As butterless as possible please

Julia Child mocked our fear of fat in food, but surely sometimes substitution must be just as good as moderation?

The Menu:

Côtes De Porc Poêlées

Marinade Sèche

Ratatouille

Salad with Macadamia Dressing

After last night’s buttery extravaganza, I choose some dishes that would be a bit lighter. The pork chops were marinated in Marinade Simple – lemon juice, oil, parsley, thyme, salt and pepper this morning. The marinade was great as it really permeated the meat.

The pork chops were cooked in the Le Creuset in a little olive oil (butter optional so we went with oil) for 3-4 minutes each side. As the pork chops were a little shy of the prescribed inch thick mark I probably should have cooked them a little less. The chops and juices were removed from the dish and some butter and halved cloves of garlic were added and heated. The chops were returned to the dish until they started to sizzle, then placed in the oven for 20 minutes. The recipe said 25 minutes, I was working with half the amount and probably should have tried to remove them at 15 minutes. Some of the juices were then cooked down with white wine to form a jus.

Not sure why, but I have never thought of ratatouille as French. The ratatouille involved sweating eggplant and zucchini and then lightly frying them in oil for a minute on each side. Then onions and green capsicum were sweated for ten minutes in the same pan and garlic and chopped tomatoes were added. The tomatoes cooked down, covered and then the juices were cooked off and the tomatoes were seasoned. A third of this was added to the bottom of a stoveproof casserole dish, followed by half the eggplant and zucchini, more tomatoes, more eggplant and zucchini, then the final layer of tomatoes and some parsley.

The verdict? Le Gourmand thought the ratatouille should be more finely chopped (I thought it was surprisingly small, Le Gourmand rectified this by chopping his own ratatouille on the plate) but liked the flavours. I loved the flavours, particularly the green capsicum – it was smoky and tasty and relatively healthy. Good for Bruce!

The pork chops had beautiful flavour and the jus was tasty. Unfortunately just a little overcooked – obviously the amount and size of the chops should result in cooking time being adjusted. You live (hopefully dodging heart disease for another day), you learn.

What is bad French Food?

As Bastille Day draws near, I am preparing for an onslaught of French cooking and MTAOFC will finally get a work out - a large amount of butter has been purchased in preparation for Wednesday night's meal, which fills me with a degree of trepidation (poor little Bruce is ill prepared for what is to come).

Queries about whether it is "right" to serve 4 out of 5 dishes with butter as the main ingredient are supplanted by the big question - what is bad French food? For some people it is too rich, too much butter and I fear that Le Gourmand may eventually skid right into this big, buttery wall. For me I think a more appropriate word than bad is disappointing. If you manage your expectations and order correctly, I think there is almost always something on the menu that will satisfy you in even an ordinary French restaurant but if the Chateau Briand is on the menu for $10, don't be surprised if it doesn't live up to your expectations (0f course life is even worse if the food is both overpriced and underwhelming).

Sometimes it is impossible not to be disappointed - on our recent trip we were innocently dragged into a group dinner at a touristy French restaurant in the centre of London a mere day after our return from Paris. One of the worst things about pregnancy is the warnings against eating undercooked meat, which meant that (unless I was prepared to order it well done), I could not follow Le Gourmand's sensible selection of steak frites. Instead I ordered chicken in a creamy mushroom sauce. For me one of the highlights of french cooking is the amazing technique the French demonstrate with sauces. This fell sadly short. An excessive use of cornflour is really a very efficient way to stuff up almost any sauce and sadly this "technique" had been employed by our "chef".

We wisely steered clear of French restaurants for the rest of our English-American trek - it just wasn't fair to compare.