day 191 of the Julie/ Julia Project.  I have completed three chapters, and have before me, mostly, dessert, aspic, and a hell of a lot of red meat.  This last part is going to be a doozy, I can tell already.  Just go ahead and schedule that triple bypass surgery and the stay in the mental hospital – I’m a’coming…. Moules in Sauce is not just an elaboration of mussels steamed in wine.  Put some vermouth, minced onions, parsley, bay leaf, thyme, pepper, butter, curry powder, fennel and garlic in a large pot and boil a couple of minutes to evaporate the alcohol.  Dump in the mussels, cover, and steam, shaking the pot from time to time, for three or four minutes, until the shells swing open.  Remove the mussels from their shells.  This produces a very large pile of shells, and an itty-bitty bowl of mussels.  Boil down the cooking liquid a good bit, and while you’re doing that beat together some cream and an egg.  Make a roux with a bit more flour than butter, then beat in the cooking liquid, making sure not to pour in any of the sand that the mussels released.  Boil it for a minute.  Julia says that “the sauce will be very thick,” and she’s certainly right about that.  Then she turns right around and says “beat [into the egg and cream] the hot sauce, in a thin stream of droplets.”  The sludgy sauce I have just made does not do droplets.  I scrape out a bit of the stuff at a time into the bowl, and beat it together.  It seems okay.  I put it back into the pan and boil it a minute, taste it, squeeze in a little lime juice.  So far so good.  Here it is, hardly eight o’clock, and we’re going to eat! I get Eric to make the salad, take a break with the Atlantic.  Before I know it, he’s done, back to watching his beloved Mishal Husein (blast her!), and I’ve got to finish up dinner.  No problem.  I start to heat up the sauce again, so I can do the last step, but – wait a minute – what the fuck?  The sauce is separating!  What the fuck?!  I guess I’ve been very luck with this, I’ve never had this happen to me before.  But it’s sure as hell happening now.  I beat at the stuff desperately for awhile, but it’s just getting worse and worse.  I flip frantically through MtAoFC, looking for a solution.  And Julia has it – “a tablespoon of cold water beaten into it will often bring it back.”  Actually, she has another solution, but it is too complex for me to contemplate at this dire moment.  I put water and an ice cube into a measuring cup, and pour a bit into the sauce, beating.  Sure enough, it seems to help.  Only problem is, now the sauce is cold, and I still have to beat in two tablespoons of butter.  The rest of the process is delicate indeed.  I am Tom Cruise hovering with a bead of sweat.  I am Harrison Ford in a battered fedora, weighing a bag full of sand in my hands.  I am Joe Millionaire.  I pour, warm, beat.  The butter goes in, tries to come out again.  I beat it into submission, only to have it rebel. Finally, finally, I seem to have reached stasis.  Quickly, before anything can drastically change, I stir in the mussels, and scoop the mess onto plates.  And it is a mess, definitely not a pretty thing.  A lumpy, dingy gold pile of glistening stuff, some wimpy salad, bread.  I notice, and then choose not to, that the sauce is separating a bit on the plate.  But it is nice – very, very rich, good to scoop up with bread. And here we are, not even nine yet, and we’ve finished eating. What do people do when they aren’t cooking?  I find it a difficult concept to grasp, these days.   8:00:39 AM    comment []