Stirring It Up with Molly Ivins (7 page)
Read Stirring It Up with Molly Ivins Online
Authors: Ellen Sweets
7
Julia Child MeetsChicken-Fried Steak
I THOUGHT ABOUT MOLLY WHEN THE MOVIE
Julie & Julia
was released in 2009. When I told her about interviews I had done with Julia Child during my time as a food writer with the
Dallas Morning News
, she hung on every word. Mol loved it that Mrs. Child, while a guest at Dallas's Mansion on Turtle Creek, visited the kitchen where my daughter cooked and did so because she had heard there was a female chef in the kitchen. Molly got an even bigger laugh when I told of how I once encountered Mrs. Child in No Place, a local East Dallas neighborhood favorite that reflected the quirkiness of its owner, the late Matt Martinez.
No Place had an unlisted number. No window sign announced its existence, and nothing indicated that it served superb steaks in addition to the only one-pound smoked baked potato in town.
The point here is that early in the 1990s Matt arranged for No Place to serve chicken-fried steak, smoked mashed potatoes, and sautéed spinach to Julia Child. When she walked in, I was already there with my houseguest Catherine Sabbah, a French reporter visiting from Paris.
France.
Not Texas.
“My God, that's Julia Child,” I said to Matt, trying to contain my childlike glee. He had known she was coming. “Yeah,” he whispered back. “I can't introduce you because she already has an interview set up with another publication. I don't want her to think I tipped you off.”
“That's okay,” I replied. “If you can, tell her my guest is from France and I would like to introduce her.” As he pondered the possibility, Catherine piped up and askedâa little louder than I would have likedâ“But oo ees thees Zhulia?” Of course
I
was the one dying to say hello, and I had no shame about using Catherine as an excuse. Suddenly we were in a parallel universe: an American icon famous for introducing French food to the US was about to meet a French reporter who didn't know who Julia Child was. Julia recognized the accent, smiled and nodded. Matt, Catherine, and I smiled and nodded. The human bobbleheads of No Place.
Before Matt or I could say anything, Catherine moved to Mrs. Child's table and introduced herself. The two of them commenced nattering away in French. Julia, as she insisted on being called, was in Texas to promote the companion volume to her PBS series about master chefs cooking at home. Matt remembered the meal in detail because he introduced her to regional dishes. I talked to him before he died in 2009, and he shared his memories of the evening.
“Julia had never had chile con queso or chicken-fried steak,” Matt said. “I did stuffed prawns with smoked garlic over my Indian riceâbrown rice cooked with corn, broccoli, cauliflower, onions, and mushrooms. She also had a taste of our wild-boar sausage with smoked mashed potatoes. I'll always remember her response when I told her the sausage was low in fat. She said, âDoesn't that defeat the whole point of eating sausage?'”
Today, Matt is gone and No Place is no more. Catherine is back in France, married with children and living in suburban Paris. If there is an afterlife and we're all reunited in it, I'd like to believe that by now Matt, Julia, and Molly have encountered one another.
Somewhere in the mysterious mind meld that not even neurosurgeons fully comprehend, dinner tables and home-cooked meals and groceries merge in that part of the cerebrum that unites the love of food with the love of friends and family. Our cooking together cemented a friendship in life, and here's hoping it moves all who read this to do more cooking for those they love.
MATT MARTINEZ'S CHICKEN-FRIED STEAK
Â
I didn't grasp the concept of chicken-fried steak until I first had it, at Matt's restaurant. I became a hopeless fan: chicken-fried steak with cream gravy and mashed potatoes; with chili, cheese, onions, and jalapeños; with green chile sauce, Jack cheese, refried beans, and rice. By the way, you can use vegetable oil to make the cream gravy, but it won't taste the same.
INGREDIENTS
2 to 3 cups soft plain bread crumbs (1 cup all-purpose flour or ¼ of a 15-ounce box of saltine crackersâabout 40 crackersâcoarsely crushed, may be substituted for bread crumbs)
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
1½ pounds ½-inch-thick sirloin, or flank steak, fat trimmed and cut into 6 portions, then flattened to about ¼ inch (ask your butcher to do this, or do it yourself by placing each piece between two pieces of heavy plastic wrap and pounding it with a meat mallet)
¾ to 1 cup buttermilk (½ cup milk and 2 large eggs whisked together may be substituted for buttermilk)
1/3 cup vegetable oil
6 (6-inch) corn tortillas (optional)
1½ cups shredded Monterey Jack cheese (optional)
Cherry tomato wedges, avocado slices, fresh cilantro, or sliced red jalapeño for garnish
Cream gravy (recipe follows)
DIRECTIONS
Combine bread crumbs, salt, and pepper in a large, shallow dish. Dredge steak pieces in bread-crumb mixture. Dip into buttermilk, and dip again in bread-crumb mixture.
Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until hot. If desired, add corn tortillas, one at a time, and cook until crisp. Drain, pressing between layers of paper towels.
Add steak patties to hot oil; cook 3 to 5 minutes on each side or until crisp. Remove from heat, reserving 3 tablespoons drippings if making cream gravy. Drain steak patties on paper towels.
Place steak patties on tortillas, if desired. Top with sauce of your choice and sprinkle with cheese, if desired. Broil 5 inches from heat (with oven door partially open) until cheese melts. Garnish, if desired. Serves 6.
CREAM GRAVY
Â
INGREDIENTS
3 tablespoons reserved chicken-fried steak pan drippings
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1½ cups milk
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
DIRECTIONS
Cook drippings in a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium heat until hot; add flour, stirring until smooth. Stir continuously until light golden brown. Gradually stir in milk; cook, stirring constantly, until thickened and bubbly. Stir in salt and pepper.
8Mise en Place(
MISE EN PLACE: A FRENCH TERM THAT MEANS
“everything in its place.” As in having ingredients ready for use in meal preparation.)
Before one can cook, one must shop. With Molly, grocery shopping was as much an expedition or excursion as it was a utilitarian exercise.
In advance of rattling pots and pans, we would plan a menu and reconnoiter the pantry and refrigerator. Molly rarely kept frozen food other than ice cream, preferring to buy and prepare foods freshâand this was several years before Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, and Marion Nestle admonished us to do so on a national stage.
We'd make a grocery list, divide it in half, leave for the store, and forget the list. Before we boarded Bob, her well-dented forest-green pickup truck, the conversation tended to go something like this: