Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home

Potato Salads\ Potato salad is perfect picnic fare, but it is a good side dish any time of year, dressed and garnished in various styles to suit the season. Julia's American-style potato salad is garnished with hard-boiled eggs and crisp bacon bits, chopped pickles, onions, and celery, all given a light coating of homemade mayonnaise. Make this at least an hour ahead of time so the flavors have time to ripen, and serve cool or at room temperature. Jacques's salad is particularly nice for winter meals -- the hot potatoes are tossed with white wine and oil, sautéed onions, scallions, and garlic. Serve it warm, with slices of hot, homemade sausage arranged on top, or with other meats.\ The best potatoes for salad are the firm-textured, low-starch "waxy" varieties, which hold their shape well, such as boiling potatoes, small new potatoes, or delicate fingerlings. All-purpose potatoes with waxy flesh, such as the versatile Yukon Gold, are particularly delicious. Whatever kind you use, dress the potatoes while they are still warm so that they best absorb the flavors, and gently fold in all the dressing and seasoning ingredients in one or two additions only, so the potato pieces don't get mashed from overhandling.\ Julia's American-Style Potato Salad\ Yield: About 6 cups, serving 4 to 6\ 2 pounds large Yukon Gold potatoes, or other waxy, boiling potatoes\ 2 Tbs cider vinegar\ 1/3 cup chicken stock or potato-cooking water\ 2/3 cup finely chopped onion\ 1/2 cup finely chopped celery\ 3 or 4 slices crisply cooked bacon, chopped or crumbled\ 2 to 3 Tbs finely chopped pickle, sweet or dill\ 2 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and sliced thin\ 3 Tbs or so finely chopped fresh chives or scallions, including a bit of their tender green Salt and freshly ground white pepper\ 1 cup or so mayonnaise, homemade if possible (pages 117 and 120)\ Sour cream (optional)\ For garnishing\ Crisp whole red-leaf or other lettuce leaves Canned red pimiento, diced; sliced hard-boiled eggs; tomato quarters; parsley sprigs (optional)\ Peel the potatoes and slice each one lengthwise in half, or in quarters if very large; then cut crosswise into half-round or quarter-round slices, about 1/2 inch thick.\ Put the slices in a saucepan with water just to cover and 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt per quart of water. Heat to a simmer, and cook the potatoes for 5 to 6 minutes, or until just cooked through. It is essential that they be just cooked through. Bite into a slice or two to be very sure. Immediately remove from the heat and drain the potatoes into a colander, but save a cup of the cooking liquid for dressing the potatoes. Transfer the potatoes to a large bowl. Stir the cider vinegar with 1/3 cup of the potato water or chicken stock and drizzle this over the potato pieces, turning them gently to distribute it evenly. Let sit 10 minutes to absorb the liquid.\ Add the prepared onion, celery, bacon, pickle, hard-boiled eggs, and chives, and season carefully to taste. Top with 2/3 cup of mayonnaise (or a mix of mayonnaise and a bit of sour cream) and, with a large rubber spatula, gently fold everything together until well blended. Taste the salad and add more salt, pepper, or mayonnaise as needed.\ Cover the salad and set aside in the refrigerator for at least an hour or so before serving. If it is refrigerated longer, let it come back to room temperature before serving. Taste and adjust the seasoning again.\ To serve, line a bowl or a platter with red-leaf lettuce or other greens, and mound the salad on top. Decorate at the last moment, if you wish, with any or all of the optional garnishes.\ Jacques's French Potato Salad\ Yield: About 6 cups, serving 4 to 6\ 2 pounds fingerling potatoes or other small waxy potatoes\ 1/2 cup or so extra-virgin olive oil\ 1/2 cup 1/4-inch slices of scallion, green and white parts\ 1/2 cup chopped onion\ 3 cloves garlic, mashed and coarsely chopped (1 1/2 tsp)\ 1/3 cup white wine\ 1 1/2 Tbs Dijon-style mustard\ 2 to 3 Tbs chopped chives\ 2 Tbs or more coarsely chopped fresh green or purple basil, fresh tarragon, or parsley\ 1 tsp kosher salt, plus more if needed\ 1/2 tsp freshly cracked black pepper (coarse), plus more if needed\ For serving and garnishing\ Large radicchio leaves, about 6, from the outside of the head\ 1 or 2 hard-boiled eggs, coarsely chopped Chopped fresh parsley\ Scrub the potatoes and put them, whole, in a saucepan with water to cover by 1/2 inch. Bring the water to a boil, reduce the heat, and cook the potatoes gently until they are just tender and can be pierced with a sharp knife. Drain immediately and let cool slightly. (Scrape the skin from the cooked potatoes, if you want, as soon as they can be handled. For a decorative look with fingerlings, scrape off only a band of skin, about 1/2 inch thick, all around the long sides of the potato.)\ Heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a small saute pan. When hot, add the scallions and the onion, toss to coat well, and cook for about a minute over medium-high heat. Add the garlic, toss to mix, and cook for just a few moments, then remove the pan from the heat.\ Slice the potatoes while still warm, cutting them crosswise into 1/2-inch sections. Put the pieces in a large mixing bowl, pour the wine and 3 or 4 tablespoons of olive oil over them, and toss gently to distribute. Add the warm vegetables from the pan, mustard, chives, chopped herbs, salt, and pepper, and gently fold all together, mixing well but not crushing the potatoes. Taste the salad and add more seasonings as you like.\ Serve the potatoes warm (no colder than room temperature). Arrange the large radicchio leaves, if you have them, in a close circle on the serving platter, with their curved insides up, to form a rough bowl. Spoon the potato salad inside the leaves, sprinkle chopped egg around the edges, and parsley over the top.

\ From Barnes & NobleCooking with Two Culinary Masters \ As any dedicated cook will tell you, the same recipe can yield startlingly different results in different hands. Sometimes it happens because of the quality of ingredients used, sometimes it's due to technical issues like humidity or oven temperature, but more often than not, it's because different cooks have different tricks, shortcuts, techniques, and tastes that make their influence felt even when they stick close to a recipe's directions. Julia Child and Jacques Pépin do something wonderful in the beautiful new companion volume to their PBS series, Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home. They highlight and play with these differences, showing the reader exactly how and why they make the same dish differently and explaining the results. Charmingly, they do it in their own voices, and they're not afraid to disagree with each other. The book brings the personalities of these two legends, as they improvise, joke, and argue, to vivid life. It's also beautifully put together, with simple sidebars color-coded to each chef's comments, step-by-step photos illustrating techniques like beating egg whites or cleaning an artichoke, and candid black-and-white shots of the chefs on and off the TV set. The recipes included cover the basics of great casual French cuisine, from perfect roast chicken to classic omelettes, from Niçoise salad to crème brûlée. For a beginning cook, Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home offers not just the expert advice of two culinary masters but a unique insight into the thought processes that go into putting a dish together. And for more experienced home chefs, the book is simply a pleasure, both to read and to cook from.\ —Kate Murphy Zeman\ \ \ \ \ \ Laurie Glenn BuckleIn Julia and Jacques Cooking at Homethese two legendary cooks explore the classics of French home cooking, explaining the traditional methods of preparing the dishes and then offering up their own interpretations and innovations for a book that is as full of information as it is full of personality. \ — Bon Appetit\ \ \ Publishers WeeklyCulinary grande dame Child and master chef Pepin pin define "the basics of fine food that looks good, tastes the way it should and is a total pleasure to eat." Chapters are organized into appetizers, soups, eggs, salads and sandwiches, potatoes, vegetables, fish, poultry, meats and desserts. Based on the vast experience of these chefs, the book takes a she says/he says approach to home-style French cooking: While Julia finds the dark digestive vein in shrimp "ugly" and automatically removes it, Jacques considers it "perfectly good protein to eat"; Julia prefers seasoning food with white pepper, but Jacques uses black pepper, and so forth. Child and P pin recycle familiar Franco-American classics, like Omelets, Souffl s, French Fries, Sole Meuni re, Roast Chicken, Steak Au Poivre and Cr me Br l e, with a contemporary sleight-of-hand (e.g., stocks that can be made within an hour; a microwave method for clarified butter). Eschewing today's trendy global pantry, recipes emphasize fresh, seasonal ingredients. There is also no shortage of shopping, preparation and technique tips from the pros, such as Jacques's perspective on buying a good steak: "it's more useful to have knowledge about cuts of meat than a lot of money." A charismatic tag team, veterans Child and P pin illuminate novice and seasoned home cooks alike, gently reminding readers that "eating, as well as cooking, should be pleasurable and guiltless." First serial to Gourmet; Good Cook Book Club main selection; author tour. (Sept.) FYI: Cooking at Home is based on a forthcoming 22-part PBS series. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.\ \ \ \ \ Library JournalWhat could be better than seeing these two incomparable chefs cooking together in Julia's kitchen and having a wonderful time while they're at it? This is the companion volume to the authors' new PBS series, premiering in October, but there are many "bonus" recipes here, including some that had to be cut from the series because of time limitations and others created especially for this book. For each show, the two chefs started out with ideas and ingredients but no set recipes, so they improvised as they went along, cooking a lot of their favorite traditional dishes and coming up with new ones as well. The two didn't always agree--each recipe has one sidebar from Julia, another from Jacques, presenting each one's take on the dish and personalized tips. Dozens of boxes throughout the text provide information on a wide variety of topics, from "Julia on Getting a Good Chicken" to "P pin Peels a Pepper," and the more than 300 color photos show both techniques step by step and many of the finished dishes. An essential purchase, of course. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/99; BOMC/Good Cook main selection.] Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.\ \ \ \ \ Jennifer WolcottJulia and Jacques Cooking at Home is every bit as entertaining as it is the program and even more useful. Colorful comments from each of these formidable cooks make it a good read and differing opinions on such topics as tools used to scramble eggs or what type of chicken to buy probe that cooking, like any art, is highly individual.\ —Christian Science Monitor\ \