Sunday, June 6, 2010

Fricassee De poulet A L'Ancienne (Chicken Fricassee)


I have come to realize two things about French cooking thus far. There will be a lot of butter and wine is the first. The other is that no French woman could possibly hold down a full time job and cook like this (unless the job was as a chef).

That said - the wine does help the time go bye as this dish did take me much of the afternoon to prepare.

From peeling the pearl onions to taking a hatchet to the bird - was worth it. Very very yummy.

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Boeuf Bourguignon


Okay - So it's beef stew. How hard could it be? Take the bull by the horns and get my Sundays with Julia off to a proper start.

Quite possibly the most complicated stew recipe I've ever seen. Composed a list of ingredients and off to the market Joe goes to get them for me. Although the tomatoe paste in a tube still eludes us he did well. He did however find parsley in a tube...... (I didn't ask for that)

I have two quips about Ms Child's recipe. Step 11 calls for "Braised brown onions (recipe page 583) and step 13 calls for sauteed brown mushrooms (page something or other). Good thing I'm a nerd and read the recipe in it's entirety first or I wouldn't have known to take 50 minutes to brown braise my onions first.

I finally assemble my prepped ingredients into my casserole and plop them in the oven. BTW Joe thinks my casserole dish is not large enough and we have much debate about that.

3 hours of intoxicating smells later? Voila! Ms Julia is my new best friend! THAT was the best beef stew I've ever eaten! Sweets went for seconds and I'm not allowed to take any to share at work. LOL!

A success!