I’ve been thinking a lot lately about learning more about French preparations. I’d always heard good things about the cookbook that came out, oh, about 10 years ago, a collaboration between Julia Child and her French friend, chef Jacques Pepin. This cookbook still looks good, and I came to enjoy reading their disagreements on opposite pages (i.e. “I like to cook chicken this way,” and “Unlike Julia, I do it this way…”).

I made Julia’s lemon roast chicken. For the most part it worked, and was tasty.

She said to de-fat the pan drippings, and I tried. But darn it, it’s not fun nor easy to do when you have onions and carrots in the pan. So, I decided to put my knowledge to work: add flour, and it will thicken things up. Her pan sauce combines wine, chicken stock, and the flavorful bits, fat removed. I still had some fat, but the sauce was ultimately too greasy. It also lacked lemon flavor. While sage was the herb used, I think adding more lemon at the very end would have been smart.

As you can see, I also made their potato gratin. I did it in individual servings using ramekins, but felt the vertical shape didn’t adequately hold enough of the flavored milk. I augmented my middle layer of both Yukons and russet rounds (cut very thin) with a little truffle oil. I think real truffle slices would have made this properly deluxe.

For the next night’s dinner, I made their simple (and simply delicious) salad of avocado, red onion, and tomato.

This was absolutely delicious, using good-quality red wine vinegar and really ripe, perfect Haas avocado. I aim to make more from their book. I took a classic and put it to work from the dessert section of the book: Crème Anglaise sauce with fresh berries.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 23rd, 2009 at 10:47 pm and is filed under French, In the Kitchen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.