Weekend Cooking/Cook the Books: Mastering the Art of French Murder by Colleen Cambridge

 

A recipe for murder

Ingredients

A fab opening line

Paris setting

Two close friends (one of whom happens to be Julia Childs)

Fabulous food

A body in the basement

A grumpy police detective

A dash of post war intrigue

Some fun secondary characters

Method

Take two American women who have become best friends after meeting in Paris. Add in a late night party, a missing knife, a body in the basement.

Add a very serious Parisian detective who turns up the heat of suspicion on our main character and then mix in a suspicion of espionage

Cook under pressure, until things begin to boil.

Sprinkle with misdirection

Season with a quest to perfect mayonnaise and lessons on how to make a perfect omelette.

When this book was announced as the current choice for Cook the Books, I was very pleased. I have been reading this author for years, following her through various identities and sub genres. I was also keen to read this because I loved the idea of having Julia Child as one of the characters. 

Right from the opening paragraphs I expected this book to be fun:

Julia Child had a mayonnaise problem.

I knew all about it - every sordid detail - because, first, I was one of her closest friends in Paris, and second....well, I wouldn't be surprised if everyone in the seventh arrondisement - from the Place due Palais-Bourbon to the Tour Eiffel - had heard about the mayonnaise problem. Julia was just that kind of person. She was gregarious and ebullient and giddy and enthusiastic.

Tabitha Knight moved to Paris in 1949, and almost immediately made friends with Julia Child, who would later become known for her work on TV cooking shows. At this point, Julia is attending classes in Paris. When she is not cooking up a storm, Julia is attempting to both teach Tabitha to cook, and to encourage her to try and meet a good man!

After a late night party at Julia and Paul's apartment with Julia's theatre loving sister, Dort, Tabitha stumbles across the body of another woman who was at the party.  She is found dead in the basement and most damningly, one of Julia Child's distinctive knives is found too. The French police, in the form of Inspector Merveille, are instantly suspicious that either Tabitha or Julia were involved in the murder, and so Tabitha needs to prove their innocence. Her natural curiosity soon leads her into investigating the crime, and draws her into an English speaking theatre world and a far reaching conspiracy.

Whilst I enjoyed all the characters, I think my favourites have to have been Tabitha's grandfather and her "oncle" (as in a very close friend of the family). Tabitha and the two gentleman share the house along with their adorable pets.  It is inferred that the two men got up to all sorts of things in the war, and still have many contacts in all sorts of places, which come in handy whilst Tabitha is kind of sort of investigating the crime. Luckily, this is the first in a series so I am hopefully we learn more about them in future books.

I had been intending to try making a Julia Child recipe since I watched the TV series Julia last year. I still haven't actually watched the second series yet! One day.

When it came to deciding which recipe to cook, there were so many options. I did consider trying to make mayonnaise, which I have never done before, and I considered making the omelette which Julia tried so hard to teach to Tabitha in the book. I still intend to try to do both, but in the end I decided on a classic French recipe, Boeuf Bourguignon.

Here is the original recipe, as  far as I can tell anyway!

Boeuf Bourguignon  (Julia Childs)

8 oz bacon chopped 
4 tbsp olive oil
3 lbs stewing beef, cut into 2-inch cubes.
1 large carrot, sliced 
1 onion sliced.
1 pinch salt and fresh ground pepper
2 tbsp plain flour
3 cups red wine
3 cups beef stock
1 tbsp tomato paste
2 cloves garlic, smashed
1/2 tsp thyme
14 oz pearl onions, 18 to 24.
3.5 tbsp butter
1 herb bouquet (bay leaf, 2 sprigs thyme, 4 sprigs flat-leaf parsley, tied together.)
1 lb brown or white mushrooms, quartered.


Preheat your oven to 450°. Simmer the bacon lardons in a pot of water for about 10 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon and let them drain on some paper towels.

Over medium heat, saute the cooked bacon in 1 tablespoon of olive oil for about 3 minutes. You'll want it to be lightly brown. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.

Take the beef cubes and pat them dry using a paper towel. Then, working in batches, sear the meat on all sides over medium-high heat in a large Dutch oven. Then set it aside with the bacon.

In the same Dutch oven, saute the sliced onions and carrots over medium heat for about 3 minutes. Add a little more olive oil (or butter) if necessary. Return the bacon and the seared meat back to the pot and sprinkle in about 1/2 teaspoon of coarse salt and about 1/4 teaspoon of fresh ground black pepper.

Sprinkle the flour in and toss. Place in the oven, uncovered, for 4 minutes. Remove the pot fro the oven, toss again, and place back in the oven for another 4 minutes. Then, remove from the oven and reduce the heat to 325°.

Pour the wine and the stock into the pot. You'll want enough so the meat is just barely covered. Then, stir in the tomato paste, crushed garlic, and thyme leaves. Bring this to a light simmer on the stove, then cover and place in the oven for 3 to 4 hours, until the meat is fork tender.

About an hour before you take the stew out of the oven, use a medium-size saute pan and heat 1.5 tablespoons of butter with 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. Add the pearl onions and cook until they are golden-brown, about 10 minutes. Then stir in 1/2 cup of beef broth, a pinch of salt and pepper, and the herb bouquet. Gently saute for another 30 to 40 minutes, until the small onions are soft.

Remove the pearl onions from the pan and set aside. Discard the herb bouquet and add the remaining butter and oil to the pan, over medium heat. Stir in the mushrooms and saute for about 5 minutes until they are soft. Remove the mushrooms and set aside with the pearl onions.

When the meat and vegetables are ready to come out of the oven, place a colander over a large pan and strain the liquid from the meat. Set the meat aside and bring the pan of liquid to a low simmer for about 5 minutes. Place the beef and vegetables back into the Dutch oven, then pour the sauce over that mixture. Stir in the pearl onions and mushrooms, and bring to a low simmer for 5 or 10 minutes.

Serve at this time or allow it to cool and refrigerate for a day or two before serving. The flavor will get better and develop with a little time.

I don't think I have ever seen pearl onions in the shops here, so we ended up using shallots instead of pearl onion, but other than we stuck mostly to the recipe. 

I did pick up a couple of handy hints by reading various different versions of this recipe. We have a few different beef stews that we make, some of which include mushrooms. I have never seen a recipe where you fry off the mushrooms and then add into the pot for only a short time towards the end of the cook. By doing this, you end up still having a firmish texture on the mushrooms.  The other thing that we have never done before was removing all the meat and then straining the sauce. The sauce looked smooth and glossy. It was amazing.

When I went to the shops to buy the ingredients. I was quite shocked by how much I had spent on what in theory was just one meal. In the end though we ended up having this for dinner two nights and I had the last bit for lunch as well. And the dogs got a bit of the gravy on their dinner too, so it didn't work out too badly in the end. What I didn't do, is remember to take a photo but it is difficult to take a photo of a casserole that looks good!

Here's Julia cooking the recipe back in the very first episode of her TV show.

I am sharing this recipe with Historical Fiction Reading Challenge and with Foodie Reads hosted by Based on a True Story

Weekly meals

Saturday - Boeuf Bourguignon
Sunday - Boeuf Bourguignon
Monday - Creamy Mustard Pork with mash, mushrooms and broccoli
Tuesday - Green Chicken Curry Pie
Wednesday -Tomato and Rice Soup
Thursday - Pork Nachos
Friday - Out for dinner

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page

Weekend Cooking: Simple Noodles by Pippa Middlehurst

A couple of weeks ago I posted about the Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai, where a father and daughter team of food detectives take a dish from your memories and try to recreate it perfectly. I shared about a garlic prawn dish that lives on in my memory which I have never been able to find again. 

Another dish that lives on in perfection in my memory is a Beef and Broccoli in Oyster Sauce dish that I had at a Chinese restaurant in Adelaide back in probably the early 1990s. I was there with a group of friends, not 100% who or why, but I do remember eating this dish and thinking it was delicious. We have a favourite restaurant now where we go, mainly because of their Shao Long Bao dumplings. Every time we also order Beef and Chinese Broccoli in Oyster Sauce which is very nice, but not quite as good. We have also tried cooking a similar dish on several occasions.

A few months ago, the Jamie Oliver Cookbook Club selected a book called Simply Noodles. As I was flicking through the book, one recipe jumped out at me and we have now made it several times! This is yet another take on my beef, broccoli and oyster sauce flavour combinations. It is a completely different dish, but it is pretty tasty.

In the book there is plenty of information about various topics including different types of noodles, equipment you might need, and different techniques. There are even some suggestions for making instant noodles a bit fancy! The intent is to provide quick, easy, tasty, feel-good recipes.

The recipes are broken into 3 sections. The first section is the Really Easy Noodles (10+ minutes), then Fuss-Free Noodles (20+ minutes) and finally Minimal Effort Noodles (30+ minutes).  

Among the recipes I would like to try are:

Midnight Noodles and Dumplings

Non-nuclear Fire Noodles

Sizzling Red Oil Noodles

Bangkok-style Spaghetti

Soy Garlic Butter Prawn Spaghetti

Sticky BBQ Chicken Noodles

Pad See Ew

There are some recipes that I am sure taste good, and might appeal to some readers, but I am not sure that I would ever make a recipe like Chicken Nugget Mazeman. It might be a good way to get kids to try something different though! 

Here's the Beef and Broccoli Noodles recipe which we have made multiple times now. In fact, I think I might add it to our menu for next week!

Beef and Broccoli Noodles (Pippa Middlehurst)

1 tbsp cornflour
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1 rump steak, thinly sliced
½ head broccoli, broken into florets
2 nests egg noodles or 120g bronze-cut spaghetti
2 tbsp neutral oil
4 garlic cloves, grated
3 spring onions, finely sliced

For the sauce:
2 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
½ tbsp dark soy sauce
½ tbsp toasted sesame oil
2 tbsp Sichuan chilli oil or Lao Gan Ma Crispy Chilli Oil
½ tbsp golden caster (superfine) sugar

In a bowl, mix together the cornflour, 1 tbsp water and the light soy sauce. Marinate the steak slices in this mixture, coating well, while you prep the rest of the ingredients.

Bring a large pan of water to the boil. Add the broccoli florets and cook for 3-5 minutes until just softened but still green. Scoop out directly into a bowl of ice-cold water. Set aside.

In the same pan, cook the noodles for 2 minutes less than what is stated on the packet instructions. We want them to remain al dente. Strain and rinse under cool water, separating the noodles with your fingers, to prevent them from sticking. Set aside.

Mix all the sauce ingredients and set aside.

Then, heat 1 tbsp of the neutral oil in a wok or non-stick, heavy-based frying pan. Add the steak and cook for 3-5 minutes until browned and caramelised. Remove the steak from the pan and wipe the pan.
Add the remaining 1 tbsp neutral oil to the clean pan and set over a medium-high heat. Add the garlic and stir-fry for 30 seconds. Add the blanched broccoli and the steak. Toss and cook for 1 minute.

Give the noodles another quick rinse in cool water to make sure they’re not stuck together. Add them to the pan and toss with the veg and beef. Add the sauce, toss to combine, then add the spring onions, toss and let wilt for 30 seconds.

Remove the pan from the heat and serve.

Weekly meals

Saturday -  Sausages, mash and gravy

Sunday -  Grilled cheese on toast

Monday - Pressure Cooker Spaghetti Bolognaise

Tuesday - Herbed steak and chips

Wednesday - Spicy pork  Noodles

Thursday - Zucchini, Tomato and Parmesan Risotto

Friday -Takeaway

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page

Weekend Cooking: French Onion Casserole

When I look back over the recipes that I have shared as part of Paris in July, I have realised that there are some common things - mainly that they are wintery, casserole type dishes. A couple of years ago I shared a recipe for cassoulet, and last year it was French style chicken. I guess it makes sense since we are in the depths of winter and so we are looking for soups, stews and casseroles  - hearty, warming dinners and comfort food.

Luckily, our local supermarket magazine has come to the party again this year, with the cover recipe for June being French Onion Beef Casserole with Garlic Butter Potatoes.

We cooked this on a cold Sunday afternoon, letting the delicious smells fill the house. It definitely is a slow process with a couple of different steps to the process but it was well worth it. The reality is that a lot of the time that this takes to cook is just in the oven, so it isn't like you are busy making it for the whole time. Plenty of time to read a book, make a cake or watch a movie while the oven does it's magic.

As I was writing this post I was curious about how French this would actually be. I guess it is instpired by French Onion Soup which apparently has it's origins in the 18th century.

French Onion Casserole with Garlic Butter Potatoes

2 tbs olive oil
1kg diced beef/oyster blade steak, cut into 3cm pieces
200g brown mushrooms, thickly sliced
1 brown onion, coarsely chopped
1 large carrot, peeled, coarsely chopped
2 celery sticks, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup (35g) plain flour
40g pkt French onion soup mix
1 1/2 cups (375ml) salt-reduced beef stock
4 thyme sprigs
50g garlic butter
6 Red Royale potatoes, cut into 1cm-thick slices
1/2 cup (50g) shredded pizza cheese
Thyme sprigs, extra, to serve

CARAMELISED ONION

20g butter
2 brown onions, thickly sliced
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 tbs brown sugar
1 tbs balsamic vinegar
2 tbs salt-reduced beef stock
1 tsp thyme leaves




Preheat oven to 150°C. Heat half the oil in a large casserole pan over high heat. Add one-quarter of the beef and cook, turning occasionally, for 2-3 mins or until brown all over. Transfer to a heatproof bowl. Repeat, in batches, with the remaining beef.


Heat half the remaining oil in the pan. Add the mushroom and cook, turning, for 5 mins or until golden. Transfer to the bowl. Heat remaining oil in the pan. Add the onion, carrot and celery and cook, stirring, for 5 mins or until onion softens. Return the beef and mushroom to the pan and sprinkle with flour. Cook for 1 min or until well combined. Add the soup mix, beef stock and thyme sprigs and bring to a simmer. Cover and transfer to the oven. Bake for 2 hours or until the beef is very tender.


Meanwhile, to make the caramelised onion, melt the butter in a large frying pan over low heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, for 15 mins or until the onion softens and begins to caramelise. Add the sugar, vinegar and stock and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 mins or until onion caramelises. Add the thyme and season with pepper.


Increase oven to 180°C. Heat the garlic butter in a large frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the potato and cook for 2 mins each side or until the potato is golden.


Arrange potato and caramelised onion over the beef mixture. Bake, uncovered, for 20 mins or until the potato is tender. Sprinkle with cheese and bake for a further 10 mins or until the cheese melts and is golden. Sprinkle with extra thyme sprigs and season with pepper to serve.

 Weekly meals

Saturday - Out for dinner

Sunday -  French Onion Casserole

Monday - Pork sausages, pumpkin mash and caramelised onions

Tuesday - beef pad see ew

Wednesday - chicken enchiladas

Thursday - Pork chops, mash, gravy, broccoli

Friday - Out for dinner

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page

Weekend Cooking: Beef Stroganoff

We've made several of British chef Tom Kerridge's recipes now. His last few series have been about how create healthy meals that should help you lose weight as part of a balanced diet. What we like about the ones that we have made so far is that they are very tasty. For example, the recipe for "fried" chicken (which I posted here) is a regular part of our meal planning now

Recently we were rewatching some of series and we saw a recipe for Beef Stroganoff that we thought that we would try. In the end we didn't quite make it as written as we didn't add in the cornichones or gherkins. What we did have was still delicious.

The husband does already have his go to recipe for stroganoff but he did say that he would use the technique that is described for the meat in his version going forward because it was very tender.

Beef Stroganoff

½ tbsp light olive oil
1 large onion, finely sliced
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 beef stock cube
2 tsp sweet smoked paprika
1 tbsp tomato purée
400g tin beef consommé (we used a beef broth)
150g/5½oz chestnut mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
2 rump steaks (175g/6oz each), visible fat trimmed
olive oil spray
60g/2¼oz cornichons or small gherkins, sliced
75ml/2½fl oz half-fat crème fraîche
2 tbsp finely chopped flatleaf parsley
2 tbsp roughly chopped chervil or parsley
2 tbsp dried onion flakes
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
160g/5¾oz basmati rice, freshly cooked (to serve)

Heat the light olive oil in a large frying pan over a low–medium heat. Add the onion and cook gently for 10 minutes, or until softened and starting to caramelise.

Stir in the garlic and cook gently for 2 minutes. Crumble in the stock cube and stir in the paprika and tomato purée. Cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Add the beef consommé, mushrooms and mustard. Bring to the boil then lower the heat and simmer for 10–15 minutes, or until the volume of liquid has reduced by half.

Meanwhile, place a griddle pan over a high heat. Bash the steaks between two sheets of cling film, until about 5mm/¼in thick. Spray each side with six sprays of oil and season with salt and pepper. When the griddle is smoking hot, add the steaks and cook for 1 minute on each side. Remove and set aside to rest.

Once the sauce has reduced, remove from the heat and stir through the cornichons, crème fraîche, and most of the parsley and chervil (reserving some for garnishing). Stir in the juices from the resting meat and check the seasoning. Cut the meat into thick slices and stir into the sauce.

Mix together the dried onion flakes and reserved chopped parsley and chervil. Serve the stroganoff sprinkled with the onion and herb mix, with the rice on the side, if you like.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. For more information, see the welcome post.

Weekend Cooking: Beef and Vegetable Red Curry

Sometimes, despite your best laid plans, things just don't quite go right, and this was the case a couple of weeks ago when we had a plan to try a new recipe which was going to be a Beef and Vegetable Rendang Curry. However, when you realise that you have forgotten to add the rendang curry paste to the shopping list, and then you do an emergency dash to the shop around the corner but they don't have any, you have to improvise.

Now improvisation isn't really my strong point. I am a recipe follower, a weigher of ingredients, I am most definitely not someone who can look in the cupboard and voila....something magical appears. My husband is much better than I am though.

Once he got home from the unsuccessful emergency dash we decided that instead of using rendang and a couple of other ingredients we would use the rest of the red curry paste that we already here in the fridge.

So this recipe is inspired by the Beef and Vegetable Rendang Curry from the Symply Too Good to be True (book 7), and using the techniques in those books, particularly in relation to the use of evaporated milk and coconut essence instead of coconut milk to reduce the calories.

Beef and Vegetable Red Curry

300g potatoes
Cooking spray
500g rump steak cut into bit-size pieces
1 tspn crushed garlic
1 onion, cut in quarters then sliced
2 cups small broccoli florets
1 cup red capsicum diced
1/2 cup water
20 snow peas
3 tbspn red curry paste
1 tbspn cornflour
1 tspn coconut essence
1 x 375 can evaporated light milk

Peel and chop potatoes into bite size pieces. Parboil in a little water in microwave for 5 minutes. Drain and leave to one side.

In a large non-stick frypan that has been coated with cooking spray, place dice rump and garlic into pan and toss together until meat has browned. Remove and leave to one side.

Re-coat pan with cooking spray then add onion, broccoli and capsicum with 1/4 cup water and cook 3 minutes. Add snow peas and potato with the extra 1/4 cup of water and cook 2-3 minutes or until vegetables are almost cooked.

Add curry paste and fold through the vegetables are almost cooked.

Add the meat back to pan.

Combine cornflour with coconut essence and evaporated milk, then add to pan, ,stirring continuously until just boiled. Do not overboil sauce, as the milk may separate. When boiled, take off heat and serve.


If you were going to be making the original rendang recipe you would add 3 tablespoons of rendang curry paste and then 2 tablespoons of kecap manis and 2 teaspoons of reduced salt soy sauce.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. For more information, see the welcome post.