Disaster and Triumph with Julia Child

Kitchen Adventures with Clafouti

This post is part of Fight Back Fridays. Sometimes eating seasonally and preparing your own food can be dangerous.

It all started innocently enough. Sweet cherries are in season, and I found Julia Child’s recipe for clafouti, or cherry flan. It happened to call for an abundant quantity of seasonal cherries, and Julia deemed it “as simple a dessert to make as you can imagine.” It seemed like a perfect opportunity to challenge my culinary skills and take advantage of the Nature’s Harmony pastured eggs, palm sugar, and raw goat’s milk we had on hand, along with said cherries. Little did I know the danger lurking in my kitchen.

Setting the Stage

My friend Lynn introduced me to Julia Child a year or so ago, and convinced me that I just had to own some of her cookbooks. I didn’t have a clue what that was about, but Lynn is very sure of herself, so I ordered a few used cookbooks. (Since then I’ve learned that if I bought every great book Lynn recommended to me I’d have to take out a second mortgage or get a second job.) I haven’t been sorry for a minute, though. Julia’s books are fascinating just to read and browse through.

Last November I invited over 4 couples for a Julia Child dinner party. Each of us prepared an item from one of her recipes and brought it for an amazing potluck dinner. I think it was one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten. June brought the main course, a leg of lamb that had marinated for 3 days. She didn’t have the recipe, so she found a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a bookstore and copied it with her mobile phone camera. Now that’s resourceful!

Back to the cherries. Most summers I take advantage of my time off work from school to detox and eat intentionally. I recently learned about the best foods for my metabolic type, but was facing serious resistance to strengthening my system by severely reducing carbohydrates and dairy products. The cherries were calling, and so was Julia.

I have an emotional connection to fresh cherries. A favorite childhood memory is picking sweet cherries and perfect peaches from Granny’s back yard orchard in Jacksonville, Illinois. I don’t remember eating the cherries raw, but they were the featured ingredient in Granny’s cherry pies topped with a flaky lattice pastry. I shared this memory with Jon on our first date, a blind meeting that began at a local mall, neutral territory, but didn’t end until after 3:00 a.m. when we ate cherry pie at a Waffle House in Buckhead.

A few weeks ago, I sent out a tweet about a Julia Child recipe I had prepared. One of my Twitter friends wanted to know if it came from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, her favorite. That is one book I didn’t have in my collection yet, so I placed an order for it along with a copy of Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell. Julie blogged about finding new purpose in life by cooking her way through every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It is very funny, and is about to released as a film. Julie had regular meltdowns as she struggled through challenges including the butchering of live lobsters and the hatching of maggots from her slimy dish drain.

The Clafouti

Jon and I had a busy day yesterday and did not have the time or patience to grill the beef heart that has been marinating for two days now. We decided to try a local restaurant for the first time and happened to arrive in the middle of a local food event. We were too late for that, but the chef allowed us to purchase the filet mignon entree, grass-fed from local White Oak Pastures. We chatted with the manager who treated me to a local Terrapin beer to pair with my steak. After dinner we went to Whole Foods to get the cherries.

At first I thought I’d make clafouti in the morning and we’d just prep the cherries. We discovered that a knife isn’t really useful for cherry pitting when a sharp fingernail and fingers can do the trick more quickly. Immersing our hands into the plump, juicy, cherries and staining our fingers with the sweet, red, tart juice was quite a sensual experience. Eating the occasional over ripe cherry was a nice bonus. You don’t get that by opening a Mrs. Smith’s frozen pie and popping it into the oven.

We had plenty of cherries, so I decided to try both variations – Cherry Flan, and Cherry Flan with Liqueur. The second variation called for marinating the cherries in sugar and cognac. I had one pyrex pie plate that seemed perfect for the occasion, and Jon suggested our trusty cast iron pan for the second one. The recipe called for a “fireproof dish,” as it goes from stovetop to oven.

One thing you need to know about me is that I am basically a morning person. I’m sharp as a tack at 5:00 in the morning, but after 9:00 at night, my brain goes to mush. By the time we finished pitting the cherries, it was 10:00. But the clafouti called to me, and I began to whip up the batter. I should have learned from reading Powell’s book that it does not pay to ignore Julia. She knows her stuff. But I wanted to use my new Kitchenaide stand mixer and used that instead of a blender for mixing the eggs, milk, and a couple tablespoons of flour. It came out lumpy, so Jon helped me out by remixing it in the blender.

Then I misread the recipe. Instead of pouring 1/4 inch of batter into the cast iron skillet, I melted 1/4 inch of butter into it. Julia loves butter. I caught my mistake before starting the second clafouti, but a little butter never hurt anyone, right? The batter went on top of the butter to set like an omelette before adding the cherries, remaining batter, and popping into the oven. Easy-peasy, right? Before putting the pyrex dish into the oven, I had a flash of inspiration. I set it on a baking pan to prevent possible spillage into the oven. Two seconds later, this is what happened.

The pyrex pan exploded. Thankfully, it was not on my bare oven shelf at the time. About 98% of the mess was contained in the pan, but shards of glass did fly onto the floor, counter, and stovetop. The Cherry Flan with Liqueur appeared untouched, so I popped it into the oven to bake. Now, at this point, Julie Powell would have had one of her famous meltdowns with much shouting and use of her favorite four letter word beginning with f. I like to think I handled it more like Julia would have. I took it in stride and was grateful that it wasn’t much worse. Jon, sweetie that he is, helped clean up the glass shards. After that, however, he retreated to his office and refused to have anything to do with the clafouti. He is convinced that it is full of hidden glass shards that will embed themselves in my intestines and kill me. So, dear reader, if this is the last blog you read from me, you will know why. And it serves me right. But I’m not going to let the risk of a little glass get in the way of my cherry orgy. After all, I drink raw milk, consume raw eggs, and cook with lard. I do take a few risks with my food.

Anyway, all’s well that ends well. The clafouti turned out beautifully! The one in the cast iron pan (highly recommended) was the one that got the 1/4 inch of butter and the cognac, by the way. I can’t imagine that Jon won’t come around and enjoy a bit of it with me. But if not, his loss is my gain. I’ll be enjoying clafouti all day.

Julia Child’s Clafouti (Cherry Flan)

serves 6-8

1 1/4 cups milk

1/3 cup sugar

3 eggs

1 Tablespoon vanilla

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup flour

3 cups cherries, pitted

1/3 cup sugar

powdered sugar

In a blender blend the milk, sugar, eggs, vanilla, salt and flour. Pour a 1/4 inch layer of the batter in a buttered 7 or 8 cup lightly buttered fireproof baking dish. Place in the oven until a film of batter sets in the pan. Remove from the heat and spread the cherries over the batter. Sprinkle on the 1/3 cup of sugar. Pour on the rest of the batter. Bake at 350 degrees for about for about 45 minutes to an hour. The clafouti is done when puffed and brown and and a knife plunged in the center comes out clean. Sprinkle with powdered sugar, serve warm.

Variation: Clafouti a la Liqueur – Follow the master recipe but first let the cherries stand for 1 hour in 1/4 cup kirsch or cognac and 1/3 cup sugar. Omit the 1/3 cup sugar in the recipe and reduce milk to 1 cup.

Bon Apetit!