It was sometime a little after I graduated college that I took an interest in French Cuisine however, my interest may have started sooner as I had taken a French language course the last term of my college life. The class was entirely conducted in French by the professor, who by the way, actually was from France. On occasion she would break that rule of hers and talk about life in France in English, and among things would give wonderful detailed talks about French food that made my mouth drool.
Then, on one occasion, I happen to tune into Julia Child's cooking show, it was a show I normally didn't watch since to be honest, I just didn't care for her; to me she always sounded as if she had been dipping into the cooking sherry a wee bit too much. However, on that day I happen to catch her show, she was introducing a then up and coming French chef, Jaques Pepin. O la la! Not only was he demonstrating his own techniques for cooking French foods, but hey, he wasn't bad to look at either. Now when I think of it, what then happened next was almost similar to that movie Julie & Julia, where the one character, Julie Powell decides to cook every single recipe in Julia Child's cookbook, but instead of cooking up recipes from Julia Child's cookbook, I began collecting not only Jaques Pepin's cookbooks, but other French recipe cookbooks and began cooking up a storm.
Now you have to realize that in years prior, if and when I did cook something, it would be very basic, mainstream foods, you're typical meat and potatoes type of thing, nothing fancy schmancy. In my childhood and teen years, I relied on whatever food my mother or grandmother cooked up, and let's put it this way, cooks they weren't. If they could have burned water they would have, yes, their cooking was that bad. The only real cook of the family had been my great grandmother, and praise be, there is a God, I must have inherited her skills rather than either my mother or grandmother.
I have to admit I didn't cook every single French recipe in the cookbooks I had, as the idea of say preparing and fixing something like escargot or Tripes à la Niçoise (Tripe stew) just repulsed me. I did however start my journey into French cooking by preparing known classics, such as Crêpes, Boeuf Bourguignon, and yes, I even made the all elusive and difficult Soufflé.
When I realized I had a real knack for cooking French foods, it was like full steam ahead. After a little time had passed by and as I became more confident in my skills, and since Thanksgiving was fast approaching, I ditched the idea of the usual and more traditional Thanksgiving dinner and instead did a full French gourmand feast consisting of French Onion Soup Gratinée, Crêpes filled with chicken and mushroom with Sauce Mornay, Boeuf Bourguignon, and for dessert, Poires pochées au vin (Poached Pairs in Wine Sauce). How I didn’t gain a hundred pounds with that one dinner, I’ll never know.
As the years passed by I would later embark on cooking other types of cuisine as well, such as Oriental, Mexican, Italian, and so forth, but to this day, my first love is to cook French food and while I don’t knock myself out as much as I used to, as I did with that Thanksgiving dinner I had cooked so many years ago, I still love to make up something special from time to time, like my Boeuf Bourguignon which I serve on a bed of Couscous as seen in my photo of it when I made it as my birthday dinner.
If you would like my recipe version of Boeuf Bourguignon you can find it here:
voices.yahoo.com/how-great-boeuf-bourguignon-meal-2294943.html?cat=22Recipe for Boeuf Bourguignon
To coin a phrase Julia Child would say at the end of her show: Bon Appétit
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