january “julia” - boeuf bourguignon

Last week, I posted a list of eleven tasks I plan to accomplish in 2011.  This past weekend, I knocked (part of) one off my list!  On Sunday after church, Andrew and I got crackin’ on some Boeuf Bourguignon – straight from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  It was amazingly good, and cooking it was a lot of fun – but first…

LOOK at this cookbook.  I adore it.  I went to a thrift store specifically looking for a vintage copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and found one!  What luck!  My favorite part is that, in the sixties, the woman who owned it made notations throughout the book on all of the recipes she made herself.  I feel like, when I cook from it, I’m not only channeling Julia, but I’m channeling this adventurous-cook-of-a-lady who owned this book before me.

We cooked our Boeuf Bourguignon, following Julia’s recipe strictly minus using turkey bacon instead of bacon and using turkey stock in place of beef stock (we had both on hand and it seemed silly to buy other ingredients!)  It was fairly simple to make – but spent lots of time cooking on the stovetop and baking in the oven.

I baked homemade bread to go with it, and we served the beef over roasted potatoes with a side of buttered peas because that’s how Julia said it should be served!  We served it on a beautiful platter handed down to me by my grandma – and had my mom and grandma over for dinner to share it with us – which made it even more special.  As we were nearly finished devouring it, I realized we hadn’t taken a single picture of it “ready to serve.”  All we got was this…

Which I think shows exactly how delicious our first venture into Mastering the Art of French Cooking turned out to be!  If you’re looking for Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon recipe, I found a link on Oprah’s website.  It’s amazing – and I’d highly recommend it, especially as a Sunday meal on a cold, wintry weekend!

Technically, I can’t even cross a task off of my list, since my goal is to make one of Julia’s recipes each month in 2011.  Boeuf Bourguignon was a great start to completing this goal!  I think we did Julia proud!