Julia's First Dinner Party (@ Kay's)

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Caprese Salad

Baguette with Olive Oil & Basalmic Vinegar

Braised Whole Salmon

Celery Victor

Saffron Rice

Poached Pears

Lemon Sorbet

This was a lot of cooking. I began with the Lemon Sorbet. Julia says the only difference between a sorbet and a sherbet is the speaker, 'sorbet' users being snootier than 'sherbet' users. You can see which I am.

Nobody should make both Lemon Sorbet and Poached Pears in the same day because they both require lemon zest and zesting is a tedious task. It requires the cook to peel just the colored part off the skin of a citrus fruit, leaving the white part of the rind behind. Julia recommends using a vegetable peeler. I thought I knew better and started out with a grater, but eventually surrendered to her expertise and went the peeler route. Either way it takes longer than you want to spend.

After securing your zest from 4-6 lemons you combine it with 1 cup of sugar in a blender for 2 minutes, then add 1.5 cups of water and continue to blend for another 2 minutes. Next put that mixture plus an additional cup of sugar into a saucepan and bring to a boil until the sugar is completely dissolved. Now remove it from the heat; add 3 cups of water and 1 cup of lemon juice that you have extracted from the lemons that you previously zested. Set the pan over a bowl of ice water and stir several minutes until well chilled. Whisk in 2 egg whites that you have beaten until foamy and then put the entire mixture into your ice cream maker. I use a Donvier which has a canister filled with this miracle liquid that you just keep in the freezer. When you want to make ice cream you take it out, fill it with your ice cream mix and then turn the crank several turns every 3 minutes for about 45 minutes.

Immediately after the Sorbet I got onto the Poached Pears. Julia lists Apple Compote as the Master Recipe here, but if you refer to the next page she lists the pear variation, which was my choice. I used Bosc pears, because of their firmer texture and after my lengthy lesson in how to tell when a pear is ripe last weekend, I feel like I am an expert in testing the base of the stem for readiness. The pears are peeled, leaving the stem on and slicing a bit off the bottom to flatten them out so they will sit nicely in the pan, and then poached in a syrup made of 2 c dry white wine, 2 T vanilla extract, and the zest and strained juice from 2 lemons. Bring the syrup to a boil to dissolve the sugar, lower the temperature to below simmer, which ended up being about 150 degrees on my candy thgermometer, and then add the pears for 12-15 minutes. Let them cool in the syrup for 1/2 hour and then refrigerate until serving, reserving the syrup to spoon over the fruit on the plate. The fact that I shaved off the bottom was insignificant due to the fact that they floated while cooking which resulted in one side of them being slightly off color. That could probably have been prevented by adding some Fruit Fresh to the syrup.

Still at a dead run, but mightily glad I was done with zesting I started on the Celery Victor. Julia has a different view of celery than I have been exposed to in the past, which is that you only use the hearts. So in this case, the recipe called for 1/2 head per person. All the tougher, stringier stalks are discarded, the tops of the heads cut down to 8", then the remaining innermost tender stalk is split in half and the root end of the stem shaved, being careful to keep the halves intact. The Master Recipe called for a Mirepoix, which is a handful each of diced onions, celery and carrots sauteed until soft in 2 T butter and seasoned with thyme, salt and pepper. The dish is assembled by spreading half the Mirepoix in the bottom of a buttered rectangular baking dish which is close in size to the area required by the celery. Next put the celery in the baking dish, cut side up, salt, and then spread the remaining Mirepoix over the celery. Add chicken stock to 1/3 of the depth of the celery and top with a piece of buttered wax paper. Bring to a boil on the stove, cover tightly with aluminum foil and transfer to a 350-degree oven for at least 30 minutes. Cool in the simmering liquid an additional 30 minutes, then drain reserving the liquid, and place on a serving dish, cut side up.

Now boil the reserved liquid until somewhat thickened and then add 2 t wine vinegar, 1 T Dijon mustard and 1 T diced shallot. Follow this by slowly whisking in 1/3-cup olive oil and then pour over the celery. Let it marinate, basting if necessary, at least 15 minutes and up to 2 hours. Then scrape off the remaining marinade, turn cut side down, and garnish with pimentos and anchovies laid in 'X' patterns across the celery and chopped capers, parsley and hard-boiled egg, mixed together, and laid around the ends.

Finally we are on to the Braised Whole Salmon. The first thing I didn't want to do was remortgage my house to buy the salmon, so I started by calling around to the local stores to see what they were charging for fresh whole salmon. The local QFC won hands down with fresh wild-caught Coho (Silver) at $3.99/lb. Julia says a whole salmon should arrive at the table well dressed, with its head and tail on, and I had purchased cucumbers to garnish the transition area from head to flesh, but the fish was already headless, it was too late to find it somewhere else, and once again I was learning the hard lesson of planning ahead.

This recipe begins by sauteing 2 cups of sliced onions and 1 cup each of sliced carrots and celery in 6 T of unsalted butter. While that is cooking wash the salmon inside and out, dry, and oil the outside with a "tasteless cooking oil" such as canola, and salt the inside. When the vegetables are cooked, taste and season them with salt and pepper.

To make this dish you will need a pan large enought to hold the fish, that has a rack. (Of course I didn't have one, so I headed back to the store.) Remove the rack from the pan, lay out a piece of cheesecloth about 4 feet long, place the rack in the center of it, oil it, lay the salmon on it and wrap the salmon and rack together with the cheesecloth, and put them in the pan. Then place the vegetables around the fish and add an herb packet, which is made by tying together a bundle of fresh parsley, fresh thyme and a bay leaf. Pour in 3-4 cups dry white wine and enough chicken stock to a depth of 1". Now heat to a simmer on top of the stove, cover with aluminum foil, and transfer to a 350-degree oven for approximately 45 minutes or until the temperature reaches 150 degrees.

Until this point this recipe had seemed pretty straight forward, but I ran into trouble getting the fish out of the pan intact. The fish was too heavy to grab the cheesecloth and lift it out, the liquid was too hot to put my fingers in to lift the rack and I couldn't figure out how to get any tool under the rack and lift it out, so I ended up burning my fingers and again wondering why in the heck I didn't plan ahead. In addition I had figured that my salmon at 5.5 pounds minus its head, must need to cook the whole 45 minutes because Julia had called for a 4-6 lb. salmon including the head. But it was too done to remain intact by the time I was done removing its skin and bones, so I ended up scrunching it together to be fish-shaped, when in fact it had been reduced to a pile of fish meat.

The final installment of the Braised Whole Salmon was the sauce. The recipe called for boiling the braising liquid down to 1 cup and then adding 1 cup of heavy cream and continue boiling for another couple of minutes and then pouring some of the sauce over the salmon and serving the remainder in a bowl. But I had at least 4 cups of braising liquid and after boiling it down for a half an hour, and still having a long way to go before it was reduced to 1 cup, I took a cup out of it and added the cup of cream. It think the result was less tasty and too thin and in retrospect I would have had another glass of wine and waited it out.

The other items on the menu: Caprese Salad, Saffron Rice and Baguette with Basalmic Vinegar and Olive Oil are not Julia recipes, but are delicious and easy to make. For Caprese Salad slice tomatoes, preferable heirloom, and add a fresh basil leaf and slice of mozzarella cheese, preferably buffalo mozzarella, and a light sprinkling of salt. I buy the package of Vigo Saffron Rice and just make it according to package directions. I currently prefer Mezzetta first cold press Extra Virgin Italian Olive Oil and Napa Valley Naturals cherry wood aged Basalmic Grand Reserve Vinegar with my sliced fresh Baguette (slender loaf of French bread).

We, The Main Eater and I, were pleased to host my brother Bill Gustavson and his fiancee, Pam Senter to our first Julia Dinner Party. We all loved the starters, the Caprese Salad and Baguette. I got rave reviews for the Celery Victor from Bill and Pam. The Main Eater liked it as well until he had the misfortune to bite into an anchovy, but personally I despise cooked celery and while I did try a few bites, it is hard to embrace a food that you just can't stand. Everyone was actually the most enthusiastic about the salmon, probably because they hadn't seen the picture of what it was supposed to look like in Julia's book and because they are used to having salmon overcooked. Everyone but me finished off their pears and I thought the syrup was delicious, but I am not a fan of soft fruit and a poached pear is bound to be soft. My greatest dinner moment was the lemon sorbet, which was topped with a couple of spoonfuls of Aquavit, a Norwegian liqour, and is the only Julia recipe from this dinner that I will make again.

The Bottom Line

Caprese Salad: Thumbs Up

Baguette with Olive Oil and Basalmic Vinegar: Thumbs Up

Celery Victor: Thumbs Up

Braised Whole Salmon: Thumbs Down

Saffron Rice: Thumbs Up

Poached Pears: Thumbs Up

Lemon Sorbet: Thumbs Up

Bon Appetit