Mastering the Art of French Cooking, v.1, Child, Beck & Bertholle (365 Books, Day 128)

[rushthatspeaks]

So this is a book that is both an Acknowledged Classic and also really trendy right now, and I had never read it because um.

I kind of hate French food.

Don't get me wrong, there are things about French food I love desperately. When we were in France we spent huge chunks of time eating nothing but bread, cheese, and the occasional piece of fruit and those were some of the best meals of my life, because the French have demonstrably won at both bread and cheese. It's just that every time I go to a French restaurant I order something that looks interesting and it tastes lovely for the first three bites and then it is so rich that either I have to stop right there or it just starts tasting cloying, as though I am sitting there eating a stick of butter. (Oddly enough, when I was a child my mother cooked with no fat at all, on a rather misguided health kick, and so I was sufficiently fat-deprived for doctors to come into it at one point and I have had the experience of simply eating, and enjoying, an entire stick of butter. I knew I was getting enough fat in my diet when that stopped tasting awesome. I can remember what it tasted like, though, and slightly miss it. Maybe it resembles what people who aren't me like about French food?)

But this book was very interesting, though it continued to demonstrate that this is neither my natural idiom of cooking nor of eating and there is no use pretending that it is. The foods I feel most comfortable in a kitchen with are Indian and Chinese and some vernacular English; you want massaman curry, char siu bao or summer pudding and I can do that. You want a boeuf bourguignon and I start fumbling for my instruction manual and fretting. This is why I wanted to read this, because it is not remotely in my comfort zone.

And as a good cookbook should be it is designed to increase that comfort zone. It's really well laid out, very systematic-- each family of preparations has a master recipe, which then has usually about seventeen variations, some of which would taste entirely different, but which use the same basic methods. Get the first one down and you can make all of the others, probably without anyone noticing that you really just know one dish. The really intimidating things are also spelled out plainly, with diagrams, and the places you can cut corners are noted, as well as the places you shouldn't. The book has a way of blithely assuming that a determined person can deal with anything, which is both reassuring and slightly intimidating all on its own-- no, I do not think I am ever going to find a souffle something to approach without some element of trepidation, thank you, no matter how often I am told that with practice I can whip one out.

The technique notes are also good. I may never need to flute a mushroom cap, but it's interesting to know how it's done.

So there were entire huge sections of this which I am never, ever going to want to make (I mean, no one in the house eats veal), but there kept being things I would strongly consider: the aforementioned boeuf bourguignon, cassoulet, pot-au-feu, pretty much the entire dessert section. And I do feel vague smugness at already being able to make mayonnaise and Hollandaise and poached eggs and creme anglaise, because it means the variations and changes on them are things I can note down for future use. This really is one of those books which can and does serve as an introduction and overview of an entire way of looking at food, and so inevitably there are some things I would like to swipe, even if I will never be able to figure out why in hell anybody would want to braise lettuce.

Deservedly classic. At some point I should read volume two.

Comments

[oyceter]

Souffles are actually not that difficult! And I speak as someone who is not particularly good in the kitchen and tends to get really sloppy about preparing stuff, and I've never made mayo or Hollandaise or etc.

Chocolate is supposedly easiest because something in the chocolate stabilizes the egg whites so the souffle doesn't fall, and I've never made it unsuccessfully, and I've made them at least 5-6 times. Lemon was harder for me, and I've had one actually fall down on me before, although never after the first time and after I baked them in a water bath. I've made lemon about 4 times now, thrice successfully, the first time with three successful souffles and one hockey puck.

[adrian_turtle]

I agree that chocolate souffles are great, and not that difficult (especially if you cheat, as I do, by stabilizing it with a spoonful of almond butter in the yolk mixture.) The hardest part, in my experience, seems to be getting the oven temperature exactly right. That's why there are so many dire warnings about not opening the oven door. Thanks for suggesting a water bath.

even if I will never be able to figure out why in hell anybody would want to braise lettuce.

Have you ever eaten it? Braised celery is surprisingly good, and so is braised endive. I wouldn't braise iceberg, but a relatively sturdy, bitter lettuce might be nice to braise.

My father used to put a little lettuce, whatever lettuce was handy, into pea soup. You wouldn't think it would affect the texture, because these soups were cooked all afternoon and then pureed. And you wouldn't think it would affect the taste, because there was also *bacon*, and some kind of wine. But I tried leaving the lettuce out when I started cooking for myself, and it was noticeably different and not quite as good. (Now that I recognize wine as a migraine trigger, and choose not to eat bacon, I make completely different pea soups...though perhaps they would also benefit from a handful lettuce.)

[rushthatspeaks]

Noted about the pea soup, I can imagine that working. Also about the almond butter, which sounds like a beautiful cheat and one I will totally use.

I've never tried braised lettuce, but it seems to me as though it ought to fall apart? She recommend Boston lettuce, which I have never thought of as sturdy, but maybe it is meant to deliquesce. Braised celery or endive make a lot more intuitive sense to me and are things I might try making sometime.

[rushthatspeaks]

I should try chocolate. I've tried lemon repeatedly and I get lemon pudding. Good lemon pudding, mind you-- on one occasion the Best Lemon Pudding Ever, so that I now make that recipe as lemon pudding-- but still.

Now that I have a stand mixer I should try again as it is probably better at beating egg whites than I am.

[oyceter]

Oooo, which lemon recipe did you use? This has been the one that's worked best for me; the Bittman one on the NYT wasn't lemony enough (I like really sour stuff).

For chocolate, I've just used the Joy one (first New Joy I think). But yeah, you can make the batter for the chocolate up to 24hr ahead of time and refrigerate it, which is super convenient!

[tirerim]

Not directly related, but I ran across this recently and thought of you: http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/omelette

[rushthatspeaks]

... they reverse-engineered a sous-vide. That's kind of hilarious, and also awesome.

[vehemently]

I really like starting winter stews with bacon (in lieu of lardon). This and roux are about the extent of my understanding of French cooking!

[chalcedony_cat]

I definitely like French food most when I've been low on fat for a while, so I think there is something to be said for your 'stick of butter' analogy.

[zxhrue.livejournal.com]

I love me some c,b,&b, one of the cookbooks I read just to read. I think the determined part is notably julia's contribution, but I may be overly influenced by recent media.

salad nicoise is one of my personal favorites that I first made following their directions.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

At some point, I will make braised lettuce (and baked cucumber, and other things of that ilk), just to see what it's like.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Let me know how it goes, if you do! The braised lettuce is just over the edge of more work than I would want to put in for curiosity's sake, I think. The baked cucumbers were intriguing.

[sovay]

The book has a way of blithely assuming that a determined person can deal with anything, which is both reassuring and slightly intimidating all on its own-- no, I do not think I am ever going to find a souffle something to approach without some element of trepidation, thank you, no matter how often I am told that with practice I can whip one out.

It is actually true. I have seen both of my parents throw soufflés of both the savory and sweet kind together on nothing more than impulse and the presence of some spinach or lemon in the house. It is not yet a skill I possess.

I learned to cook some things from Julia Child as I grew up, not systematically at all. I probably should just read one of her books straight through now that I am an adult with a kitchen.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

That impresses me profoundly. I have tried souffle on multiple occasions, and what I end up with is pudding. Perfectly edible pudding, but.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am fascinated that the stick of butter works on people who are short of fats in the way that the liquid iron supplement worked on me as a child: it was by no means pleasant-tasting by objective standards, but it was clearly the taste of what I needed, and one of the ways I can tell that I'm iron-short these days is when I crave it. I have also heard that Gatorade works this way (that if it tastes good, you're dehydrated enough to need it), so I'm fascinated to hear that a stick of butter did as well.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

It is true about the Gatorade. In fact, there's this distinct moment when Gatorade goes from tasting like "the best thing ever OMG" to "slightly toxic and gross like Gatorade." It's odd.

[larryhammer]

Yup. And here in the desert, you learn to listen to those tastes, because dehydration is something to watch for.

---L.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

It very much did work the same way. Unfortunately it seems to have set some sort of pattern to my cravings, so that nowadays if I am craving and eating a lot of fat it does not actually mean I need that and in fact usually means I need iron. Which is kind of annoying, but interesting.

[nipernaadiagain.livejournal.com]

Could be worse. When I need iron I crave rubber.

Now I know it, but as an underfed breastfeeding woman during the lean times I did not know and even if it was terribly embarrassing I chewed thorough (cut into pieces and chewed - I had no willpower not to)first the useless for me rubber nipples, then the rubber enema balloons that had come with the "Healthy baby kit" and couple of rubber toys ...

Fortunately I tried to sell my blood and was sent away with bag of iron supplement pills. I was able to leave the rubber items alone after first couple of pills.

[deliasherman.livejournal.com]

This is the book I learned to cook from. I certainly didn't cook my way through it--I couldn't afford to, for one thing, but I did learn the fundamental things the French (and a couple of other European cuisines, it turns out) do with food. Child is a mistress of crystalline exposition and calm confidence. I even used her recipe for puff pastry when I was teaching Freshman Comp to dissect the art of process analysis.

When I was in my 20's, I was perfectly happy with all the butter and cream and enriching. Now, I can't stomach them, so I make substitutions. I don't cook out of that book much any more--Chinese, Middle-Eastern, Italian, and simpler, leaner French idioms have taken up most of the room in my "I'm really trying here" repertoire. But I know, from experience, if I follow her directions, I can do anything. Including a souffle, which I used to make all the time, but haven't done in years. Hmm.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I noticed after posting the review that you'd been cooking from the book at about the same time I was reading it.

God, her recipes are clear. It's a standard to which I wish more cookbooks aspired. I have fucked up things of hers before, usually for reasons of not thinking it through enough (caramel, for instance, continues cooking even after you take the pan off the stove, if you don't take it out of the pan), but it's never been her fault.

I wish it didn't feel so like blasphemy to quarter the amount of butter in all her food.