The Culinator (that’s me) strikes again! Tonight’s dinner was Ratatouille and Supremes de Volaille a Milanaise (Chicken In Parmesan Cheese and Bread Crumbs) serves with a brown butter sauce.
First of all, Elizabeth said I was too ambitious and wouldn’t have dinner ready until 9pm. Well, for the record, I had her eating at 8:57pm (no joke!) and had I not been delayed at work an extra 2 hours I would have had it ready before she came home.
New things I was excited to learn to do: 1. I peeled and juiced fresh tomatoes! Blanch (yep, learned that too) for 10 seconds, cut out the stem, peek skin from where stem was, and then cut in half crosswise and squeeze. Out pops the seeds and gooey stuff - keeps the ratatouille from being too juicy. Don't be afraid to try it, it worked! I thought the tomato would turn into a blob of mush, but it didn't. Amazing. 2. I clarified butter! That was fun - make it foam, watch the foam go down and the solids settle. I'll probably write about butter someday, not only did I learn to clarify the butter but Julia has some wonderful explanations regarding why. 3. I made brown butter sauce for the chicken — keep heating the clarified butter until it turns a nutty brown color, skim off any floaties, and put in serving bowl. Then I added lemon juice and fresh parsley. Butter as a sauce sounded kind of odd and greasy -- it wasn't and it really added to the flavor of the chicken. Even Elizabeth agreed the sauce was really yummy! 4. I breaded the chicken! Actually, it was bread crumbs and fresh grated parmesan.
The French word I learned with this meal was "Supremes" which apparently means "chicken," or at least a part of the chicken. And all these years I thought they were a music group... I did cheat a little and used chicken tenders/fingers so that we could have some smaller portions for leftovers and they worked great. Although they look a bit dark in the photos, they really weren't burnt, errrrr...charred. I'm working on not setting the heat too high so they don't get quite so dark but these were some reallllllllly good pieces of chicken. Definitely going on the list to make for the entire family. Well, maybe not the entire family because then there won't be much left over?
Oh, did I mention that French cooking uses a lot of butter? Apparently it is healthier that way! Well, it was offset by zucchini, bell pepper and tomatoes from our garden plus eggplant, onions and fresh parsley. I’m sure the parsley was the secret.
Well, my knife skills still need sharpening and I need to not make the house so smokey but we’ve survived my second meal from scratch. Did I mention that mom checked out Julia Child’s cookbook for me from the library? I’ve got two weeks to cook everything in “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” Hmmmm, maybe I’ll renew it...
Stay tuned for the next report.
P.S. French cooking sure uses a lot of pans.
P.P.S. I actually used a saucepan to make a sauce!!!!!
P.P.P.S. This was my first attempt at using one of Julia's recipes to actually create a whole meal and was done on July 11, 2019 (remember, I was posting these originally on our family Facebook page so there are a couple of old ones getting us started). Here's an update from the following day:
The ratatouille was good but it wasn't as spectacular as I'd hoped for the amount of effort I put into it -- that, I realized, was because I kind of misunderstood part of Julia's assembly instructions. The instructions were to place the ingredients into the casserole/dutch oven pan in layers - first 1/2 of the tomatoes, 1/2 of the sauteed onions/peppers, then 1/2 of the eggplant/ then 1/2 of the zuchinni, then 1/2 of the tomatoes, then 1/2 of the onions/peppers, and so on with the remaining layers. All was going well until I got to the last layer where she said "put in the remaining half of the tomatoes..." Oooops. The second tomato layer was referring to 1/2 of what remained, not 1/2 of the original quantity. Turns out that would be important because all of the goodness from the top layer of tomatoes and their spices were supposed to flow down onto the top layers of zuchinni and eggplant -- adding flavor and color. So, it was good but not spectactular. But wait! Not so fast!!! Julia's cooking TV show was filmed live with no retakes so she was known for making mistakes and then adapting or making do with whatever turned out. So it was with this WONDERFUL ratatouille! Julia mentioned in "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" that the ratatouille could be served warm or cold. The awesome surprise was on day 2 when I took some to work for lunch and snitched a bite when it was cold. It was one of the best things I'd ever eaten! Sitting overnight with all the layers mixed together (yeah, we'd just kind of dumped it into a plastic container) let all those flavors come together like they were supposed to. I'll be making this again someday and I'll definitely make enough to be sure to have cold leftovers. Hmmmm, I wonder what reheated leftovers would have tasted like? Never got that far!
P.P.P.P.S. For those of you monitoring my Blog Techno Skills: You'll notice that there's a photo in the middle of the blog. That's where it ended up and I haven't figured out how to move it (or put it in the right place the first time). Here's the exciting part -- I have a couple other photos to go with this one and have no idea if I can put them in! You'll know if you see more than one photo, otherwise I may just do a different post with them (eventually).
Ratatouille is one of my favorite vegetable dishes!
I loved the ratatouille. It was good cold the next day as well as hot the first day.