A few weeks back, my very kind wife decided to pick up a few different books either written by, or written about Mrs. Child as a gift for me. One in particular stood out though: Julie Powell’s book, “Julie and Julia”, which the upcoming movie is based on. I’ve known about Julie and her work for some time, seeing as how my blog is the exact same kind of “cook the book” endeavor that she decided to tackle head on a few years ago.

I shot an e-mail off to my inspiration, Carol Blymire (from the world famous French Laundry At Home and now Alinea At Home), to find out if she had been inspired by Julie to start her blogs. It would have been a great “Six Degrees of Separation” kind of moment if she had, but Carol started working her way down the culinary path she’s on now for a different reason:

I was tired of eating takeout and cooking the same old thing week after week, and I was pissed off that the Food Network had dumbed down its programing so much. I wanted to put something out there that showed that cooking wasn’t hard and that we shouldn’t be afraid of it. I wanted to reconnect with my love of cooking and make it a priority again in my life. If an untrained home cook like me who works 60-70 hours a week could cook through The French Laundry Cookbook, anyone can cook anything. I have so many friends who keep cooking at an arms’ length, proud of the fact that they can’t or don’t cook, and it makes me sad that we’re losing this great tradition passed down from one generation to the next. It’s a cop-out to say, ‘I’m too busy to cook.” Bullshit. When I think about the hours we all waste on Facebook, Twitter, watching TV and other crap we give higher priority to rather than what we put in our bodies, it bums me out. So, I decided to walk the walk and not just talk the talk.

In my very humble opinion, I’d like to think that Carol has taken on a Julia Child mindset about cooking.

I’ve been slowly working my way through “Julie and Julia”, and it’s been comforting to say the very least. I’ve found quite a few moments in the book that paralleled my own trials and tribulations trying to find exact ingredients. It’s very nice knowing that someone else out there was searching for bone marrow just as hard as I have in the past.

In honor of the Julie and Julia movie, with this update I’ll be showing the step by step progression of making the first recipe Julia made on air, Beef Bourguignon. You can find the recipe over at one of my favorite websites, Simply Recipes.

Here we have all of the necessary ingredients set for making the recipe, with one notable difference. This version will have my own little twist to it, as I’ll be working with beef cheek, not chuck as the recipe asks for.

We start off by blanching six ounces of bacon in water for about eight minutes to remove the smoky flavor. I usually have some unsmoked bacon I cured myself on hand, but it turns out I’d eaten all of it without making more. Whoops! Once the time had elapsed the bacon was dried with a few paper towels and then dropped into my largest cast iron skillet.

The bacon was cooked until it was nice and crisp, which left a significant amount of rendered fat still in the pan. My now crispy bacon slices were moved into a cast iron dutch oven to await future use.

While the bacon was cooking, I started cutting the beef cheek into two inch cubes. Just so there are no illusions, when I say beef cheek, I mean the actual cheek of a cow. The cheek meat is very similar to the chuck in the sense that both cuts are tough and need long cooking times to make them tender. The advantage of using cheek is that they’re not only cheaper, but there is significantly more fat to them, which keeps the flesh tender and succulent. If you happen upon some beef cheeks at your local supermarket, I encourage you to pick one up. You’ll never go back to pot roasts again!

Into the hot bacon fat the first batch of cheek cubes went. I made sure not to over-crowd the pan, which would lead to steaming. Here we wanted to get a nice browning on all sides, not a pale grey or a burnt offering. With each batch of cheek cubes I added salt and pepper for seasoning, and moved the cooked meat into the dutch oven with the bacon.

After all of the beef had been browned, I removed some of the excess fat from the pan, and added two cups of sliced onions and a cup of sliced carrots. The veggies needed to be cooked thoroughly, so I cranked the heat up a little bit to get them on their way.

After eight or nine minutes, the onions had softened enough and the carrots were nice and pliable. These too were decanted into the dutch oven. I popped the cork out of a bottle of California Zin, and poured it into the pan for deglazing purposes. Using a wooden spoon, I scrapped all the tasty little brown bits off the bottom of the pan.

As I deglazed, my wife lent a hand by making a bouquet garni with parsley, thyme, a bay leaf, two whole cloves and three smashed cloves of garlic.

The red wine used to deglaze the pan was poured into the dutch oven along with the bouquet garni, a cup of diced tomatoes and enough beef stock to almost cover all of the pot’s inhabitants. This was brought up to a boil, and then covered and placed in a 325 degree oven for two hours.

I left the kitchen for the first hour and went back to reading Julie and Julia, but soon enough, the timer I had set to remind me to start working on the pearl onions went off. Back in the kitchen, I set a pot of water to boil. Once I saw the tell-tale sign of bubbling water, the pearl onions were dumped in to blanch for a minute. They were quickly removed and placed under cold running water to stop them from cooking further. As the onions became cool enough to handle, I made “X” slices on the bottom of each one. In another pan I melted two table spoons of butter and added the onions to cook. Sugar and chicken stock went in as well, and I covered the pan for about twenty five minutes to let the onions soak up the chicken stock as they simmered.

In yet another pan (the French must have a lot of spare cooking pans) I started cooking a pound and a half of button mushrooms that my wife had washed and quartered with a little olive oil and butter. They cooked down nicely, and I removed all of the excess moisture as they cooked.

Finally, the two hours had elapsed. I pulled the dutch oven out and removed the lid. A wonderfully beefy smell had permeated the whole house by now, and my puppy transformed into a permanent fixture, right in front of the oven. There is nothing quite like playing “Don’t step on the Dog” while cooking, is there? With a slotted spoon I moved all of the meat and veggies out of the dutch oven and into a serving bowl. The cooking liquid needed to reduce down so I turned my burner up to “POWER BOIL” in an effort to speed things up.

Away from the “POWER BOIL” I started to make the beurre manié, which is simply two tablespoons of melted butter mixed with three tablespoons of flour, and is used to thicken soups and sauces. I added the paste to the reducing liquid slowly, making sure not to leave any big flour chunks floating around, since not many people I know want to bite into a ball of flour paste.

I know exactly what you’re thinking: “That looks like a mess.” I’ll agree with you, it does. But it’s one damn tasty mess. All of the meat, vegetables, onions and mushrooms were dumped back into the reduced and thickened liquid, and tossed for an even coating. I was done. This was one of the “simple, not easy” recipes that Julie talked about in the book.

In the bottom of every bowl I heaped some overly-rich mashed potatoes, which I then covered with the Beef Bourguignon. A little chopped parsley was added for decoration.

While I could assume that the Beef Bourguignon was going to be wonderful just by its smell, nothing could prepare me for the actual taste. Massive amounts of flavor jockeyed for my attention with the superb, tender texture of the beef cheek. The effort was totally worth it, and I thank Julia for the recipe, and applaud Julie for making this not once, but twice within the timeline of the book.  How she managed to work her way through the whole book in just one year is astonishing.  I’ve got respect for her by the bucket-load.

Before I finish, I’d like to urge you to do me a small favor: If you plan on going to go see Julie and Julia, take that friend of yours that doesn’t seem to understand why you care so much about cooking or food. I think they’ll see the light before the credits roll.

Bon appétit!