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.
What does the word, “quenelles” bring to mind?
If anyone is like me, not much, but once I looked it up I found out that it’s basically a mashup between a dumpling, a croquette and a fish cake, but with a twist: Done properly, quenelles double in size. Done improperly, they dissolve.
Gee, no pressure, right?
Here’s the relevant episode, which originally aired on March 7, 1966, the thirtieth installment in Season Four:
OK, Julia, let’s see how this goes. I make no guarantees, especially regarding those fluted mushrooms (insert flashback here). Or anything that involves food doubling in size like that infernal Genoise cake.
And now it’s time for the ingredients. Funny that most of them are blindingly white:
So yeah, I can’t lie. I was nervous. Again, my track record with Julia’s recipes hasn’t been exactly stellar lately. On the bright side, the first step was to make paté a choux, which I’ve made before, only it was for those plum puffs from Anne of Avonlea (They’re really good, by the way. Highly recommend).
Paté a choux is a straightforward business. First things first, though: I had to sift enough flour for a cup. This was not optional; Julia said it HAD to be done this way or the amount of flour might be too much or too little and that would spell disaster. Out came my little squeeze sifter, and I got to sifting.
Julia makes this look so easy. I’m quite sure she milked cows in her offtime.
Behold, Mount St. All-Purpose before it got leveled.
The next step in paté a choux is to add butter to water and let it all melt together, then remove it from the heat and add all the flour at once.
Julia said there should be a film on the bottom of the pan, and this thing was definitely filmy. After that came eggs and egg whites, added one at a time and beaten vigorously so they didn’t scramble.
I didn’t take pictures of that part. It goes too fast, and I’m proud to say that there were no scrambled eggs on my watch.
However, I did capture the paté a choux getting put into a bowl and covered in buttered waxed paper. Oh, and enjoy this glimpse of part of my freezer. Those are cream cheese won tons and jalapeño poppers under the paté a choux, by the way. They’re my son’s.
While the paté a choux chilled, I got to work on the fish. Julia recommended ocean cod, and I could only find Pacific, but what’s in a name, right? It’s still cod.
Just to make sure there were no surprises like bones or whatever, I cut the fish into big chunks before loading it into the food processor. Julia said to finely ground the fish, so here we go.
Voilá. Julia said she preferred the new methods of food processing to the old mortar-pestle-sieve method she learned at Le Cordon Bleu, and I heartily agree. Food processors rock.
Time to stir in the paté a choux. So far, so good.
Julia said the mixture was to hold a shape, and I couldn’t help but feel a bit optimistic. From where I stood, it looked as if this fish wanted to be a quenelle.
Hmmm. Time to roll these puppies in flour and poach them in barely simmering water.
I watched it nervously. Would this fish quenelle?
Nope. Heck to the nope.
All was not lost, though. Julia said that if the quenelles dissolved, they could be baked in a casserole like a mousse.
Okeydokey. I had a bed of spinach all ready to go, plus a nice cheese sauce, Julia’s favorite Swiss cheese and a soupçon of melted butter. The fish went in the middle. If all went well, this thing was gonna mousse.
Promising, right?
Erm…
Yeah, no. This stuff didn’t mousse, either. It was slop. There’s no other word for it. It literally slopped onto the plate with a pronounced kersplat. I suddenly had visions of cafeteria workers at Folsom Prison slinging this monstrosity onto shiny aluminum trays and inmates flinching in between bites.
Only this slop tasted halfway decent for all it looked so awful. About as decent as underbaked custard with little mince-y bits of Pacific cod can taste, anyway. What a waste of a good cheese sauce. And spinach. And Pacific cod.
So what went wrong? The only thing I can think of is that the paté a choux didn’t chill enough in the freezer. Maybe there are advantages to Le Cordon Bleu’s mortar-pestle-sieve method. It gives everything time to rest.
OK, that was an adventure, but I think I’ll make croquettes next time. Funnily enough, they’re a lot easier. Oh well. What a way to end 2025.
A new Club 15 post is coming out tomorrow, and we’ll be paying tribute to a different French chef. Not to brag, but it’ll be delicious. 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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