Cooking like Julia, in under one hour!

The first recipe in Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" is Potage Parmentier, Leek and Potato Soup. It's simple, takes little time to make and, most of all, it is delicious!

Practicing my knife work for culinary school led me to make a good pot of Potato and Leek Soup last evening. I small diced 1 pound of potatoes and thinly sliced 1 pound of leeks, put them in 2 quarts of water, tossed in 2 tablespoons of salt and simmered for 45 minutes. Then I mashed the softened veggies with a fork. Just before serving, off the heat, I stirred in 2 1/2 tablespoons of softened, unsalted butter. To add color, mince some chives or a little parsley to garnish and serve.

Start to finish -- 1 hour. The working part of the recipe took 15 minutes.

A couple of important steps for the novice cooks: Peel the potatoes before dicing; wash the leeks thoroughly to remove dirt that is embedded in the tight folds of the leaves.

It's a great place to start making Julia's recipes. The result is a soup that she is seen making in the photo and that she describes: "Leek and potato soup smells good, tastes good, and is simplicity itself to make."

(Photo credit: media.onsugar.com)

Tourné or not tourné; that is the seven-sided question

Our "Bible", Gisslen's "Professional Cooking", ends its step-by-step instruction for the tourné by showing a photo of the finished product with this caption: "If perfectly done, the potato has seven sides." Then it adds in parentheses and somewhat wryly: "(but customers rarely count them)."

You can bet that the next time I am in a good restaurant and find tournéed potatoes on my plate, I will count the sides.

Tourné -- past participle of "to turn" in French -- is the knife cut that produces a little football-shaped potato, and it is the last of the 10 basic cuts learned in this, my first week of culinary school. In one week, we students in Chef Tony's Foundations of Culinary Arts class must do the 10 cuts in 30 minutes.

The tourné exercise went well, and it is one cut that I feel confident about. It aso happens to be the one that from all appearances is the most complex. Yet it was simpler for me than the julienne (1/8 of an inch square by 2 1/2 inches long), which others in the class appeared to cut with ease.