Welcoming my new kitchen with Julia

With the Julie & Julia movie recently out, of course I had to pick a Julia Child recipe to celebrate. I made Supremes de Volaille aux Champignons, chicken breasts with a mushroom sauce, which was featured in the movie and from Julia’s book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Mmm butter for sauteing the mushrooms and onions. Julia was not afraid of using butter.

What would French cooking be without the cream? Here it is getting added to the sauteed mushroom and onion mixture to create the sauce.

The sauce starts off pale and runny but after a few minutes it becomes a nice deep brown. The mushrooms are delicate and ribbon-like.

The sauce poured over the chicken. A sprinkle of minced parsley for garnish.

Final plate with sliced potatoes

Overall I was very happy with the dish. I was pretty nervous not having done French food before but it was well. While researching the recipe, many mentioned this being a 30-minute dish. It took me over an hour not having everything prepped and the oven not preheated, but if I were to do it again, 30 minutes is feasible. This could easily be a weeknight dish.

Supremes de Volaille aux Champignons
From Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child

My recipe notes:

• I followed the recipe exactly except for the port, which I substituted with red wine. It still made for a nice rich and creamy sauce. I will probably get port next time to see how it differs.
• For the stock I used chicken stock.
• Again from research, the 6 minute cooking time for the chicken is best with 4 oz pieces of chicken breast. I would also pound them to about 1/2″ thick. Mine were a little thicker so I had to cook for 10 minutes. Amazingly it was still tender and moist, but for eating, I would have preferred it slightly thinner.
• Recipe only calls for 4 oz of mushrooms but they were so good from baking with the chicken and then soaking in the sauce, not to mention all the time spent on cooking the dish, I would have made more and eaten them by themselves.