January 5

I tried to make beef stew but it tasted terrible, somehow burnt, and refused to reduce. The vegetables seemed to disappear and I added more and more and finally panicked when Sam called to say he was on his way home, threw in blocks of curry roux and the beef stew turned into an enormous pot of Japanese curry. Curry fixes everything because all you taste is curry.

From “The Tenth Muse, My Life in Food” by Judith Jones:

“Then, one day in the summer of 1959, a huge manuscript on French cooking by Mesdames Julia Child, Simone Beck, and Louiserre Bertholle landed on my desk, courtesy of Bill Kockland, who was then the secretary of the Knopf establishment and a good friend in court. … I started taking home recipes and trying them, and my faith was vindicated. I made the boeuf bourguignon, and before I even put on my apron, I learned all about the right cuts of beef to use (first choice as well as second choices, in case you were out in the sticks with no obliging butcher). I was introduced to lardons, the little pieces of pork fat that give that onctueux texture to the braising sauce, and learned that you could use bacon as a substitute but you had to blanch it first to subdue the smoky flavor. I discovered that it was important to use a combination of bacon fat and oil — not butter, which burns too easily — and that one should pat dry each chunk of beef first and brown only a few at a time (otherwise, the meat would merely steam and not get brown). I was admonished not to try to get away with some old jug of California red, that the Burgundy you cook with must be as good as what you would serve for dinner. I realized that I had to saute to a golden hue the little white onions and the mushrooms, separately, so that they would caramelize and add flavor to the sauce, even if this did mean using two more pans, and I followed faithfully the final instructions for removing the fat and boiling down the cooking liquid to reduce it to a rich sauce. Et voila! Evan and I agreed that it was the best boeuf  bourguignon we had tasted since leaving France.”