Recipes to Live and Learn By
Three classic cookbooks and the dishes we make most often
Issue 08: From Dana’s kitchen
The recipes we develop for The Dynamite Shop have to check off certain boxes: they should teach one or two (not twelve!) great cooking lessons; the ingredient list has to be easily shop-able and flexible; and the technique should be something an eight-year-old could pull off on their own during class.
So, pretty much, Julia Child’s Coq au Vin is out.
That’s okay – there’s time for the kids to learn how to make this epic chicken stew. Maybe they’ll pull Julia’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking off the shelf and tackle it on their own one weekend afternoon and serve it to you for dinner – wouldn’t that be nice? Or you can make it together, divvying up the laborious steps, after watching The French Chef episode devoted to it (PBS membership is required, but what a culinary education in this archive!). You have to boil and peel the onions, saute the mushrooms, cook the bacon, brown the chicken, then flambe the whole thing – this is a big commitment recipe, and every time I make it, I pour myself a glass out of the cooking wine and think, there MUST be an easier way. (There isn’t.)
Learning how to cook from books is how I did it, and Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Knopf, 1961) was – is – one of my most cherished guides. This was Julia Child’s breakout book; the one she co-authored with French cooking teachers Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle that introduced the American market to the riches of French cuisine. Even though I’ve made this dish (and the Tarte Tatin and Boeuf Bourguignon) enough times that the process is seared into my memory, I still turn to those sauce-splattered pages to cheer me on.