Mastering the Art of French Cooking

There was no doubt about it. I had to get my hands on this book.

In August, I saw the movie Julie & Julia with a couple of friends. I vowed to get the cookbook Julia Child is writing in the movie, Mastering The Art of French Cooking, her first cookbook, co-authored with Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck, published in 1961. I'd decided to borrow it from the library, but not surprisingly, it was already checked out, so I was put on the waiting list. Today I went to the library to pick it up--it was in at last! The book I brought home is actually Volume Two, which was originally published in 1970. I was pleased to bring home a beautiful copy of this book. In fact, it looks new. I was also pleased to see that the library has some new check-out machines. I guess they have some money, after all. But back to the cookbook.

"Anyone can cook in the French manner anywhere, with the right instruction."
~Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck

There's no need to be intimidated. Although French cooking has a reputation for being complicated and out of reach for most people, this book explains things clearly and makes it seem almost easy. The authors adapt French cuisine to what's available in American supermarkets, describe cooking techniques in simple language, suggest which dishes and wines complement each other, and include some helpful illustrations. These recipes do not seem terribly difficult or fussy--I'll attempt some of them; even the soufflé au chocolat seems possible (and isn't that what cookbooks are all about--possibilities?). Julia Child's friendly, down-to-earth personality and joie de vivre shine throughout the book. I think this would be a terrific cookbook for someone who's about to start their own household, or for someone with an interest in French cuisine or Julia Child's cooking career.

Here are seven sundry facts and ideas I gathered while leafing through this cookbook:

• The French do not eat much broccoli. They prefer turnips, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and other vegetables.
• The essential rule of the French technique for vegetables: Do not overcook.
• A very savory way of serving tomatoes is à la Provençal, tomatoes stuffed with bread crumbs, herbs, and garlic.
• Fluted mushroom caps add a nice professional touch to your cooking. (I will try this!)
• Never stir cooked rice with anything other than a wooden fork or chopstick, and be gentle.
• In a true sauté, cut-up chicken is cooked only in butter or butter and oil, and seasonings, without any liquid, until the very end, for poulet sauté.
• You can judge the quality of a chef or a restaurant by the quality of their roast chicken (unless you're a vegetarian).

Soon after the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Julia Child starred in a series on public TV called The French Chef, which made her a national celebrity and the first female celebrity chef.

Kudos to Rebecca Reid for hosting the delectable Spice of Life: A Reading Challenge.

Kitchen（キッチン）

Whether large or small, modern or old-fashioned, cluttered or organized, the kitchen represents the heart of the home for many of us. It's the place where we gather with others to eat, cook, and share parts of our day.

Kitchen is also a novel by Japanese author Banana Yoshimoto, a critically acclaimed example of contemporary Japanese literature, published in 1988, and translated into English in 1993 by Megan Backus. Kitchens in Japan are called Daidokoro (台所; lit. "kitchen", notice the little house symbol). Until the Meiji era, a kitchen was also called kamado (かまど; lit. "stove"), which was considered to be the symbol of a house; the term could even be used to mean "family" or "household", similar to the English word "hearth".

In this novel, a young Japanese woman, Mikage Sakurai, has just lost her grandmother, her last living relative, with whom she has lived for several years. Grief-stricken and on her own, Mikage is invited to the home of one of her grandmother's friends, a young man, Yuichi Tanabe, and ends up staying with him and his transsexual mother, Eriko. After Mikage's arrival at their apartment she inspects the kitchen and starts to feel at home. Mikage has always been enchanted by kitchens, which seem to nurture and comfort her. She quickly falls in love with the kitchen at the Tanabe's home.

"Lit by a small fluorescent lamp, all kinds of plates silently awaited their turns, glasses sparkled. It was clear that in spite of the disorder everything was of the finest quality, There were things with special uses, like . . . porcelain bowls, gratin dishes, gigantic platters, two beer steins. Somehow it was all very satisfying. I even opened the refrigerator (Yuichi said it was okay)--everything was neatly organized, nothing just 'left'.

I looked around, nodding and murmuring approvingly, 'Mmm, mmm.' It was a good kitchen. I fell in love with it at first sight."
~Kitchen, Banana Yoshimoto

Mikage feels lost and lonely after the death of her grandmother. However, with the help of Yuichi and his mother, and through her cooking and job as a culinary teacher's assistant, she begins the healing process. There's also a budding romance in this book, which is a lovely treat.

This novel centers around food and its preparation. I must admit that while reading this book, I started to crave Japanese food (I adore miso soup and bento boxes), especially the katsudon--even though I rarely eat pork--because it sounds so delicious in the book. Influenced by my reading but unable to head to my neighborhood Japanese restaurant, I went to the kitchen and made some ramen noodles with onion and scallion for lunch.

I've read some criticism of this short novel, and this book is certainly not for everyone. As for me, I'm interested in modern Japanese culture, food, and fiction, and was intrigued by this book. Yoshimoto uses words sparingly, yet deals with large themes such as death, isolation and loneliness, love, and food. She captures the essence of what she writes about with a clear and simple elegance. At first I was startled by the descriptions of Eriko's radiant physical beauty (she used to be a man, Yuichi's father), but soon I appreciated the unconventional aspect of this. These unlikely housemates form a new family, a new home, their own "kitchen". I really enjoyed this short book.

My edition of Kitchen also includes a novella, Moonlight Shadow, a much shorter story about love and loss and healing, with a touch of the supernatural, which is also quite engaging.

Special thanks to Dolce Bellezza's Japanese Literature Challenge 3 and Rebecca Reid's Spice of Life Reading Challenge, which motivate me to read books that I probably would neglect otherwise!

Miscellanous Musings

Last month, I was honored by two new awards from fellow book bloggers. Cathy from One eyed stuffed bunny and. . . gave me a B-I-N-G-O Award, while Mel from The Reading Life gave me a Lemonade Award. Thanks, Cathy and Mel! I'm honored by these awards and display them on my blog (at least for the time being--if I get many more, I may need to keep them in a separate post). I'm not distributing any awards today because I know far too many deserving blogs, but please feel free to "steal" these awards and give them out if you desire.

Today I found out that I won a copy of The Blue Star from Laura's Reviews. Many thanks to Laura and the Hatchette Book Group--I can't wait to read this book!

Until late August, I'd resisted joining any organized reading challenges. I noticed that several bloggers, including Amanda from The Zen Leaf, Mel from The Reading Life, and Mee from Books of Mee, seemed to do a lot of challenges. To make up for lost time, I joined four reading challenges: Rebecca's Spice of Life, Belleza's third Japanese Literature Challenge, Carl V.'s R.I.P. IV, and Jennie's China Challenge. These challenges are not overly ambitious for me. I've already completed the Spice of Life challenge at the level of A Taste.

My friend, Laura, just started a blog about the process of writing a screenplay, called aptly, Screenplay 101. Please stop by her blog to welcome her when you have a moment!


Update, 5:00 PM: Laura from Laura's Reviews just gave me three more awards, which now adorn my blog: a Super Comments Award, a Superior Scribbler Award, and a Zombie Chicken Award.

Wow! I am triply honored! Amanda from The Zen Leaf commented that the Zombie Chicken Award is too cool to not give to others. Nor do I wish to risk the wrath of zombie chickens by not not sharing this grand award, officially described below:

"The blogger who receives this award believes in the Tao of the zombie chicken-- excellence, grace, and persistence in all situations, even in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. These amazing bloggers regularly produce content so remarkable that their readers would brave a raving pack of zombie chickens just to be able to read their inspiring words. As a recipient of this world-renowned award, you now have the task of passing it on to at least 5 other worthy bloggers. Do not risk the wrath of the zombie chickens by choosing unwisely or not choosing at all."

I hereby bestow this prestigious award upon the following blogs:

Bending Bookshelf
Bibliophile by the Sea
Books on the Brain
Giving...Reading-A Chance
One eyed stuffed bunny and. . .
Sam's Book Blog
The Reading Life
Writing Space

Congratulations to each of you!

Cookbooks

Rebecca Reid's Spice of Life: A Reading Challenge appealed to me because I have several cookbooks and knew I'd post about cookbooks in some way. Some of my cookbooks are basic, while others have a foreign flavor (sorry, couldn't resist).


Although I already have enough cookbooks to choose from, my original plan was to go to the library and take out Julia Child's Mastering The Art of French Cooking. (Some of you already know this, having read my post, Potluck, and to you I offer my apologies for being repetitious.) The book was already taken out, so I asked the reference librarian to put me on the list for it. But I did find a couple of other cookbooks, some culinary library loot which seemed right for the Spice of Life Challenge. I could have gone crazy in the library, surrounded by such an impressive array of cookbooks, but instead I checked out only two books, The Medieval Cookbook by Maggie Black, and a huge one called The Way to Cook by Julia Child (not the one I wanted, but still Julia Child).

For this post, my second for the Spice of Life Challenge, I'll focus on The Medieval Cookbook, which was published in 1992, and which attracted my attention for a few different reasons. I liked the idea of learning about the cookery of a past era, namely the Middle Ages. Also, when I was in college, my school held an annual Medieval Feast which I enjoyed greatly, a lavish, six-course extravaganza, complete with costumes and skits. This cookbook also has reproductions of Medieval art, as well as recipes from manuscripts written in Old English (followed by modern English). It features Medieval fare such as Roast Pheasant, Civey of Hare, Grilled Quail, and Sweet-sour Spiced Rabbit. Since I don't eat pheasant nor hare nor quail nor rabbit, I was pleasantly surprised to find a recipe for Lasagne Layered with Cheese in this cookbook. It actually sounds delicious enough to try.

Here it is, from the book, in Old English:

"Losyns. Take good broth and do in an ethen pot. Take flour of paynedemayn and make therof past with water, and make therof thynne foyles as paper with a roller, drye it harde and seeth it in broth. Take chesrucryn grated and lay it in dishes with powdour douce, and lay theron loseyns isode as hoole as thou myght, and above powdour and chese; and so twyse or thryse, & serue it forth. (CI. IV. 50.)"

Maggie Black also writes out the recipe in modern English, and lets us know that we can use ready made lasagne noodles (how about the no-boil kind?). This recipe, which is basically lasagne noodles layered with grated cheddar cheese, calls for a pinch of ground mace and cardamom or cinnamon, and white pepper, which sounds interesting, and seems very easy. The author suggests that this would have been an ideal last course in the Middle Ages, " to 'seal' in the alcohol so often imbibed too freely by the young".

What about you? What kind of cookbooks appeal to you and why?  I look forward to hearing from you.

Potluck

~Preface~

Spice of Life: A Reading Challenge, hosted by Rebecca Reid, is my very first challenge. I've avoided reading challenges in the past because I thought they'd have too many complicated rules, and I truly like to "do my own thing", to read what I want to read when I want to. I was quite pleased to discover that for this challenge, which I learned about initially on Books of Mee, you choose your level of participation, and that the "rules" are very relaxed. "A Taste" of the Spice of Life challenge only requires posting about two food-related books. Two is certainly possible for me! I also thought I'd start with Julia Child's first cookbook, Mastering The Art of French Cooking, because I recently saw the movie Julie & Julia and was inspired to read her debut cookbook, but I changed course this morning. I went to the library to find the cookbook, but it's already checked out (not surprisingly), so I won't be able to get it for at least a month. And I didn't want to splurge on a new copy for myself from a bookstore, as I've been buying myself far too many books lately.

* * * * * * * * *

"In the context of this sisterhood, I was introduced to the potluck, and it became my template for community"
~Potluck, Kim Thomas

Each year, I go to several potlucks. Usually they are held after the music recitals which my children perform in, but sometimes they are just get-togethers. When I spotted Potluck: Parables of Giving, Taking, and Belonging by Kim Thomas, I took a look inside and saw stories followed by recipes, and I thought this book would be fun to read. But that wasn't the only thing I was thinking. I have a confession. When it comes to potlucks, I am out of luck. Whenever I have to cook for a group substantially larger than my family, I fail. Miserably. For the last potluck I cooked for, a violin recital, I made fried rice. It turned out to be awful. I'd even packaged it with extra care so that it would stay warm while the violinists were performing, but this only served to ruin the taste of the dish even further. I'm not sure exactly what I did wrong, but the results were disastrous, and even my kids, who love and request my fried rice at home, hardly touched it.

As I read the lovely stories in Potluck, with titles and subtitles such as An Honest Little Cake: The Virtues of Imperfection, Root Vegetables: Life From Dark Places, and Cake Potluck: Creativity Is A Gift, which are followed by recipes guaranteed (under normal circumstances) to please any crowd, I felt hopeful. I felt inspired. I wanted to make the recipes in the book, Jamie's Carrot Muffins, Cristin and Kale's Spring Rolls, Scott's Tortilla Soup. I even wanted to try making the somewhat "risky" lime-loaf. I thought that maybe, just maybe, my "potlucking skills" would improve after reading this book. Maybe my dishes would be eaten up, maybe I would receive praise for my fine cooking, and maybe someone might even want my recipe!

To make a long story short, this book did not change my life, nor my status at potlucks. Potluck is an entertaining book, and I enjoyed the ideas and ideals in addition to the recipes, but it wasn't life-altering. I tried a few of the recipes (not the lime-loaf), but I still cannot cook well for a large group. Consequently, I've had to accept my inability to cook for potlucks. The last time I went to a potluck, I brought ready-made fried chicken and cookies from the supermarket. There were no leftovers.

If you have an easy recipe for a potluck dish, or an experience or thought that you'd like to share, please feel free to do so in the comments. Thanks for reading!