Here is the peach tartlet video recipe I promised the other day. It's a Julia Child recipe from one of the cookbooks she did with Jacques Pepin. I was going to do this delicious dessert for the Julie & Julia post, but decided to go with the more substantial roast chicken recipe.
This is about the easiest "looks hard" pastry technique I know. You can make the pie crust dough if you want (I've also posted my mother's key lime pie video below so you can see how easy pie crust is), or you can grab a package of the Pillsbury pie crust that is in just about every store these days.
I usually don't give brand names, but in this case I will since I've tried a couple brands and the Pillsbury is by far the best. It actually has lard in the ingredients, and as any pie maker will tell you, when it comes to delicious, flaky crust, lard kicks ass.
This recipe features the unusual and exotic Chinese 5-spice powder. Peaches are a natural with the aromatic blend of anise, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, fennel seed, star anise and Szechuan peppercorns, which usually make up this thousand-year-old spice.
By the way, by watching and mastering this technique, you just learned like 12 different tartlet recipes. This works equally well with apples, pears, plums, etc. Just adjust the caramelizing time based on the density of the fruit so it will be perfectly cooked in the 15 minutes it sits on the tartlet. Enjoy!
Ingredients for 8 tartlets: 2 tbsp butter 3 large peaches, halved, pitted, each half cut into 4 pieces (24 slices total) 1/4 cup sugar 1/4 tsp Chinese 5-spice 1 box (15-oz) ready-to-use piecrust (2 sheets) 1 egg, beaten plus 1 tsp water
Coming soon: Our next installment in cooking grass-fed beef series, featuring grilled rib eye steaks complete with "secret" steakhouse seasoning blend, and how to make a simple beurre maitre d' hotel. Stay tuned!
This video recipe for roasted chicken with watercress is dedicated to the late, great Julia Child. Today, Food Wishes is the Julie & Julia (a new film starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child) Blog of the Day, and I decided to feature my favorite Julia Child recipe to celebrate this great honor.
We're all familiar with the question, "If you could invite three famous people (dead or alive) to dinner, who would they be? For me, that's an easy one, it's Leonardo da Vinci, Joseph Campbell, and Julia Child.
Since this is a food blog, I won't expand on the first two choices, although if you're familiar with their work, they're pretty easy to understand. As far as choosing Julia Child goes, that's an absolute no-brainer. My decision to become a chef was a direct result of my childhood fixation with watching her cook on The French Chef. I'm sure I saw every show she did, and would watch, and re-watch the reruns with undiminished delight.
She was as enigmatic as she was iconic. She was America's most famous French chef, and yet she was neither French, nor a chef. Her cookbooks contained some of the most complicated recipes ever published, yet she adored simple food.
At a time when the country was just becoming health conscience, Julia Child was publicly outraged McDonald's had decided to stop cooking their French fries in beef tallow.
She stubbornly refused to jump on the organics bandwagon, and was heard to ask on numerous occasions, "what's so great about a free-range chicken walking around in its own droppings?"
She certainly wouldn't have been considered what today we call Locavores. She was once asked what vegetable she'd want on the plate for her last meal. She said, "Asparagus…no matter what season it is."
So, while the guest list to my dream dinner party would be relatively easy, the much harder question is what would I serve? Da Vinci was history's greatest mooch, so he'd eat anything. Joseph "follow your bliss" Campbell never struck me as a picky eater, so I guess it would have come down to what to serve Julia.
I believe that if I'd ever had the opportunity to cook for her, I would have served this roasted chicken recipe. The fact it's from one of her cookbooks helps, but more than that, this was the kind of cooking she most loved. Rustic, simple, big flavors, rough around the edges -- a plate of food you don't have to think about to enjoy.
This recipe is from her cookbook, Cooking with Master Chefs, from the chapter with Jeremiah Tower. My wife Michele introduced this recipe to me, and we've been enjoying it, almost exactly as you'll see, for many, many years. I really hope you give it a try. Bon appetit!
UPDATE: I forgot this recipe is from an old Julia Child's cookbook! I'm going to film for my Julie & Julia post for Monday. Stay tuned! UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: I did film the peach tartlet, but I decided not to use it for theJulie & Julia post for Monday. Instead I decided to film my favorite Julia Child recipe, a delicious roasted chicken with watercress. Stay tuned!
On Monday, Food Wishes will be honored as the "Blog of the Day," on the official Julie & Julia website! For those of you not familiar, Julie & Julia is a soon-to-be-released movie based on an autobiographical book by Julie Powell.
The movie stars Meryl Streep as Julia Child, with Amy Adams playing the intrepid Julie Powell. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the movie trailer below -- Meryl Streep's Julia Child is so scarily accurate, I think that some sort of supernatural possession may have occurred. I've also included a clip of Streep talking about her role. I will be doing a special Julie & Julia blog post on Monday in celebration of this great honor, hopefully including a Julia Child-inspired video recipe. Stay tuned!
It's been one week since I put this strip loin into the special "drybag" and sucked the air out (I used a machine, in case you were wondering).
It looks great! The loin has shrunk ever so slightly, the meat is firm, there is no unpleasant odor, and the color looks just right. The membrane has adhered perfectly to the surface of the meat, and most importantly there is no wetness under plastic.
There's also no moisture on the surface, or under the rack, yet the loin is clearly undergoing a very slow dehydration. At this point, I can only conclude that the bag is performing as advertised. One week to go, so stay tuned!
One product of my recent online interview with Wolfgang Puck was being given his pizza dough recipe to publish on my American Food site on About.com. I don't think this recipe is any kind of secret, and I'm sure it's been published many times, but I had never personally tried it, so I decided to do this recipe video and check out this iconic dough for myself.
As I read the recipe, I noticed the times were very short for the rising and proofing. I was a little suspicious, but hey, he's Wolfgang Puck and I'm not. I believe the honey in the dough, which feeds the yeast (sugar is to yeast, as anonymity is to bravery online), as well as the very warm water both contributed to the yeasts very rapid growth.
In just 35 minutes the dough had doubled beautifully -- it was soft, supple, and very subtly scented with honey. As you'll see in the video, this is a very quick and easy pizza dough recipe, and I was very happy with the results. I think this Wolfgang Puck guy may have a future.
Even though I already have a couple pizza dough recipes that I love and use (both posted online), you never want to get to a point in your cooking where you think you've found the "best" recipe for something, and not try other variations. This is the fatal flaw of many cooks and chefs.
Thanks to Wolfgang Puck for his recipe, and I hope you all give this a try. Enjoy!
Ingredients: 1 package dry active yeast 1 teaspoon honey 1 cup warm water (105 degrees F) 3 cup all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon kosher salt 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing toppings of your choice
Here is the peach tartlet video recipe I promised the other day. It's a Julia Child recipe from one of the cookbooks she did with Jacques Pepin. I was going to do this delicious dessert for the Julie & Julia post, but decided to go with the more substantial roast chicken recipe.
This recipe features the unusual and exotic Chinese 5-spice powder. Peaches are a natural with the aromatic blend of anise, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, fennel seed, star anise and Szechuan peppercorns, which usually make up this thousand-year-old spice.
