My Week with Julia: Roasted Chicken
Julia Child has been my summer obsession.
I’ve read several books related to Julia, and I started to actually cook from my mother-in-law’s copy of her cookbook. My most successful dish was also probably the easiest for the “servantless cook” to master — Poulet Rôti. Julia included multiple versions of roasted chicken in her various cookbooks and I will link up some recipes at the end of the post for you to try!
Although Julia appeared to be very laid back, I’m pretty sure she would not have approved of the one adaptation I made to her recipe.
I decided to use an upright roaster to drain off some of the fat from the chicken. I put the roaster in a larger pan to give it more stability and make it easier to handle and to catch any drippings that didn’t go into the little drip pan.
It came out of the oven with a glorious crispy skin and it was moist and delicious on the inside despite the upright roaster. Success!
I served the roasted chicken with corn on the cob and our favorite go-to summer dessert, fruit salad.
The web is full of recipes claiming to be Julia Child’s — this video is one of many. The guy drives me crazy when he calls the divine Mrs. C Julia Childs, but otherwise, it’s a good tutorial if you’ve never stuffed and roasted a chicken before.
While not exactly like Julia’s recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, this recipe is a simplified version and has the steps that Julia liked to use when she wrote cookbooks.
This recipe is from a 2000 edition of Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom and apparently Emeril used it on the Food Network when he cooked roast chicken.
The fun thing about getting to know my way around Mastering the Art of French Cooking is that it turns out Julia Child was right.
The servantless American cook CAN master French techniques if you just follow Julia’s instructions. She worked for ten years to create a foolproof book, and at least in the roasted chicken department, she succeeded.
Bon appétit!
Provence Week: Two Food Network French Menus
Anchovies. I love them but many people want to “list them.”
Apparently I’ve been watching too much HGTV while I clean my house. I can’t decide if I love or hate Love It or List It. I’ve also been watching lots of Food Network since I can’t abide the thematic approach HGTV is taking with daytime programming. I miss Joan Steffend. Remember her?
Anchovies figure large in the recipes of the Provencal region because they are fished from the Mediterranean and are commonly used in bouillabaisse, pasta dishes, salad dressings, and toppings for breads.
The Food Network loves French cooking (or what purports to be French cooking).
Just this week there were two segments showing Ina Garten and Melissa Darabian making French meals. Although I haven’t yet made the full meals, they look relatively easy and something that I might attempt.
On the Ten Dollar Dinners show, Melissa Darabian presented a Provencal meal with a pizza, salad, and grilled pineapple. With the exception of the poached egg (I don’t do runny eggs), this menu seems doable. And the pizza has anchovies on it, but I saw several different versions of Pissaladiere online, including this one which may also be vegan. I’m hoping that some of my friends actually want to eat this with me when I make it — will they love it or list it?
I couldn’t find a photo of Darabian’s pissaladiere, but this photo (Image Credit) is part of a blog story about a young man going to culinary school. Gorgeous photos of the food!
Our favorite Barefoot Contessa also created a French Bistro lunch in a segment airing this week. Her menu seemed within my ability to recreate and includes Roasted Butternut Squash, a French apple tart, and Sole Meuniere. No anchovies in these recipes, though. What initially caught my eye was how she set the outside table in anticipation of her French-inspired party.
So this gets us back to anchovies.
One of my summer goals is to learn how to make my favorite salad dressings at home with ingredients I can control. I watched Ina make Caesar Salad with Pancetta in another episode, but it got me thinking about cooking with raw eggs. It seems like there has been an awful lot of food scares recently so I researched alternates for the raw egg in the Caesar Salad Dressing. There are a lot of opinions on this issue, including that only raw eggs are appropriate, but this one by Alton Brown looks promising. It uses tofu instead of egg for the thickening agent. And this one just flat-out subs the egg with egg substitute. Will I “love” any of these recipes or want to “list them” down the garbage disposal?
Still no anchovies.
I’ve always bought my anchovies in the tin, but Costco had anchovies in the seafood case that actually looked like fish instead of sun-dried tomatoes with fur. Has anyone tried them? Do they actually have the “anchovy flavor” or is the flavor we expect from anchovies actually coming from the salt-curing process? I’m feeling as though I’m probably going to stick with the basic tin of salty goodness — and I can get them in a six-pack from Costco practically for free. 🙂
Adventures in Home Cooking continues next week — catch up with me then to see if any of these recipes actually worked — or try them yourselves and let me know what happened!
The Irony of the Muffins
Over the weekend, I decided to make a batch of mini muffins, using a recipe featured by my niece on Vanderbilt Wife. I already had frozen zucchini and some leftover chocolate chips, as well as amaretto cocoa that came in a Christmas gift basket. Woot!
Unfortunately, the first batch I baked got too crispy on the edges because I baked them a tad too long. You should have seen Music Man’s face when I dumped them into the trash bin. I decided I HAD to make another batch, since we were entertaining a Cordon Bleu trained chef for dinner. I mean, really! How embarrassing to serve crispy muffins.
The next batch got the addition of wild dried blueberries, so we ended up with zucchini-blueberry-chocolate muffins and they were delish! I was careful about the time in the oven, and I had enough batter left over from the mini muffin trays to create three full size muffins. From thence comes the irony.
Tonight, as I opened the oven door after turning on the broiler for the chicken breasts, I discovered the pan of three muffins that had been forgotten in the frenzy to make a second batch of mini-muffins and then get on with our dinner. I had turned off the oven when I took out the minis, and the big muffins were only a little bit the worse for wear for a couple of days in the oven and a blast from the broiler. They were only a little crispy on the outside and still moist on the inside — a welcome treat with our dinner tonight.
In the words of the immortal Alanis Morrissette —
Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
Life has a funny, funny way of helping you out
Helping you out
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