For this installment of TV Tuesday, we bring an episode from Julia Child's classic series "The French Chef". Entitled "The Potato Show", this episode features four delicious ways to create potato courses. Let's begin!
"Don't you ever get awfully tired of just baked, boiled, mashed, and fried potatoes? Well, if you do, tune in on us. We're doing four wonderful recipes on our potato show today on The French Chef". Julia tells us that she's counted about 200 hundred potato recipes contained within French cooking.
Julia starts in with a dish called "gratin pomme de terre dauphinois", which is sliced potatoes cooked in milk, butter, and a little seasoning. First, though, she gives us a few pointers on how to slice potatoes.
She puts a pan on the stove and gets her seasonings and some milk going. Of course, she adds a healthy dose of butter. "There's nothing like butter," she says later on in the show after a taste test.
She show us how to arrange it on the stove before popping it into the oven to finish it off for twenty minutes. "This goes very nicely with roasts and steaks," she says.
Next comes basically the same dish. However, she adds sausage to this one, along with cooked onions and grated Swiss cheese.
Julia makes a point of telling us that she uses Polish sausage (the kind you can get at any supermarket). You don't have to cook it ahead of time, because it will cook along with the dish.
She gets a baking dish and starts to layer it, adding a large dose of a cream/egg mixture so that it will set up like a quiche once it's cooked.
Then shows us the before and after it's cooked product. "It's a very simple dish, and it makes an awfully nice supper or luncheon dish, and it's good and hearty," she says with enthusiasm.
Then she tells us some of the merits of eating potatoes. It turns out they don't have as many calories as people think.
Next, comes a sort of large potato pancake. For this, Julia uses baked potatoes. She scoops out the insides and sort of mashes them with a fork together with some cream, butter, and seasoning.
Julia loves using cream. She finds she has a little bit left over. Naturally, that goes into the mixture.
She tells us different pans you could use to sauté the potatoes, but she prefers "my darling no-stick pan, which I'm so fond of."
Then comes the "pancake flip". When you flip, you have to have the "courage of your convictions". When disasters happen, "you can always pick it up, and when you're alone in the kitchen, who is going to see?"
Then it goes into an oven dish with more cream and some cheese to finish it off.
For her final dish, Julia starts by getting some cream cheese and eggs mixed up in a bowl.
We then have a brief interruption. Julia grabs a handful of paper towels and exclaims, "I've got so many burners on here. I'm hot!" as she wipes herself down.
Without missing a beat, she grabs a grater and starts grating potatoes until she has about two cups worth.
She says you have to make sure the potatoes are absolutely dry before you go on. So, she proceeds to dry them with towels. "We must have absolutely clean towels so as not to offend anyone," she says as she wrings them out.
Then it goes into a pan...with butter, cream, more cheese, and all the good stuff. "We aren't concerned about calories," says Julia.
These are formed into little pancakes. Julia spoons on some diced ham, a poached egg, and a tomato (pronounced toe-mah-toe) sauce that she doctored up from a can. Sounds delicious to me!
Once her four dishes are finished, Julia takes them into the dining room to present them to us.
"Now out of two hundred French recipes, we've done four very nice ones. We've done two potato casseroles and main dishes, and two potato dishes that you can serve with meat. So, you only have a hundred and ninety-six recipes to go. Courage. Bon apetit!"
And that's it for this episode of The French Chef. Julia's show made French cooking more accessible to the American public. Aside from its informative look at the way to cook French food, it has a wonderful entertainment value.
If you're looking for more Julia Child, check out this fun video. Bring on the roasted potatoes!
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