Recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking used in this meal:

Sauce Velouté (57)
Sauce Mornay (61)
Asperges au Naturel [Boiled Asparagus – hot] (436)
Roast Chicken pan sauce (242) (ack, never mind!)

Other recipes:

Ina Garten’s Perfect Roast Chicken

Frontmatter: So here’s a confession: I’m pretty hopeless with sauces, and a real dummy with carving a bird. I’ve been playing at roasting birds for 15 years, and making a complete cock-up of the final presentation the whole while. I’m afraid to cut into bone, and while I can roast a bird to perfection, the second I try to cut between the leg and the whatever, the drumstick bone rips out, or I shred the breast meat, or do some other stupid crap and then I lose my place and just start hacking away at the poor bird, and it all just looks like a giant pile of carrion remains in the end. And everyone’s really nice because it still tastes great, but then I get scared off it for a bit, and in my head, and then try again in a few months, and watch Jacque Pepin carve a bird, and a dozen other videos on You Tube, and look at old diagrams and drawings, and I come to my perfectly roasted and rested bird with a new plan and e voila, I fuck it up again and we eat a weird pile of delicious meat that looks like a drunkard shoveled it out of a gutter before it was attacked by wild dogs. Again.

Oh and I have no idea what wings are for or why anyone would care, so those just go in my next batch of stock. Which seems like a waste. But like who wants the wings off a roast chicken? Anyone? Someone must.

And I’ve never mastered the basics of sauces, so I follow recipes, but they’re not building on skills or knowledge. Every sauce is its own thing, not, oh it’s an ‘x’ but with vinegar instead of lemon juice. Like I can remember cocktail proportions that way. I know my Mai Tai in relationship to proportions of a Margarita, replace half the orange with orgeat, etc. So I know my brain can do that. But I’ve never learned my basic sauces, and so I can’t do it with sauces. Yet. Enter my cunning plan.

It’s to get better at stuff. My cunning plan is to learn shit and get better at stuff.

So, I’m going to spend some time with the OGFC, Julia Child to try to learn her basic sauces to build from there.

Toward that end, tonight I’ll attempt TWO, eh like 2.5, JC recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking: Asperges au Naturel [Boiled Asparagus] (peel that shit, the JC way, whether I think it matters or not {and I don’t}), a Sauce Mornay out of a Sauce Velouté which I think will be nice on asparagus and some simple boiled potatoes I’m making. I’m also going to roast a chicken, but I’m not going to do one of Julia’s roast chickens. Look, they sound great, but require basting and turning like constantly (like, I don’t know how you keep the oven temp up you’re basting it and turning it so much), and Ina Garten’s roast chicken turns out incredible for me every time and it’s a real leave-it-alone-and-let-the-magic-happen kinda deal which works for me when I’m trying to learn a basic ass sauce that everyone else already knows how to make. Plus I gotta lemon, head of garlic that’s getting old, and some fresh thyme I really wanna shove up there. There’s a certain catharsis to it. But I’m gonna use Julia’s pan sauce method instead of Ina’s gravy, which means adding carrots to the pan I’m roasting the bird in, then sauteing minced shallots in the pan juices while the chicken rests, deglazing with more chicken stock, reducing, and adding butter.

But I’ll try to carve it for the I-don’t-knowth time after watching Julia and Jacques and a bunch of other videos and I’ll see if it goes any better this time around.

So here we go!

Barefoot Contessa aka Ina Garten’s Roast Chicken

Sidebar: Links to my favorite relatively fuss-free roast chickens:

This one from Ina is great too, but Luke doesn’t so much truck with fennel, so I don’t do this one anymore:

If you don’t want to stuff your bird full of the aromatics, try Jacque Pepin’s Skillet Roasted Chicken with Natural Juices

Jacques Pepin’s Basic Roast Chicken | New York Times

or Matty Matheson’s easy-ass no-truss bird that cooks in like 45-60 minutes.

Matty Matheson: Winner Winner Chicken Dinner | It’s Suppertime for Munches / Vice: (7:19 for the roast chicken)

Just go to her site. It’s really one of the easiest and most consistently good recipes for roast chicken I’ve ever tried. Are there better out there, yeah probably. If I’m making simple sides, I’ll experiment with something more fussy, but this is the one to make if you want to focus on your sides or if you’re making other things that need to be watched closely.

I added some carrots to the pot, and I use the carrots and onions to lift the chicken off the bottom a little bit. Then I usually add a ¼ cup of water or stock to the bottom of the pot when it’s got about 20 minutes to go. Oh, and the cook time in my oven is usually about an hour 20 minutes instead of 30. That’s when my thigh temp hits 165.

Bird goes in the oven, 425 for 80-90 minutes.

Boiled Potatoes – no recipe!

The last of the garden baby potatoes for the year were starting to sprout. And these only lasted this long because I think they were small russet potatoes and the skins were ugly, so I peeled those, boiled them in salted water, threw in some butter and salt, chuffed them a little, and stuck a dish towel over them until ready to serve. Just tossed in the microwave for 45 seconds so I could get these out of the way early to focus on the other stuff. Served with some minced parsley and sauce mornay. Could have done without the latter, but we’ll get to that.

Asperges au Naturel [Boiled Asparagus – hot] (Child 436)

Julia says “We have tested every asparagus cooking method we have heard of—peeled, unpeeled, boiled butts, steamed tips—and can say categorically that the freshest, greenest, and most appetizing asparagus is cooked by the French method” (435). So…. There ya go.

Sidebar: Yeah, that wasn’t working, but the peeler did fine. Maybe not on really fat asparagus, but then just do another couple of passes on the super fat end. Have a good peeler, use that shit. Made quick work of it.

To do this, I have to peel. Julia says the peeler will do me no good as it doesn’t go deep enough. She says “hold the butt end up” and “peel off the outer skin with a sharp, small knife, going as deep as 1/16 of an inch at the butt in order to expose the tender, moist flesh” (435). Then “gradually make the cut shallower until you come up to the tender green portion near the tip. Shave off any scales which cling to the spear below the tip” and then wash the peeled spears in cold water, and drain.

Then you line them up so the tips are in the same place, and tie them in bundles of about 3 ½” with string in two places, and cut off the butts to even everything out. But leave a couple spears out of the bundles so you can test for doneness. (Which I forgot to do.)

And if you’re doing this ahead of time, which I am, set them upright in ½” of cold water, cover with a plastic bag, and refrigerate.

HOLD UNTIL THE BIRD IS RESTING.

Then in a pot big enough that you can put the asparagus bunches in horizontally, in enough boiling salted water to cover the bundles:

Sidebar: Uhm, I did this for 8 minutes, and I still think I over-cooked them a little. Can’t imagine what nearly twice that would have done.

Boil slowly, uncovered, for 12-15 minutes, until a knife pierces the butt end easily. The spears “should bend a little, but should not be limp or droopy. Eat the loose spear to test for doneness” (437).

Sidebar: Yeah, this was genius. I mean, I’m always scrambling to get green veg done in the end so it doesn’t get cold. Will use this again for sure. Probably could have worked for the potatoes too.

Cut and remove the strings. If not using right away, they will keep warm for 20-30 minutes covered with a napkin. Put asparagus on a platter, then place that platter on top of the water you boiled the asparagus in, then put a napkin on the asparagus. She says.

Sauce Velouté, medium consistency (57) and Sauce Mornay (61)

The great sauce journey begins here. Bear with me, I’m learning, and I’m trying to learn with Julia.

The White Mother Sauces “stem from those two cousins, béchamel and velouté. Both use a flour and butter roux as a thickening agent but béchamel is a milk based sauce while the velouté has a fish, meat, or poultry base” read: stock (54), which is the version I’ll be doing today.

Thin Sauce or soup                        1 Tb per cup of liquid
Medium, general purpose sauce    1-1/2 Tb flour per cup of liquid
Thick sauce                                   2 Tb flour per cup of liquid
Soufflé base                                  3 Tb flour per cup of liquid

And then the mornay sauce is a medium consistency velouté or béchamel with swiss cheese, or a combination of swiss and parmesan mixed in after the original sauce is completed.

2 T butter
3 T flour
2 cups boiling stock
Salt and white pepper

Instructions for Sauce Veloute from Mastering the Art of French Cooking (57):

Sidebar: Maybe my low heat is lower than Julia’s. But I had to turn this up to a medium-low to get anything to happen here. Or maybe the time here really depends on the kind of pot. I was using an enameled cast iron pot, so I upped that temp a bit. Eventually there was some light frothing, but it took forever to get there at low.

1) In a heavy bottomed [at least] 6-cup saucepan, melt the butter over low heat. Blend in the flour, and cook slowly, stirring, until the butter and flour froth together for 2 minutes without coloring. This is now a white roux.

Sidebar: Is it supposed to smell like butter cookies? I’ve heard popcorn, but mine really smelled like cookies. Hmmm.

2) Remove roux from heat. As soon as roux has stopped bubbling, pour in all the [boiling chicken stock] at once. Immediately beat vigorously with a wire whip to blend liquid and roux, gathering in all bits of roux from the inside edges of the pan.

3) Set saucepan over moderately high heat and stir with the wire whip until the sauce comes to a boil. Boil for 1 minute, stirring.

4) Remove from heat, and beat in salt and white pepper.

Now we’re gonna turn that into the Sauce Mornay with the addition of the following:

¼ cup swiss coarsely grated
¼ cup parmesan finely grated
Pinch nutmeg
Pinch cayenne (optional)
1-2T softened additional butter (optional)

1) Take the sauce veloute you made, and right after it has boiled for one minute, while it is still hot, remove from the heat and beat in the cheeses until melted and blended with the sauce.

2) Season to taste with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and optional cayenne.

3) Off heat, and just before serving, stir in optional additional butter a bit at a time, if using. (I didn’t.)

If not using right away, you can pour a thin layer of melted butter, or stock over the top to keep it from skinning over.

Julia’s Pan Sauce for the roasted chicken (242):

½ Tb minced shallots
1 cup chicken stock
Salt and pepper
1-2 Tb softened butter

1) While the chicken is resting, scoop the onions and carrots that are left in the roasting pan out, leaving as much liquid as possible.

2) Remove all but two Tablespoons of fat from the pan. Stir in the minced shallots and cook slowly for 1 minute. Add the stock and boil rapidly over high heat, scraping up coagulated roasting juices with a wooden spoon and letting liquid reduce to about ½ cup.

3) Season with salt and pepper

Sidebar: This is where I fucked up and just scrapped the whole thing. I was distracted trying to carve the bird, and added the butter in all at once with the pan still on the heat, and it never came together. Looked like a nice reduction until I added the butter. So yeah, do that part slowly or you’ll have a broken fatty mess. I did not serve this.

4) Off-heat, and just before serving, swirl in the enrichment butter by bits until it has been absorbed.

5) Pour a spoonful of the sauce over the chicken, and send the rest to the table in a sauceboat

It’s off the menu. Let’s say no more about it.

Carve my damn chicken.

So I think I watched all the videos again today, plus a few more. And I think I know where I’ve been going wrong, but I was focused on the task and didn’t take any pictures.

But here are my favorite videos for learning:

Jacques Pepin Techniques: How to Carve a Roast Chicken

But here’s the thing: so easy, so fast, watched it a dozen times, but honestly he goes so fast that I need some more help.

Chris Carves a Roast Chicken | From the Test Kitchen | Bon Appetit

This one may have helped me the most this time around because he really slows down to show you the parts where you’re exploring the joints with the knife to find those connection points.

Then there’s this:

At 21:26 you can see how a Fak carves a chicken, I guess.

Here’s some notes. I let this bird rest for 20 minutes, and I think it could have gone another 10. It was still very hot, and I rushed my pan sauce and fucked it because my bird rest timer went off, and I could have ignored that and saved my pan sauce. So 30 minutes is not too long for a 5 pound bird.

Dinnertime

Roast Chicken Dinner with Julia Child’s Asperges au Naturel [Boiled Asparagus], Sauce Mornay, roast chicken pan sauce, and boiled potatoes

So, how did it all go?

Well I think the chicken carving turned out way better than usual. I wasn’t serving it to a bunch of people, and Luke and I both wanted thigh and leg tonight, so that’s what I plated, and I didn’t bother to separate them, and I think it doesn’t quite look like a drunken monkey did it. The breasts came off fine, though perhaps I still left a lot of scrap behind, and the meat shredded a bit. The breasts were slightly overcooked as I let the chicken go in the oven the full 90 minutes, when I knew from last time I should have taken it out at 80. Not a huge deal. They sliced up nicely for leftovers.

Chicken was fucking great, even without the pan gravy. Good job Ina and good job me.

The asparagus was good, not great. I’m not sure why I would peel it, but Julia says it’s best that way.

Here’s the thing: we’ve improved vegetables a lot, even the ones we just get at basic ass stores. Has the skin on asparagus gotten less tough in the last 50 years? I kinda think maybe. I think I’m going to stick with sautéing nice thin asparagus in oil in a really hot pan. I’ll try this again when I can only get big fat asparagus. Or I won’t because I don’t love big fat asparagus.

The mornay sauce was pretty bland. I tasted it, and maybe it needed more salt, or maybe more cheese, but mostly I think it wasn’t a great pairing with the asparagus, which needed something with more vinegar I think. I thought the swiss would work with the asparagus and potatoes, but it didn’t taste like swiss. It seemed on the sweet side, and still smelled like cookies. I’ll keep working on it, and try to bring the leftover sauce back and incorporate it into a pasta with cheese, adding more cheese. Not sure what to use this sauce for, or if I made it right. But it wasn’t quite right for this.

I watched a couple videos. I don’t think my roux was cooking hot enough. I think I needed a more vigorous cook when it was the flour and the butter, but Julia said low, so low and slow I went. I’ll keep learning, but this wasn’t the shit, it was… I swear it was cookie dough. Luke thought maybe I used his Krusteaz pancake mix which we did totally have in an unlabeled Tupperware under the counter, but I know I filled my flour container from the bag and labeled it with my OCD labelmaker. Still, it was weird. And probably wrong.

Potatoes were perfect, and because they were tiny russet babies they soaked up all the chicken juices, just parsley and salt and butter. Great little potatoes I grew. Good job me again.

Nice fucking dinner, basically. But the asparagus and the mornay sauce were meh at best.

New Segment

I’ve been working on a sort of post cooking project emotional check in on a four point scale based on how motivated I feel to treat, challenge, or punish myself in the end. It goes like this:

4: Feel great, up to new challenges. I’ll make a new cocktail I’ve never tried before, and document it in another post here.

3: Feel pretty good, but not especially inspired. I’ll make a classic comfort cocktail I know by heart. Old Fashioned, Manhattan, Negroni, etc.

2: I’m OK, but whooped and can do no more. I’ll have a glass of wine or a beer, a straight whiskey, a Rum and Coke or a G&T.

1: I’m really feeling pretty fucked up about the whole thing and not good about myself at all. Like I don’t deserve good. I only deserve bad. I’ll take a shot of Malort. And I’ll have a good long think about what I’ve done.

0: I’m actually dead. The recipe finished me off. I can drink nothing and have put myself to bed. Done because me chefed too menny.

Tonight I had a beer. I wasn’t whooped, but none of the experiments turned out great. My chicken carving went better than ever before, so that was pretty dope. I still don’t know what the deal is with chicken wings.

Goodnight!

Citation

Child, Julia, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck. Mastering the Art of French Cooking. 1961. 40th Anniversary ed., Knopf, 2009.

Garten, Ina. “Perfect Roast Chicken.” Barefoot Contessa, 1999, https://barefootcontessa.com/recipes/perfect-roast-chicken

I’m not gonna keep doing the thing where I put the whole ingredient list down at the bottom. Y’all can read. It’s all up there.

Roast Chicken Dinner with Julia Child’s Asperges au Naturel [Boiled Asparagus], Sauce Mornay, and boiled potatoes