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Legendary chef, author, and TV personality Julia Child helped bring French cooking into American households through her seminal books, including “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” and her long-running PBS cooking shows. However, that doesn’t mean she wasn’t up for a juicy burger. In fact, her favorite fast food chain was California’s In-N-Out. Still, this is Child we’re talking about, so when making some typically humble beef patties for a November 1970 episode of “The French Chef,” she gave her hamburger dinner a luxe upgrade for dessert with a dish playfully called crepes Saint Claire in a nod to Santa Clara, California. And then there’s the upscale drink she recommended serving with the flambeed crepes: Champagne.
Child’s dessert is a take on the classic French dish crepes Suzette. Her version calls for them to be soaked in a sauce of apricot nectar (Santa Clara being known for its apricots at the time), grated orange peel, and butter, which she sprinkled with sugar and doused in cognac before setting alight. “There’s nothing wrong ever with serving Champagne with a flaming dessert,” she said as she tucked into a bite of her crepes. Then she went even further, saying that it’s a wholly appropriate drink to serve at the end of a hamburger dinner. It’s certainly one way to fancy up a basic meal. But again, this is Child, so even her burgers are anything but downhome.
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Julia Child’s version of a simple hamburger dinner
two glasses of champagne – Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock
Like Julia Child’s flaming crepes and Champagne, her burger recipe was quite elegant. Instead of buns and ketchup, hers included a cream, wine, and a tomato pan sauce over the burgers, which sat atop soubise, a buttery French rice and onion dish. Even the first course was rather grand — broiled oysters with a butter shallot sauce. It seems appropriate that Child would give the humble hamburger an upgrade. She was, after all, responsible for helping demystify French cooking, and what better way than using the all-American burger to do it.
The same goes for wine and Champagne. Child’s favorite cocktail may have been an upside down martini, but on many of her shows she would enjoy a glass of French wine or Champagne, helping to make them more accessible to her American audience. She did the same for the very Francophile crepes. She referred to them as “French pancakes” during the episode, and even had an easy trick for cooking these notoriously fussy desserts. While Child didn’t recommend any one Champagne to pair with her crepes Saint Claire, we do know that one of her favorites was Dom Pérignon. Três chic, indeed.
Read the original article on Chowhound.
Dining and Cooking