Has the cook-through blog jumped the shark?

Julie Powell started it all when she launched the Julie/Julia Project, in which she set out to cook all 500-plus recipes in MtAoFC over the course of the year and blog about it.

Julie's blog begat a book which begat a movie, which has now begat (begotten?) what has to be the most meta web phenomenon...The Lawrence/Julie & Julia Project.

For reasons unknown, a Northwestern University student named Lawrence Dai, has resolved to watch Julie & Julia every day for a year and to chronicle his quest on a blog.

Bon Appetit, dude.

182. Sole Meunière (p. 284)

Could a single meal have changed the entire course of America's culinary history? If any meal can be said to have been so momentous, surely it would have to be the meal that Paul and Julia Child shared at a small restaurant in Rouen upon their arrival in France on November 3, 1948. It was during that meal that Julia's lifelong passion for French cooking--the passion that she shared with generations of chefs and home cooks through her books and television shows--was born. And the dish that sparked the fire that's been burning brightly in kitchens everywhere for the past sixty years? This recipe* for Sole Meunière, which Julia called "an opening up of the soul and spirit for me."

Since that meal was where it all began for Julia, it is fitting that the new film, Julie & Julia starts there, too, with a wide-eyed Julia breathlessly exclaiming "Butter!" as the opening credits roll. The movie opened this weekend, and I didn't waste a minute in getting to see it. More about the movie in a moment, but first, let's keep talking about food. I thought that it was only fitting to mark the occasion of the movie opening by eating, what else? Sole Meunière. According to The Book (the Gourmet Cookbook, that is, and not MtAoFC), meunière means "miller's wife," and refers to anything dusted in flour. And that's exactly what this dish is: a fillet of sole, dusted in flour, sauteed in butter and parsley, and topped with a butter and lemon juice sauce.

The first step in making Sole Meunière is obtaining the said sole. Without a doubt, the sole that Julia ate at Rouen in 1948 was a Dover sole. Unfortunately, Dover sole is a European fish that is hard to find in the United States. And while The Book says that it's worth seeking out the real McCoy for this recipe, it also says that gray sole or lemon sole are acceptable alternatives. I was able to find some gray sole at Hometown Seafoods in Andover, and that was good enough for me. The Book calls for two six ounce fillets for two people. The fillets at Hometown were much smaller, and so I got four fillets totaling twelve ounces.

The rest of the recipe couldn't be easier. I patted the fillets dry and dredged them in some flour. Then I heated three tablespoons of butter on medium-high heat until it started to brown. Next, I added some chopped parsley and shook the pan for just a few seconds to distribute the sizzling parsley throughout the golden butter. I added the sole, and lowered the heat slightly, I cooked it for just a couple of minutes on each side, turning it very carefully with two spatulas (it's very delicate). When the fish was golden-colored and slightly crisped at the edges, I transferred it to a plate. Finally, I added some more butter, lemon juice and salt to the pan and cooked it for just a few seconds before pouring it over the sole.

So, how was it? It was really, really good. The fish was light and flaky, with just a bit of crispiness. The sauce was buttery without being heavy. Browning the butter gives it a sweet and nutty flavor, while the touch of lemon brightens the sauce and cuts the richness of the butter. There's nothing "extra" or fancy in this dish. Just a couple of simple ingredients combined so perfectly together to make a truly sublime, yet uncomplicated dish. In MtAoFC, Julia refers to Potage Parmentier (Leek and Potato Soup) as "simplicity itself." Sole Meunière could be described in the same way, and it's no surprise that this dish was an eye-opening experience for Julia.

Now, the movie. It was everyting I hoped it would be. Meryl Streep is amazing. She's not so much "playing" Julia Child as she is channeling her. My money is on her for a Best Actress Oscar. But, with all of the fawning over Meryl and Julia, I think that the critics have been unfair to Julie Powell. As a cook-through blogger, I'm biased, but I can't help but feel the need to come to Julie's defense when the New York Times places all of the blame for the movie's few shortcomings squarely on Julie's shoulders. The Times calls Julie's book "rambling," and says that "the deck is stacked against" Amy Adams, who plays Julie because of "the discrepancy between Ms. Powell’s achievement and Ms. Child’s." Ouch! Even Judith Jones (Julia's editor, who stood Julie up on a dinner invitation during the Julie/Julia Project, by the way) is talking smack about Julie. Judith told Publisher's Weekly that Julia didn't want to "endorse" Julie's project because she thought it was a "stunt" undertaken by someone who wasn't a "serious cook." Courage, Julie! There are an enlightened few of us who understand what it was that you were trying to accomplish, and we appreciate your efforts. Don't listen to the haters.

One last point about the movie. At it's core, its a love story. There's the love affair we all have with food, of course. But, this movie is really about two couples who love, support, and understand one another. Without Paul Child and Eric Powell, there wouldn't be a Julia Child or a Julie Powell. This film was a wonderful reminder to me of just how lucky I am to have found someone who is, as Paul said of Julia, "the butter to my bread and the breath to my life."

Date Cooked: August 8, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: A-

*This recipe isn't on epicurious.com, and, strangely enough, it's not in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, either. Curious that Julia didn't include the dish that started it all in her classic book. Julia's recipe for Sole Meunière, does appear, however, in Julia's Kitchen Wisdom, and was recently reprinted in The Chicago Tribune.

The Book before The Book

A few weeks ago, I was flipping through The Book looking for something to make for Father's Day. I absent-mindedly stopped at the Preface. Now, I'm sure that I read Ruth Reichl's introductory essay before I started The Project, but the first few lines apparently didn't register with me until now.

"The book that taught me to cook was a big brown leather-covered tome with The Gourmet Cookbook stamped in gold on the front. I called it 'the Book,' but to a little girl in the fifties, it was more than that."

What? But I thought that I was reading The Gourmet Cookbook? The Book was published in 2004, not the 1950s. It's yellow, not brown. Was Ruth mistaken? I needed to get to the bottom of this, so I put The Book aside and pulled up Google. I typed "Gourmet Cookbook 1950s" in the search window. After a few minutes, I had learned that, in 1950, as Gourmet Magazine was approaching its tenth anniversary, the magazine's editors decided to publish a cookbook "based on the cream of the recipes that had appeared in the magazine during the first decade of its existence." A few years later, in 1957, the editors published a second volume of The Gourmet Cookbook, meant to be a companion to the 1950 book, but at the same time "a complete and independent cookbook in itself." Whereas Volume I is a broad-based general cookbook, Volume II delves deeper into "pastry making a la francaise, outdoor cookery, and the accouterments of the grand buffet." After a number of printings, the editors undertook a complete revision, and in 1965, they published a second edition of the two volumes. (The early 1960s also saw the publication of a couple of other Gourmet books: The Gourmet Menu Cookbook and The Gourmet Basic French Cookbook.)

I had to get my hands on these books. My local library was no help. But e-bay came through. I found a set of the 1965 second edition available in an auction set to end in a couple of days. My first instinct was to lunge and make a "buy it now" offer, but I decided to play it cool. There were no bids yet, and the minimum bid was $9.99. I stalked the auction, checking it almost hourly as the end-date approached. A few hours before the auction ended, there were still no bids. I could smell victory. With only minutes left in the auction, I typed my bid into the dialogue box. After a few tense moments, and for the bargain price of $9.99 plus shipping, I was the proud owner of The Book's mama and papa.

A few days later, a great big brown-paper package (not tied up with string, but that's OK) was waiting for me when I got home from work. I tore the package open, and there they were. The pages were slightly yellowed and had that faint, mildewy high-school library scent. They are both big, heavy, and more than 700 pages each.

If The Gourmet Cookbook is the food Bible, the 1965 edition is the Old Testament. The pages are crammed with recipes written with an economy of words. The recipe for French Onion Soup, for example is only six sentences long. Notably absent, however, is the list of ingredients that precedes recipes in modern cookbooks. The recipes in Volume I and II are written in paragraph form, in the style of the classical cookbooks like Escoffier's. Apparently, ingredient lists, like those printed in the margins of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961), were still innovative in the 1950s and 60s. The books are also liberally illustrated with red ink line drawings, and lush, if somewhat corny, technicolor photographs. For instance, the photo of Caneton a la Orange au la Bigarade (Duck with Orange) includes a creepy prop ceramic duck sitting uncomfortably beside its cooked cousin. And the photo of Chocolate Bavarian Cream is decorated with a statute of Napoleon and a model of the Arc de Triomphe.

As I sat on the sofa flipping through Volume I, my wife asked me, "So, are you going to cook through that book, too?" Just then, I happened to stop flipping at page 473. I looked down at the page, and without hesitating for a moment, I answered, "No, I am not going to cook through this book." The recipe I had stopped at was for Ours Grand Veneur, or "Bear Huntsman Fashion." That's right, a recipe for roast bear loin. Apparently, "bear flesh is rich, sweet, and delicious." I don't think that they carry it at Stop & Shop, though. But if you don't like your bear "huntsman fashion," perhaps one of the three other bear recipes will appeal to you. What's that, bear's not your thing? That's OK. There are six pages of recipes for venison, two recipes for woodchuck, and six for frog's legs.

So, while I won't be making Brunswick Stew any time soon ("Cut 2 plump young squirrels into serving pieces..."), I know that I'm going to enjoy flipping through the pages of these books for ideas and inspiration.

Just a taste...

Mark your calendars. Julie and Julia, the Nora Ephron movie that combines Julia Child's My Life in France and Julie Powell's Julie and Julia, comes out on August 7.

The movie trailer just came out a couple of days ago, and it's our first glimpse of Meryl Streep channeling Julia Child. This is gonna be good.

75. Beef Bourguignon (p. 440)

There are two dishes that changed Julia Child's life, and by extension, American cooking, forever.

The first, sole meunière, was Julia's first meal upon arriving in France with her husband, Paul. Julia described this elegantly simple dish as a revelation, and as "an opening up of the soul and spirit for me."

This introduction sparked Julia's interest in la cuisine Française, inspired her to take classes at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, and led her to write a manuscript, with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, for a cookbook aimed at making French food approachable for the American home cook.

That's where the second dish, beef bourguignon, comes in. Julia's manuscript found its way into the hands of Judith Jones, a general book editor at Alfred A. Knopf, who was on the lookout for a new French cookbook for the American market. And as she described in a 2004 New York Times piece, Judith took the manuscript home with her one night and made Julia's recipe for beef bourguignon. The result was "a masterpiece," and Judith determined to get Mastering the Art of French Cooking published. The book launched Julia's television career and inspired thousands of Americans to start cooking. None of that would have been possible without these two dishes.

This story even touches on cook-through blogging in a "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" sort of way. When Julie Powell was working on her Julie/Julia Project, the original cook-through blog, in which she set out to cook and blog about every recipe in MtAoFC, Judith Jones accepted an invitation to have Julie Powell cook for her, and Julie planned to cook (what else?) beef bourguignon. But, in a very "Big Night" turn, Judith never showed up, and Julie and her husband Eric, ended up eating alone.

So, it was against this backdrop that I cooked this recipe* a few Sundays ago when a couple of my good friends from grad school came over for dinner. I have been looking forward to making this dish for some time now, and I wasn't disappointed.

My friends were coming over for dinner at 6 (it was a "school night," so we planned on eating early), and so, at about 3, I was in the midst of congratulating myself on getting an early start on cooking, when I re-read the part of the recipe that says "simmer gently ... 3 1/2 to 4 hours." Not an auspicious start, but I didn't let it rattle me. We'd just have more time to catch up over glasses of wine while we waited for dinner to be done. I did kick myself a little bit for not making this on Saturday since the Cook's Note says that the dish can be made a day in advance "and in fact it tastes even better made ahead, because this gives the flavors time to develop."

This is a pretty time-consuming recipe with lots of steps. First I cut a couple of slices of thick-sliced bacon into one-inch pieces. I boiled the bacon pieces in water for a few minutes. I assume that the purpose of this step is to get rid of some of the salt and to mellow out the strong bacon flavor. I drained the bacon and set it a side.

Next, the beef. Since my wife is "semi-veg," I rarely cook beef, and I'm not very knowledgeable about my cuts of meat. The Book calls for three pounds of boneless beef chuck cut into two-inch chunks. I went to my local butcher, and as usual, I stared blankly at the array of meats on display. I told the butcher what I wanted and what I was going to do with it. He reached into the case and selected a nice, big chuck roast, and he even offered to cut it up for me. I thought that was great. The butcher went down a bit in my estimation, however, when I saw him drop a chunk of the beef on the floor and actually shoot a look in my direction to see whether I saw what happened. I wonder if I hadn't been watching, if the five-second rule would have been invoked. Anyway, I divided my not-dropped-on-the-floor beef (which I had patted dry and seasoned with salt and pepper) into two zip top bags with a bit of flour, and shook to coat the meat. (I'm not sure why The Book insists on having you use two bags? Couldn't you just do it in two batches in the same bag? Then, I browned the flour-coated beef in my Dutch oven in a few batches, and set it aside while I deglazed the pan (which had developed a nice fond) with some brandy.

The next step is a little bit odd. The Book says to make a bouquet garni from a celery stalk studded with a couple of whole cloves, parsley, thyme, and bay leaves. I've got no problem with that. The weird part is that this instruction is smack dab in the middle of the recipe, and then The Book doesn't tell you what to do with the bouquet garni until about five steps later.

Once the pan was deglazed, I melted some butter and cooked the chopped onion, garlic and carrots with the blanched bacon. Once the onions began to turn golden, I added some tomato paste, and then the beef and a bottle of wine. The Book calls for Burgundy or Cotes du Rhone. They didn't have any Bugundy at the wine shop I went to, so I used Cotes du Rhone, and it worked well. I brought this to a simmer and let it cook, partially covered for about three hours.

While the stew simmered, I blanched some boiling onions for about a minute and ran them under cold water. This step does make peeling them a lot easier, but they're still a pain in the neck. I browned the oinons in some butter, and then added some water to the pan and simmered them until they were tender. I raised the heat and boiled them until the liquid had thickened.

After that, I browned some mushrooms in some butter and cooked them until all of the liquid evaporated.

After the stew was done simmering, I stirred in the onions and mushroom, seasoned with salt and pepper, and tasted it to make sure that it was just right.

I served the stew with buttered egg noodles. The Book suggests serving it with parsleyed boiled potatoes, but I decided at the last minute that noodles would be easier, and anyway, noodles are mentioned as an acceptable accompaniment in MtAoFC, so I had the Julia Child seal of approval.

The finished dish was great. The beef was tender and delicious. The sauce was thick and rich with an excellent layered flavor. Beef bourguignon is the perfect example of home-style comfort food being elevated to haute cuisine status. It's a classic.

Date Cooked: November 16, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: B+

*This recipe from epicurious.com is almost identical to the one in The Book, and both are very similar to Julia Child's recipe in MtAoFC.

An Impulsive Spy in the Kitchen?

It's no big secret that Julia Child worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of the CIA, during WWII. But today, the government released hundreds of thousands of pages of OSS personnel files, including Julia's.

These newly released documents give us a little bit of a glimpse into how Julia saw herself. In her application to join the OSS, Julia admitted "impulsiveness" as a character flaw.

She expressed regret that she quit a job at a department store because she didn't get along with her boss. Well, the department store's loss was all of our gain, and Julia went on to serve her country in the OSS, and then to serve us all with great food.

And while the idea of Julia Child sneaking around in a trenchcoat and dark glasses spying on Nazis is pretty appealing, she wasn't exactly doing covert ops (at 6'2", nothing Julia did was covert). She did, however, have assignments in Washington, D.C. and Sri Lanka (where she met her husband, Paul), and she even worked on a project to develop shark repellent to protect explosives intended for German subs. Pretty cool, if you ask me.

Do today's celebrity chefs have what it takes to be spies? The folks over at Best Week Ever think so. Are you listening CIA? (Silly me, of course they're listening. They're always listening.)

If only I had $4.3 million to spare

Julia Child's former home at 103 Irving Street in Cambridge is on the market. According to the exclusive listing with Premier Properties of Boston, this historic home on Cambridge's famed "Professor's Row," has 6,000 square feet of living space luxuriously appointed with a marble entryway and hardwood floors throughout.

Of course, the kitchen where Julia Child cooked and filmed her television shows was removed years ago and put on display at the Smithsonian. But, the "oversized Italian kitchen" that took its place is nothing to sneeze at, with custom cabinetry, marble countertops and top-of-the-line appliances (Kuppersbusch Okotherm oven, Miele cooktop and dishwasher, Sub-Zero regrigerator/freezer). And while Julia's kitchen is gone, the Childs' temperature controlled wine storage room remains.

The asking price? A mere $4,350,000.

A small price to pay for a culinary dream house.