THE POTEMKIN

Suprêmes de Volaille aux Champignons [Chicken Breasts with Mushrooms and Cream] from Mastering the Art of French Cooking

Frontmatter: This is an expansion of Julia, Simone, and Louisette’s master recipe for suprêmes, or chicken breasts. I keep saying “Julia says” because she became the face of this cookbook and I grew up watching her on TV, but Mastering the Art of French Cooking really was a team effort, so I’m trying to catch myself. So today it is not “Julia says,” it is the “Trois Gourmandes say.”

I’m hoping for a weeknight chicken dish that I can throw into a regular repertoire. Now, I have a particular allegiance to a chicken breast cooking method that has proven fool-proof to me, so I’m a bit reluctant to change my ways, but I do love a creamy mushroom sauce, and this cooks the both together, and is pretty fast, so if it turns out, into the rotation it shall go. But I’m wary of overcooking chicken breasts.

According to the Trois Gourmandes:

The suprême is an easy morsel to cook, but attention must be exercised to be sure it is not overdone, as even a minute too much can toughen the meat and make it dry. The flesh of a perfectly cooked suprême is white with the faintest pinky blush, its juices run clear yellow, and it is definitely juicy. Its point of doneness is easily determined as it cooks. Press the top of it with your finger; if it is still soft and yields slightly to the touch, it is not done yet. As soon as the flesh springs back with gentle resilience, it is ready. If there is no springiness, it is overcooked. (267)

That doesn’t inspire me with the greatest of confidence, so Imma use my internal meat thermometer, and try really hard to not overcook these suprêmes, but I’ll see if I can figure out their cook by touch method, and also try really hard to not Pull a Corbett, which is what I’ve started calling that thing where you forget that the meat thermometer that came out of your fucking oven is actually hot and burn the shit out of your fingers when you try to take it out. Also, like I’m using chicken breast from the store – I don’t know if it came from a 2 ½- 3-lb fryer. So I don’t know if these are the same size suprêmes as the ladies were getting in 1961, or if the recipe has been adjusted for the monster chickens we have now. I mean, I don’t buy monster chickens, but…. Look whatever, I’m using an internal meat thermometer and I’m going to cook the breast until it reaches…160. That’s my pull out of the oven temp. And so it shall be. I can’t abide overcooked chicken breast.

And I want to focus on learning the new-to-me recipe, so I’m serving with simple little boiled potatoes and broccoli or chard or peas to soak up the sauce. I’ll see what Luke wants when he gets home. (Broccoli, it turns out.)

Have you seen this ad for Cascade dishwashing liquid where the lady is like “You know that feeling of taking your dishes out of the dishwasher and they’re not clean yet?” and then the camera zooms in and she’s all holding up a dish and says “I don’t” and it’s really smug and annoying. Anyway, I’m getting that ad a lot on You Tube and I don’t much care for it.

Ok, here we go.

And I’m already confused.

Fuck.

So check it out. 

Breast of Chicken with Cream (master recipe)

For 4 people (aka, 4 breasts)

4 suprêmes ½ tsp lemon juice ¼ tsp salt Big pinch of white pepper A heavy, covered, fireproof casserole about 10 inches in diameter A round of waxed paper 10 inches in diameter and buttered on one side

4 Tb butter 

For the sauce:

¼ cup white or brown stock ¼ cup port, Madeira, or dry white vermouth

1 cup whipping cream

Salt and pepper

Lemon juice as needed

2 Tb fresh minced parsley

Chicken Breasts with Mushrooms and Cream (a variation)

5 Tb butter 1 Tb minced shallot ¼ lb diced or sliced fresh mushrooms 1/8 tsp salt

4 suprêmes and the sauce ingredients in the master recipe 

So dig: the mushroom and cream part is an expansion of the master recipe. So the mushroom part starts with 5 Tb butter, and the master recipe has 4 Tb of butter. And the instructions for the mushroom expansion have you cook the mushrooms and shallots in the 5 Tb of butter, then say “Following the master recipe, cook the suprêmes in the mushrooms and butter” (270). Then in the master recipe, which has 4 Tb of butter in it says “Heat the butter in the casserole until it is foaming. Quickly roll the suprêmes in the butter” (268).

Is it the same butter, or do I need to add another 4 Tb of butter in when I add in the chicken breasts and roll them in the new butter. Or is it like the 4 Tb of butter you were gonna use, but you need 1 Tb more because you’re cooking mushrooms in it as well. That’s what I’m going with because it just seems like 9 Tb of butter is a lot. But like “that seems like a lot of butter” is kinda the subtitle of the book.

Wait, when it says “the sauce ingredients in the master recipe” does it mean I’m not using the other ingredients in the master recipe besides the sauce? So does that mean ignore the 4 Tb of butter in it and like the lemon juice in there too?? Ladies, Trois Gourmandes I’m talking to you? One of these days that’s going to work. But today, still they are silent. Simca? Julia?

Ok, Internet?

Cool, the internet is answering.

These guys use 10 freaking Tb of butter to make this: but they’re also doubling the sauce it looks like (double the mushrooms, cream, stock, wine, etc.). Still using lemon juice.

These guys go with the 5 Tb and are still using lemon juice.

Here’s another vote for 5 Tb and still using lemon juice.

And another and still using lemon juice.

OK, here’s what I’m gonna do. I’ll use the 5 Tb, and I’ll see how the mushrooms look after I cook them in 5 Tb of butter. And I’ll keep a few Tb of soft butter on hand and whirl them into the sauce if it seems dry after I take the chicken out of the oven. Seems like an idea. And I’ll use the lemon juice.

Then there’s this deal with the buttered round of waxed paper. I’ll do it this time, but, I mean… You’re still putting a cover on the pan, so what is the point of the waxed paper? Is it so no condensation that drips off of the lid falls on the chicken? But like why would that matter since you’re not dealing with a crispy browned skin or anything. If you’re putting a lid on the pan, why the waxed paper? Can anyone tell me why this is a step?

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees

2. Rub the suprêmes with drops of lemon juice and sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper.

3. Heat the butter (5 Tb) in the casserole over moderate heat until it is foaming. Stir in the minced shallots and saute a moment without browning. Then stir in the mushrooms and saute lightly for a minute or two without browning. Sprinkle with salt.

Sidebar: Yo I don’t know about the time, y’all. Julia says 6-8 minutes. I’m cooking in what she calls a casserole, which is what I call a braising dish. It is enameled cast iron and it has a lid. It took 24 minutes. That 7th picture where the chicken was definitely still raw was at 12 minute.

In the end, I still have no idea what the paper was for.

4. Quickly roll the suprêmes in the butter, lay the buttered paper over them, cover casserole and place in hot oven. After 6 minutes, press top of suprêmes with your finger. If still soft, return to oven for a moment or two. When the meat is springy to the touch it is done (I’m removing at 165 degrees). Remove the suprêmes to a warm platter and cover while making the sauce.

5. Pour the stock and wine into the casserole with the cooking butter (if there is any left, if not, add some more in now- I added one more Tb, but I don’t know that I needed to.) and boil down quickly over high heat until liquid is syrupy.

6. Stir in the cream and boil down again over high heat until cream has thickened slightly.

7. Off heat, taste carefully for seasoning and add drops of lemon juice to taste. Pour the sauce over the suprêmes, sprinkle with parsley, and serve at once.

Thoughts/ Impressions: The sauce was incredible, and the chicken breast tasted like chicken breast. It was fine, but not as juicy as the method I prefer, and I really don’t think that the chicken took up enough of the butter to warrant the method, so…. Next time I’m going to cook the breast the way I like, and meanwhile make a mushroom cream sauce. I used a tawny port, and some specialty mushrooms I got from a local mushroom farm based on their recommendation, and they were really incredible together. (Shout out to Black Forest Mushrooms.) The mushrooms were on the nutty side, and that worked really well with the sweeter port in the sauce. The sauce was the star in this dish, but was on the rich side. We kept the rest of the meal light with some boiled creamer potatoes and steamed broccoli.

Luke has a traumatic childhood memory of canned cream of mushroom soup, and was pretty wary when I said I was making a mushroom cream sauce, something he would never order himself. (Can you see the trauma? Maybe he transferred it to Water-LooLoo.) But even he said the mushroom sauce was pretty good, and that’s about as good as it gets. Cat got none.

Today I’m going to make Julia Child’s Garlic Soup from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Mine is the 40th Anniversary Edition. They’re into the 50th now.

Julia says that

because the garlic is boiled, its after-effects are at a minimum, and its flavor becomes exquisite, aromatic, and almost indefinable. Along the Mediterranean an aigo bouido is considered to be very good indeed for the liver, blood circulation, general physical tone, and spiritual health. (40th Anniversary Edition p 46-47)

Well, I could use some tone and spiritual health, so let’s get going.

With the garlic, the actual first listed ingredient, I run into my first big question – yes, the garlic part of the garlic soup throws the first wrench. She says “one separated head or approx. 16 cloves of garlic.” So I haven’t counted a store bought head of garlic in a while, and I’m using homegrown. Store bought will be softneck, I’m using hardneck, looks like a Chesnock Red or Russian Red, but my row markers all washed out. And my cloves are ENORMOUS, like one head of garlic will be 5 cloves, and they’re all quite big. So I’m using 1-1/2 heads, it’s 9 cloves, and weighs 2.8 oz (before peeling). Or maybe 3 more making it two whole heads? Julia says “A head of garlic is not at all too much for 2 quarts of soup. For some addicts, it’s not even enough” (47) so maybe I should do 2 heads?

Julia, how big was your garlic??

Ok, I’m doing 2 heads, 12 cloves, 3.7 oz. Am I gonna regret it? Probably, I regret most things. Have I ever regretted using too much garlic? Not to the best of my recollection, your honor.

I have to assume that the changes in quality, type, clove size, freshness of the garlic itself could have a huge impact on the flavor of this recipe. This is probably a great tester of garlic harvests and varieties, so if you’re growing your own garlic, or buying from your local growers or farmers markets, this could be a good first recipe to try to assess a new variety.

Julia wants me to drop the cloves into boiling water, boil for 30 seconds, drain, run under cold water, and peel.

Done.

Other ingredients have been gathered.

Added all of the following: water, salt, pepper, cloves, sage (mine is old, so I’m doubling what Julia says) bay leaf, parsley sprigs, first 3 T olive oil to a 3-quart saucepan (I’m using my big ole dutch oven, though Julia says use a 3-quart saucepan, but mine is ugly and non-stick, and the coating is failing, plus I think it will be prettier in the white enameled lining.)

Bring to a boil, and simmer slowly for 30 minutes.

By which time the gigantic cloves of garlic were still very much not soft, so I would say simmer until your garlic is cooked through, because you’re going to have to push it through a sieve, and you can’t do that if it is still crunchy, needs to be something where you can, like, smoosh it easily with a fork.

Taste, burn the fuck out of your tongue, wonder why you are this way, sulk, ice tongue. Keep simmering.

And here I had to let the soup sit in the pot for several hours because Luke’s saxophone repair tech called, and he had to go pick up his horn. But I think that’s ok because Julia said “when you are ready to serve…” you do the part where you beat the egg yolks and dribble in oil like you’re making mayo, which suggests that the soup can wait at this stage until it is ready to serve. So it did. But it also meant I could taste it for seasoning without burning my tongue, and make a cocktail that uses one of the egg whites I didn’t use.

Maybe I’ll do a Mr Boston Bartender’s Guide drink-along series. Tell me what you think in the comments. Oh wait, no one is reading this. Drink I shall.

The cocktail was a disappointment.

Ok, so the next step is to essentially make a mayonnaise in your serving bowl. Whip the egg yolks, then slowly add the remaining olive oil, just whip whip, dribble dribble, until you’ve added 3T (which was plenty). Then add a ladelfull of the soup into your fine mesh strainer over your tureen or serving bowl. You need to do the first ladelfull then whip it up a bit still to stabilize it. After that you you can add the rest of the soup, pushing it through the sieve, mashing up all that good garlic, and use a bowl scraper to get all the bits that have pushed through the sieve.

Served with the cheese and toasted baguette slices. Luke buttered ours, and added Maldon salt, which was a nice touch. Undersalting the soup a little, and letting the salt on the bread compensate was perfect.

The soup is smooth and lovely, a light buttery yellow, and what I ended up using was not too much garlic by any means. If you’re a fan, I would say go with two heads of garlic, or 3-4 oz, but mileage will vary depending on variety or type of garlic. I can see cutting the olive oil in the soup to 2T, esp considering you’re adding another 3 for serving, but 3 in the soup plus another 4 in the egg emulsion may be too much for some.

Toward that, and moving forward, Julia says of the cookbooks in her introduction to the 40th edition:

You will note this indulgence here, especially in sauces, where you can reduce them with cream or where you swirl in fresh butter a generous tablespoon at a time to render them smooth, shining and luscious. I have not changed any of these original proportions or directions, because this is the way the dishes were conceived. However, do use your own judgement as to how much or how little of the enrichments you care to use, since the amounts will not interfere with the basic recipe. In my case, for instance, I have been known to substitute a modest teaspoon for the generous tablespoon. (xv)

So I don’t know what mixing an extra Tablespoon into the “mayonnaise” mixture would have done, but it was not necessary for the soup to hold together. As you can see in the pic of the finished spoonful of soup at the very bottom, the droplets of fat are well dispersed and plentiful. I suspect that is an area in which one could skimp.

Plan for at least 2T of cheese per bowl, and a bit more could be offered. Is the cheese necessary at all? Probably not.

(Confirmed, heated up 2 days later gently in the microwave. The soup did not separate, and I served it with no cheese, just some crumbled stale ass leftover baguette, and it was still delicious.)

This is a lovely, bright luncheon soup, on a rainy day, or a delightful starter course. I can see adding potatoes or poached eggs to bulk it up and make it a more substantial meal. It’s a lot like the buttery broth you soak up from the bottom of a bowl of steamed mussels or clams.

Also, this soup was incredibly inexpensive and simple to make. This really felt like making something out of nothing. Getting it going on the stove took almost nothing, and the only real labor was whisking the egg emulsion in the end, so a bit of energy right before serving, and a very warming and satisfying reward.

Julia Child’s Aigo Bouido [Garlic Soup] from Mastering the Art of French Cooking

For 6-8 people (makes 2 quarts of soup)

Ingredients

1 separated head or about 16 cloves whole, unpeeled garlic (3-1/2 oz was not too much)

2 quarts water 2 tsp salt Pinch of pepper 2 cloves ¼ tsp sage ½ bay leaf 4 parsley sprigs 3 Tb olive oil

3-4 Tb more olive oil (a candy squeeze bottle made this easier) 3 egg yolks

Rounds of hard-toasted French bread 1 cup of grated Swiss or Parmesan cheese

Equipment

3-quart saucepan, or bigger (my dutch oven was fine) wire whip soup tureen (or 2+ quart serving bowl if, like me, your tureen was too small) fine-mesh strainer strong-ass wooden spoon bowl scraper candy squeeze bottle for olive oil (optional)

Instructions

Blanch the unpeeled cloves of garlic in boiling water for 30 seconds, drain, run under cold water and peel.

Gather water, salt, pepper, cloves, peeled garlic, parsley, sage, bay leaf (just half a bay leaf now, don’t go crazy unless you’re driving (I see you, Jaime), and 3T olive oil, and simmer gently for 30 minutes — or until garlic is softened. (If your garlic cloves are GIGANTIC, like mine were, it may need more. I left mine on a gently simmer for 60 minute.) Taste, and correct seasoning as needed.

Beat the yolks in [your serving vessel] for a minute until they are thick and sticky. Drop by drop, beat in the olive oil as for making mayonnaise.

Just before serving, beat a ladlefull of hot soup (it’s soup now!!) into the egg mixture by droplets. Gradually strain in the rest, beating and pressing the juice out of the garlic.

Serve immediately, accompanied by the bread and the cheese. (It’ll be 2-2.5T of cheese per serving. We floated a couple slices of bread in each bowl, and served another 2 on the side. Worked quite well.)

 Citation

This is one of the expansion/escalation “serving ideas” Julia shares that starts with the regular Soupe a l’Oignon, but a gratin version of onion soup is generally what we consider French Onion Soup (in that if I ordered French Onion Soup in a restaurant and it did not come with beautifully browned ooey-gooey melted cheese and toast layered on top, I would, like, I don’t know, cry maybe, or just be real sad.*

Julia says

The onions for an onion soup need a long, slow cooking in butter and oil, then a long slow simmering in stock for them to develop the deep, rich flavor which characterizes a perfect brew. 43 

So that’s what we’re gonna do.

I’m doing all of this in my Dutch oven. While some of the versions of this soup can be served in individual pots, as a French Onion Soup bowl, you really can’t do this version easily that way as you have to mix in some final ingredients, an additional enrichment Julia calls the “final fillip.” And my 2-quart Corningware says it’s not broiler-safe, so I’m using the Dutch oven.

The way Julia stacks these recipes is confusing in the cookbook because of all the variations, but in broad strokes for this version:

1)    Caramelize the onions 2)    Make the Soup 3)    Make the croutes (Or stop here, see HINDSIGHT NOTE) 4)    Build the gratin 5)    Add the “final fillip” 

Go to the bottom for the full ingredient and equipment list. I’ll do this in stages here as it made the most sense to me. I’m not going to do this recipe like this again though, and I’ll put my thoughts and changes in sidebars and the “hindsight note” below.

1)    Caramelize the onions for the soup (allow 60-90 min):

1-1/2 lbs or about 5 cups of thinly sliced yellow onions 3 Tb butter 1 Tb oil 

1 tsp salt ¼ tsp sugar 

3 Tb flour

A heavy-bottomed, 4-quart (or larger) saucepan (or oven-safe Dutch oven).

Melt butter and oil in your saucepan over medium heat, add onions, then cover and cook for 15 minutes.

Uncover, lower heat as low as you can, add salt and sugar. Cook very gently for 60-90 minutes stirring occasionally for the first 45, then every 5-10 minutes until onions have reached a rich deep brown. Less time means slightly higher heat, but also watch more closely and stir more often. Be warned.**

Sprinkle in flour and stir for 3 minutes.

2)    Make the soup

Add all of the following to your onions:

Sidebar: I think this needs thyme. Add a large sprig or three here, and fish out before you build your gratin. Don’t gotta, but I will next time.

2 quarts boiling brown stock ½ cup dry white wine or dry white vermouth Salt and pepper to taste 

Add 1-2 ladlefuls of your stock to your onions, deglazing the pan, scraping up all the fond that has accumulated on the bottom and loosening your onion and flour mixture. Then pour in the rest of your boiling stock and add the white wine to your onions.

Simmer, partially covered for 30-40 min. Taste for seasoning.

You can stop right here and just eat this and it’s delicious onion soup. Or… You can add 3T of cognac before serving and it’s delicious onion soup with cognac in it. Or…

3)    Make the croutes:

12-16 slices French bread, cut 3/4” – 1” thick Olive oil or beef drippings 1 cut clove of garlic

Sidebar: OK JULIA, STOP RIGHT THERE! We’re talking about 24-32 teaspoons of olive oil!!?? So 8-10+ Tablespoons. That’s 4-5 oz of olive oil!? Half a cup of olive oil?! For the toast?! The toast I’m gonna smother in cheese?

Sweet Charlie Brown!

I’m using way less, and you have my permission to do so as well, or put half a cup of olive oil on your bread, that’s fine, too. Do you.

Also, is the garlic rubbing strictly necessary? Probably not.

Preheat oven to 325-degrees. Place the bread in one layer in a roasting pan or on a baking sheet for 15 minutes (the bread will be in the oven for 30 minutes total, but you’re going to remove halfway through to brush with olive oil). Remove bread and then “each side may be basted with a teaspoon of olive oil or beef drippings” (44).

Bake 15 more minutes after your generous or otherwise “basting.”

Remove from oven, and rub each piece with garlic.

HINDSIGHT NOTE: Next time I make this, I’m going to stop here and proceed differently. I won’t gratin the dish at all. I’ll make the croutes as below, but broil briefly with the cheese to melt it on top of the bread on the baking tray, then serve the toast with the melted cheese atop the soup in each individual serving bowl.

If you are serving this for a party, and intend to serve all of it, go ahead and continue as Julia instructs. But here’s the thing: you have to sneak under the crust you make in step 4 to add the ingredients in step 5, but my crust didn’t “lift” that easily to allow me to add the final slurry of ingredients, and those ingredients include cornstarch, which thickens the soup quite a bit, and the bread soaks the soup up quite a bit, so it’s not conducive to leftovers like this. And it’s a lot of bread for this soup. (We had leftover bread with no accompanying soup to have it with.)

I would add the cognac and Worcestershire from step 5 here! (Don’t bother with egg and cornstarch—the soup is thick enough!) Make as many croutes as I intend to serve now, melt the cheese on top of them in the broiler, and add the now ooey-gooey toast to the top of the soup at serving time.

ALSO, next time I’ll double the soup recipe to just have leftover Onion Soup. Once you’re spending 3 hours making soup you may as well be able to have some for lunch or dinner the next day. Make it 3 lbs onions, and 4 quarts stock, or 2 quarts and a bottle of red wine. And you can always melt more cheese on toast to serve the next day. Or just eat delicious onion soup.

This is your make ahead point. You can set the soup and croutes aside here until ready to serve.

You can add cognac here, and just put the bread in the bottom of bowls and serve your onion soup just ladled over the top of it just like this and pass some grated cheese around the table. Or…

4)    Build the gratin:

Fireproof tureen, ovenproof casserole, or Dutch oven (needs to be able to be put under the broiler, not just in the oven)

Onion soup you made 1 T grated raw onion 2 oz Swiss cheese cut into very thin slivers 12-16 croutes you made 1-1/2 cups grated Swiss cheese, or a mixture of Swiss and Parmesan 1 Tb olive oil or melted butter

Preheat oven to 325-degrees. Bring the onion soup back up to a boil. Stir in the grated onion and the slivered cheese (super doesn’t matter if it’s slivered—it can just be grated like the rest of the cheese).

Float the croutes on top, and cover with the grated cheese. Sprinkle with the oil or melted butter.

Bake for 20 minutes, then remove, and preheat broiler, and broil 2 minutes more.

You can serve the soup now just like this or…

5)    The “final fillip” (45) aka that which makes it Onion Soup Gratineed de Luxe (and not just Gratineed)

A 2-quart bowl 1 tsp cornstarch 1 egg yolk 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce 3 Tb cognac 

Sidebar: This was not that easy, the lifting the crust part. Maybe I didn’t toast my bread enough, because it stated soaking up the soup almost immediately. And this really thickened the soup quite a bit because of the cornstarch. Next time I’m just going to try to stir in the cognac and Worcestershire sauce by themselves right before serving, and add the toast as described above. 

Combine cornstarch, egg yolk, Worcestershire sauce and cognac into the bowl, and whisk to combine. Just before serving the soup, lift up an edge of the crust with a carving fork, remove a ladleful of soup, and add to the egg mixture. Whisk together to combine, then add a couple more ladlefuls of soup. Stir together, then pour back into the soup under the crust, stir to combine, and serve.

* I started by saying I would throw it on the ground and walk out, but I’ve never so much as sent food back at a restaurant. Even when I got a beef burger when I was a vegetarian and I know I ordered a veggie burger, I just told the concerned waiter who was wondering why I was looking at my food all sad and shit that I just realized I was really full and I asked for a to-go container to take it home where I threw it away and made buttered noodles or like Morningstar Farms “chicken” nuggets or something.

**I disagree with Julia here on heat and timing. Julia says moderate heat for 30-40 minutes for the onions after the initial covered 15 minutes. You can get some decent color this way and much faster than my method, but it’s far too easy to burn your onions as you really need to stir CONSTANTLY at this kind of heat. And you cried too hard to slice a pound and a half of onions to ruin them now. So: Cook covered on moderate heat with butter and oil for 15 minutes, uncover, and just turn your burner down low, stir occasionally for the first 45 minutes, and then set yourself a timer for every 10 minutes to stir, scrape up the little browned bits and fond that accumulate at the bottom. When it starts getting close, you’ll want to stir every 5 minutes so they don’t start to get frizzled. Just take it the fuck easy on the heat. It’s a rainy day soup for a reason. Let it take some time.

Soupe Gratinee des Trois Gourmandes [Onion Soup Gratineed de Luxe] from Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child et al.

Ingredients

to make Soupe a l’Oignon [Onion Soup]

1-1/2 lbs or about 5 cups of thinly sliced yellow onions 3 Tb butter 1 Tb oil  1 tsp salt ¼ tsp sugar 3 Tb flour 2 quarts boiling brown stock ½ cup dry white wine or dry white vermouth Salt and pepper to taste 

to make Croutes [hard toasted French bread]

12-16 slices French bread, cut 3/4” – 1” thick Olive oil or beef drippings 1 cut clove of garlic

to make Onion Soup Gratineed with Cheese

The onion soup you made 1 T grated raw onion 2 oz Swiss cheese cut into very thin slivers 12-16 croutes you made 1-1/2 cups grated Swiss cheese, or a mixture of Swiss and Parmesan 1 Tb olive oil or melted butter 

to make Onion Soup Gratineed de Luxe

1 tsp cornstarch 1 egg yolk 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce 3 Tb cognac

Equipment

A heavy-bottomed, 4-quart (or larger) saucepan (or oven-safe Dutch oven) Cookie sheet or sheet cake pan A wire whisk A soup ladle A serving fork A 2 quart bowl A wooden spatula or flat edge spoon  

Citation

Recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking used in this meal:

Sauce Velouté (57) Sauce Mornay (61) Asperges au Naturel [Boiled Asparagus – hot] (436) Roast Chicken pan sauce (242) (ack, never mind!)

Other recipes:

Ina Garten’s Perfect Roast Chicken

Frontmatter: So here’s a confession: I’m pretty hopeless with sauces, and a real dummy with carving a bird. I’ve been playing at roasting birds for 15 years, and making a complete cock-up of the final presentation the whole while. I’m afraid to cut into bone, and while I can roast a bird to perfection, the second I try to cut between the leg and the whatever, the drumstick bone rips out, or I shred the breast meat, or do some other stupid crap and then I lose my place and just start hacking away at the poor bird, and it all just looks like a giant pile of carrion remains in the end. And everyone’s really nice because it still tastes great, but then I get scared off it for a bit, and in my head, and then try again in a few months, and watch Jacque Pepin carve a bird, and a dozen other videos on You Tube, and look at old diagrams and drawings, and I come to my perfectly roasted and rested bird with a new plan and e voila, I fuck it up again and we eat a weird pile of delicious meat that looks like a drunkard shoveled it out of a gutter before it was attacked by wild dogs. Again.

Oh and I have no idea what wings are for or why anyone would care, so those just go in my next batch of stock. Which seems like a waste. But like who wants the wings off a roast chicken? Anyone? Someone must.

And I’ve never mastered the basics of sauces, so I follow recipes, but they’re not building on skills or knowledge. Every sauce is its own thing, not, oh it’s an ‘x’ but with vinegar instead of lemon juice. Like I can remember cocktail proportions that way. I know my Mai Tai in relationship to proportions of a Margarita, replace half the orange with orgeat, etc. So I know my brain can do that. But I’ve never learned my basic sauces, and so I can’t do it with sauces. Yet. Enter my cunning plan.

It’s to get better at stuff. My cunning plan is to learn shit and get better at stuff.

So, I’m going to spend some time with the OGFC, Julia Child to try to learn her basic sauces to build from there.

Toward that end, tonight I’ll attempt TWO, eh like 2.5, JC recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking: Asperges au Naturel [Boiled Asparagus] (peel that shit, the JC way, whether I think it matters or not {and I don’t}), a Sauce Mornay out of a Sauce Velouté which I think will be nice on asparagus and some simple boiled potatoes I’m making. I’m also going to roast a chicken, but I’m not going to do one of Julia’s roast chickens. Look, they sound great, but require basting and turning like constantly (like, I don’t know how you keep the oven temp up you’re basting it and turning it so much), and Ina Garten’s roast chicken turns out incredible for me every time and it’s a real leave-it-alone-and-let-the-magic-happen kinda deal which works for me when I’m trying to learn a basic ass sauce that everyone else already knows how to make. Plus I gotta lemon, head of garlic that’s getting old,  and some fresh thyme I really wanna shove up there. There’s a certain catharsis to it. But I’m gonna use Julia’s pan sauce method instead of Ina’s gravy, which means adding carrots to the pan I’m roasting the bird in, then sauteing minced shallots in the pan juices while the chicken rests, deglazing with more chicken stock, reducing, and adding butter.

But I’ll try to carve it for the I-don’t-knowth time after watching Julia and Jacques and a bunch of other videos and I’ll see if it goes any better this time around.

So here we go!

Barefoot Contessa aka Ina Garten’s Roast Chicken

Sidebar: Links to my favorite relatively fuss-free roast chickens:

This one from Ina is great too, but Luke doesn’t so much truck with fennel, so I don’t do this one anymore:

If you don’t want to stuff your bird full of the aromatics, try Jacque Pepin’s Skillet Roasted Chicken with Natural Juices

Jacques Pepin’s Basic Roast Chicken | New York Times

or Matty Matheson’s easy-ass no-truss bird that cooks in like 45-60 minutes.

Matty Matheson: Winner Winner Chicken Dinner | It’s Suppertime for Munches / Vice: (7:19 for the roast chicken)

Just go to her site. It’s really one of the easiest and most consistently good recipes for roast chicken I’ve ever tried. Are there better out there, yeah probably. If I’m making simple sides, I’ll experiment with something more fussy, but this is the one to make if you want to focus on your sides or if you’re making other things that need to be watched closely.

I added some carrots to the pot, and I use the carrots and onions to lift the chicken off the bottom a little bit. Then I usually add a ¼ cup of water or stock to the bottom of the pot when it’s got about 20 minutes to go. Oh, and the cook time in my oven is usually about an hour 20 minutes instead of 30. That’s when my thigh temp hits 165.

Bird goes in the oven, 425 for 80-90 minutes.

Boiled Potatoes – no recipe!

The last of the garden baby potatoes for the year were starting to sprout. And these only lasted this long because I think they were small russet potatoes and the skins were ugly, so I peeled those, boiled them in salted water, threw in some butter and salt, chuffed them a little, and stuck a dish towel over them until ready to serve. Just tossed in the microwave for 45 seconds so I could get these out of the way early to focus on the other stuff. Served with some minced parsley and sauce mornay. Could have done without the latter, but we’ll get to that.

Asperges au Naturel [Boiled Asparagus – hot] (Child 436)

Julia says “We have tested every asparagus cooking method we have heard of—peeled, unpeeled, boiled butts, steamed tips—and can say categorically that the freshest, greenest, and most appetizing asparagus is cooked by the French method” (435). So…. There ya go.

Sidebar: Yeah, that wasn’t working, but the peeler did fine. Maybe not on really fat asparagus, but then just do another couple of passes on the super fat end. Have a good peeler, use that shit. Made quick work of it.

To do this, I have to peel. Julia says the peeler will do me no good as it doesn’t go deep enough. She says “hold the butt end up” and “peel off the outer skin with a sharp, small knife, going as deep as 1/16 of an inch at the butt in order to expose the tender, moist flesh” (435). Then “gradually make the cut shallower until you come up to the tender green portion near the tip. Shave off any scales which cling to the spear below the tip” and then wash the peeled spears in cold water, and drain.

Then you line them up so the tips are in the same place, and tie them in bundles of about 3 ½” with string in two places, and cut off the butts to even everything out. But leave a couple spears out of the bundles so you can test for doneness. (Which I forgot to do.)

And if you’re doing this ahead of time, which I am, set them upright in ½” of cold water, cover with a plastic bag, and refrigerate.

HOLD UNTIL THE BIRD IS RESTING.

Then in a pot big enough that you can put the asparagus bunches in horizontally, in enough boiling salted water to cover the bundles:

Sidebar: Uhm, I did this for 8 minutes, and I still think I over-cooked them a little. Can’t imagine what nearly twice that would have done.

  Boil slowly, uncovered, for 12-15 minutes, until a knife pierces the butt end easily. The spears “should bend a little, but should not be limp or droopy. Eat the loose spear to test for doneness” (437).

Sidebar: Yeah, this was genius. I mean, I’m always scrambling to get green veg done in the end so it doesn’t get cold. Will use this again for sure. Probably could have worked for the potatoes too.

Cut and remove the strings. If not using right away, they will keep warm for 20-30 minutes covered with a napkin. Put asparagus on a platter, then place that platter on top of the water you boiled the asparagus in, then put a napkin on the asparagus. She says.

Sauce Velouté, medium consistency (57) and Sauce Mornay (61)

The great sauce journey begins here. Bear with me, I’m learning, and I’m trying to learn with Julia.

The White Mother Sauces “stem from those two cousins, béchamel and velouté. Both use a flour and butter roux as a thickening agent but béchamel is a milk based sauce while the velouté has a fish, meat, or poultry base” read: stock (54), which is the version I’ll be doing today.

Thin Sauce or soup                        1 Tb per cup of liquid Medium, general purpose sauce    1-1/2 Tb flour per cup of liquid Thick sauce                                   2 Tb flour per cup of liquid Soufflé base                                  3 Tb flour per cup of liquid

And then the mornay sauce is a medium consistency velouté or béchamel with swiss cheese, or a combination of swiss and parmesan mixed in after the original sauce is completed. 

2 T butter 3 T flour 2 cups boiling stock Salt and white pepper

Instructions for Sauce Veloute from Mastering the Art of French Cooking (57):

Sidebar: Maybe my low heat is lower than Julia’s. But I had to turn this up to a medium-low to get anything to happen here. Or maybe the time here really depends on the kind of pot. I was using an enameled cast iron pot, so I upped that temp a bit. Eventually there was some light frothing, but it took forever to get there at low.

1)   In a heavy bottomed [at least] 6-cup saucepan, melt the butter over low heat. Blend in the flour, and cook slowly, stirring, until the butter and flour froth together for 2 minutes without coloring. This is now a white roux.

  Sidebar: Is it supposed to smell like butter cookies? I’ve heard popcorn, but mine really smelled like cookies. Hmmm.

2)   Remove roux from heat. As soon as roux has stopped bubbling, pour in all the [boiling chicken stock] at once. Immediately beat vigorously with a wire whip to blend liquid and roux, gathering in all bits of roux from the inside edges of the pan.

3)   Set saucepan over moderately high heat and stir with the wire whip until the sauce comes to a boil. Boil for 1 minute, stirring.

4)   Remove from heat, and beat in salt and white pepper.

Now we’re gonna turn that into the Sauce Mornay with the addition of the following:

¼ cup swiss coarsely grated ¼ cup parmesan finely grated Pinch nutmeg Pinch cayenne (optional) 1-2T softened additional butter (optional)

1)    Take the sauce veloute you made, and right after it has boiled for one minute, while it is still hot, remove from the heat and beat in the cheeses until melted and blended with the sauce.

2)    Season to taste with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and optional cayenne.

3)    Off heat, and just before serving, stir in optional additional butter a bit at a time, if using. (I didn’t.)

If not using right away, you can pour a thin layer of melted butter, or stock over the top to keep it from skinning over.

Julia’s Pan Sauce for the roasted chicken (242):

½ Tb minced shallots 1 cup chicken stock Salt and pepper 1-2 Tb softened butter

1)   While the chicken is resting, scoop the onions and carrots that are left in the roasting pan out, leaving as much liquid as possible.

2)   Remove all but two Tablespoons of fat from the pan. Stir in the minced shallots and cook slowly for 1 minute. Add the stock and boil rapidly over high heat, scraping up coagulated roasting juices with a wooden spoon and letting liquid reduce to about ½ cup.

3)   Season with salt and pepper

Sidebar: This is where I fucked up and just scrapped the whole thing. I was distracted trying to carve the bird, and added the butter in all at once with the pan still on the heat, and it never came together. Looked like a nice reduction until I added the butter. So yeah, do that part slowly or you’ll have a broken fatty mess. I did not serve this.

4)   Off-heat, and just before serving, swirl in the enrichment butter by bits until it has been absorbed.

5)   Pour a spoonful of the sauce over the chicken, and send the rest to the table in a sauceboat

  It’s off the menu. Let’s say no more about it.

Carve my damn chicken. 

So I think I watched all the videos again today, plus a few more. And I think I know where I’ve been going wrong, but I was focused on the task and didn’t take any pictures.

But here are my favorite videos for learning:

Jacques Pepin Techniques: How to Carve a Roast Chicken

But here’s the thing: so easy, so fast, watched it a dozen times, but honestly he goes so fast that I need some more help.

Chris Carves a Roast Chicken | From the Test Kitchen | Bon Appetit

This one may have helped me the most this time around because he really slows down to show you the parts where you’re exploring the joints with the knife to find those connection points.

Then there’s this:

At 21:26 you can see how a Fak carves a chicken, I guess.

Here’s some notes. I let this bird rest for 20 minutes, and I think it could have gone another 10. It was still very hot, and I rushed my pan sauce and fucked it because my bird rest timer went off, and I could have ignored that and saved my pan sauce. So 30 minutes is not too long for a 5 pound bird.

Dinnertime

Roast Chicken Dinner with Julia Child’s Asperges au Naturel [Boiled Asparagus], Sauce Mornay, roast chicken pan sauce, and boiled potatoes

So, how did it all go?

Well I think the chicken carving turned out way better than usual. I wasn’t serving it to a bunch of people, and Luke and I both wanted thigh and leg tonight, so that’s what I plated, and I didn’t bother to separate them, and I think it doesn’t quite look like a drunken monkey did it. The breasts came off fine, though perhaps I still left a lot of scrap behind, and the meat shredded a bit. The breasts were slightly overcooked as I let the chicken go in the oven the full 90 minutes, when I knew from last time I should have taken it out at 80. Not a huge deal. They sliced up nicely for leftovers.

Chicken was fucking great, even without the pan gravy. Good job Ina and good job me.

The asparagus was good, not great. I’m not sure why I would peel it, but Julia says it’s best that way.

Here’s the thing: we’ve improved vegetables a lot, even the ones we just get at basic ass stores. Has the skin on asparagus gotten less tough in the last 50 years? I kinda think maybe. I think I’m going to stick with sautéing nice thin asparagus in oil in a really hot pan. I’ll try this again when I can only get big fat asparagus. Or I won’t because I don’t love big fat asparagus.

The mornay sauce was pretty bland. I tasted it, and maybe it needed more salt, or maybe more cheese, but mostly I think it wasn’t a great pairing with the asparagus, which needed something with more vinegar I think. I thought the swiss would work with the asparagus and potatoes, but it didn’t taste like swiss. It seemed on the sweet side, and still smelled like cookies. I’ll keep working on it, and try to bring the leftover sauce back and incorporate it into a pasta with cheese, adding more cheese. Not sure what to use this sauce for, or if I made it right. But it wasn’t quite right for this.

I watched a couple videos. I don’t think my roux was cooking hot enough. I think I needed a more vigorous cook when it was the flour and the butter, but Julia said low, so low and slow I went. I’ll keep learning, but this wasn’t the shit, it was… I swear it was cookie dough. Luke thought maybe I used his Krusteaz pancake mix which we did totally have in an unlabeled Tupperware under the counter, but I know I filled my flour container from the bag and labeled it with my OCD labelmaker. Still, it was weird. And probably wrong.

Potatoes were perfect, and because they were tiny russet babies they soaked up all the chicken juices, just parsley and salt and butter. Great little potatoes I grew. Good job me again.

Nice fucking dinner, basically. But the asparagus and the mornay sauce were meh at best.

New Segment

I’ve been working on a sort of post cooking project emotional check in on a four point scale based on how motivated I feel to treat, challenge, or punish myself in the end. It goes like this:

4: Feel great, up to new challenges. I’ll make a new cocktail I’ve never tried before, and document it in another post here.

3: Feel pretty good, but not especially inspired. I’ll make a classic comfort cocktail I know by heart. Old Fashioned, Manhattan, Negroni, etc.

2: I’m OK, but whooped and can do no more. I’ll have a glass of wine or a beer, a straight whiskey, a Rum and Coke or a G&T.

1: I’m really feeling pretty fucked up about the whole thing and not good about myself at all. Like I don’t deserve good. I only deserve bad. I’ll take a shot of Malort. And I’ll have a good long think about what I’ve done.

0: I’m actually dead. The recipe finished me off. I can drink nothing and have put myself to bed. Done because me chefed too menny.

Tonight I had a beer. I wasn’t whooped, but none of the experiments turned out great. My chicken carving went better than ever before, so that was pretty dope. I still don’t know what the deal is with chicken wings.

Goodnight!

Citation

Child, Julia, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck. Mastering the Art of French Cooking. 1961. 40th Anniversary ed., Knopf, 2009.

Garten, Ina. “Perfect Roast Chicken.” Barefoot Contessa, 1999, https://barefootcontessa.com/recipes/perfect-roast-chicken

Millionaire Cocktail from the Old Mr. Boston Deluxe Official Bartenders Guide

1 egg white 1/4 tsp Grenadine 1/2 oz Triple Sec 1-1/2 oz Old Mr. Boston Blended Whiskey

Shake with ice and strain into cocktail glass.

Why this?

I’m waiting for Luke to get home, and I have 3 egg whites left over from making Julia Child’s Garlic Soup. I literally just opened the book until I found something with an egg white that I had all the other ingredients for. And this chic looks like she’s having f.u.n. FUN.

Citation

Mr. Boston Deluxe Official Bartender’s Guide. 1935. Boston, Mr. Boston Distiller Co., 1977.

I’m guessing this book is in the public domain at this point. This is my parent’s old copy, and is how I learned about coctails. I marked it all up when I was a teenager. Looks like if I hadn’t I could sell it on ebay for $60, but c'est la vie.

We’re talking about the incomparable Yma Sumac and she’s singing to David Letterman and a parrot. We’re also featuring Ruth Brown, The Prisonaires, Hank Williams, Tom Lehrer, and the best jazz from 1953, including The Quintet: Jazz at Massey Hall. Check it out: http://www.thepotemkin.com/music-april-1953

“If it isn’t true that Dino De Laurentiis, John Guillermin, and Lorenzo Semple Jr. (the producer, director, and screenwriter of the 1976 King Kong, respectively) actively never liked the 1933 film, it’s pretty clear that they thought it was broken and needed to be fixed. And the “solutions” they have provided for the “problems” of King Kong ’33 are almost all the most grievous no-scare-quotes problems with the film: the depiction of Ann Darrow, now Dwan, and gender and race politics by extension; the repurposing of the voyage to oil exploration and repositioning of the Carl Denham character to professional mustache twirling; and that guy in that ape suit.

“I was going to write about all three, but the first issue is so monstrous that it ate the other two. What has been done to the heroine in this film makes me prone to hyperbole and paroxysms of rage. The bottom line problem, that which I think all other problems regarding Lange and her Dwan flow from, is a directorial decision that the idea of this giant ape running off with this woman, her kicking and screaming in fear, is hot. They think it’s sooooo sexy. And oh man, do they want you to think it’s sexy too. And the worse part is, I think they think it’s smart to think it’s sexy.” [Read more]

Read this and more in our first month at ThePotemkin.com. We look at King Kong, 20th Century, and all things March 1933. 

We’re just getting started, so we’d be grateful if you’d check us out, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.

“In 1932, in a country reeling from the Great Depression, there might have been some pleasure in seeing the mighty like Jaffee fall and the “little nobody,” rise so high. Though Broadway was arguably more affordable in the 30s than it is today, not many Americans got to savor this role reversal on stage, but its certainly possible they enjoyed it when Howard Hawks brought the story to the screen in 1934. The movies of the 1930s managed to incorporate both the realities of America’s situation (primarily through gritty crime dramas) and the escapism of musicals like 42nd Street. 20th Century, as an early standard bearer of a genre specific to the 1930s, the screwball comedy, managed to do a little bit of both, while perhaps also pointing towards a new direction for American women.” [Read more]

Read the rest of Lois Anne DeLong’s article on the play 20th century and its various revivals and adaptations over the years.

“So on a merely functional level, these scenes establish a romance plot that drives the man to fight to save the woman. The film simply requires a love story because being a pretty blonde woman does not sufficiently warrant rescue from certain doom. Someone has to love her to make her life matter. Or, perhaps mirroring the uncompleted project Carl Denham set off to film in the first place, the studios insisted on a romance plot. So if you’re writing a romance that really just needs to exist, but that doesn’t really matter, that will fade into the background entirely, why not write your own? And if it means you can get in a few jabs at your husband in the process—his vocal misogyny and likely ineptitude at romance—even better. It’s a perfect revenge for all those times she must have had to listen to his criticisms of women, of how much trouble we all are, of what a burden we are to take along, needing our own rooms to sleep and change in, needing our own toilets to use, needing protection so we don’t get raped all the time. So many needs. Sigh.” [Read more]

As part of our inaugural issue dedicated to March 1933, Corbett Treece explores the ridiculous and preposterous love story between Ann Darrow and Jack Driscoll in the 1933 classic King Kong and discovers an appreciation for the woman who wrote it. Quite the feat considering the story starts with the heroine getting slapped in the face.

The Potemkin Picks, 1933

Our Spotify playlist for March, 1933 features selections from the year's Billboard chart, popular (and not so popular) musicals, the blues, and music from King Kong. It's difficult in '33 to pin music popularity or release down to the month, so these are selections from the entire year. Check it out http://www.thepotemkin.com/music-march-1933