Cookbook Club – Mastering the Art of French Cooking

For our first Cookbook Club, we used Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I chose the Galettes au Fromage and the Oranges Glaces. Go to my Cookbook Club site to see all the cheesy, buttery goodness we consumed. For now – my dishes!

This was my first Cookbook Club event, and I was a little nervous about cooking for a group of foodies, several of whom were professional chefs. I was also feeling out of my element with Julia Child’s style of cooking. I tend to do more with spices and herbs, less with butter and cream. But the whole point of Cookbook Club was to expand my repertoire (well that, and to eat lots of good food), so challenge accepted!

I will admit that on my first pass through Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I was daunted by the complexity and shear quantity of butter, cream, and cheese that seemed to appear on every page. So the first recipe I was drawn to had no butter, cream, or cheese and sounded downright simple – Oranges Glaces (translation: Glazed Oranges). Ingredients – oranges and sugar. Yes, this is a recipe I could get behind!

All I had to do was simmer thin strips of the orange part of the skin in water, then add them to a sugar and water mixture that I’d boiled down to a syrupy glaze. The hardest part was cutting all the remaining white part of the peels off the oranges so that I was left with beautiful peel-less orange balls. I did this ahead of time and put the oranges in the fridge, so that when I was making the glaze I could focus and not risk burning it. Perhaps this was a mistake, because once ready I poured the warm glaze over the cold oranges, which immediately caused some of the sugar to solidify. I’m not sure whether or not that was supposed to happen, but it gave the oranges a sweet crust which I actually quite enjoyed.

I was feeling sheepish about choosing such a basic recipe, so guilted myself into doing another. This one did involve both butter and cheese, but seemed only moderately difficult – Galettes au Fromage (translation: Cheese Wafers). I mixed together grated Swiss cheese, softened butter, what seemed like the tiniest amount of flour (Julia Child literally notes that there’s just enough flour to hold the galettes together while they bake), salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper. Then I made 1-tablespoon balls, and flattened them into I/4-inch thick cakes. I painted each with beaten egg and topped with more grated cheese, then baked!

The Galettes au Fromage use a half pound of butter! Butter oozed out of them and filled the baking sheet during the baking. I wish I’d taken a picture, but I was just focused on not failing at my first Cookbook Club. I put paper towels between each layer when I transported them to the party, and the paper towels were soaked through by the time I got there. Serious butter. I tried one of the Galettes when they were fresh out of the oven (of course!) and it was a tasty treat. They lost some of their luster by the time we were eating them at the party at room temp. Good note to remember as I choose recipes for future Cookbook Club events.