Vivi's Long Day's Journey Into Night (Lesson #6)

(I believe many of the photos will be improved if you open them to full-size.)

The day started calmly enough, if early (about 10:30 a.m.), when I made my own crème fraiche (much cheaper than buying it). I used buttermilk with a sell-by date of a month ago -- it tasted fine so, yes, dear Reader, I used it. I asked my own mother to taste the milk to determine if it was good (I can't stand the flavor of buttermilk, so I couldn't judge). However, from that moment, a soupçon of worry simmered on a back-burner of my thoughts for the rest the day, wondering if I were poisoning the whole household, including mother and sibling. Rotten buttermilk? Rotten cream? Rotten seafood?

As to the menu items of the day, I started with the Bavarois à la Vanille. This, for those without the cookbook, is a crème anglaise to which gelatin is added, and then, just as it is setting, you fold in whipped cream, and chill.

First my crème anglaise curdled, and rescuing it uncovered the hole ripped in the bottom of the sieve, so many sieve-like objects were soiled attempting to get it de-curdled. (I thought I was being clever in using a Bodum Coffee Maker to strain it -- it worked excellently for much of the mixture, but not at all for the last, critical, inch of custard.)

The crème anglaise was eventually rescued, but then I missed the rather delicate timing of the setting of the gelatin. I had already folded in the whipped cream before I realized there would be lumps in my Bavarian Cream. Too late to rescue, it turned out not to be that lumpy, but my stern internal French Chef Teacher did not give me a passing grade for smoothness. After cleaning the dishes so that I had room to start the next menu item, a solid three hours had passed.

I did save some time and effort by merely straining the seeds out of some low-sugar raspberry freezer jam that I made last summer, which worked perfectly. The picture is the Bavarois as it was served in the evening. The sprig on top is a bit of thyme, just for the look of it (but actually, it gave a marvelous edge to the scent of the dessert).

The paté brisée was actually rather fun to make, and the Onion Tart was one of the few things that went without a hitch. The dough rolled beautifully; the onions caramelized well. I debated making the tart without cream, as I've made it before (with American pastry dough), but had just the right amount of cream on hand, that was about to spoil, so I followed the recipe.

About 3 in the afternoon I turned to the Mouclade. The fishmonger didn't have 3 lbs of mussels, so he suggested we make up the difference in clams and cook them the same way. The most inspiring thing of the day was the beauty of those clams, a subtle palette of grays, tans and blues. The mussels were also beautiful, but more brash, all black and shiny.

By the time we got to scraping, debearding, and cleaning the shellfish, the light was gone outside, and we had to clip one of The Brother's portable work lights to the cupboard to illuminate the sink.

Here is where everything slowly broke down. Scraping the barnacles off? What's a barnacle? Why can't you boil them with the rest? My sous-chef (Maman) and I dutifully scraped off the tiny white spots on the mussels. There were none on the clams. Why? Do clams, sitting in the sand, wear off their barnacles?

Then debearding. Why, oh why, do they call them beards? Why could you not remove the fringe, or the tassel, something decorative and inanimate and distinctly not an integral part of a living being? As we systematically tugged off all these hairy bits, we were constantly reminded that they were alive, as we checked for dead ones, and worried about killing them by accident, in the heat of the work light intensified on the water, or by stabbing them with a knife. My karma was dropping like the sea before a hurricane, and my creative energies were being sapped.

So, apologizing to the mollusks with a litany, (Thank you, little clams and proud black mussels, for giving up your lives to us. Possibly you will save the lives of your sea-wild brethren as a result of this evening of excess) we poured them into the pan of sautéed onions and wine and butter. And realized the lid didn't fit properly, so they couldn't confidently steam.

In the wisdom of hindsight, I would have cooked the shellfish in two batches, but by this time we were already half an hour over the time dinner was called for, with wall-bouncing children, and I had effectively signed off of creative cookery and was hanging on by word-for-word reading of the recipe. There was no suggestion of cooking them in multiple batches.

Then for the removal of shells and laying of the mollusks in the earthenware bowl. Yet more handling of these alien, slimy, springy creatures. This was the final straw. Only about 1/3-1/2 of them had steamed open (despite cooking for an additional 3 minutes -- 50% more), and my sous-chef, against my better judgment and against my orders, insisted upon cracking the closed ones open. (This is probably why few Cordon Bleu-trained chefs hire their mothers as sous-chefs. I wonder if there's a lesson specifically about that, or if the students just pick it up as they go along, like remembering to start the morning by taking the eggs and butter out of the refrigerator).

I realize now that the closed shell mollusks simply were not fully cooked (I stop myself thinking when I remember they were alive going in the pot -- no, there is where I stop thinking about it), but, tired, freaked out and hungry, at the time we just weren't thinking straight.

Actually, that was not the last straw, the nadir, the rock bottom pits. That moment came when I realized I had just carefully poured the delightful mixture of butter, onions and mollusk juices down the drain -- the sauce, the ultimate flavor we had worked for 3 hours to achieve -- by placing the strainer into the sink to filter out the gritty, sandy onion bits. I hit about as far down as I've ever been in cookery at that moment.

...

But I rallied. I threw more butter and wine in the pan, quickly sautéed some more shallots, and squeezed that d*mn straining cloth dry, getting every last drop remaining in the cooked onions. I used the juices left in the holding pan of cooling mussels, too.

In the end, we had a nice sauce. I'll go further -- it was a really delicious sauce. The last (and relatively benign) mistake I made was to pour the sauce over the half-cooked mollusks, attempting to warm them up, rather than serving it on the side.

My first mussel was like paradise, and almost singly reversed the wearing effects of the day. It was pungent and warm and buttery and bursting with subtle flavor. The second mussel put me over the edge into gung-ho mussel favoritism, "Yes, these are good, these are really, really good and I'm going to order moule frites every day the next time I'm in France." Enchanted, I bit with relish into the third mussel, and -- it was like chewing raw intestines. And the game was up. I couldn't eat another one or I would have gagged.

I was not alone. ME, not a fish eater, agreed to try one mussel (because the kids are having to try something new at every meal, so the grown-ups should, too), and did her duty. Mom and the S-i-L gamely ate about 5 each. The Brother took a healthy 10, and then another 10 for seconds, but then he ran across one with a dark bean-shaped appendage in the middle, and he was done, reminded of little living beings and mysterious anatomies.

In the end, we threw away about 2 lbs of mollusks that we cooked, uneaten. The emotional investment was worse than the financial or even the practical -- what a waste of time, effort, and life (, lower-forms of).

However, the onion tart was really tasty, and consumed quickly. I had made an excellent wilted spinach salad with warm bacon dressing, which was eaten entire as well.

And the Bavarois à la Vanille, even lumpy, is a dessert fit for kings -- we each had seconds, and some of us thirds, and one of us, tempering the cookery dismals with fat and fruity sugar, cleaned the serving plate of every drop.

To drink, we had a Columbia Valley Chardonnay (most of which went in the mussel sauce) and a less-nice California Chardonnay. Brother drank his gift from Peaceable's son, of home-brewed beer (which I named, "White Lily IPA"), and pronounced it, Good.

Last night, I was never going to cook mussels again, but in the light of today, I am going to give them one more try (there's a Scallops, Mussels and Shrimp dish coming up in a few weeks, and I'm determined to do them right, then).