It seems that everybody who went to see Julie & Julia immediately went out and bought a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the seminal 1961 cookbook by Julia Child, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle.  And well they should - it's one of the most influential American cookbooks, and it brought French cuisine within reach of American cooks who had, at the time, been using a lot of condensed soups and other things that come in cans.  

There have been a lot of articles lately, then, on the phenomenon of the book's recent popularity and whether you, yourself, the home cook, ought to go buy it.  An article in the New York Times brings up some of the "problems" with the book - okay, I admit it.  There's a lot of butter.  And a lot of cream.  And when I say a lot of butter, I mean a lot of butter.  Hey, Julia Child lived to be almost 92 - do you want to live forever?  Is 92 not enough for you?

Slate really ticked me off with an article called "Don't Buy Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking" - that bit of advice is what drove me to write this blog post.  The author, Regina Schrambling, thinks you'll never cook from it - that the recipes don't work for our modern, busy lifestyles, that they're too complicated, that they require too much patience (heaven forbid), that they're fussy and that they're dated.  Well, yes, some of them are dated - a lot of recipes in the book are for a style of entertaining that has gone the way of the dodo.  If I go to your party and you have some sort of chicken aspic on the table, I'm going to go home and spread rumors about you and your meat Jello.  And I'll also grant that they're a little French for American tastes - there's a whole chapter on sweetbreads and brains, and I don't even know where to buy brains in Columbia.  (Don't e-mail me to let me know - I'm okay with ignorance on this matter.  I'd try brains at the Best Brain Restaurant in the World, but I doubt my first attempt at cooking them myself would endear them to me.) 

But don't buy it because the recipes are too hard?  For one thing, that's just not true - they may be complicated and long, but generally they are not actually technically difficult.  They're extremely well explained, and I assure you that if you follow the directions you will get the expected result - they're very precise and exhausively tested.  (They're not even all long - the omlettes cook in 40 seconds, although they do require technique.)  Take a look at the title.  If you don't want to master the art of french cooking, which one assumes would take some time and effort, then no, don't buy it.  Otherwise, why let a snob tell you what you are and are not capable of?

At the Boston Globe, they tried making one of the most complicated dishes in the book - pate de canard en croute.  It's a duck stuffed with meat... stuff, and the whole thing gets baked in a pastry crust.  And it took them a lot longer than they expected, sure.  But it came out good, which is the point, right?  Even with the trouble the authors had, they agreed that the recipes are written so clearly that it's very difficult to have one turn out wrong if you even try to follow the instructions.

I'll have you know that Publisher's Weekly agrees with me, too - their article quotes Nora Ephron, director of Julie & Julia, on how instructive and fun the recipes are.

But don't just take my word for it - let me show you.  If you're on the Periodicals home page, click on the title of this blog post to see the second half, where I make the iconic boeuf bourguignon from Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
 I've cooked from this book several times before, but I haven't made this particular recipe.  Now, I admit, I'm a pretty experienced cook, but not a masochist - let's say I'm the kind of cook who makes her own pie crust but doesn't bother to make her own puff pastry.  However, I'm willing to bet you that even if you don't know a thing about cooking, you'd be able to pull this recipe off if you know how to work your stove and oven and how to chop an onion.  Julia explains everything else.

I started at noon by parboiling about 20 little boiling onions. 

The thing you need to notice is that there are two other recipes (for sauteed mushrooms and browned onions) that go into the master stew recipe.  This is not the kind of recipe you just jump into - you need to have read it before you start and make sure you have everything you need.  So I'm parboiling these little guys so I can skin them easier, which is a trick you got from me, not from Julia.  Get a pot of water boiling, cut off their roots and tops, and throw them in and let them go for maybe two minutes or so and then throw them in some cold water so they stop cooking. 

Meanwhile, I'm cutting 6 ounces of bacon into little lardons.

Actually, the recipe calls for slab bacon with a rind, but Julia will just have to live with what I could pick up from the grocery store on Labor Day Saturday.  That means I won't have a bacon rind when the recipe calls for it later on, but we'll live.  And I suddenly have more kitchen helpers than I strictly need. 

They didn't offer to help with the stupid little onions, but chop some bacon up and suddenly you're not alone in the kitchen anymore.  (I'd throw 'em out, but my kitchen is tiny and gets way too hot with the door closed on a big stove project like this.)  I just wanted you to know that the difficulty level has gone up at this point, as now I have to defend dinner with one hand and cook it with the other, and I'm still telling you it isn't a difficult recipe.

The bacon goes into a pot of water (six cups - the recipe is very exact on these things) to take some of the salt out.  It simmers for ten minutes while we peel the onions and put them in a strainer so they can dry out well.  You'll need them dry for their next step. Meanwhile we're cutting 3 pounds of beef into 2 inch cubes.  I used a rump pot roast, but you can also use a chuck roast. 

And another country heard from. 



Shortly after this, I accidentally dropped a meat cube and it was World War III in my kitchen.  The dog won.

When the bacon has simmered ten minutes, take it out and dry it.  It won't brown correctly if it's still wet, so make sure you do it well.  Unfortunately, I'm out of paper towels, so I had to get my kitchen towels bacony, which was gross, and then I had to keep the dog from eating the towel.  Do you appreciate the things I do for you?

Somewhere along here, preheat the oven to 450.

Now you get out whatever you're going to cook the thing in.  The book suggests a fireproof casserole dish, but I'm using my dutch oven - works just as well and it's my favorite pot.  Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in there and throw the bacon in to cook. 

Mmm, bacon. 

While that's cooking, dry your meat cubes.  When the bacon's done, take it out.  Here's an awesome tip - if you're working with a pot you will eventually cover with a lid and you have to take things out of it and hold them for a while, don't dirty a plate - turn the lid upside down and put stuff like cooked bacon or browned meat in the lid.  Thank me later for that one.

Throw that meat in in batches and brown it on all four sides.  You want pretty high heat for this.
 

It's beautiful, isn't it?  Watch out and don't let it cook too much, but while this is going on you can chop an onion and a carrot. 

I like more texture in my food, so I did pole to pole onion crescents.  Throw that meat on the lid with the bacon and saute your veggies in the pot.  They're going to look gorgeous with all that bacon grease and meat stuff.  Mmmm, meat stuff.

Okay, now you put the beef and bacon back in the pot and throw on a teaspoon of salt, a quarter teaspoon of pepper and two tablespoons of flour.  Stir.  Put it uncovered into the oven for four minutes, stir and put it back for another four minutes.  This cooks the flour and gets a nice coating going.  Then take it out and turn the oven down to 325.

This is starting to look like food!

Now you'll need all this stuff. 

Add three cups of wine (and don't use wine you wouldn't drink yourself - it doesn't have to be expensive, but the wine's in the name of the dish!) enough beef stock or packaged beef broth to cover the meat, a tablespoon of tomato paste, two cloves of garlic either mashed or pressed, half a teaspoon of thyme, a bay leaf and that imaginary bacon rind.  Note that the tomato isn't really very authentic - what a lot of people don't realize is that these recipes really are a little Americanized, to make the ingredients easier to find and work with for American cooks.  If you open up a really authentic French cookbook like Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook the first thing you realize is that you can't even get the cuts of meat you need to make any of the recipes.  I think Child's way is a good happy medium, personally.

Stir it all up, bring it to a simmer on the stove, cover it and throw it in the oven for 2 1/2 to 3 hours.  Right now it's 1:40, so I've spent not quite two hours on my feet at the stove at this point.  It's a lot, but this is obviously a special dish that I don't make every day.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, you gotta do your onions and your mushrooms.  This is when the dishes really start to pile up in the sink.  Haul out your skillet and melt 1 1/2 tablespoons of butter and the same amount of oil in it over medium heat.  When the butter's foaming, throw in your onions and roll them around for ten minutes, browning them as evenly as you can.  Then add half a cup of beef stock, an herb bouquet with parley, thyme, and bay leaf and salt and pepper to taste.  (Keep in mind when you're using commercial stock that you ought to be using the reduced sodium kind so you can decide for yourself how much salt something needs.)  Cover and simmer for 40 to 50 minutes.  Congratulations, you get to sit down for a bit!

These look SO GOOD.  Reader, I ate one. 

Now that they're done, you can throw them in a bowl (covered so the cats don't get them) until you need them, and use the pan for your mushrooms. 

I just sliced them in my mushroom slicer, because I was tired of cutting things - works fine.  You need a pound.  You'll need two tablespoons of butter and 1 tablespoon of oil, and you need that pan hot.  When the butter stops foaming it's hot enough - throw the mushrooms in in batches so they brown instead of steaming.  Stir them vigorously for about five minutes until they start to brown.
 

You'll probably need more butter eventually (look, it isn't a Weight Watchers cookbook.)  When they're all done you can put them in the bowl with the onions, since they're all going to the same place in the end. You know how in a petrified log, the wood has essentialy been replaced by stone?  That's kind of what you did to those mushrooms, only you were replacing mushroom with butter.  You can try one - I won't tell. 

You've just made Oignons Glaces a Brun and Champignons Sautes au Berre - was that so hard?

Now you get to rest until the stew in the oven is done.  Put your feet up, have a glass of that wine for Julia.  You deserve it - you're almost done!  The meat is done when you can pierce it with a fork easily.

Then all you have to do is strain the sauce into a saucepan and simmer it for ten minutes, skimming the fat off.  

It should coat the back of a spoon lightly.  If you have too much, boil it down a bit - too little, and you can thin it out with broth.  Check it for seasoning and add salt and pepper if need be, and then just add the onions and mushrooms to your beef stuff and pour the sauce over the top.  Mine was finished at 5:30, an hour before my guests arrived.

And it was DELICIOUS.  I made some simple roasted potatoes to go with it, because you just don't want anything to compete with the main dish here.  Add a salad and you're good to go.

This is not a beautiful restaurant plating, and I don't do tablescapes.  Trust me, it tastes good.  I think next time I might reduce the sauce further, though - that's just my own personal taste.  It was so good I forgot to take any pictures of us enjoying the food!  It did make terrific leftovers, though, so this is my boyfriend enjoying it over egg noodles the next day.

I felt I should offer some proof that I do have real live friends and family who come over and eat my cooking, since I gave evidence that I'm the kind of librarian who has more than one cat.

Now, this is supposed to be a recipe for novices - there's no pastry, nothing delicate or complicated.   And I'd agree that it's well within the abilities of an inexperienced cook.  It required no special equipment (although there were a lot of dirty dishes) and no technical skills beyond "chop things."  It did take a while, and a lot of that time was spent actively cooking - it wasn't a "fix it and forget it" recipe, but then, that's not why you're doing it.  You learn a lot of technique here, for one thing.  If you want to do a really richly, complexly flavored beef dish, then this is a great recipe for it and there really aren't that many shortcuts that provide the same results.  I'll certainly make it again, and I think you should give it a try.  Tell me in the comments how it went!

You can check out the book itself from us and give it a whirl - I notice that there are 18 requests on it right now, which means that at least somebody's interested in trying it out!  You can also read Julie and Julia, which will definitely make you want to try your hand at some of these recipes.  (Maybe not the brains, though.  Or the aspic.)  You can watch the original Julia do her thing on The French Chef, too.  And as always, you can find these articles here in Periodicals and see if you agree with them or not.  There's a lot of articles on the book and movie that I didn't tell you about - come on in and ask us about them!

Clifford, Stephanie. "After 48 Years, Julia Child Has a Big Best Seller, Butter and All." New York Times. 8/23/09 A-1

Schrambling, Regina. "Don't Buy Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking." Slate. 8/28/09.

First, Devrah and Wesley Morris. "A Kitchen, a Bottle of Wine, and a Duck Recipe - Easy, Right?" Boston Globe. 8/5/09

Andriani, Lynn. "Mastering the Art of French Cooking Reaches Young Readers Again." Publishers Weekly. 7/20/09