You should look into getting a Larousse Gastronomie … it is an encyclopedia for professional chefs, that acts like sort of an uber cookbook for french cooking.
First thing I made solo was Pintade au Riz Sauvage … but I didnt have guinea fowl, so I used cornish game hens instead =) I was 8 years old. That started my love of fussing in the kitchen.
Even if you accept the premise that this is a book review, the author should not state in big bold letters “Do Not Buy This Book”. Clearly, the book probably should not be bought by those who don’t want to put a lot of effort into cooking, but why should Squash Lady expect all her readers to be like that? Some may actually want to improve their cooking skills or challenge themselves, and Child’s book would be perfect for them.
I’ve never read her book(s) but I watched her shows from as soon as the local PBS station broadcast them. I know diddly about cooking otherwise, but if that drunken old lady could cook it I’m sure I could. And she taught me the (limited) value of clarified butter. (Buddy, if the taste of butter solids offends you, maybe you should start with canola oil.)
Note that I refer to her (apparent) perpetual tipsiness. I grew up around women whose ACTUAL perpetual tipsiness pushed them toward the Canned and Frozen Goodness diet for their families. Women who thought that Manwich (canned ketchup plus ground beef you bought on your own) was haute cuisine.
ETA: Cooking them all in order appeals to me and my similarly OCD daughter. Note that it’s the “in order” part that appeals to us, though some good eats will also transpire.
Where does this “drunken old lady” thing come from? The story seems to be something along the lines of “Add a cup of wine to the skillet, and here’s one for the chef.” I can believe she might have said that in a show, but that doesn’t mean she was a drunken old lady.
Last year, my son volunteered to bring croissants to his 8th grade French class end-of-the-year party. He likes cooking, so I asked him if he’d like to make croissants. He said yes, and I pulled out Mastering volume one, and we went at it. We had a blast.
Buy the books!
Every house I ever ate in growing up probably had a copy of that book. So far I know nobody ever cooked from them.
I’m sure people do, but I think there is a significant population for whom it is like having A Brief History of Time on the coffee table back in the early '90s. Everybody had it, hardly anybody had read it.
So I wouldn’t be surprised if the author’s premise is basically correct (though obviously universally). That said, even if she’s right, there are worse things in the world that aspirational book buying.
Why not? Isn’t the purpose of a book review to let readers know if they should or should not read the book being reviewed? What’s wrong with stating the reviewer’s conclusion in the title of the article?
Miller, please stop trying to hijack the thread. The topic is: this article is rude. You can agree or disagree, but quit trying to make a meta argument out of it. I don’t know what your point is and I doubt anyone, including you, really cares. Thank you.
The writer might not have even picked the title. It’s like in the newspaper world; the reporters might suggest headlines for their stories, but copy editors (like me) are ultimately the ones responsible.
I don’t have any of her books to hand, but I’m pretty sure in the preface Julia explains that her recipes aren’t authentically French, they’re simplified versions of the real thing, specifically adapted so that America housewives will have no trouble obtaining ingredients, or understanding specialized cooking techniques.
For real Tipsy Cooking, check out Sandra Lee’s Semi-Homemade on Food TV. Most of her shows include a couple of killer cocktails. The less said about her food, the better–although the folks at TwoP have devoted 16 pages to Ms Lee’s culinary atrocities.
Cisco writes:
> The whole article reads like it was written by a jealous coulda-shoulda-woulda-
> never-has-been.
lisacurl writes:
> You’ve pretty much described the majority of Slate’s content.
TheFifthYear writes:
> That’s about 90% of Slate’s content. “X is now popular or the conventional
> wisdom, so we’ll write an article about how X is wrong.” Mastering the Art of
> French Cooking makes the best seller list? Write an article slamming it.
Really? Could you give me some examples of these sorts of articles from Slate? I’ve just looked through the recent table of contents and I don’t see that they’re doing that sort of article very much.
My fiancee is a classically trained, educated French chef. I, on the other hand, am not. He is actually teaching me gourmet cooking using her cookbook as a model. I can bake like the dickens, but cook… I need Julia’s help! It’s great for a novice chef like myself. I mean, I can make Mac and Cheese, and know a few decent casserole recipes, but fancy cooking? She’s helping me the whole way.
90% was, of course, hyperbole, but they do have a definite contrarian slant. In fact, googling “slate contrarian” will bring up some example articles, as well as criticisms.
Here’s a quote from Jonah Goldberg’s criticism of the magazine (solicited by themselves on the occasion of their 10th anniversary):
From Eric Alterman:
Here’s another, from Brendan Nyhan:
If this woman really cared about the state of how Americans are eating, she would be encouraging people to buy this book, and use it, to try to master cooking a few complicated dishes because when you do, you realize that cooking simpler things isn’t such a chore after all. If one crazy Saturday night you cook up and serve a beouf bourginwhatever then maybe putting some butter and herbs on a chicken and putting it into the oven on a Wednesday won’t seem so daunting and that when you do the math, it’s both more economical and more healthful than buying another bucket of KFC, even the new “grilled” kind.
You’d be wrong. I’m as confused as Miller.
Hell you could fake up a pintade au riz sauvage by cooking up a batch of long grain and wild rice in chicken broth with an onion and a tomato chopped into it at the beginning of the cooking, split a cornish game hen in half front to back [so each piece has a leg and wing and breast] then gently sauteing it in butter and olive oil that has been used to saute up a clove of garlic, and then sliding the whole bird in halves into a vessel one can roast the birdy bits in, while sauteing a tad of flour in the drippings until it is a roux then deglazing with white wine. Put half the rice on each plate, flop a bird half on the rice, spooge the sauce on top [not assininely decoratively around on the plate where you cant taste it on the food] and slap on the table with a nice tossed salad and something nice to drink.
Probably about half an hour of actual prep time spread out over about an hour, and a very nice dinner for 2 or 4 [1 game hen per 2 people for a light service, I suppose you can do a whole game hen per person but i dont do huge servings. Id rather do small portions of protein.fat and large portions of fruit and veggies.]
Wonderful. Then the two of you will have each other to keep company somewhere else. Two dozen other people get it just fine.
No. I like it in this thread just fine, thank you, and will continue to read along just as I have before. I’m simply correcting your mistaken impression that no one understands or cares about Miller’s quite simple point.
Cisco, if you think that Miller and Aesiron are doing something that’s against the rules of the SDMB, then ask a moderator to tell them so. Otherwise, you can’t tell them to get out of your thread just because you don’t like their posts.