Welcome back to Cooking With the French Chef, in which I make recipes from the new edition of Julia Child’s French Chef Cookbook and review episodes of Julia’s original TV series, The French Chef. Past installments can be found here.
Coquilles Saint-Jacques is a dish I’ve been wanting to make for a long time but never had the opportunity or a recipe I could actually work with. Julia gives us two variations of Coquille Saint-Jacques in The French Chef, well, two and a half, really, and I tried two of them.
Julia made Coquilles Saint-Jacques more than once on the show, but the episode we’re interested in was first broadcast on July 14, 1965:
After reading the recipes and watching this episode, I figured it would be no big deal to attempt the Parisienne and Provenςal methods on the same night. I’ve pulled together three or four Chinese dishes at the same time, so what could be so hard about two recipes that have a lot of the same ingredients? Especially since one of them simmers while the other one sautees and they both seem very quick?
Heh. Like most Julia newbies, I was naïve and overconfident. Once I had assembled the star ingredients, though, I started rethinking that attitude.
However, there was nothing to do but plunge ahead, and once all my ingredients were prepped it was heigh-ho for Paris. It seemed to be the most complicated, after all, since it involved sauce and the broiler and other fun stuff.
The first big step in the recipe was to simmer the scallops, shallots, and mushrooms in a cup of vermouth with enough water to cover everything. That seemed easy enough, but then I had to pull all the veg and seafood out and reduce the liquid to a cup. I eyed the weirdly gray broth dubiously, wondering where Julia was taking me.
Julia didn’t say how long the reduction would take, and the show glosses over that part, of course, so not knowing what to expect I settled in to wait, and apparently fixing Parisienne Coquilles Saint-Jacques is like going on a leisurely cruise up the Seine.
At first, watching the bubbling mass turn from gray to a quiet taupe seemed relaxing and meditative, but after about twenty minutes of boiling, visions of a certain pink bunny beating a drum danced in my head. Meanwhile, my mushroom-shallot-scallop mixture waited in the wings, the scallops looking disturbingly like water chestnuts. Another five minutes went by, and I’d had enough. I finally pulled out the cup I needed and stuck the rest of the stock in the freezer (Scallop stock–woo hoo!).
The rest of the steps seemed ridiculously easy. Make roux with butter and flour, add scallop stock, thin out with milk as necessary, add mixture gradually to two egg yolks and a wee bit of cream, and then pour the whole shebang back into the pot. Since I don’t have individual dishes that can go under the broiler, I put the pot in there and hoped for the best.
Well, it wasn’t the prettiest, but nothing exploded or dribbled, so that’s good, but unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the result. Oh well. It was time to move on.
If Coquilles Saint-Jacques Parisienne was a slow boat trip up the Seine, the Provenςal version was the Tour de France. Season the scallops with lemon juice, kosher salt and white pepper before dredging in flour and shaking off the excess. Into the skillet went the scallops, where they got a nice crust. A bit of tossing, a pat of butter and we were in business. It was lightning fast. So fast, in fact, that I really only had time for a photo of the finished product.
Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I had to cheat a little bit. I only had sliced Swiss cheese, so when it came time to top the Saint-Jacques Parisienne I tore a few pieces to bits and sprinkled them around more or less evenly. Julia dredged her scallops on waxed paper and shook the excess off with a strainer; all I could see were clouds of flour flying around, so I shook my scallops off by hand. I was not in the mood to quibble; it was time to eat.
And oh my word, the scallops were divine. Like, amazingly, hugely divine. I don’t know if all Coquilles Saint-Jacques recipes are like this (probably not), but either way, if anyone has any doubt whatsoever as to why Julia’s recipes are special, well, they should wonder no more. The flavors were deep and bright, the scallops had a great texture, and it was all quite decadent. And by the way, dry vermouth rocks.
Which version of Saint-Jacques was my favorite? Well, initially I liked the Provenςal best because the flavors seemed to come through better with the lemon setting it all off, but upon eating the leftovers I really got into the Parisienne version because it was like a good gumbo–time did wonders.
Would I make either version again? Absolutely. Just not at the same time. 🙂
Another post is coming out tomorrow. Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you then…
The French Chef Cookbook, The French Chef, Volume One (DVD) and The French Chef, Volume 2 (DVD) are available to own from Amazon.
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I adore this series of yours!! Keep up the good work! I’ve never had or heard of Coquilles Saint-Jacques, but I did recently read a book called The Kitchen Front where one of the characters prepared it for a cooking competition!
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