The Galveston County Daily News

This Friday’s opening of the movie “Julie and Julia” is eagerly awaited by fans of the book on which it was based, also titled “Julie and Julia,” and by longtime devotees of Julia Child, one of the guiding lights of serious cooking at home.

Child was both chef and cheerleader, insisting in her groundbreaking 1963 television show that any cook could turn out elegant dinners if he or she just stayed focused on the process at hand.

Many beginning cooks felt they had reached new heights in the kitchen by re-creating Child’s step-by-step version of boeuf Bourguignon. They made the passage, with Child’s help, from making good dinners to making memorable meals.

Forty years later, Julie Powell rose to Child’s challenge. She decided that, in the course of a year, she would cook her way through Child’s best-known cookbook, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” Not only did she succeed in cooking all 524 recipes, she managed to write a blog reporting on each cooking adventure.

The unexpectedly popular blog spawned her memoir, which combined the blog reports on some of the most successful, challenging or farcical cooking episodes with Powell’s insights into Child’s journey from enthusiastic eater to enthusiastic chef (who still loved to eat.)

One quibble with both the book and the movie has been that, for the sake of a more dramatic narrative, they focus on the most daunting elements of Child’s teachings — killing lobsters, removing the bones from a duck, tracking down ingredients that are rarely found outside remote French villages or following dissertation-length recipes.

While all these are indeed found in “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” there are just as many simple recipes calling for easily found and quickly prepared items.

Granted, it makes for a more entertaining movie to highlight the missteps that are inherent in boning a duck or making a souffle, but the audience likely will leave the theater thinking Child’s cookbooks and cooking were all the culinary equivalent of a high-wire circus act. In reality, though, some of her biggest contributions to home cooking were the simplest — baked eggs, marinated mushrooms and sauteed shrimp.

Beyond the recipes, Child’s great gift to American cooks was her unflappable manner.

One of her televised flops was “an apple charlotte, that lovely dessert of carefully flavored thick applesauce baked in a colonnade of butter-soaked bread strips that brown in the oven,” she wrote.

“It looked just fine on the screen for about 30 seconds, until the walls slowly began to sag and the whole dessert deflated like an old barn in a windstorm. I could only say, hiding the tears in my voice, that I didn’t like too thick an applesauce anyway.”

The Child recipes included here are almost guaranteed to be tear-free, both in finding the ingredients and in cooking them. Not only tear-free, but quick enough to leave plenty of time to catch that new movie.

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Oeufs En Cocotte (Baked Eggs)

1/2 teaspoon butter 1 ramekin, 2 1/2 to 3 inches in diameter and about 1 1/2 inches high 2 tablespoons whipping cream A pan containing 3/4 inch of simmering water 1 or 2 eggs

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Butter ramekin, saving a dot for later.

Add 1 tablespoon of cream and set the ramekin in the simmering water over moderate heat.

When the cream is hot, break one or two eggs.

Pour in the remaining spoonful of cream over the egg and top with a dot of butter.

Place in middle level of preheated oven and bake for 7 to 10 minutes.

The eggs are done when they are just set but still tremble slightly in the ramekins. They will set a little more when the ramekins are removed, so they should not be overcooked.

Season with salt and pepper and serve.

The ramekins may remain in the hot water, out of the oven, for 10 to 15 minutes before serving.

To prevent overcooking, remove eggs from oven when slightly underdone.

— Recipe from “Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1” by Julia Child

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Champignons A La Grecque (Greek Mushroom Salad)

1 pound button mushrooms 15 pearl onions (or 1 large onion, diced) 1½ cups white wine 1½ tablespoons tomato paste 1 large lemon 3 bay leaves 2 sprigs of thyme (or 1 tsp. dried thyme) Salt to taste 1 dozen black peppercorns 8 or 9 coriander seeds 3 tablespoons olive oil

Trim the mushrooms and wash them under running water. Rinse them in water with a little lemon juice added to it.

Peel the pearl onions, leaving them whole. Put the mushrooms and onions in a saucepan with the wine, the tomato paste, the lemon slices, and all the herbs and spices.

Add enough water so that everything is covered. Put the pot on medium heat and let it simmer for 20 to 30 minutes.

When the mushrooms are done, take the pot off the heat and let it cool. Stir in the olive oil.

Pour the mushrooms into a serving dish and keep in the refrigerator until serving time.

— Adapted from Julia Child by Monique Maine

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Crevettes Sautees Au Citron (Sauteed Shrimp)

1 pound (about 30) raw shrimp, peeled 5 tablespoons olive oil, divided 1 or more cloves of garlic, minced or puréed Zest (yellow part of peel only) of 1/2 lemon, minced 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice Drops of soy sauce, salt and freshly ground white pepper 2 tablespoons or more fresh minced parsley and fresh dill

Dry the shrimp in paper towels. Heat 3 tablespoons of the oil in a large no-stick frying pan.

Add the garlic and lemon zest, and toss (with a wooden spoon) several seconds.

The add the shrimp and toss over high heat for 2 to 3 minutes only, just until shrimp have curled and feel springy to the touch.

Remove from heat and toss with the lemon juice, drops of soy sauce and salt and pepper to taste. Then toss with the 2 tablespoons of olive oil and the herbs.

Serve hot or cold.

— Recipe from “From Julia Child’s Kitchen” by Julia Child