I’ve been working through ideas for this project in my head for a week now, but it’s time to take the plunge and start writing.

So, here goes!

Inspired by Julie and Julia, the memoir by Julie Powell and new film featuring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams; as well as by an enduring love of food, cooking, and doing it myself (whatever “it” is); and now as always fueled by unlimited admiration for Julia Child and her impact on the life of the home cook in America; I’m undertaking this blogging adventure to see what the limits are for engaging in and learning from Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking while also adhering to Jewish dietary observance.

This is a pretty tall order.  Last night I made Gateau de crépes a la Florentine – and to summarize it is comprised of some flour, butter, milk, spinach and mushrooms; no meat – and yet the recipe did call to prime the hot pan by rubbing it with some good old pork fat instead of or in addition to using oil.

Naturally, I used oil and omitted the lard, but I think this is instructive of the nature of my project.  French cooking and Jewish cooking are at complete odds with each other; French seemingly hedonistic in its call and response to food simply for the flavor, texture and pleasure of the experience.  Jewish cooking seeks the flavor, texture and pleasure but with the additional project of attaining them without mixing meat and dairy, to name just the most basic of limitations.  French: complete indulgence and satisfaction.  Jewish: calculated and hard-won delicacy.

So the crépes Florentine.  I pre-made the crepe batter combining milk, water, eggs, salt and butter in the food processor and letting it sit refrigerated for the afternoon.  The harder work was more immediate in anticipation of dinner; think three hours sweating over a hot stove top in my un-air-conditioned brick oven of a house and you’ll have a good picture.  From 4-7 pm last night is now a blur to me of flipping crepes (successfully made in my well-seasoned cast iron pans without any sticking casualties!) blanching spinach, sauté-ing mushrooms and onion, and of course building a cheese sauce from the basic butter-flour roux on up.

I stacked crepes with alternating layers of the spinach and mushroom fillings and buried it all in cheese sauce (sauce Mornay, to be precise) topped it with shredded Swiss cheese, and browned it in a hot oven for 25 minutes.

I’m not sure how to give you a sense of this creation – except to say that the recipe called this 6 servings, but I ate less than a tenth of it and was completely satisfied by the richness of it all. (Use that much butter, cream and oil and you better get some satisfaction out of the experience.)  To give you a better sense, let me say this: my lactose intolerant husband, who hates spinach and generally lobbies for meat in every meal, thinks it was the best thing I’ve ever made.  This is saying a lot not only because it was vegetarian and enough dairy to cramp his stride for weeks, but since he raves and brags about my roast chicken, which is admittedly also very good.

The real trick will be to find a way to make crépes that in themselves are pareve (neither milk nor meat, therefore able to be served with both.)  The dairy-only recipe was kind of a freebie, since realistically I would have skipped the pork fat whether for this project or otherwise.  I haven’t projected a timeline for this undertaking because of this problem: recipes can be made kosher in two ways: eliminating meat or eliminating dairy.  The fun will be experimenting and deciding what variations taste best; the struggle will be someday actually finishing it, since it has the potential to take a very, very long time.

But this was an auspicious first stab.