Din Din

Along with ten other ambitious ladies, I'm participating in a "Julie and Julia"-esque experiment. Every two weeks, one chef selects a recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, tries it out and emails it to the group along with any additional suggestions. We have two weeks to make the chosen recipe before the next selection arrives in our inbox. Obviously the Julia Child cooking blog has already happened to critical acclaim and I won't attempt to repeat what's been done already, but I would like to make a short record of this evening.

The first choice was Poulet Rôti and, after an initial flurry, the chicken is roasting in the oven and the brown stock to make the sauce is on the stove top. Haricot verts and a simple green salad wait in the wings as its accompaniments. With basting required every ten minutes, the chicken is labor intensive, but as Julia herself said, "Nothing is too much trouble if it turns out the way it should."

As the sky darkens, I sit at my tiny kitchen table eyeing my even tinier oven, its eyes alive with bubbling pots and its mouth exhaling a heady combination of chicken, bubbling fats, carrots and onions. My glass of Pouilly-Fuisse sweats from the heat of the kitchen and The Swing Years and Beyond streams from our laptop's tinny speakers. In many ways, this evening could just as easily be Julia's Paris of the 1950s as it is the Philly 'burbs in 2009. Classic food, good wine, timeless music.

Bon appétit!