Can Julia Child's Worst Recipe Be Redeemed?

so I'm going to redo what I consider to be the worst Julia Child recipe I've ever made this is Jamie and Julia oh Bon Appetit so I've been here before Julia Child's moussaka recipe out of this one right here and a different time back then it was almost two years ago to the day I was in a different kitchen I was in a different country I was in between moves so it wasn't even my kitchen and I don't know who that is like look at that hairdo look at the mop it looks like a bit like Julia Child oh I won't try this thing like that there's a lot of complicated steps unnecessary ones but I kind of approached it a bit too nonchalantly vastly unprepared might I say and inexperienced surround the serving dish with a quarter pint of the tomato sauce like that's all you want me to do with it I'm gonna say around 90 95 of it was all my fault but it didn't turn out that's what I'm trying to say it was awful I feel like it is lacking any sort of cohesive like enjoyable flavor for me it's pretty just nothing I just attacked these recipes differently my skills have improved drastically so I want to give this one a fair Shake lamb can hardly be considered a leftover when it receives this elaborate treatment a mold is lined with the skins of a cooked eggplant and filled with a carefully seasoned mixture of cooked lamb eggplant and mushrooms it presents itself after baking and unmolding as a shiny dark purple cylinder surrounded with a deep red tomato sauce yeah like uh that didn't really happen for me the first time so uh I'm gonna do it again let's get to work so first things first I gotta make a tomato sauce foreign heat on that mofo we're gonna need three tablespoons of butter and a tablespoon of oil carrots celery onions I got a quarter cup of each all diced up along with around two tablespoons of minced up more or less bacon this looks and smells beautiful and it's not browned it's been 10 minutes so last time around this was a very confusing step for me because the cookbook says blend the flour with all of this stuff here and my pea-sized little brain can figure out what the meant last time I'm only at the tomato sauce and I'm already confused by some of the the phrasing in this book says blend the flour in the ham in the vegetables like with a blender or am I just adding it in this time around well I've done this a million times now but I gotta blend the flour this is a tablespoon and a half cook it for three minutes just like this I'm gonna add in a cup and a half of boiling beef stock you're supposed to do that off the heat so just cool your jets for a second okay done back on the heat chopped ripe tomatoes with the seeds and the skin on and I need two and a half cups four pounds worth and it goes just a little tiny eighth teaspoon of sugar quart or teaspoon of salt two unpeeled cloves of garlic there's two there she says half a bay leaf I'm just gonna use a full one you know why because I'm not driving quarter teaspoon of thyme Don't You Dare Forget about four parsley Sprigs yes they've been washed so I gotta simmer this for an hour and a half to two hours that's why we did this first do that next up is a brown sauce classical French brown sauce and I'm going to be following similar steps to what I just did with the tomato sauce honestly this is something that in the previous video I didn't realize I needed it until I needed it flower based brown sauce which will take two hours two hours for 100 milliliters of sauce look but I know it's coming up I'm gonna need it I read the recipe another saucepan medium heat now you need six tablespoons of clarified butter or rendered pork fat and I have leftover clarified butter from the Thomas Keller recipes hey oh um but I only have two tablespoons for it and the rest will be pork fat the next step is going to be slightly familiar I have roughly chopped onion celery carrot 1 3 cup of each and let's get that in there first no Takis with three tablespoons of diced bacon or ham if you have ham I'm going to cook this in the butter and the fat for 10 minutes so I'm gonna add in this is what four tablespoons of flour this time blend it in with a wind spoon and cook it on a low heat for eight minutes flower can brown but it needs to turn a golden color I mean technically it already has but uh yeah let's just waste the time anyway I got beef stock which is boiling this is four cups worth oh I missed a bit and then there's another two cups worth this time we're not gonna spill it then we're gonna whisk whisk whisk vigorously that flour mixed in with the stock no clumps no clumps okay I need three sprigs of parsley she loves me she loves me not she loves me it's a around a quarter teaspoon of thyme and then again she's going with a half a bay leaf I'm going with a full Bailey's we know Jamie you're not driving okay so I need to last thing we got to do is two tablespoons of tomato paste I'm gonna whisk the tomato paste in there sunny boy all right so partially covered I'm going to bring that to a simmer keep it there for two hours and then I'm going to be skimming the scum and the fat throughout the two hours you know keeping my eyes on it I got my tomato sauce over here too so I'll be keeping my eyes on both of them let me introduce you to the hero of this recipe I got it on a gold platter to really emphasize its importance the aubergine eggplant I got five of them and they're pretty uh pretty hefty Hefty firstly we got to remove the green cap and then we slice them in half lengthwise off with the head cut deep gashes In the Flesh of each half [Music] sprinkle salt on each half to dry these suckers out I'm gonna let this stand for half an hour I just need it out of my out of my way the tomato sauce is done doing whatever it was doing Bowl me whoa thank you very much thank you strain the sauce there's a lot of like interesting looking stuff in here it's she wants me to toss all this once I've strained it I'm like why don't I just blend it into the sauce I'm like thinking should I do that but on the other hand I'm thinking the whole point of me making this video is to redo exactly what Julie has in this book it's conundrum I just need to try something out of curiosity's sake maybe not include the parsley or the bay leaf going against Julia's wishes right now but it is my show it's not that bad okay so what if I just add like half of this you know back into the sauce that way we're not wasting it and then I've added my own little take to this thing it's better than just tossing it I think so I've just cleaned out my saucepan and I'm gonna add the tomato sauce back in there simmer for five minutes so sauce is supposed to be a deep red after adding this it's turned it a deep orange she says to help with the color you can add a tablespoon or two or tomato paste and maybe that will help turn it back to red so back to the eggplants a lot of moisture that has risen to the surface of these eggplants whoa is it going to wash the eggplants with cold water and squeeze out water from these eggplants honestly the salt did a pretty good job bring them back over here to this pan line your pretty birds all in a row dry with paper towel olive oil on top and just kind of rub it in about two tablespoons worth of olive oil in total as quick as we were to remove moisture from these eggplants we need more water now add water into the Pan about half an inch worth the oven is at 400 degrees F and I need to add these into the upper echelon of the oven upper half careful there buddy all right I'm Gonna Bake those 30 minutes until tender where's the knife oh there it is 2 3 cup of finely minced onion medic let's just cut myself thumb is okay onion looks great I need a tablespoon of olive oil in a frying pan here I'm gonna cook these slowly slowly for 10 to 15 minutes until they are tender but not browned all right so this is what's going on here I'm sauteing the onions I got my brown sauce simmering away eggplants in the oven it's like what else can I add to the list so I need a half a pound of mushrooms mince the mushrooms up I don't want to get into this today everyone but [Music] I'm just joking you know what I'm just gonna rinse my mushrooms I know it bothers some people a lot of people are on board with it I only bring up this topic because it irks some people and I find that funny rinsy rinse Rub-A-Dub dub mushrooms in the water bring over Steve Steve the Steve The Wiz Steve I love using the food processor to finally mince up my mushrooms and we're going to give them a whiz as a kid pretty nice we're gonna take a clean kitchen towel here she always says just to do a little at once but I figure why not just do it all so I'm going to extract the juices from the mushrooms oh this is a lot so I'm gonna bring the tomato sauce over here let's add the mushroom juice to the tomato sauce I'm gonna bring the tomato sauce back to a simmer it doesn't say but I feel like that would be right and hey look onions I gotta scrape these into a mixing bowl thank you okay I see what's going on here feel feel good so let's just put that mixing bowl aside so either with some shallots or green onions I'm opting for well you can see finely minced up green onion along with the mushrooms that I squeezed exactly along with the mushrooms tablespoon and a half of olive oil saute the green onions and the mushrooms in the olive oil for five minutes or so until the mushrooms start to separate sorry I don't want to clean up the mess because I got some momentum here there's two and a quarter cup of ground lamb would someone answer that damn this is super heavy I don't know why it's so heavy okay I just want to keep doing things I got I got the Need for Speed right now [Music] so with the mushrooms and the green onions they are ready to go into the mixing bowl I'm going to reuse this pan for the third time and add in the the lamb because all she says is that the lamb needs to be cooked so I'm gonna cook it snowman's gonna break it all up all right let's take a look at this brown sauce simmering for two hours coat the spoon incredibly lightly yes adjust for seasoning please have a strainer yes I'm just gonna strain it and there should be around four cups worth of liquid okay this measuring cup is exactly four cups which means this whole mission has been a complete success just to dirty up even more things in the kitchen please don't spill it please don't spill it now when I need to use this brown sauce I can separate the fat from it because I don't want the fat in my moussaka so I'm just going to keep that off the side to let it cool down for a bit I'm going to take a second to breathe okay these should be ready now tender very tender I feel like if I take take these off the pan they're going to cool quicker scoop at the flesh but I need to keep the skin keep the skin intact [Music] that is as much flesh as I want to take away from these things because any more than that it's just going to tear them and this is by far the hardest part of this recipe was keeping these intact but I think I've done an okay job so I'm going to take half of the flesh half of it it's a lot I need to chop that's going to go in the mixing bowl with the onions and the mushrooms so with the rest I gotta dice or slice the rest I got Big Bertha here Big Bertha three tablespoons of olive oil and let's get the flesh into Bertha all right I'm gonna Brown that lightly going back a few years the make or break moment in the recipe there's a few of them but the big one was that I did not have the right vessel to cook this thing in I was completely idiotic I was completely idiotic so what I ended up using on the show was my braising dish well not this one but another one that was similar to this and it wasn't the right thing to do yeah it was I don't know everything was wrong what Julia's calling for is the Charlotte mold owning this is the main reason why I'm able to cook this thing up the way I want to today now I can attempt her actual Vision so I've just uh kind of oiled it up oiled up my Charlotte I gotta do is line it with the eggplant skins they're purple sides against the mold Place each lengthwise a pointed end at the center [Music] oh this is gonna work so I don't know why it's so so confused about this a few years ago it makes perfect Bloody sense to me now that I have the Charlotte pan it looks absolutely revolting but I hope that once I add the filling it will change things so I just leave this um off to the side two cups and a quarter of the ground cooked lamb okay Sans the fat [Music] a teaspoon of salt and around a half a teaspoon of pepper half a teaspoon of ground thyme half a teaspoon of Rosemary clove of garlic mashed get that all Incorporated very well got the brown sauce and my fat separator 2 3 cup of it that looks interesting next up three eggs I'm watching for eggshells don't worry and then another three tablespoons of tomato paste mix that all together come over here Charlotte mold she wants me to taste carefully for seasoning never mind the three raw eggs in here you know I'm glad I did you know I'm not gonna lie to you could use a little salt spread an inch of the mixture in the bottom of the mold over top of this layer goes a layer of sauteed eggplant continue with the layer of the mix sauteed eggplant and then more mix and that should probably do it all right so now Let's Fold the eggplant over top cover this up with foil first and then the lid baking pan that's going to go into the bottom third of the oven and pour in boiling water so I'm going to bake Charlotte here 375 degrees F in the bottom third of the oven for an hour and a half so I have uh somewhat of a mess on my hands here actually it is a disaster [Music] it's time easy does it so I haven't been able to like peek at what's going on here I have no idea how this turned out so I'm going to remove it to my pizza pan I gotta let this cool for 10 minutes so firstly let's take this tin foil off oh boy [Music] add the tomato sauce okay you know what this is two years in the making right here the dish is complete order up [Music] ambulance on standby [Music] foreign I think it's time to put an end to the current worst Julia Child recipe title [Music] all right you're supposed to eat the skin the eggplant [Music] it's Julia Child's masaka Infamous around these parts not anymore good is a great good not great you know where I'm like kind of just getting held up there is it's just kind of more trouble than it's worth you know it's a lot of work to make something that is like this I mean when I woke up this morning this recipe was sitting at a two out of ten so now we're up to a six and a half seven I say that's solid work uh what a difference two years makes not with the recipe Julia's recipe hasn't changed at all but I've changed and it all just comes down to me so sorry Julia for shifting all the blame over to you I like to take some of that back like a traditional moussaka has it could have cheese potatoes bechamel sauce in it and I mean it could vary from wherever you are eating it and you know country to Country region region this one is just for whatever reason missing those components and I mean it's most curious with the Bechamel and the cheese because Bechamel is one of those French mother sauces and you know Julia loves her cheese we're in a French cooking cookbook it's kind of perplexing that it's not in this recipe this thing mostly reminds me of a meatloaf like an eggplant and lamb meatloaf I'm gonna wrap this thing up because I don't even want to tell you how late it is right now it's after midnight it's 12 30. 12 30. just a late night snack with this musaka recipe off to bed I go this is Jamie and Julia bon appetit

Channel: ANTI-CHEF

Views: 317,996

Keywords: Julia Child, Jamie and Julia, Julia Child Anti Chef, Anti chef, Antichef, Anti-chef, Jamie, Julia, French cooking, French chef, moussaka recipe, julia child moussaka recipe, mastering the art of french cooking, moussaka, classic french cooking, worst recipe, julia child's worst recipe, eggplant recipe, french moussaka recipe, jamie and julia dinner recipe, redemption, anti chef julia child show, antichef julia child, julia child recipes

Id: sGP8YeQM8fc

Length: 20min 18sec (1218 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 09 2023