cook-bookin

I am in the process of reading the book Julie and Julia by Julie Powell - you know the one, girl starts blog chronicling her adventures cooking her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child and it eventually is made into a book and then a movie.  I got the book for Christmas from my mom a few years back in the gift pack (meaning the novel came shrink wrapped to the cookbook that inspired it) just a few days after I saw the movie.  Now I have to say, I found the movie to be...well disappointing; that is why I sort of subconsciously put off reading the book for so long.  I have always found books to be better than movies but that movie just didn't strike me as something I would want to put the time it takes to read 359 pages into.   I've been meaning to, because I mean to read every book that I receive as a gift, but I hadn't gotten around to it until now.  The cookbook, sadly, has scarcely seen any action either.  It inspired my French-themed potluck very early in the Tahoe-Potluck days (which failed miserably by the way, not that it wasn't a blast, but the theme was butchered with no one except for me all that interested in French cooking we ended up with about 5 loaves of French bread, 3 cheese platters, some Pilsbury crescent rolls, and even some French Fries - arguably the least French thing there, even with their very "Frenchy" name - on the menu) and since that fateful potluck I have done little more that cart it back across the country and stick it back in the pile with all of my other cookbooks to be forgotten when I arrived home and had all of my mothers vast (compared to mine at least...) collection of cookbooks to play with.  

At any rate that brings us to now, I am only 93 pages into the novel and already I am dying to share two things - one, that I now want to cook my way through Julia Child's cookbook and two, that this book is miles better than the movie with more likeable characters, sillier narration, and a whole lot of humor that was completely lacking in the movie.  Julie explains where her obsession with Julia started (something to do with the resemblance of Mastering the Art of French Cooking to the copy of The Joy of Sex she discovered hidden in her home as an adolescent) and how finishing her cooking project had more to do with her stubborn-ness than a real commitment to the cause, giving background stories that make me like her a whole lot more than I like the Julie character in the movie.  I understand her a little better now I guess, her silly crass jokes and self-deprecating humor make her a little more relate-able to me than the whiny little woman of the movie who couldn't seem to get through a single recipe without an emotional breakdown and had none of the wit and smart-ass-y-ness that I am finding to be characteristic of the woman in the book.  

Ok, I'm making up words so I think its time for me to change subject; I'll share pictures and recipes from the book when I try them but this week I have been cooking recipes that I had saved before I started reading it.  The first was recommended by my grandmother who saw it on PBS, made it once and lost the recipe.  Through the glories of the internet I found a recipe, potentially even the same one, for artichoke chicken from a PBS cooking show and printed it out to give to my grams (who was very suprised - I guess she had assumed I would forget - oh ye of little faith!).  I had to sample it of course so I made it for the family tonight and I quite enjoyed it.  The recipe is posted here but I took a few liberties with it, as usual.  First I used a boxed couscous that came pre-seasoned and took only 5 minutes to make.  Easy, delicious, and made up for the fact that I had already thrown out the wilted shallot greens that were supposed to be tossed into the couscous had I made it plain.  Next, I used bagged, dry sundried tomatoes (about $2.99) instead of the kind bottled in oil as the recipe calls for (about $6.99) and let them soak in olive oil that I already had for 2 days before I used them.  Finally I didn't measure anything and made the recipe to serve 4 instead of 1.  I was starving when it was done and it smelled so good I just wanted to dig in so the photos might have been a little rushed, with not much attention to detail, but here's what it looked like:

Now if you'll excuse me I have to get back to my book about some crazy girl with a blog about cooking.  seriously who does that?