We rocked the chocolate mousse

Following up on our movie night at Julie and Julia, Clara and I borrowed the book that started it all – Mastering the Art of French Cooking – and rustled up a fantastic meal that I still am not entirely comfortable pronouncing, my French being way limited. It was Boeuf a la Parisienne (sauteed beef with mushrooms and cream sauce), and we chose the recipe because it looked relatively easy and not-so-time-consuming for a first try. True to her reputation, Julia calls for beaucoup butter and cream, and we used it all – the only thing we changed was the cut of beef, sirloin instead of filet. For obvious reasons. And the dish came out fine. We served it with sautéed potatoes – Julia recommends doing them whole (in more butter) which is what we did, but they were a little undercooked. Patience has never been my strongest virtue. And we had green beans of our own making -- Clara's, actually, also involving lots of butter in the saute pan.

The crowing achievement of the meal was the chocolate mousse. Yep, we used raw eggwhites – and the egg yolks were none too cooked either, as we did them in a makeshift double boiler. But we all survived every delicious bite of it, and I do believe I’d do it again. Really, it set a new standard for the kind of chocolate I crave – it was not that light and airy mousse you sometimes get in restaurants, sort of a muddy-water color, but a nice, rich, dark chocolate color with taste to match. Yum.

Thanks to our lovely guests for coming to enjoy the meal. I think my favorite thing about cooking fabulous food is sharing it with friends. But I'm not sure -- because dancing around with my daughter in our small kitchen, as we madly stirred the chocolate so it wouldn't burn and tested the syrup we made for sugar-encrusted orange rind to garnish the mousse (do we have a candy thermometer? Could it be any further back in that overcrowded drawer of old wine corks and soup ladles and crab mallets? what does it mean to drop the syrup in water until it forms a string?) -- and peeling potatoes and figuring out how to do all the beef without crowding the pan (use two pans) ALL AT ONCE -- and still having fun -- was more than lovely.

BTW, I haven't decided yet if I'm going to buy my own copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It feels a little retro -- not necessarily a bad thing, but I'm more drawn to veggies than meat, and all that butter, well. I do like the explanations of the basics, though, lots of detail that answers the kitchen-y questions you don't know who else to ask.