Mastering the Art of French Cooking

One of my Christmas presents was Julia Child's first cookbook. I also watched the Julie and Julia movie over the holidays so - no surprise - I decided to try out a recipe or two, (four to be exact) from the cookbook. With Alli as my sous chef, we attempted a half day cooking marathon. I was a little skeptical that all the different cooking steps that Julia insisted on (which required four different recipes) could beat my previous attempts at bouef bourgennone ala the crockpot. We deftly patted the beef dry and sauteed it carefully in batches so as not to crowd the meat and let it carmelize. We simmered the sauce of wine (a nice Chianti recommended by Julia), beef stock, and herbs and poured it over the meat, stuck it in the oven to braise and made the next two recipes of carmelized onions and golden mushrooms. For the onions, we peeled 24 pearl onions, sauteed them in butter until golden, and added some beef stock to stew them for an hour. I will say the sauce that resulted was meltingly delicious. We set these aside for later. Then we sauteed the quartered mushrooms in butter, again in batches so as not to crowd and prevent browning. These also were set aside. After about three hours of braising the meat in the oven, we removed the meat from the sauce, brought the sauce to a simmer and thickened it with flour. We put the onions and mushrooms in the serving dish with the beef and poured over the sauce. We served this whole delicious mess with crusty bread for dipping. On the side we made buttered peas with pearl onions. Even though we used frozen peas, I could not believe how much better they tasted done Julia's way. My way was to microwave with a few tablespoons of water and maybe a pat of butter if I felt fancy. Julia's is to boil the pearl onions until soft (about 15 minutes), drain, add the defrosted peas and roll around in the pan to get rid of all excess moisture over medium high heat. Once dry, you add six (yes, six) tablespoons of butter, sugar to taste (I used about a teaspoon) and salt and pepper. Once melted you roll the peas in this yellow gooiness until the peas are cooked. No water or broth but it still makes a nice sauce. Best frozen peas we ever made. I wish we could find fresh and try out the recipe again.

Final verdict - this took a lot of kitchen time but the result was delicious. I rarely have time to put all this effort into cooking but that is the point of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Alli noted it was "Delicious. I was surprised how the sugar enhanced the peas". But best of all, Jeff, who usually disdains French food because of the wine, went back for seconds.