Beurre Blanc

Here's another Julia recipe. There's actually a very adorable scene in Julie and Julia where she's describing this sauce to her sister, and her husband describes it as "Tangy," thoroughly insulting Julia. Well, in general, the movie is adorable.

And apparently I'm on a not-so-official quest to cook every recipe that appeared in the movie. So far I have made:

Bruschetta (Julie makes it before starting the blog)
Sole Meurniere
Boef Bourginnon
Beurre Blanc
Artichokes and Hollandaise... have I missed anything?
I don't know that I will ever bone a duck.



Ingredients:
2 1/2 Tb White Wine Vinegar
2 1/2 Tb White Wine
1 Tb Minced Shallot
Salt and Pepper
2 Sticks of Buttah (oh lordie.)
Lemon Juice

Combine Vinegar, Wine, Shallots, Salt, and Pepper and boil until "syrupy." Take off heat and throw in two chunks of butter. When the butter is almost completely creamed into the sauce, add another chunk and put back on LOW heat. Add in one chunk at a time until your heart is mentally prepared to handle what is about to come. Take off the heat and add Lemon Juice to taste. Easy peezy japaneezy.

Quiche

This recipe is purely based on a kitchen toy purchase. I bought a quiche pan because it was lovely and convenient and I was weak and I am unworthy. But nevertheless, Steve and I gobbled this up with no problem whatsoever. The great thing about Quiche - you can eat it for any meal of the day... and we might have.



Ingredients for Crust:
1 1/4 Cups Flour
1 Tb Sugar
1 Tsp Salt
4 Tb Shortening
5 Tb Buttah

Ingredients for Insides:
7 Eggs
1 1/2 Cup Half and Half
1/2 Lbs Bacon
3 Red Potatoes
2 Cups Cheddar Cheese

Hardware: The most beautiful pie pan in existence.

Combine dry ingredients of crust. Add Shortening and mix until it looks like course crumbs. Add Buttah until it looks like bigger, pearly, delicious, artery clogging crumbs. Clump into a ball, wrap, and freeze for at least a half hour.

Fry some Bacon, set aside. Peel your Potatoes (unless you like peels, then by all means, ignore me.) and microwave on High for about three minutes or until they're just a little squishy. Cut Potatoes into little cubes and fry in the bacon grease. Set aside. Exercise for a few hours. When the bacon is cool and crispy, smash it up into little pieces.

Pre heat oven to 400F.

Roll out your dough (neater than I did) and get it into the pan (more efficiently than I did). Poke it around with a fork so that bubbles don't form, and put it back in the fridge to firm up.

Combine all filling ingredients.

Blind bake your crust for about 10 minutes, put in your filling, and bake for an hour or until the smell of bacon is too intense and you pounce on the oven like a rabid wolf.

Chicken with Mushrooms

Cooking has been consuming my life. If I'm not cooking, I'm reading cookbooks. If I'm not reading cookbooks, I'm watching Food Network. If nothing good is on Food Network, I'm watching other peoples' food blogs. One of my favorites is called Economy Bites. It's hosted by a chick named Allie, who, like me, cannot cook very well. She invited me to blog one of her recipes - so here it is! Chicken with Mushrooms a la Jenny a la Allie.



Again, this is not exactly Allie's recipe - it's a mixture of Allie, Julia Child, and whatever was on my spice shelf. To see her version of this dish, Click Here!

Ingredients:
4 Chicken Cutlets (Or two breasts, pounded and halved)
1/2 Cup Flour
4 Oz Mushrooms, sliced
A small Shallot, minced
1/2 Cup White Wine
1 Cup Chicken Broth
1-2 Tb Cream
1 Tsp Dried Rosemary
Olive Oil and Butter for sautee-ing
Salt and Pepper to taste
Parsley and Parmisan Cheese for garnish


Put Flour on a small plate and season with salt and pepper. Dredge the chicken cutlet lightly. Heat up a large sautee pan and drizzle in Olive Oil and Butter. When the butter has stopped foaming, put in chicken.

Let chicken sit until it turns white halfway up its side, then flip. Let sit again until entire side of chicken is white; it will not be cooking all the way, but they will simmer later in the sauce. Remove chicken to another plate.

Put Mushrooms in the pan and salt, then sautee until browned. Throw in the shallot and let soften for a minute.

Deglaze the pan with Wine. Scrape browned bits of chickeny goodness off of the pan. Add Chicken Broth, Cream, Salt, Pepper, and Rosemary. Mixy mix. Put the chicken back in - they should be almost covered; if not, add more broth. Let this sit for a few minutes until the sauce is reduced so it covers the back of a spoon and the chicken is cooked through. Garnish with Cheese and Parsley, tuck a napkin into your shirt, and eat.

Successful! Leek and Potato Soup

Forget the last one happened. Call it intelligence, call it talent, or call it my new Le Creuset Dutch Oven, but I figured out Leek and Potato soup. It's actually a really simple formula, and kinda makes me feel dumb for not figuring it out the first time.



Ingredients:
Leeks
Potatoes
Heavy Cream
Salt to taste

The formula is:
1 cup solids to 1 cup liquid to 1 Tb Heavy Cream

Therefor, if you have like a potato and a leek, you would do 1/2 cup Potato, 1/2 cup Leek, 1 cup water, 1 Tb Heavy Cream.

Or, if you're feeding a huge Italian family, you would use 50 cups Potato, 50 cups Leek, 100 cups Water, and 100 Tb Heavy Cream. Or just go to a restaurant because no one has a pot that big.

Cut up and clean veggies, put them in a pot with water. Boil until mushy gushy in your tushy. Buzz it with an emersion blender or in a food processer or a food mill or between your teeth if you're EXTREME. Add cream and salt to taste.

Leek and Potato Soup

According to Julie Powell, this is the "simplest" recipe to make in Julia's book, but "simple" isn't the same as "easy." Now, when I first read this, I thought she was just trying to sound philosophical. But she was right. Witness me mess up a three ingredient soup.



Now to my credit, her directions say "2 quarts of water." Who thinks in quarts? I then ran to Barnes and Noble and read another of her books that fixes that measurement and calls it 6 cups. Uhm. Thanks Julia. There will be a retry on this one.

Ingredients:
2 Lbs Potatoes
2 Lbs Leeks
6 Cups Water
6 Tb Cream
Salt to taste... or the salt from my disappointed tears.

Peel and cut up potatoes, cut up and clean leeks. Throw everything in a pot and boil until soft. Buzz it with an immersion blender, or in a food processor or food mill. Add some cream, season with salt. Hopefully enjoy it more than I did.

Or if you're Steve, suggest adding bacon and cheddar cheese and make Jenny cry.

Coq au Vin

I asked Jessica what she wanted to make this week, and she said "Coq au Vin." But I thought it would be too expensive because there are two kinds of booze in it. I suggested a few more things - some French, some German, some American - and it always came back to Coq au Vin. So, we went to the liquor store, bought the crappiest six dollar jug of Burgundy we could find, and proceeded to light my dutch oven on fire. Enjoy.



Ingredients:
3-4 Pounds Chicken (we used boobies, you can use whatever you want.)
4 oz Bacon (about 5 strips.)
A shallot (in place of Pearl Onions... read Julia's recipe if you're confused.)
1/4 Cup Cognac
3 Cups Burgundy
Chicken Stock to cover
A bay Leaf
2 Cloves Garlic, mashed
1 Tb Tomato Paste (the recipe says 1/2 Tb, but Jessica made me put more. Peer pressure.)
3 Tb Flour
8-10 Oz Mushrooms (we used baby bellas)
A shit ton of butter... I think we finished off a stick by the end of it.
Salt and Pepper

Boil the bacon for 10 minutes to get rid of the smokey flavor. Saute in a dutch oven with butter until crispy. Remove. Try not to eat too much of it.

Salt and pepper your chicken and sear both sides in the bacon fat. Add bacon back in, throw in a diced shallot. Cover and cook for five minutes. Turn the chicken to its other side and cook for five more minutes.

Grab a lighter and your Cognac, laugh maniacally, and set the chicken aflame. Then freak out and shake the pan around until the flames are gone. Add your wine and chicken stock, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes.

Saute up some mushrooms, fo' shizzle. You can probably do whatever vegetable you want, but Julia said mushrooms. So it has been written, so it will be done. Make a paste of butter and flour.

Take chicken out of the pot and reduce the sauce to about 2 cups or until you're sick of waiting. Throw in paste and whisk vigorously. It'll be thick and saucey now.

Add everything in - chicken, mushrooms, whatever else - and let stand for a few minutes to baste in its majesty. Eat.

Apple Tarte Tatin

So I'm completely obsessed with Julie and Julia. I've read the book twice, read the sequel (which kind of ruined the first, but whatever.), read "My Life in France," and watch the movie an embarassing amount of times. In honor of my obsession, I decided to make ANOTHER recipe that was featured in the movie - Apple Tarte Tatin. To give myself credit, I've wanted to do this long before the movie came out - Gordon Ramsay made it on one of his shows and made it looks simple at 30 seconds long. Oh, was he wrong.



Yea, my pan was too big so my tart turned into something resembling baked apples on a cracker. But whatevs.

Sole Meurniere

Tonight I made Sole Meurniere... I hope that's spelled right. It's a very fancy sounding dinner that maybe costs ten bucks for two people. PS - I do not like fish. At least cooked. Sushi is great, but I've never liked the "fishy" taste of fish. Let's see how this turns out.

Ingredients:
3 Sole Filets
Zest and Juice of a lemon
Parsley
2 ish Tb Butter
Salt, Pepper
Flour
Asparagus



Retrospective thoughts: I am in need of a better lemon zester or microplane and a fish turner if I'm going to keep trying to make fish. And a potato ricer. But that's just because Grandpa says you need one to make gnocchi.

Cheese Souffle

This is, by far, the most difficult thing I think I've tried to do. A cheese souffle, for one.



One thing I've been thinking about: All of these fancy, schmancy French dishes are probably stupid expensive in restaurants, but let's look at what it actually took me to make a cheese souffle.

A tablespoon of butter.
A tablespoon of flour.
Some scraps of cheese.
Two eggs.
A splash of milk.
A stick of wood.
A piece of cloth.

Oh... woops, I left the last two in Anatevka. But you get the point - why so expensive, Restaurants? I made this at home for about 3 bucks. Make it yourself, people.

Boeuf Bourguignon

After buying "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," it's almost silly not to make Boeuf Bourguignon. So, here's my attempt.



Recipe ideas for later - Molten chocolate cake, cheese souffle, apple tart tatin... any ideas?

((EDIT: Apparently, it's pronounced "key-aunti," not "shee-auntie." Thank you, Harrison.))