Julia Child died last week, and leaves behind a legacy of joy and inspiration for cooking. Child is largely credited with being the inspiration behind the modern "cooking show" which was not a genre when she released her first cookbook ("Mastering the Art of French Cooking"). She went on to be a staunch and serious defender of the importance and fun of home cooking, and helped to ease people's intimidation of cooking at home with her easy-going manner, her ability to mess things up and keep going, her humor, and yes, her silly voice. Every interview I've heard with her has always been gracious, intelligent, funny, and wise, and given my love of food and cooking, it didn't take long for me to love Julia.
So, this week sometime, in memory, I'd like each of you to cook something that you think is way too difficult, but you've always wanted to try. Then, share your experience with me in the comments. I haven't decided what I'll go after, but I've got a lot of Thai dishes I've been meaning to get to.
Bon Appetit!
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Fresh Air interview with Julia
Slate Diary with Julia From 2000
Julia Child Memoriam Challenge:
This is one I've been meaning to try for a while, the infamous cheese soufflé. So with a Julia Child Memoriam Challenge, it was the clear choice.
I saw the cheese soufflé episode on Good Eats on Food TV a couple of months ago and thought I might be able to make that... maybe... hmm, folding looks hard. Normally, I don't shy away from any difficult, foreign, exotic cooking challenge that presents itself to me, as long as it's Asian. I don't know, maybe it's because, if I'm going to put a lot of work and mental effort into a dish, it might as well be one with Asian flavors that seem to do a lot more for my palate than stuffy old European dishes do.
A word or two about Good Eats. I sincerely doubt that I'll stir up much controversy here by stating that Alton Brown, the host, has, hands down, the best informative cooking show on the Food Network, and possibly anywhere on TV today. His shows are thematic, built around exploring the uses and possibilities of a given ingredient or technique. The shows are designed to be cumulative in their knowledge, meaning they refer back to information in previous shows, but not in a way that you are lost if you've missed that episode or aren't a regular watcher. And the shows are never recipe driven. He uses and gives out recipes, but then will give you s dozen or so ways to change them always emphasizing the general techniques and food chemistry. For MTU-theaterites, it's the difference between learning acting from Debra Bruch (regular cooking shows), and Richard Blanning (Good Eats). Also, he never says "Bam". So, bearing all that in mind, I'm willing to forgive him for being the informative commentary guy on the terribly insipid American version of Iron Chef (shudder). If there were a cooking show heir to Julia Child, I would nominate Alton Brown.
Now the cooking. For those of you playing along at home:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_19915,00.html
If you look at the directions in the recipe they are terribly incomplete, which may be on purpose because his show is not recipe driven. Generally, for Good Eats, if you haven't seen the episode the recipe is from, don't try it.
Things started out very well for me as we own one single soufflé mold and it just happened to be the right size. Go us. Julia Child hated substitutions but, I can't help it, I hate buying extra stuff. These were my substitutions:
Shredded parmesan instead of grated
Home ground mustard seeds instead of dry mustard
Iodinated salt instead of kosher
Not too bad. Since the parmesan was for pan release, it really should have been grated, but I hate that canned grated crap and I just wasn't going to buy a block of parmesan to grate 2 tablespoons when I knew that I would just end up eating the rest.
Anyway, some things the recipe fails to mention which were covered in the show. First, preheating the oven is much more involved for a soufflé because the temperature has to stay right at 375 but your ovens temperature resembles more of a sine wave than a straight line. So you have to add heat capacity and start preheating at least an hour early. Normally, when I think of household objects with good heat capacity that I can stick in the oven I think big pan of water. Unfortunately, the whole moisture/humidity thing ruins that. I settled for 5 medium sized rocks on the bottom shelf. All of my mixing, whipping, tempering, and folding went well. Soufflés are not as temperamental as the entertainment industry would have us believe, but they cannot stand up to someone opening the oven during the first 20 minutes or so of cooking. That was hard for me as I'm a checker. Finally, it was done and this was where the trouble came. My rocks had some dirt on them still, which does not bake particularly well. I opened the oven and it smelled very bad... burned dirt would be the smell. I had visions of the legendary light and airy soufflé absorbing that terrible smell like a sponge... fortunately for me, the air exchange between a soufflé’s interior and its exterior during baking appears to be quite low as the soufflé tasted amazingly great. But then there was my problem of timing. Unfortunately, I had finished it sooner than I had though possible and way before Corrie got home from work. Definitely more than the 20 minutes it takes for one of those bad boys to deflate. So do you feel cheated eating a deflated soufflé when your spouse gets home? Fuck no! Still damn tasty and still impossibly light. Go me.
WTF! Am I the only one who cooks? Jeez. Maybe if you all weren't wasting so damn much time at work you'd be able to cook something and tell everyone about it.
As I don't see my wife before dinner, I have not been able to cook. Maybe this weekend....
Nice siteGod knows
Bye!
Jill Jones