{"id":22216,"date":"2019-04-23T00:57:54","date_gmt":"2019-04-23T00:57:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=22216"},"modified":"2019-04-23T00:57:54","modified_gmt":"2019-04-23T00:57:54","slug":"cotes-de-veau-braise-pommes-de-terre-et-chicoree-roties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=22216","title":{"rendered":"c\u00f4tes de veau brais\u00e9*; pommes de terre et chicor\u00e9e r\u00f4ties"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Last night I returned to my ancient,\u00a0well-thumbed and lightly-sauced 1966 edition of Julia Child’s, ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1’ to help me decide what to do with a cut of meat I don’t think I have ever prepared before.<\/p>\n

The result was really delicious, although it was very different from my current<\/em> cooking style, and it looks surprisingly ‘French provincial cooking’ (I don’t know what I was expecting). Anyway, thank goodness for micro greens.<\/p>\n

It also reminded me of some of the reasons I mostly abandoned Julia Child years ago: I almost always found it personally very stressful, especially toward the finish, even when they were a great success (maybe you have to be the mythical bonne femme<\/em> to carry it off?); I got tired of the rigidity of her formulas; I doubted her books would ever enable me to be creative or improvisatory;\u00a0and I was eventually persuaded that the recipes were unnecessarily complicated, especially after I started working with Italian models. I worried that I would never be\u00a0\u00e0 la bonne femme<\/p>\n

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These are the potatoes that went into this meal. I may finally have to admit that I become obsessed with eggs at this time of the year. The image is of a couple handfuls of Pintos, but as I was preparing them last night I saw them as small marzipan Easter eggs. They made absolutely delicious roasted potatoes!<\/p>\n

I found timing the cooking of this single veal chop problematic, and I don’t know why. I had kept the lowest possible flame under the covered pot while it was braising, but my instant read thermometer told me it was done much sooner than Julia had said it would be. The next time, if there is a next time, I’m probably going to depend entirely on my personal finger gauge, as Pierre Franey advises<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Of course, it is not always practical to pierce chops with a meat thermometer, so I usually use the trusty finger method. Press the meat carefully and quickly while it is cooking-naturally, avoid touching the hot surface of the pan-and if the meat bounces back readily, it needs further cooking. As soon as the meat loses that resilience, it is done. Judging this takes some experience, but once you master the technique, it is foolproof.<\/em><\/p>\n