by Julia Child
Serve warm or at room temperature. (Leftovers, if any, are best frozen, then set from freezer for a few minutes into a 350°F oven.)
BAKING POWDER in an opened can loses its strength after about 6 months, so always test it by stirring a teaspoonful into ½ cup of hot water. If it doesn’t bubble up in a lively way, throw it out. Before you use baking powder, be sure to smooth out any lumps.
VARIATION
STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE. Use 2 tablespoons sugar rather than 1 in the dough, and you may prefer to form it into a single large cake 1 inch high. Plan on about 2 cups of fresh ripe strawberries per serving. Leaving one whole big fine berry for decoration, halve or quarter the rest, toss in a bowl with drops of fresh lemon juice and a good teaspoon or so of sugar for each quart. Let stand for 10 minutes or more, allowing the juices to exude. Toss again and add a little more lemon and sugar if needed. When it’s time for dessert, split the biscuits (or single large cake) in half horizontally, spoon strawberries and their juices over the bottom halves, set on the tops, crown with a generous dollop of sweetened whipped cream (see box, below), center the reserved berry on top, and proudly serve. You may wish to pass around extra whipped cream separately.
SWEETENED WHIPPED CREAM. For 2 cups, whip 1 cup heavy cream or whipping cream as directed in the box. Just before serving, sift on ½ cup of confectioners’ sugar and fold it in with a large rubber spatula, adding, if you wish, ½ teaspoon of pure vanilla extract.
Kitchen Equipment and Definitions
KITCHEN EQUIPMENT
Oval Casseroles
Oval casseroles are more practical than round ones as they can hold a chicken or a roast of meat as well as a stew or soup. A good pair would be the 2-quart size about 6 by 8 inches across and 3½ inches high; and a 7- to 8-quart size about 9 by 12 inches across and 6 inches high.
Saucepans
Saucepans in a range of sizes are essential. One with a metal handle can also be set in the oven.
Baking Dishes
Round and oval baking dishes can be used for roasting chicken, duck, or meats, or can double as gratin dishes.
Chef’s Skillet and Sauté Pan
A chef’s skillet, poêle, has sloping sides and is used for browning and tossing small pieces of food like mushrooms or chicken livers; the long handle makes it easy to toss rather than turn the food. A sauté pan, sautoir, has straight sides and is used for sautéing small steaks, liver, or veal scallops, or foods like chicken that are browned then covered to finish their cooking in the sauté pan.
BESIDES THE USUAL ARRAY OF POTS, ROASTERS, VEGETABLE PEELERS, SPOONS, AND SPATULAS, HERE ARE SOME USEFUL OBJECTS WHICH MAKE COOKING EASIER:
Knives and Sharpening Steel
A knife should be as sharp as a razor or it mashes and bruises food rather than chopping or cutting it. It can be considered sharp if just the weight of it, drawn across a tomato, slits the skin. No knife will hold a razor-edge for long. The essential point is that it take an edge, and quickly. Plain rustable steel is the easiest to sharpen but discoloration is an annoying problem. Good stainless steel knives are available in cookware and cutlery shops, and probably the best way to test their quality is to buy a small one and try it out. The French chef’s knives, pictured here, are the most useful general-purpose shapes for chopping, mincing, and paring. If you cannot find good knives, consult your butcher or a professionally trained chef.
Knives should be washed separately and by hand as soon as you have finished using them. Tarnished blades are cleaned easily with steel wool and scouring powder. A magnetic holder screwed to the wall is a practical way of keeping knives always within reach and isolated from other objects that could dull and dent the blades by knocking against them.
Wooden Spatulas and Rubber Scrapers
A wooden spatula is more practical for stirring than a wooden spoon; its flat surfaces are easily scraped off on the side of a pan or bowl. You will usually find wooden spatulas only at stores specializing in French imports. The rubber spatula, which can be bought almost anywhere, is indispensable for scraping sauces out of bowls and pans, for stirring, folding, creaming, and smearing.
Wire Whips or Whisks
Wire whips, or whisks, are wonderful for beating eggs, sauces, canned soups, and for general mixing. They are easier than the rotary egg beater because you use one hand only. Whisks range from minute to gigantic, and the best selections are in restaurant-supply houses. You should have several sizes including the balloon whip for beating egg whites at the far left.
Bulb Baster and Poultry Shears
The bulb baster is particularly good for basting meats or vegetables in a casserole, and for degreasing roasts as well as basting them. Some plastic models collapse in very hot fat; a metal tube-end is usually more satisfactory. Poultry shears are a great help in disjointing broilers and fryers; regular steel is more practical than stainless, as the shears can be sharpened more satisfactorily.
The Vegetable Mill (or Food Mill) and Garlic Press
Two wonderful inventions, the vegetable mill and the garlic press. The vegetable mill purées soups, sauces, vegetables, fruits, raw fish, or mousse mixtures. The best type has 3 removable disks about 5½ inches in diameter, one for fine, one for medium, and one for coarse puréeing. The garlic press will purée a whole, unpeeled clove of garlic, or pieces of onion.
The Food Processor
This marvelous machine came into our kitchens in the mid-seventies. The processor has revolutionized cooking, making child’s play of some of the most complicated dishes of the haute cuisine—mousses in minutes. Besides all kinds of rapid slicing, chopping, puréeing, and the like, it makes a fine pie crust dough, mayonnaise, and many of the yeast doughs. No serious cook should be without a food processor, especially since respectable budget models can be bought very reasonably.
Mortar and Pestle
Small mortars of wood or porcelain are useful for grinding herbs, pounding nuts, and the like. The large mortars are of marble, and are used for pounding or puréeing shellfish, forcemeats, and so on. The electric blender, meat grinder, and food mill take the place of a mortar and pestle in many instances.
Heavy-Duty Electric Mixer
Whip, for eggs
Dough Hook
Flat Beater, for heavy batters, ground meat, etc.
A heavy-duty electric mixer makes light work of heavy meat mixtures, fruit cake batters, and yeast doughs as well as beating egg whites beautifully and effortlessly. Its efficient whip not only revolves about itself, but circulates around the properly designed bowl, keeping all of the mass of egg whites in motion all of the time. Other useful attachments include a meat grinder with sausage-stuffing horn and a hot-water jack which attaches to the bottom of the stainless steel bowl. It’s expensive, but solidly built and a life-long aid to anyone who does lots of cooking.
DEFINITIONS
BASTE, arroser: To spoon melted butter, fat, or liquid over foods.
BEAT, fouetter: To mix foods or liquids thoroughly and vigorously with a spoon, fork, or whip, or an electric beater. When you beat, train yourself to use your lower-arm and wrist muscles; if you beat from your shoulder you will tire quickly.
BLANCH, blanchir: To plunge food into boiling water and to boil it until it has softened, or wilted, or is partially or fully cooked. Food is also blanched to remove too strong a taste, such as for cabbage or onions, or the salty, smoky taste of bacon.
BLEND, mélanger: To mix foods together in a less vigorous way than by beating, usually with a fork, spoon, or spatula.
BOIL, boullir: Liquid is technically at the boil when it is seething, rolling, and sending up bubbles. But in practice there are slow, medium, and fast boils. A very slow boil, when the liquid is hardly moving except for a bubble at one point, is called to simmer, mijoter. An even slower boil with no bubble, only the barest movement on the surface of the liquid, is called “to shiver,” frémir, and is used for poaching fish or other delicate foods.
BRAISE, brasier: To brown foods in fat,
then cook them in a covered casserole with a small amount of liquid. We have also used the term for vegetables cooked in butter in a covered casserole, as there is no English equivalent for étuver.
COAT A SPOON, napper la cuillère: This term is used to indicate the thickness of a sauce, and it seems the only way to describe it. A spoon dipped into a cream soup and withdrawn would be coated with a thin film of soup. Dipped into a sauce destined to cover food, the spoon would emerge with a fairly thick coating.
DEGLAZE, déglacer: After meat has been roasted or sautéed, and the pan degreased, liquid is poured into the pan and all the flavorful coagulated cooking juices are scraped into it as it simmers. This is an important step in the preparation of all meat sauces from the simplest to the most elaborate, for the deglaze becomes part of the sauce, incorporating into it some of the flavor of the meat. Thus sauce and meat are a logical complement to each other.
DEGREASE, dégrassier: To remove accumulated fat from the surface of hot liquids.
Sauces, Soups, and Stocks
To remove accumulated fat from the surface of a sauce, soup, or stock which is simmering, use a long-handled spoon and draw it over the surface, dipping up a thin layer of fat. It is not necessary to remove all the fat at this time.
When the cooking is done, remove all the fat. If the liquid is still hot, let it settle for 5 minutes so the fat will rise to the surface. Then spoon it off, tipping the pot or kettle so that a heavier fat deposit will collect at one side and can more easily be removed. When you have taken up as much as you can—it is never a quick process—draw strips of paper towels over the surface until the last floating fat globules have been blotted up.
It is easier, of course, to chill the liquid, for then the fat congeals on the surface and can be scraped off.
Roasts
To remove fat from a pan while the meat is still roasting, tilt the pan and scoop out the fat which collects in the corner. Use a bulb baster or a big spoon. It is never necessary to remove all the fat at this time, just the excess. This degreasing should be done quickly, so your oven will not cool. If you take a long time over it, add a few extra minutes to your total roasting figure.
After the roast has been taken from the pan, tilt the pan, then with a spoon or a bulb baster remove the fat that collects in one corner, but do not take up the browned juices, as these will go into your sauce. Usually a tablespoon or two of fat is left in the pan; it will give body and flavor to the sauce.
Another method—and this can be useful if you have lots of juice—is to place a trayful of ice cubes in a sieve lined with 2 or 3 thicknesses of damp cheesecloth and set over a saucepan. Pour the fat and juices over the ice cubes; most of the fat will collect and congeal on the ice. As some of the ice will melt into the saucepan, rapidly boil down the juices to concentrate their flavor.
Casseroles
For stews, daubes, and other foods which cook in a casserole, tip the casserole and the fat will collect at one side. Spoon it off, or suck it up with a bulb baster. Or strain off all the sauce into a pan, by placing the casserole cover askew and holding the casserole in both hands with your thumbs clamped to the cover while you pour out the liquid. Then degrease the sauce in the pan, and return the sauce to the casserole. Or use a degreasing pitcher into which you pour the hot meat juices, let the fat rise to the surface, then pour out clear juices—the spout opening is at the bottom of the pitcher; stop when fat appears in the spout.
DICE, couper en dés: To cut food into cubes the shape of dice, usually about ⅛ inch.
FOLD, incorporer: To blend a fragile mixture, such as beaten egg whites, delicately into a heavier mixture, such as a soufflé base. This is described in the cake section. To fold also means to mix delicately without breaking or mashing, such as folding cooked artichoke hearts or brains into a sauce.
GRATINÉ: To brown the top of a sauced dish, usually under a hot broiler. A sprinkling of bread crumbs or grated cheese, and dots of butter, help to form a light brown covering (gratin) over the sauce.
MACERATE, macérer; MARINATE, mariner: To place foods in a liquid so they will absorb flavor, or become more tender. Macerate is the term usually reserved for fruits, such as: cherries macerated in sugar and alcohol. Marinate is used for meats: beef marinated in red wine. A marinade is a pickle, brine, or souse, or a mixture of wine or vinegar, oil, and condiments.
MINCE, hacher: To chop foods very fine.
NAP, napper: To cover food with a sauce which is thick enough to adhere, but supple enough so that the outlines of the food are preserved.
POACH, pocher: Food submerged and cooked in a liquid that is barely simmering or shivering.
PURÉE, réduire en purée: To render solid foods into a mash, such as applesauce or mashed potatoes. This may be done in a mortar, a meat grinder, a food mill, an electric blender, or through a sieve.
REDUCE, réduire: To boil down a liquid, reducing it in quantity, and concentrating its taste. This is a most important step in saucemaking.
REFRESH, rafraîchir: To plunge hot food into cold water in order to cool it quickly and stop the cooking process, or to wash it off.
SAUTÉ, sauter: To cook and brown food in a very small quantity of very hot fat, usually in an open skillet. You may sauté food merely to brown it, as you brown the beef for a stew. Or you may sauté until the food is cooked through, as for slices of liver. Sautéing is one of the most important of the primary cooking techniques, and it is often badly done because one of the following points has not been observed:
1. The sautéing fat must be very hot, almost smoking, before the food goes into the pan, otherwise there will be no sealing-in of juices, and no browning. The sautéing medium may be fat, oil, or butter and oil. Plain butter cannot be heated to the required temperature without burning, so it must either be fortified with oil or be clarified—rid of it’s milky residue as described here.
2. The food must be absolutely dry. It if is damp, a layer of steam develops between the food and the fat preventing the browning and searing process.
3. The pan must not be crowded. Enough air space must be left between each piece of food or it will steam rather than brown, and its juices will escape and burn.
TOSS, faire sauter: Instead of turning food with a spoon or a spatula, you can make it flip over by tossing the pan. The classic example is tossing a pancake so it flips over in mid-air. But tossing is also a useful technique for cooking vegetables, as a toss is often less bruising than a turn. If you are cooking in a covered casserole, grasp it in both hands with your thumbs clamped to the cover. Toss the pan with an up-and-down, slightly jerky, circular motion. The contents will flip over and change cooking levels. For an open saucepan use the same movement, holding the handle with both hands, thumbs up. A back-and-forth slide is used for a skillet. Give it a very slight upward jerk just as you draw it back toward you.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Julia Child was born in Pasadena, California. She graduated from Smith College and worked for the OSS during World War II in Ceylon and China. Afterward she and her husband, Paul, lived in Paris, where she studied at the Cordon Bleu, and taught cooking with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, with whom she wrote the first volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961).
In 1963 Boston’s WGBH launched the French Chef television series, which earned her the Peabody Award in 1965 and an Emmy in 1966. Her subsequent public television shows—Julia Child & Company (1978), Julia Child & More Company (1980), Cooking with Master Chefs (1993), In Julia’s Kitchen with Master Chefs (1995), Baking with Julia (1996), and her one-on-one collaboration with Jacques Pépin, Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home (1999)—have all been accompanied by books of the same names.
Julia Child died in Santa Barbara, California, in August 2004.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2000 by Julia Child
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventi
ons. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Companion to the television special produced by A LaCarte Communications
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Child, Julia.
Julia’s kitchen wisdom: essential techniques and recipes from a lifetime of cooking / by Julia Child with David Nussbaum.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-59353-5
1. Cookery. I. Nussbaum, David. II. Title.
TX651 .C523 2000
641.5—dc21 00-062928
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