Summary
In this indispensable volume of kitchen wisdom, Julia Child gives home cooks the answers to their most pressing cooking questions--with essential information about soups, vegetables, eggs, baking breads and tarts, and more.
How many minutes should you cook green beans? What are the right proportions for a vinaigrette? How do you skim off fat? What is the perfect way to roast a chicken?
Here Julia provides solutions for these and many other everyday cooking queries. How are you going to cook that small rib steak you brought home? You'll be guided to the quick sauté as the best and fastest way. And once you've mastered that recipe, you can apply the technique to chops, chicken, or fish, following Julia's careful guidelines.
Julia's Kitchen Wisdom is a perfect compendium of a lifetime spent cooking.
Author Notes
Julia Child was born in Pasadena, California on August 15, 1912. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Smith College in 1934 and served with the Office of Strategic Services in East Asia during World War II. After the war, Child lived in Paris for six years, attending the famous Cordon Bleu cooking school.
After graduating from cooking school, Child opened her own culinary institute called, L'Ecole des Trois Gourmandes with her friends Simone Bech and Louisette Bertholle. She achieved critical acclaim with her first cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking which was first published in 1961 and is still in print today and helped to popularized French cuisine in America. Starting in 1963, Child hosted the first of many award winning cooking series on PBS, where she was best known for her exuberant personality and flamboyant cooking style.
Her other books include The French Chef Cookbook; From Julia Child's Kitchen; and The Way to Cook. She also filmed an instructional video series on cooking and wrote columns for various magazines and newspapers. She died of kidney failure on August 13, 2004 at the age of 91.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Excerpts
from the chapter Soups and Two Mother Sauces "Once you have mastered a technique, you hardly need look at a recipe again." Homemade soups fill the kitchen with a welcome air, and can be so full and natural and fresh that they solve that always nagging question of "what to serve as a first course." *** CHOWDERS Traditional chowders all start off with a hearty soup base of onions and potatoes, and that makes a good soup just by itself. To this fragrant base you then add chunks of fish, or clams, or corn, or whatever else seems appropriate. (Note: You may leave out the pork and substitute another tablespoon of butter for sautéing the onions.) The Chowder Soup Base For about 2 quarts, to make a 21/2-quart chowder serving 6 to 8 4 ounces (2/3 cup) diced blanched salt pork or bacon (see box, page 60) 1 Tbs butter 3 cups (1 pound) sliced onions 1 imported bay leaf 3/4 cup crumbled "common" or pilot crackers, or 1 pressed-down cup fresh white bread crumbs (see box, page 46) 6 cups liquid (milk, chicken stock [page 4], fish stock [page 5], clam juices, or a combination) 31/2 cups (1 pound) peeled and sliced or diced boiling potatoes Salt and freshly ground white pepper Sauté the pork or bacon bits slowly with the butter in a large saucepan for 5 minutes, or until pieces begin to brown. Stir in the onions and bay leaf; cover, and cook slowly 8 to 10 minutes, until the onions are tender. Drain off fat and blend crackers or bread crumbs into onions. Pour in the liquid; add the potatoes and simmer, loosely covered, for 20 minutes or so, until the potatoes are tender. Season to taste with salt and white pepper, and the soup base is ready. chowder suggestions new england clam chowder. --For about 21/2 quarts, serving 6 to 8. Scrub and soak 24 medium-size hard-shell clams (see box). Steam them for 3 to 4 minutes in a large tightly covered saucepan with 1 cup water, until most have opened. Remove the opened clams; cover, and steam the rest another minute or so. Discard any unopened clams. Pluck meat from the shells, then decant steaming-liquid very carefully, so all sand remains in the saucepan; include the clam-steaming liquid as part of the chowder base. Meanwhile, mince the clam meats in a food processor or chop by hand. Fold them into the finished chowder base. Just before serving, heat to below the simmer--so the clams won't overcook and toughen. Fold in a little heavy cream or sour cream if you wish; thin with milk if necessary, correct seasoning, and serve. to prepare clams. Scrub one at a time under running water, discarding any that are cracked, damaged, or not tightly closed. Soak 30 minutes in a basin of salted water (1/3 cup salt per 4 quarts water). Lift out, and if more than a few grains of sand remain in the basin, repeat. Refrigerate, covered by a damp towel. It's wise to use them within a day or two. fish chowder. Prepare the chowder base using fish stock (page 5), and/or light chicken stock (page 4), and milk. Cut into 2-inch chunks 2 to 21/2 pounds of skinless, boneless lean fish, such as cod, haddock, halibut, monkfish, or sea bass, all one kind or a mixture. Add to the finished chowder base and simmer 2 to 3 minutes, just until fish is opaque and springy. Correct seasoning, and top each serving, if you wish, with a spoonful of sour cream. chicken chowder. Substitute boneless, skinless chicken breasts for fish, and make the chowder base with chicken stock and milk. corn chowder. Prepare the chowder base using 6 cups of light chicken stock and milk. Stir 3 cups or so of grated fresh corn into the finished base, adding, if you wish, 2 green and/or red peppers chopped fine and sautéed briefly in butter. Bring to the simmer for 2 to 3 minutes; correct seasoning, and top each serving, if you wish, with a spoonful of sour cream. From the Hardcover edition. Excerpted from Julia's Kitchen Wisdom by Julia Child All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
