What I'm Watching: Jacques Pepin, Essential Techniques

Julia Child and Jacques Pepin are the patron saints of our kitchen, and M.P. has learned a lot from their cookbooks and cooking shows.  Here is a 3-hour video made to accompany Jacques' 2011 cookbook, Essential Pepin, which contains over 700 recipes.  

Although the video does show how to make some dishes along the way, such as eggs en cocotte, crepes suzette, and grilled steaks, much of it is concerned with demonstrating techniques useful in preparing all sorts of things:  for example, how to cook and peel an egg, how to peel and chop fruits and vegetables, and how to cut up poultry, fish, and meats.  

It's fascinating stuff, even for a plain cook like me; I like to just dip into it here and there, and watch a few minutes at a time.  The summary section on the video's YouTube page contains a very useful hyperlinked table of contents.  So if you have any interest in cookery at all, give it a whirl.  Bon appetit!

 

 Bonus: Jacques reminisces about his good friend, Julia, and the merry times they had cooking together.

 

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The Pork Boys Do Tilapia Meunière

We are still enjoying the cooler weather down here in Texas, and with it our autumn-leaf plates and goblets, as well as matching mugs that M.P. happened to find at the store the other day.  Perfect.

Saturday night, M.P. decided to make us a simple dinner of patty melts and french fries.  The patty melts are one of his specialties, built from the bottom on a piece of Texas toast, then a well-seasoned beef patty simmered in beef bouillon for extra flavor, topped with a strip of bacon and slices of Swiss and cheddar cheese, and crowned with very thinly sliced tomatoes, and sautéed onions and bell peppers.  And then a little more cheese - Asiago - why not?  Talk about good!  Oh, my.

French fries are another of his specialties, at which he worked hard for years to discover the secret of making them soft, puffy, non-greasy, and delicious.  These we topped with beef gravy and shredded cheese - some of you fellow old-timers may fondly remember this festive combination as disco fries.

The meal was rounded out with fried Italian green beans - now fellas, you really haven't lived until you've tried these, and they are the simplest thing in the world to make.  Open a can of Italian green beans, the big flat ones.  Drain.  Dump in a greased or buttered skillet, medium-hot.  Sauté for five minutes or so, until they start to blister.  No need to brown them.  Remove from heat and serve with a dollop of pepper mayo, one of the most delightful things in the world - it's simply mayonnaise with a goodly helping of black pepper stirred in.  Marvelous.

By the way, some time ago we discovered the superiority of coarse-ground black pepper over the regular pulverized variety.  The coarse-ground tastes just the same, but looks even more appetizing on whatever you're eating.  And none of those little unexpected hard crunches that stick in your dental work, such as you get with hand-ground pepper.  To each his own, of course, but we highly recommend the coarse-ground for all black-pepper affairs.

Sunday was mainly a siesta day for both of us, but when M.P. finally got around to fixing supper, he did a fine job of it.  The main dish was one of our favorite things:  tilapia meunière.  And one of the easiest things in the whole world to make:  flour the fish, lay them in melted butter, and sautée a few minutes.  Take the fish out, add a splash of lemon juice to the remaining butter and heat a couple of minutes.  Pour it over the fish and serve right away.  Nothing to it, but oh soooo good!

Of course, we always think of dear Julia when we have meunière, and the delectable first meal she had on French soil:



Her husband Paul was so wise to encourage her in the culinary direction. I have likewise encouraged M.P.'s gastronomic aspirations over the years with gifts of cookbooks, including four of Julia's, three of Craig Claiborne's, and a volume of Escoffier in English. (I would have given him the Larousse Gastronomique too, if he could read French.) And I congratulate myself that this strategy has certainly worked out very well for my taste buds, in my position of Chief Guinea Pig for all M.P.'s creative efforts in the kitchen.

Of course, as Head Scullion and Potscrubber, I have to clean up after him, too - no small task. But the rewards are well worth the labors.  Julia's assertion - I like to eat! - is therefore a familiar saying at our house:



But back to our menu.  Along with the fish, M.P. tried out a tasty new dish - fried broccoli.  Not something I would ever have thought of - but surprisingly scrumptious!  Just chop it up, dip in egg batter and flour, and fry it like okra, fellas.  You'll love it.

M.P. also whipped cheddar cheese, cream cheese, and beer into a smooth and lovely rarebit to go over the broccoli.  Mmmmm.  I like to call it rabbit, according to the best authorities, but M.P. finds that pronunciation too perplexing to countenance.

And just to round things out on a cool autumn night, M.P. added some potatoes and onions to a velouté sauce to make a tasty pot of creamy goodness, which needed only the addition of some coarse-ground black pepper to be complete.

My contribution to the dinner was to warm up a couple of those 7- Up Biscuits I told you about, and of course to lay the silverware, light the candles, and decant the White Zin.

From the 12 o'clock position:  biscuit, fish, broccoli, rarebit, potatoes & onions.

For dessert, with our coffee we had the last of the Granny in a Blanket - apples baked in pastry - from last week, once again with French vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce:  the delightful coda to another lovely meal, and another quiet weekend.

We are most grateful that in a troubled world we are somehow blessed, Deo gratias, with a happy circle of light and peace and good cheer in our humble home together, and I wish the same for all my truckbuddies.

Toujours bon appétit!

Julia Child: French Fries

Julia shows how to make les frites and other potato delicacies in this episode of The French Chef, first broadcast in 1972:

Julia Child: Salade Niçoise

First broadcast in 1970, with some footage of Julia visiting vegetable markets in the South of France:

Julia Child: To Roast a Chicken

Also known as the delightful Chicken Sisters episode, first broadcast in 1971:

Julia Child: The Hollandaise Family

Nothing beats homemade Hollandaise sauce, which is pretty easy to do up, as Julia shows in this episode, first broadcast in 1972:

Julia Child: The Omelette Show

An omelette is the best thing in the world to eat, and the simplest to cook. It really takes no particular skill - just 20 seconds in the skillet, and you're done. Seriously, people - everyone should know how to make an omelette, and your friends will thank you for it. Julia shows how in this episode first broadcast in 1972:




Just to reinforce the lesson, here's Jacques Pepin showing us the difference between a country omelette and a classic one:

Julia Child: Bûche de Noël

Julia demonstrates the making of a French yule log cake. Also in this episode: Julia copes with twig failure; how to make spun sugar with a broomstick. First aired fifty Christmases ago, in 1964:

Julia Child: Mousse au Chocolat

The Queen of Cuisine shows us how to make the perfect chocolate mousse, an excellent dessert for the holidays, in this episode from 1971:




And no, I really, truly don't give a fuck if anyone thinks it's "healthy" or not. So don't even go there. Julia herself lived to be 92 and enjoyed every minute of her time on this earth, which is more than the snotty, snobby health fanatics of this self-righteous age can say.

Julia Child: Elegance with Eggs

Labor Day is here, the last fling of summer. It's too hot to cook a big meal, but you invited all those people over for brunch - what to serve with the mimosas? Julia shows just what to do for a delicious, elegant brunch with baked eggs, shirred eggs, and omelettes, all easy as can be and takes no time at all.  First broadcast January 1, 1964 - fifty years ago already, if you can believe it.  Where does the time go?




Julia gives a shout-out in this episode to her British counterpart, Fanny Craddock, whom I'll feature in an upcoming post.

Julia and Jacques Cook Turkey Dinner

Last week, the Pork Boys had a scrumptious Thanksgiving dinner - no pics yet but my best friend M.P. nearly outdid himself on turkey and dressing and giblet gravy and twice-baked sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes and pecan pie and cranberry mousse pie - and also some extra delights like asparagus spears with Asiago cheese and homemade hollandaise sauce, wrapped in freshly made crepes. Damn, boys - it was some kinda good, I tell you what.

M.P. is feasting with his grown kids and a new grandbaby tomorrow, but I came home with plenty of luscious leftovers that I'm still working on, so I'll be just fine. In case you fellas are planning on dinner guests tomorrow but not sure how to proceed, here's the Pork Boys' two most favorite chefs, Julia Child and Jacques Pepin, to show you how it's all done. Watch it even if you're an experienced cook yourself - you just might learn some handy tips.

Have a good one, y'all.

Julia's Centenary

My best friend M. P. and I are both big fans of Julia Child, and I just found out that today would have been her 100th birthday. So in celebration of a life well lived, which continues to bring joy to millions through her many cookbooks and videos, here's a delightful little remix made for PBS. Enjoy.



My overseas truckbuddies may not know that Julia was an American institution for forty years, beloved by all. And so much so that her kitchen has been preserved in the Smithsonian. In case you're not familiar with her life and work, I highly recommend the 2009 film Julie & Julia, in which the great Meryl Streep plays Julia in what just might her best performance ever.

Here's an overview of Julia's amazing life from Biography:

I can also recommend Julia's charming autobiography, compiled with the help of her nephew, Alex Prud'homme, My Life in France. And though her cookbooks have never been out of print, I've just discovered that Amazon is now selling videos of her PBS cooking show, The French Chef, which you can download online, either per season or per individual show. A great treasure for generations of cooks to come. Here's a delightful little pastiche that gives you a good idea of Julia's cheerful, down-to-earth personality:

One of my favorite quotes by Julia, responding in 1990 to the criticisms of food critics and health Nazis:

Everybody is overreacting. If fear of food continues, it will be the death of gastronomy in the United States. Fortunately, the French don't suffer from the same hysteria we do. We should enjoy food and have fun. It is one of the simplest and nicest pleasures in life

Exactly. Both Julia and her husband lived to be 92, even with all that butter and cream and cigarettes. And your Head Trucker says: if you're not enjoying your life, what the hell is the point?

Bonus: Here is Julia's very first PBS show in 1962, featuring her famous recipe for Boeuf Bourguignon, which your Head Trucker highly recommends. A year or two ago, M. P. and I - well, mostly M. P., but I helped - followed this recipe to the letter, just to say we had, and the results were magnifique! And here's the printed recipe from her first book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Although we found by researching through some of Julia's later books and videos that as years went by, she simplified and made shortcuts to the recipe, which made it a bit easier but nonetheless authentically French. Still, you ought to try this version: there's nothing at all in the various steps that is difficult for anybody who can peel an onion or slice a mushroom. Allow 3-4 hours for this operation, first and last - perhaps as a holiday or birthday meal. You'll be mighty damn glad you did.

PS - I apologize for the crowded spacing above; lately, having more than one video in a post causes that, I don't know why.

The Pork Boys Do Boeuf Bourguignon



Last night we honored our patron saint by cooking up Julia Child's famous boeuf bourguignon and let me tell you, boys - it was to die for.  You never had anything so good in your mouth, believe me when I tell you.

Original 1961 recipe we used can be downloaded here.  Be sure to also download the recipes for braised onions and sauteed mushrooms while you're there.

Now we have been researching and studying this recipe for several weeks, night and day. The Pork Boys are nothing if not serious about good eats, I tell you what. Of course, there are many different versions of this recipe all over the Internet. And come to find out, even Julia herself does it four different ways in her various cookbooks and videos!

Which just goes to show the truth of her very first sentence about this dish in Mastering the Art of French Cooking: "As is the case with most famous recipes, there are more ways than one to arrive at a good boeuf bourguignon." The truth is, as we discovered in our researches, it originated as peasant food, the same as good old Cajun gumbo: a way to make a cheap piece of meat tender and delicious, and enough to feed a family.

But even though Julia herself, as years went by, offered quicker and simpler ways to arrive at the finished product, we wanted to do it according to the original recipe - just to be able from hereafter to say we did, for one thing, and also to have a yardstick by which to compare any other versions in future. In Mastering, Julia's first and most famous cookbook, she was translating the professional-chef techniques she had learned at the Cordon Bleu in Paris into carefully thought-out recipes that any "servantless American housewife" could follow, and produce a scrumptious result.

And the Pork Boys can now report that if you just man up and follow Julia's directions to the letter, you will indeed turn out a mouthwatering meal. As shown below.

First of all, le menu. The other Pork Boy, M.P. - who is the real chef de cuisine here, while yours truly is just the photographer, reporter, and chief bottlewasher - well, he has been looking forward to making this famous dish with such excitement that he originally planned a rather elaborate series of courses, starting with oysters Rockefeller and ending with made-from-scratch peach cobbler, both of which he is very good at making. Alas, once we got into the cooking, we found there was no time left over to do the other big dishes - which was just as well, or we wouldn't have had room in our stomachs to enjoy the boeuf bourguignon, which took about five hours to prepare, first and last. But when we did finally sit down to eat, at quarter after 1 in the morning, we had something wonderful, and plenty of it.

Hors d'oeuvre - Potato chips and shrimp dip, something simple that M.P. concocted at home and brought with him as a snack to tide us over while we cooked. I didn't get a picture, but it involves cream of shrimp soup and some chopped green olives. Yummy, creamy stuff.

Appetizer - Lobster rolls, which M.P. also brought with him. The main ingredient, of course, is the meat from some lobster tails he bought and rolled up with veggies in prepared egg wrappers. Another light and lovely snack.

Side dish - steamed Brussels sprouts with homemade Thousand Island dressing. M.P. has made this simple, delicious side dish many times, and the first time I tried it, I was rather dubious about mixing the sprouts with the dressing - but counterintuitive though it may seem, it's a wonderful pairing, you should try it sometime. The sprouts are quickly prepared with a little water in the microwave, and some melted butter.

And the piece de resistance, the famous Boeuf Bourguignon - which you shitkickers ought to understand is simply beef stew in wine with onions and mushrooms; there's really nothing complicated about it. I didn't take a picture of every little step and every ingredient, but here are some of the highlights for you.

After you've fried up half a pound of bacon, and cut up a 3-lb. chuck roast, you brown the beef in the bacon fat.  Then you dump the bacon and beef, along with a chopped carrot and chopped onion and 3 cups of dark red wine and some garlic and herbs into a casserole, like this:

Which at this point admittedly looks like a dog's breakfast, and tastes like it too.  But it gets a whole helluva lot better after simmering in the oven for 2 1/2 hours, trust me.  After we put it in, we took a break and chitchatted most of that time, instead of proceeding directly to work on the onions and mushrooms, which would have cut down the overall cooking time, but what the hell.  We weren't out to break any speed records, just had a good time visiting.

Now the onions - two dozen of the small variety - first need to be blanched a minute in boiling water, to make them easy to peel.  Then as you peel them, Julia says to make a small X-notch in the end of each one.  I wondered why that extra little step was necessary, but we found out.  Next, saute your peeled onions in butter, shaking the pan constantly to get them browned on all sides.

But looky here, guys - your unnotched onions, when they get all hot and lubed, sprout a hard-on.  You ever have that problem?  That's why you have to nip them in the bud first.  Strange but true, fellas.

Then you simmer the browned onions for about 45 minutes in beef bouillon, which gives them a luscious flavor.  Meanwhile, chop up a pound of fresh mushrooms, and saute them in butter too, which takes only a few minutes and gives them the yummiest taste.

Actually, you could just serve the mushrooms and onions with some noodles all by themselves, I think.   They taste so damn good done this way. 

When your beef comes out of the oven, you have to pour it through a sieve, then put the beef aside while you skim the fat off the wine sauce.  Now here is where M.P. used a little trick he learned elsewhere.  Instead of trying to skim the fat off the hot liquid - a Sisyphean task if ever there was one - he brilliantly threw a bunch of ice cubes into the liquid and stirred them around until all the fat was congealed. 

At which point, it was very easy to dip all the fat out, and discard.

Now you have to cook the wine sauce over high heat at a rapid boil while it reduces in volume by about half.  This is the great trick that wonderfully concentrates the flavors of the meat and the wine, and M.P. says he will always do it this way - none of Julia's later shortcuts would add so much flavor, he thinks. 

Finally, you recombine the meat and the sauce, and throw in the braised onions and sauteed mushrooms, and simmer all together for about 10 minutes; only we cheated a bit at this point - the Pork Boys were hungry - and got it all hotted up in the microwave.  God bless Corningwear is all I can say - what other cookware do you know of that can go from stovetop to oven to microwave - and on to refrigerator and dishwasher, with nary a worry?  I don't know why it doesn't seem to be very popular these days, but we both love it.

Dish yourself a nice big helping of noodles on your plate, and add as much stew as you want on top of them.  Then get you a piece of plain French bread with butter, a glass of good red wine, a fork, and dig in. 

You will be so damn glad you did.  I tell you what.  Words really can't describe it, boys:  you just have to try it for yourself sometime.

For our in-flight in-meal movie, M.P. picked up - what else? - the totally delightful Julie & Julia.  Which of course features this very recipe as a recurring motif.  And so with good food, good wine, good cheer, and good company, the Pork Boys happily concluded another adventure in cooking - with renewed admiration for St. Julia, our guide and inspiration.

Bon appetit, indeed!