Julia's Delicious Little Dinners: Six perfect small dinner parties to share with family and friends. - Hardcover

Child, Julia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375403361 ISBN 13: 9780375403361

Publisher: Knopf, 1998

Synopsis

Straight from the Kitchen of Julia Child, here is a game plan for giving a perfect dinner party--in fact, six perfect little dinner parties

Whether it's a full-dress party or an old-fashioned chicken dinner, now anyone can entertain without tears or tension.

The six superb menus in this book:
Dinner for the Boss (featuring a standing rib roast and ending with bourbon-soaked chocolate truffles)

Country Dinner (Mediterranean hors d'oeuvres, leek and rabbit pie, and ice cream-filled meringues)

Butterflied Pork for a Party (preceded by celery root remoulade and finishing with a gateau Mont-Saint-Michel)

Rack of Lamb for a Very Special Occasion (with artichoke scoops garnished with shellfish, and fresh strawberries and hazelnut cornucopias for a sweet ending)

Summer Dinner (individual chicken liver aspics, poached salmon steaks, and a savarin au rhum)

Old-Fashioned Chicken Dinner (with a chocolate bombe for dessert)

Each dinner is imaginative, often playful, and beautifully orchestrated. You'll learn everything you need to know about ingredients, cooking techniques, planning ahead, and improvising leftovers so that each menu becomes a lesson in the art of preparing a small, elegant dinner that anyone can be proud of.

With 119 full-color photographs
This book and its companion--Julia's Menus for Special Occasions feature the finest recipes from Julia Child & Company and  Julia Child & More Company

About this title

Review:

Having a dinner party? Want to kick it old school? Julia Child's Julia's Delicious Little Dinners might just be the cookbook to help it all come together. Built around six dinners for six, this is not one of Julia Child's encyclopedic volumes on cooking. Instead, it's a lesson in menu planning--Julia lays out menus for different occasions, seasons, and tastes, carefully describing the entire process of planning a meal. Whether you're cooking roast beef for the boss or having rabbit and leek pie with friends, this book is ready to assist with whimsical suggestions on wine, presentation, and the pacing of courses. With an abundance of large pieces of meat and quaint little garnishes, the fare here leans toward the traditional. Julia's inclusion of dishes like Chicken Livers in Aspic seems refreshingly archaic in this era of "fusion cuisine." Nonetheless, the beautiful and very helpful technical photographs (depicting everything from butchering beef rib roasts to cleaning a leek) will dispel any doubt that this is a contemporary cookbook for the adept home cook. --David Kalil

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

For an 8-cup baking dish, serving 8 people:

12 or more ears fresh corn (to make about 3 cups or ¾ L cream-style grated corn)
6 eggs
2 to 3 Tb grated onion
1 tsp salt
4 to 5 Tb fresh minced parsley
2/3 cup (1½ dL) lightly pressed down crumbs from crustless nonsweet white bread
2/3 cup (1½ dL) lightly pressed down grated cheese (such as a mixture of Swiss and/or Cheddar or mozzarella)
2/3 cup (1½ dL) heavy cream
6 drops hot pepper sauce (or 1/8 tsp Cayenne pepper)
8 to 10 grinds fresh pepper

Equipment
A corn scraper or grater; a straight-sided 8-cup (2-L) baking dish, such as a charlotte mold 5 to 6 inches (13 to 15 cm) deep, and a larger baking dish in which to set it.

Scrape or grate the corn and turn into a measure to be sure you have about 3 cups or ¾ liter. Beat the eggs in a mixing bowl to blend; then add all the rest of the ingredients listed, including the corn.
        Recipe may be completed even a day in advance to this point; cover and refrigerate.
        Preheat over to 350ºF/180ºC. About 2 hours before serving, butter the 8-cup (2-L) baking dish and line bottom with a round of buttered wax paper. Stir up the corn mixture to blend thoroughly and pour into the dish. Set corn dish in larger dish and pour boiling water around to come two-thirds up the sides of the corn-filled dish. Bake in lower middle level of oven for half an hour, then turn thermostat down to 325ºF/170ºC. Baking time is around 1¼ to 1½ hours, and water surrounding timbale should almost but never quite bubble; too high heat can make a custard (which this is) grainy. Timbale is done when it has risen almost to fill the mold, the top has cracked open, and a skewer plunged down through the center comes out clean. Let rest 10 minutes or more in turned-off oven, door ajar, before unmolding.
        May be baked an hour or so before serving; the timbale will sink down as it cools, but who would ever know how high it might have been, once it is unmolded?
        Note: Any timbale leftovers can be sliced and eaten cold, or easily turned into a hot soup. Also, as ears vary so in yield, you may have extra pulp and milk on hand. If so, try corn chowder, or make skillet corn dowdy, corn flan, or corn crêpes. Or have corn fritters for breakfast; or combine the pulp with other crunch bits of vegetables, in puffy eggs fu yung.

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0375403361
• ISBN 13: 9780375403361
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 112