Casserole-sautéed Pork Chops

Yesterday was another dish from "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" - quelle surprise. It's just so delicious, I want to have lunch out of this cook book every week!

I made Côtes de Porc Poêlées.

Pork chops and steaks are best, we think, when they are cut thick, browned on each side, then cooked in a covered casserole or skillet like the preceding casserole roasts of pork.

I can proudly say, this was NOT the first time I made pork chops! I really like cooking pork, because it's inexpensive, everywhere available and it usually tastes good with only a tiny effort. Too bad it's actually a disguised very tasty killer, that comes with cholesterol instead of bullets.
Since my dad has too high cholesterol, which makes us all drink meadow flavoured soymilk now ... everyday ... I can't cook a lot meat anymore, so I'm REALLY enjoying the thursdays.
The chops were really good. I used dry vermouth for the sauce, which was so delicious, I want to bath in it ... I want my future children to bath in it! Best sauce ever!!

As always, the meal did not look very appealing, but it was very good and easy! Only thing is ... Julia says, you can cook the potatoes with the meat. Maybe I just didn't get it right, but it didn't work out! Potatoes were still a little too hard inside. The red cabbage came out of a jar, because I forgot to buy sauerkraut!

Moules-Frites

French Fries with sautéed clams and selfmade mayonnaise.

Today saw three completely novelties. For the first time I've made my own fries, my own mayonnaise and cooked clams!
Clams and fries were from 1000 recipes and are usually eaten together as Moules-Frites in Belgium and Northern France. I guess it's their fish'n'chips or our currysausauge.

Mayonnaise was from "Mastering The Art Of French Cooking."
Mayonnaise like hollandaise is a process of forcing egg yolks to absorb a fatty substance, oil in this case, and to hold it in thick and creamy suspension.

Mayonnaise is a really easy thing to make, when your arm muscles are fit and healthy! I was surprised how easy it went, but I think my upper arm will have twice its size tomorrow. Seems like I gotta work out or start buying my mayonnaise ... well, luckily I don't like it at all and usually have ketchup. But this time we were out of ketchup and the idea popped into my mind.

The clams ... yes ... I'm still not sure how I got them in first place. 1,5kg of mussels cooked in 1l of white wine and seasoned with 150g butter. It was just too much wine for me. I prefer drinking it to pouring it over some poor clams, who are too dead to actually get drunk.
It tasted just sour and alcoholical.

Fries didn't work out as well. They didn't get crunchy ... or at least a little tasty. Plus I put on way too much salt.

I'm still not decided, what comes next. :)

Julia Child: Bifteck Sauté Au Beurre With Petits Pois á l'Anglaise

Pan-Broiled Steak With Buttered Peas

Pan-broiled steak is very French and also a very nice method for cooking small steaks.

This might be true but in addition to its Frenchyness and easyness, it was also the very first time I made steak. In fact I've had never eaten a steak until last year's summer, when I went to the Dominician Republic for vacation. They had 3 speciality restaurants and one was a steak house. I used to not like beef at all, but I've learned it's very delicious when medium.
Unfortunately beef is very expensive in Germany, so I only bought two steaks for 4 people which doesn't make me cheap but economical! The steaks were quite big, too so it was absolutely enough.
The weird thing is, you have to broil them in oil AND butter and the same time. Now I already know about Julia's affection for butter but having it when already using oil is blocking my arteries just by looking at it.
But since I've never made steak before I stuck to the recipes. I have to admit, it's SO GOOD. And it got perfectly medium! Ever heard the trick, that medium meat has to feel like your thenar? Well I have no idea what that means, but after Julia you can just look at the red juice, pouring out. It totally works!
The sauce was redwine and butter .... lots of butter ... tons of butter and I only took half!

Anyone who has eaten a plateful of small, tender, fresh, green peas in Italy or France in the springtime is not likely to forget the experience.

I never had peas in France or Italy although I've been to both countries. The peas were very simple and really delicious! All you add is some seasoning and -guessed right- butter.

And yeah, I know I promised garlic mashed potatoes ... but to recipes seemed enough and I wasn't sure how to time everything, so I made normal mashed potatoes. It was still very good.

The good thing is, when you have Julia's meals for lunch, you're stuffed like a turkye and don't need dinner. I've already lost 4 pounds!

Tomorrow I'll be cooking clams for the very first time!

Cookbook Mix

After thinking and thinking, I've decided to try recipes out of both books, since I couldn't pick the best one.

I think I'll still go with cooking myself throught "1000 recipes to try before you die" although "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" sounds better and more classic. But no way, it has a whole chapter on brains ... in times before BSE reached the world it might have been just disgusting but no I can't think of eating brain with out thinking "Damn it, NO!" Zombies can have my share.
So I'm skipping the brains, livers, kidneys and whatever they had ... I can live with eating liver and anything but I don't need to cook several recipes with it.

"1000 recipes to try before you die" has just a few disgusting dishes I might wanna try when really spicy or I'm terribly drunk. Snails, anyone?
Plus, it's not ordered by type, but country, which might come in handy!

So, tomorrow I'll start cooking with the very first recipe from Julia Child's cookbook: Potage Parmentier and I'm going to make a picutre of the result!

Saturday, I'll be making the first dish from 1000 recipes ... the book starts off with Belgique. I've checked some recipes and not everything is really typical ... so I might change some ingredients from time to time.

The Art of Cooking ... and Cookbooks

Being a cooking genius is not easy. It's actually not the cooking itself, it's everything that's involved. You gotta be charmin, relaxed, fast, clean and good looking. You have to be the Greta Garbo of filleting, the Audrey Hepburn of poaching and a roux queen. Then you're a real genius and I'm respectfully tipping my hat to you.

I'm not a genius. I've learned to cook, because basically I like to eat. And I'm really good at it! Eating ... Only one woman in my family cooks, which is my grandmother, and with my mom never really interested in anything stove related, I had to do the work myself. My granny likes German cuisine and she's passed 80 a few years ago, so she's not interested in trying new stuff. I love new stuff! I don't care if it turns out to be a desaster, at least I've tried! Despite the fact I'm German and quite satisfied with it, I don't like our food. When it comes to knuckles, I'm the one, who rather takes to my heels.

So I've decided, I need a project. A cooking project, something, that keeps my mind off the clouds. I've bought two cookbooks:
Julia Child - Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which would be a challenge, since it is in English only and has no pictures (oh come on!) in it:

But it has been done. Most of you know about, read the blog, the book or watched the movie. So I guess it's not the one, but I still want to try something out ... that boeuf bourginon seems to be it!

And 1000 Recipes To Try Before You Die

It's big, it's international, I think it might be the book. Too bad, it's not classy and fancy and glamorous or anything special to the world! Plus it's actually a 1000 recipes! With one each day, it would take like 3 years and yeah, I'm honest, I'd be loosing track very quickly.

I don't know a lot of older, international famous cookbooks ... I wish I would. Google just tells me about books from the 18th century, which is ...with all necessary respect ... just TOO old.