Almost everyone has heard the name Julia Child, but mention Simone “Simca” Beck, and you’re likely to get a blank stare. Beck, along with Louisette Bertholle and Julia Child wrote the first volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the work that gave American cooks the confidence to march into their kitchens and make fricassee de poulet a l’estragon and gateau a l’orange.
In 1972, four years after the mighty Mastering the Art of French Cooking was published, Beck wrote her own book, Simca’s Cuisine. It’s a collection of menus and recipes for everything from a chic little lunch to an Alsatian family dinner. Granted, not everyone wants help putting on chic lunches and hunt breakfasts, but there’s another side to the book that makes it a friend to home cooks.
Scattered throughout Simca’s Cuisine are trucs (culinary secrets) and conseils (advice) that Beck picked up from years of cooking. Her trucs can make the difference between a good dish and a really extraordinary one, and her conseils can help cooks organize and prepare ahead. For example, to enhance the flavor of coffee, add a pinch of salt with the boiling water and to give the aroma of garlic to a dish that’s been cooked with garlic, add more garlic towards the end of cooking.
Which brings me to a few of the little tricks I’ve learned along the way. I can’t honestly say they transform my cooking from ho-hum to over-the-top, but they bring it up a notch. For instance:
When making crusts for dessert pies, I add two tablespoons sugar to the flour and when the crust is for savory pies, I add two tablespoons Parmigiano cheese.
If the pie filling has eggs, I beat the eggs before adding other ingredients and brush the pastry rim with a few teaspoons of beaten egg to give it a nice glaze.
For potato salads and cole slaws, I whisk a couple of tablespoons of bottled blue cheese or ranch dressing into the mayonnaise to perk up the flavor.
I add a pinch of nutmeg to practically everything I cook with spinach or eggs.
I try never to forget to add a little brown sugar to tomato sauces.
If the cookie jar isn’t empty, I refrigerate cookie dough overnight before baking cookies. (Invariably, my husband says they taste better and asks if I did anything different. “Just one of my tricks,” I say.)
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