Haute Cuisine

Did everyone see the movie, Julie and Julia?  I loved it.  Meryl Streep is one fine actress, IMO, and she played the real Julia Child perfectly. 

This photo of her is SO typical Julia, laughing and sharing her passion with her viewers.When I was younger, I would watch Julia on TV and be in awe of the work she put into each creation.  Nothing "fast food" about her cooking, that's for sure.  She was, in fact one of my inspirations for going to cooking school and becoming a genuine (although nowhere as good as Julia) chef.  When I attended cooking school there was a right way to do things and a wrong way.  And we had to learn the right way.  That meant we whipped meringue to stiff peaks, with our hands, no utensils.  (Let me tell you, THOSE classes required a visit to the bar afterwards.)  Every morning we had to set up our "mis en place" (all of our ingredients for the current dish), every stockpot had a "bouquet garni" (fragrant herbs), and all of the sauces we had to learn were from Larousse Gastronomie, the BIBLE of French cooking. My first true cooking job when I graduated was as a saucier for a steakhouse and during the interview, the chef interrogated me on the ingredients for a number of obscure French sauces.  Julia would have known them all.  I got the job, BUT, in my locker I had a copy of the Larousse stashed and I don't know how many times a day I snuck off to the locker to look up how to make this sauce or that. That chef never did know how I pulled that off, ('cus he was usually drunk) and I went on to become a fairly good sous-chef, if I do say so myself.  But that was then, this is now.

We had crepes for lunch.  They were marvelous.  Are you old enough to remember when Crepes Suzette were the "dessert of the day"?  I had a job once as a crepe-maker too, eons ago, in a French restaurant. There were these crepe pans on the ends of these spokes of a wheel and they spun around while I had to make crepes and flip them.  It was like an episode of Big Brother. I'll spare you the details, it didn't go so well.  BUT, as a saucier, I learned how to make soups and sauces and that included THE Julia Child's Beef Bourguignon.  Now if you saw the movie Julie and Julia, you will know how intricate the making of this classic dish is, and how it has become a cult classic, if you travel in those circles.  I was going to give you the recipe, but to tell you then truth, it's so long and so involved, that I think Blogger would block me from ever posting again.  lol  I'll give you a picture instead.I know, I know, I SAID I would cook for you.  BUT have you BEEN outside today?  Yeah?  Well do you want to eat STEW?  Heck, last night at about 10PM I made Kraft dinner.  And there's always pizza.  Hey, why don't they deliver cupcakes?

Go on over to Paris in July to see a lot of posts that have to do with the REAL Paris. not the one in my mind!  lol