Welcome back to Cooking With the French Chef, in which I review episodes of Julia Child’s original show, cook out of the new edition of the French Chef Cookbook and share the results with you. Past posts can be found here.
Welp. I decided after last month’s misadventure that Julia owed us dinner. Problem is, my budget is pretty lean right now because it’s summer and I’m not back at work yet, so anything containing multiple meats is pretty much out of the question. No cassoulets, for instance. Not to mention, no one wants heavy food in the summertime.
Mousselines, though, looked intriguing. Here’s the relevant episode, which was originally broadcast on February 10, 1964, the ninth installment of Season Two:
Fish cakes, Julia. We’re making fish cakes. Super fancy fish cakes. With buerre blanc, creamed mushrooms, and asparagus. In the words of Tina Fey…
I can do this. I’ve made crab cakes before many times, and I wrote a fish cake recipe a few years ago when we had too many leftover tilapia filets. I’ll share sometime (Maybe tomorrow). The only unknown quantity in this menu is the buerre blanc, which I’ve heard nothing but good things about.
Anyway, let’s get started. Here are our ingredients. Well, most of them, anyway.
The first thing, of course, was to grind the fish, and I had some nice rockfish fillets from Winco. I know Julia said to use a white fish, but the rockfish was the best price. Unfortunately, I was too busy pulling out the bones to take a picture.
Business was the thing with this menu. There was a lot of stuff happening that required a lot of attention, and most of it was too finicky to stand being photographed. Still, I did my best. Julia wanted the fish ground, so here it is after a round with the food processor.
A little bit of egg white for the binder. These cakes were gonna be light and airy, and I liked the fact that they wouldn’t have any breadcrumbs in them.
Next came some heavy cream, white pepper, salt, and nutmeg, and this fish became cake. Julia said the amount of cream would depend on whatever it took for the fish mixture to hold its shape, and rockfish must be pretty sturdy and accommodating, because I got by with only four tablespoonfuls. Voilá.
Ze poisson went into the réfrigérateur while I prepped the asparagus. Julia suggests using frozen asparagus if it’s out of season, but since we’re currently smack dab in the middle of summer, fresh was no problem.
Next came the mushrooms. Julia said to finely mince them, but I made an executive decision and thinly sliced them instead because I was too lazy to get my husband’s mezzaluna. These were some gorgeous mushrooms, y’all.
Next I had to mince the shallots and cut the lemon. Julia sure loved her shallots and lemons.
Time to cook! A pot of water heats while butter melts…
This was another one of those times when there was too much happening to photograph as I went. I sauteed the mushrooms in batches, and since they weren’t supposed to be cooked all the way, this meant I had to let the current batch barely brown and then take them out so I could put in more. Thin slices brown pretty quickly.
The fish cakes were downright low maintenance by comparison, and once they were done they sat waiting patiently for everything to come together. I couldn’t resist taking a tiny bit out of the one in the middle. With a fork, of course.
And what of the asparugus? They got blanched and then lightly sauteed in butter with salt and pepper. Such a pretty green…
Meanwhile, the mushrooms got creamed and sat waiting for the rest of the meal with their cohorts, but once again, I was too preoccupied with the last step to take any photos. Yep, it was time for the buerre blanc.
This is a pretty prestigious recipe in Julia’s repertoire, and until Mastering the Art of French Cooking, was a closely guarded secret. As Julia said herself on several occasions, she talked famous Parisien restauranteur La Mère Michel, who popularized buerre blanc in Paris, into showing her how to make the decadent topping. The great lady was happy to do so, and Julia rushed home to try it for herself and then write it down. Just to be safe, she sent a copy to her sister.
I got curious as to what happened to La Mère’s restaurant, Chez la Mère Michel, and all I had to go by was that it was off the Avenue Wagram. There are a couple of restaurants today by the same name, but one serves Mediterranean and French cuisine while the other is a French-Japanese bistro. Neither seem to have any connection to Julia Child or buerre blanc. They don’t even mention La Mère Michel.
My guess is that after La Mère Michel passed away, the restaurant carried on without her before closing, and others came along to resurrect the name and revamp the menu. She was in her early sixties when she taught Julia how to make buerre blanc, so it’s a good bet she would have passed around the sixties or the seventies or so. Not having her real name, though, I can’t follow this up.
According to My Life In France, Chez la Mère Michel still existed in the early seventies. Julia and a film crew went to Paris hoping to film at the restaurant and were sadly disappointed to see that the quality of the food had degraded significantly. Julia doesn’t say too much, but it’s likely she and the film crew bowed out as gracefully as they could. It’s a pretty safe bet Chez la Mère Michel didn’t last long after Julia’s last dinner there.
I was able to determine that one of the two current restaurants had its original location at 5 Rue Rennequin, and whichever one that was is more likely to be the closest successor to Julia’s La Mère. Rennequin is right off Avenue Wagram as she described, and that’s where the restaurant in question was located. The space is now a curry restaurant. I can’t confirm any of this, though, so don’t quote me.
Getting back to my buerre blanc, it was a lot easier than I thought, but the initial steps take a little bit of patience. White wine vinegar, lemon juice, vermouth, salt, white pepper, and minced shallots are boiled together until the liquid is reduced to about a tablespoon and a half. After that is when the fun begins, because cut pieces of chilled butter are added a couple at a time and whisked until the whole mixture is a soft cream color and velvety as can be.
I was a little concerned at first that I would end up with buerre rose instead of buerre blanc, because the shallots turned everything a vibrant hot pink. As I whisked in more and more butter the pink tapered off, although the shallot bits stayed cheerfully bright (Apparently this is a very common tale).
Finally, finally, finally it was time to serve up this feast, and after smelling everything and seeing all this elegance come together, it was quite the payoff. So, so decadent and so, so tasty. Everything had butter–the mousselines were cooked in butter, the mushrooms were cooked in butter and cream, the asparagus was finished in butter, and the buerre blanc was, well, butter.
I know I said I don’t like heavy stuff in the summertime, but this meal was a treat. All the flavors played like chamber music. The asparagus was nicely crisp and the mushrooms were sweet and creamy. The mousselines had a light, fluffy texture and the buerre blanc set them off. Oh my word, it’s hard to describe how tangy and wonderful that buerre is. It just has to be experienced.
Well done, Julia!
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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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Bibliography
Child, Julia with Alex Prud’homme. My Life In France. New York: Anchor Books, 2006.
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