More Butter, More Better

I made good on my resolution to try some Julia Child recipes. My first endeavor: page 210 -- Filets de Poisson Bercy aux Champignons, or "Fish Filets Poached in White Wine with Mushrooms." I must say that Julia and I outdid ourselves.

Or was it just all that butter? Mmm...

I was very strategic about my fish dish for several reasons. First of all, I didn't know what the deuce I was doing, so I was treading lightly. Julia, though knowledgable and conscientious, mistakenly assumes that her readers have a clue. To my consternation she had left out a few key directions, such as what temperature to cook the fish. I read the fish chapter introduction and my recipe several times, then consulted guides from Wegmans and Google (one poaches fish in a 180 degree oven - thanks ComfyCook154!).

The friendly folks at Wegmans instructed me on the correct cheese, fish and wine to use. Some ingredients suffered from passing years and availability. As Julia warned me, it's hard to find true sole in the US, so we (Julia, the Wegmans fish lady, and I) agreed to use flounder. The Wegmans wine specialist made an excellent recommendation to use White Bordeaux Mouton Cadet, which was great in the sauce and with the meal.

Another reason for my careful strategery was the cost of the meal. The fish alone was $14. When you factor in the cost of wine, cheese, pounds of butter and other ingredients, the meal added up to a larger than usual culinary investment.

I warned SJ that I was going to be making kitchen miracles happen, so he fed the kids and stayed out of my way. By 7:00 the electric babysitter was entertaining the kids and we sat down to a delightful meal, if I do say so myself: well-cooked fish with a white sauce that butter, lemon, and wine flavors. Per Julia's instructions, the fish was paired simply with whole wheat couscous and the wine, so as not to distract from the main attraction. We skipped the planned salad course and finished with delicious Trader Joe's Lava Cakes topped with leftover whipped cream.

I'm daydreaming about the butter like a new lover (like on my honeymoon, Mom.) Like most health-conscious cooks, I try to avoid copious amounts of fats and sugar, but let's consider the facts. Butter tastes good. Really good. Butter scratches a primal itch like nothing else. A couple of bites of that sauce and I was channeling Tracey Morgan rather than Julia Child; I wanted to take it behind the middle school and get it pregnant.

And let's don't forget that Julia Child lived to be a buttery 91 years old. How could something so right possibly be wrong?

After this French food experience, I'm thinking like an ancient Greek: the key is moderation in all things. Part of Julia Child's cultural significance was to encourage Americans to embrace food, not fear it. Nutritionists today are coming back to this idea, and a lot of them blame the American obesity epidemic on the low-fat diet trend of the past thirty years. You're going to scratch your itch somewhere, they say. Better a little fat now and then than the processed crap we eat.

I'm no expert (I thought agave was a good idea only to find out yesterday that it's secretly poisoning my liver,) but I can say that having a rich French meal was a rare treat. After my first essay into Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I think I might start taking the road more buttered.