By Tonia Moxley
The Roanoke (Va.) Times
March 1, 2006
VIEW: A .pdf version of this story, page one and page two
One thing I learned after sliding the first DVD of “The French Chef” into the player: Cooking shows are much more satisfying in color.
Julia Child started out in black-and-white on Boston public television in 1963. While I could discern that America’s first celebrity chef was making French onion soup, I couldn’t tell how brown the onions should be or how deep brown the broth should turn out. It was all gray.
What I could tell as I watched her slice onion after onion was that I had been using my knife incorrectly for 20 years. Not only that, but I also learned how to keep a good edge on the blade — with a honing steel, just like the neighborhood butcher used to do.
These seem like small things, but they’re not. They are the building blocks of real cooking and the continuation of hundreds of years of tradition. Julia wasn’t showing me a recipe I needed to write down, I realized. She was offering me an apprenticeship in the uniquely human art of cookery.
I’ve been what I now call a “recipe cook” all my life. But recipes can be wrong. They can be downright unhelpful. If you’ve never seen an egg white beaten to a stiff peak, those instructions mean nothing to you. And your cake or souffle — not to mention your dinner guests — will suffer for it.
Julia demonstrates exactly what a stiff peak should look like and even tells us which arm muscle to use to fend off fatigue while wielding the whisk (Hint: forearm, not shoulder).
This is called technique. And technique, along with chemistry and physics, is what gives chefs the expertise to create dishes.
Good technique helps home cooks, too. Knowing how to comfortably and quickly chop lots of vegetables makes cooking easier and more fun. And that can mean fewer desperate weeknight pizza deliveries.
I became obsessed with Julia Child after chancing upon a copy of “Julie & Julia: 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny apartment kitchen.” I consumed the book in one 12-hour sitting.
While working at a dead-end job, author Julie Powell set herself an insane objective: to cook every recipe in Julia’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1.” She cooked compulsively to stew out her despair.
I could relate. I remember standing at the gas range in the trailer my dad shared with my grandmother after my parents divorced. I couldn’t have been more than 10 years old. I fried frozen chuck wagon patties one after another and served them with yellow mustard sandwiched between pillowy slices of Kern’s bread.
Julia Child started cooking not to distract herself from an unsatisfying life, but to wring every drop of juice out of a good one. World War II was over and she was newly married to the man of her dreams — diplomat, artist and gourmand Paul Child. They moved to Paris, and Julia was giddy over the city, especially its wine and food.
One particular restaurant meal of delicately cooked sole (similar to flounder) changed her life. In her mid-30s, she found her calling at that dining table.
She enrolled in the famous school of French chefs, Le Cordon Bleu. She met her collaborators, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck, at a cooking club. Together the women decided to write an authoritative French cookbook for “servantless” American housewives.
“Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1″ was published in 1961. It would influence generations of American chefs.
In my own cooking, I eventually moved far beyond the instant foods that my grandmothers and mother used. No longer content to merely bake, boil or fry food, I now braise, roast or saute.
But I’ve never cooked from “Mastering,” the book Julia spent 10 years perfecting. I tell myself I just don’t want to eat a pound of butter and bacon at every meal. And honestly, I will never, ever eat anything that has been encased in aspic. Eck.
The show can be challenging to the constitution, too, especially when Julia bungs a gigantic cod head onto the counter and explains how to make fish stock out of it, eyes and all. I was relieved when she said bottled clam juice makes a fine substitute for cod head.
But something slowly shifted in my food consciousness as I watched the DVDs. I barely flinched when she showed how to layer tripe (cow’s stomach) in a clay pot under a cap of fat and wax paper and cook it long enough to bring out “gelatinous qualities” in the sauce.
“That’s how you do it without cornstarch,” I thought.
By the time I got to the sausage show, I was nodding in agreement when she held up the thin, empty casing.
“You know what you’ve been eating all these years? Pig guts! And it’s simply delicious.”
The truth is, the book is daunting and old-fashioned. It’s hard to muster the courage to try “Gigot ou Epaule de Pre-Sale Braise aux Haricots” on a Tuesday night. Even the omelet recipe goes on for pages.
But when Julia throws a tablespoon of butter and two eggs into a pan and shakes the hell out of it until it rolls into a neat little bundle — all without the help of a spatula — I get it. This is the 20-second emergency dinner I need when I get home after 7.
She uses this same technique to turn a big potato pancake in another show. Sure, the first one ends up splattered all over her stove. But who cares? If it happens to you, do what Julia does: Scoop it back into the pan, throw your head back and laugh in a high-pitched warble.
When she peers into the camera, pan and potato pancake poised to defy gravity, and tells you to “have the courage of your convictions!” pay attention.
And then flip the thing with abandon.
Graphic: JULIA CHILD MILESTONES
Aug. 15, 1912: Julia McWilliams is born in Pasadena, Calif.
1944-45: Stationed in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and China with the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, a precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency.
1946: Marries Paul Child.
1949-1951: Attends Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris on the G.I. Bill.
1961: Publishes “Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1.”
1963: “The French Chef” premieres on WGBH public television in Boston and runs until 1973.
1966: Time magazine makes Julia its Thanksgiving cover story; dubs her “Our Lady of the Ladle.”
1978: Dan Aykroyd (right) parodies Julia in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch that has her continuing a cooking show despite nearly cutting off her thumb.
2000: Publishes her final book, “Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom.”
2001: Donates her Cambridge, Mass., kitchen to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and retires to Santa Barbara, Calif.
Aug. 13, 2004: Dies at 91.
Source: “Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child”
Graphic: SELECT JULIA CHILD RESOURCES
Books
-”Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vols. 1 and 2″ by Julia Child, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle
-”Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child,” by Noel Riley Fitch
-”Julie and Julia: 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny apartment” by Julie Powell
-”The Way to Cook,” by Julia Child
-”Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom” by Julia Child
DVDs
-”Biography — Julia Child”
-”Julia Child — The French Chef”
-”The French Chef with Julia Child 2″
-”Julia Child: An Appetite for Life”
Web site
Virtual tour of the Julia Child exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
http://americanhistory.si.edu/juliachild
Copyright The Roanoke Times 2006
Tags: cooking, Julia Child, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, The French Chef