- Cooking: making food that people generally eat as an appetizer or main dish or anything else that isn't a dessert or pallet cleanser. These foods generally do not make you feel entirely guilty after eating since most do have at least some redeeming nutritional value.
- Baking: the preparation of foods that make you feel guilty after eating. These include cookies, cakes, pies, etc. Basically anything you eat for dessert... or anything in which the sweetness is the overpowering taste. The nutritional value of these foods is usually negated by the amount of sugar and fat they contain.
- Hopefully you understand.
Now, as I said, I am rather talented in the area of baking. But alas, however satisfying this skill may be to the taste buds, it reeks havoc on the hips, thighs, belly, and basically any other part of the body you don't want fat to be but where fat inevitably gathers. So, with their figures in mind, my sister and mom collaborated to purchase me the aforementioned book.
It took me a while, but after again watching and gaining inspiration from the movie Julie & Julia, I decided to check out this 684-page book.
My first recipe: Suprémes de Volaille à l'Ècossaise (Chicken Breasts with Diced Aromatic Vegetables and Cream). I won't divulge too much on the activities surrounding the preparation of this dish, but I will say this: the final product was absolutely delicious, and making it wasn't too bad either (I'm realizing how much I enjoy blasting my "I Got a Feelin'" Pandora Radio station while baking and simultaneously dancing around the kitchen).
And with that, I found myself hooked on the book.
Later that evening I brought the book along with me to my good friend Cicely's house where we would attempt another dish along with our other friend, Bib. We decided to attempt a Tarte au Fromage Frais (Cream Cheese Tart), using the Pàte Brisée Sucrée (Sweet Short Paste) as the crust. Again, it turned out wonderfully (a little on the ugly side, but my stomach doesn't care and hopefully neither does anyone else's).
Still running on the excitement of discovery, I attempted another dish on Sunday, a Biscuit au Beurre (Butter Spongecake) with Crème au Beurre, Ménagère (Butter Cream frosting). I spent a good amount of time on this, even decorating the edges of the cake with sliced almonds (like in the movie). After waiting two hours to taste the cake, I ended up disappointed. Though it was an interesting and different process I used to make the cake, it ended up dry, though the taste was pretty good. The frosting, however, was quite strange indeed. Now I'm used to using your typical frosting ingredients, butter, milk, powdered sugar, vanilla, and salt. This recipe, however, used as it's liquid base butter (1 1/2 sticks worth) and egg yolks (2) with melted baking chocolate. The frosting ended up tasting much too light, fluffy, and fatty, it's difficult to explain, but it didn't sit well with me at all. Maybe in the future I'll give Julia's frosting recipes another chance, but for now I think I'll go back to my usual frosting recipe that I keep stored in the safest place of all: my mind.
Now, after having completed 5 of Julia Child's recipes, I can conclude with this: I'm not so pulled in that I'm going to make a goal to complete all the recipes in 365 days and blog about it. In fact, I probably won't blog about it any more than this one post. But it remains clear that the recipes contained in the book are, for the most part, delicious, and I'm excited to try more and learn methods that might make me a better cook. Unfortunately, my hips aren't going to get a break any time soon since it appears that Mrs. Child uses so much butter in her recipes that it would cause even Jillian from Biggest Loser to have a heart attack. Looks like I'm going to have to keep up the marathon training if I expect to retain any semblance of a feminine figure.
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