Parmigiano-Reggiano is the new Velveeta, prosciutto and pancetta share deli counter space with baloney, and pricey monogrammed kids’ aprons with themes like mermaid, dinosaur and princess are sold on cooking Web sites. If you serve iceberg instead of arugula, don’t be surprised if guests don’t clean their plates.
When did food become so snobby that even people who’ve never cooked a meal know what porcini and paneer are? At least two decades ago, experts say. Now "foodies" - a term coined in 1984 in “The Official Foodie Handbook,” according to Mitchell Davis, VP of the James Beard Foundation - support the Food Network and countless other reality TV shows devoted to food. Chances are, many will be flocking to see Meryl Streep and Amy Adams in “Julie & Julia,” opening Friday, which weaves together the stories of a young food blogger in Queens with the grande dame of French cooking, Julia Child.
Child persuaded Americans to swoon over dishes they hadn’t ever known existed, and she captured the nation’s collective interest in cuisine in her famous TV cooking shows.
As Americans familiarized themselves with exotic ingredients, they became more receptive to buying them. It was a no-brainer that exotic ingredients would fly off the shelves when marketing gurus like Steve Jenkins brought them into the country. Jenkins, Fairway’s cheesemonger and a part owner, introduced Americans to balsamic vinegar in 1978, sundried tomatoes in 1979, and olive oil shortly after that.
“It is really reverse snobbery because these foods are made by generations of peasants for other peasants,” Jenkins says. “Then Americans who are late to the party loot the peasant regions and they espouse peasant simplicity with foods eaten by peasants.”
Now, say some experts, the focus may be shifting from the chefs to the food.
“’Julie & Julia’ would not have happened five years ago,” says food trend watcher Phil Lempert, editor of SupermarketGuru.com. “Julia was a phenomenal person with a great personality but with her, the food came first. Now it’s the chefs who come first, and then the food. But I think we are starting to move away from cute and cleavage back to real food.”
Mitchell Davis says that the distinction between highbrow and lowbrow is finally beginning to blur, and that a “food snob” is very different today than just a few years ago.
“You used to be a food snob if you knew all the different kinds of truffles and foie gras,” Mitchell says. “Now the snob is the person who’s at the taco truck in Queens or the pizza place in the Bronx. This cultural omnivorousness is central among people who want to distinguish themselves through food.”
As proof of the fact that snobbism is going into reverse, he points to Daniel Boulud’s DBGB Kitchen & Bar, the Bowery restaurant that sells more than a dozen kinds of sausages and burgers.
“This never would have happened five years ago,” Davis says. “A chef of his prominence would never have done that. But chefs and diners love it.”
They also love to know a food’s origin these days, says Dorothy Cann Hamilton, founder and CEO of the French Culinary Institute. “For years, our food has been manipulated by corporations that treat us like a feed lot,” she says. “It’s all about how to get us the fattest we can be on the cheapest food without any real taste. But now food has the attention of the President of the United States and his wife. It’s getting a lot less snobby.”
Food snobbism originated and pretty much stayed in large urban areas, says Barry Glassner, University of Southern California professor and author of “The Gospel of Food.” “It’s easier to get food in the cities,” he says. “And people will pay extra there for higher status food. Because food can be an indicator of a person’s social standing.”
But some experts say we’re in for some culinary changes.
“We have gotten carried away,” Lempert says. “And I think we’ll see that all these people who’ve been so chi chi about ingredients are in for a reality check.”
Showing posts with label Julia Child. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Julia Child. Show all posts
Friday, August 7, 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Julia Child's Legacy, Beyond Tools and Techniques
By HOLLY RAMER (AP)
CONCORD, N.H. — From the timesaving tools and French techniques she loved to a famously dropped dinner, Julia Child left a lasting impression on a generation of cooks.
In the forthcoming biographical movie, "Julie & Julia," Meryl Streep channels America's first celebrity chef. As the movie opens, chefs and food magazine editors remember the real Child's vast contributions to American home cooking — a scholarly yet accessible approach to recipes, an enthusiasm for efficiency and above all, a spirited sense of fun.
At the most basic level, Child introduced home cooks to their stoves, knives, pots and pans, said chef Jacques Pepin, Child's longtime friend and collaborator.
"We're in a country where we have to cook very, very fast with the microwave or very, very slow with Crock Pot cooking. Then you have the regular stove that's lost in the middle," he said.
He said he most remembers Child's great love for life and the great pleasure she took in cooking as well as eating.
"You often see people cook and never taste. For her, it was cook, taste, cook, taste, cook, taste. With a little sip of wine on the side," he said.
Chef Alice Waters of Chez Panisse said Child emphasized that cooking was important but need not be serious business.
"I think of her sense of humor, her joie de vivre about cooking and really about her interest in gastronomy — her academic insistence on writing the recipe right," said Waters. "It was curiosity and exploration and learning all folded together to make food an art. That's what she did."
And she gave novices the confidence to try, added Art Smith, former personal chef to Oprah Winfrey. He made a whole meal out of blanched asparagus for his first girlfriend after watching Child on TV.
"Julia Child was not only an amazing cook but taught America that it could learn to cook," said Smith. "That spirit continues to this day, and this why we have great cooking shows."
Tina Ujlaki, executive food editor at Food & Wine magazine, said she often thinks of Child when she has kitchen mishaps.
"I don't think, 'What would Julia do?' I just do what she would do: Keep on going," she said. "That was a really big part of the Julia liberation. Not only did she teach the techniques ... she said, 'It's OK. Relax. It doesn't have to be perfect."
That said, there are certain processes or gadgets that Ujlaki associates with Child. "I can't cut up a chicken without thinking of her and how lovingly she would cut it up," she said.
And Child did not shy away from modern appliances or tools if they made cooking easier, she said. She put her blender to work on a variety of classic soups and once told Ujlaki that she even used a stand mixer to make mashed potatoes for a crowd instead of the food mill she favored for smaller amounts.
"She probably used more gadgets than they used in typical French cooking," she said. "She was always very quick to embrace anything that made sense, but I don't think she had silly gadgets or gizmos. She didn't like clutter."
Her kitchen tools reflected her utter lack of pretense, said John Willoughby, executive editor of Gourmet magazine.
"If something worked well, for example, she really couldn't care less if it was traditional or not; efficiency in the kitchen was always to be embraced," he said.
The food processor is a perfect example, he said.
"When it was first introduced, I remember thinking that I probably should just ignore it, since chopping things by machine rather than by hand couldn't possibly be right. Then Julia endorsed it, and like hundreds of thousands of other American cooks, that convinced me to give it a try. Think of the millions of hours of chopping that she has saved by her openness to new ideas."
Child had a sure, unpretentious confidence in knowing who she was and what she loved, said Christopher Kimball, publisher of Cook's Illustrated magazine.
"She wasn't hopping around like so many food magazines doing the hot, latest thing," he said, recalling how he joined Child to watch the 2000 election returns on a small TV in an alcove off her kitchen. "It was just about the food and the company," he said.
It's all about the whisk for Lucinda Scala Quinn, editorial director of food at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.
Quinn cooked her way through Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" as a teenager, discovering the many uses for whipped egg whites and cream, from meringue to Swiss buttercream to butter.
"The alchemy of it all and the magical transformational possibilities of that one tool, the whisk, ... has never ceased to amaze me," she said.
Tanya Steel became a fan of Child's at an even younger age, after declaring at age 8 that she would not spend the rest of her life eating her mother's awful cooking.
"I literally learned every single thing from Julia Child," said Steel, editor-in-chief of epicurious.com, the online home for Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazines.
Like others, Steel cites Child's ability to make cooking accessible and fun as her chief contribution to the culinary world. But in terms of technique, she counts roasting as the one that has meant the most to her over the years. She's passed the technique on to her own children, who tackled their first roast in honor of Mother's Day earlier this year.
"The one technique that became my infallible, go-to technique is roasting because the most basic thing turns out the most delicious dinner," she said. "I roasted a chicken about 10 different times based on watching her on the 'French Chef' until I felt like I had gotten it right."
Eve Felder, associate dean for culinary arts at the Culinary Institute of America, said Child's legacy lies in taking the mystique out of fine cooking techniques that up until her time were not available to home cooks.
"I can't tell you the number of friends I have who self-taught themselves by going through her books," she said.
Felder, a former chef at Chez Panisse, remembers feeling in awe as Child toured the restaurant's kitchen.
"She just had such a spirit. Not only her physical size, but her emotional size, and the fact that she just embraced life."
CONCORD, N.H. — From the timesaving tools and French techniques she loved to a famously dropped dinner, Julia Child left a lasting impression on a generation of cooks.
In the forthcoming biographical movie, "Julie & Julia," Meryl Streep channels America's first celebrity chef. As the movie opens, chefs and food magazine editors remember the real Child's vast contributions to American home cooking — a scholarly yet accessible approach to recipes, an enthusiasm for efficiency and above all, a spirited sense of fun.
At the most basic level, Child introduced home cooks to their stoves, knives, pots and pans, said chef Jacques Pepin, Child's longtime friend and collaborator.
"We're in a country where we have to cook very, very fast with the microwave or very, very slow with Crock Pot cooking. Then you have the regular stove that's lost in the middle," he said.
He said he most remembers Child's great love for life and the great pleasure she took in cooking as well as eating.
"You often see people cook and never taste. For her, it was cook, taste, cook, taste, cook, taste. With a little sip of wine on the side," he said.
Chef Alice Waters of Chez Panisse said Child emphasized that cooking was important but need not be serious business.
"I think of her sense of humor, her joie de vivre about cooking and really about her interest in gastronomy — her academic insistence on writing the recipe right," said Waters. "It was curiosity and exploration and learning all folded together to make food an art. That's what she did."
And she gave novices the confidence to try, added Art Smith, former personal chef to Oprah Winfrey. He made a whole meal out of blanched asparagus for his first girlfriend after watching Child on TV.
"Julia Child was not only an amazing cook but taught America that it could learn to cook," said Smith. "That spirit continues to this day, and this why we have great cooking shows."
Tina Ujlaki, executive food editor at Food & Wine magazine, said she often thinks of Child when she has kitchen mishaps.
"I don't think, 'What would Julia do?' I just do what she would do: Keep on going," she said. "That was a really big part of the Julia liberation. Not only did she teach the techniques ... she said, 'It's OK. Relax. It doesn't have to be perfect."
That said, there are certain processes or gadgets that Ujlaki associates with Child. "I can't cut up a chicken without thinking of her and how lovingly she would cut it up," she said.
And Child did not shy away from modern appliances or tools if they made cooking easier, she said. She put her blender to work on a variety of classic soups and once told Ujlaki that she even used a stand mixer to make mashed potatoes for a crowd instead of the food mill she favored for smaller amounts.
"She probably used more gadgets than they used in typical French cooking," she said. "She was always very quick to embrace anything that made sense, but I don't think she had silly gadgets or gizmos. She didn't like clutter."
Her kitchen tools reflected her utter lack of pretense, said John Willoughby, executive editor of Gourmet magazine.
"If something worked well, for example, she really couldn't care less if it was traditional or not; efficiency in the kitchen was always to be embraced," he said.
The food processor is a perfect example, he said.
"When it was first introduced, I remember thinking that I probably should just ignore it, since chopping things by machine rather than by hand couldn't possibly be right. Then Julia endorsed it, and like hundreds of thousands of other American cooks, that convinced me to give it a try. Think of the millions of hours of chopping that she has saved by her openness to new ideas."
Child had a sure, unpretentious confidence in knowing who she was and what she loved, said Christopher Kimball, publisher of Cook's Illustrated magazine.
"She wasn't hopping around like so many food magazines doing the hot, latest thing," he said, recalling how he joined Child to watch the 2000 election returns on a small TV in an alcove off her kitchen. "It was just about the food and the company," he said.
It's all about the whisk for Lucinda Scala Quinn, editorial director of food at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.
Quinn cooked her way through Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" as a teenager, discovering the many uses for whipped egg whites and cream, from meringue to Swiss buttercream to butter.
"The alchemy of it all and the magical transformational possibilities of that one tool, the whisk, ... has never ceased to amaze me," she said.
Tanya Steel became a fan of Child's at an even younger age, after declaring at age 8 that she would not spend the rest of her life eating her mother's awful cooking.
"I literally learned every single thing from Julia Child," said Steel, editor-in-chief of epicurious.com, the online home for Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazines.
Like others, Steel cites Child's ability to make cooking accessible and fun as her chief contribution to the culinary world. But in terms of technique, she counts roasting as the one that has meant the most to her over the years. She's passed the technique on to her own children, who tackled their first roast in honor of Mother's Day earlier this year.
"The one technique that became my infallible, go-to technique is roasting because the most basic thing turns out the most delicious dinner," she said. "I roasted a chicken about 10 different times based on watching her on the 'French Chef' until I felt like I had gotten it right."
Eve Felder, associate dean for culinary arts at the Culinary Institute of America, said Child's legacy lies in taking the mystique out of fine cooking techniques that up until her time were not available to home cooks.
"I can't tell you the number of friends I have who self-taught themselves by going through her books," she said.
Felder, a former chef at Chez Panisse, remembers feeling in awe as Child toured the restaurant's kitchen.
"She just had such a spirit. Not only her physical size, but her emotional size, and the fact that she just embraced life."
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Julia Child and the CIA (No, Not THAT CIA!)
Documents: Julia Child part of WWII-era spy ring
By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE and RANDY HERSCHAFT, Associated Press Writers
Famed chef Julia Child shared a secret with Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg at a time when the Nazis threatened the world. They served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created in World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt.
The secret comes out Thursday, all of the names and previously classified files identifying nearly 24,000 spies who formed the first centralized intelligence effort by the United States. The National Archives, which this week released a list of the names found in the records, will make available for the first time all 750,000 pages identifying the vast spy network of military and civilian operatives.
They were soldiers, actors, historians, lawyers, athletes, professors, reporters. But for several years during World War II, they were known simply as the OSS. They studied military plans, created propaganda, infiltrated enemy ranks and stirred resistance among foreign troops.
Among the more than 35,000 OSS personnel files are applications, commendations and handwritten notes identifying young recruits who, like Child, Goldberg and Berg, earned greater acclaim in other fields — Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a historian and special assistant to President Kennedy; Sterling Hayden, a film and television actor whose work included a role in "The Godfather"; and Thomas Braden, an author whose "Eight Is Enough" book inspired the 1970s television series.
Other notables identified in the files include John Hemingway, son of author Ernest Hemingway; Quentin and Kermit Roosevelt, sons of President Theodore Roosevelt, and Miles Copeland, father of Stewart Copeland, drummer for the band The Police.
The release of the OSS personnel files uncloaks one of the last secrets from the short-lived wartime intelligence agency, which for the most part later was folded into the CIA after President Truman disbanded it in 1945.
"I think it's terrific," said Elizabeth McIntosh, 93, a former OSS agent now living in Woodbridge, Va. "They've finally, after all these years, they've gotten the names out. All of these people had been told never to mention they were with the OSS."
The CIA had resisted releasing OSS records for decades. But former CIA Director William Casey, himself an OSS veteran, cleared the way for transfer of millions of OSS documents to the National Archives when he took over the agency in 1981. The personnel files are the latest to be made public.
Information about OSS involvement was so guarded that relatives often couldn't confirm a family member's work with the group.
Walter Mess, who handled covert OSS operations in Poland and North Africa, said he kept quiet for more than 50 years, only recently telling his wife of 62 years about his OSS activity.
"I was told to keep my mouth shut," said Mess, now 93 and living in Falls Church, Va.
The files will offer new information even for those most familiar with the agency. Charles Pinck, president of the OSS Society created by former OSS agents and their relatives, said the nearly 24,000 employees included in the archives far exceeds previous estimates of 13,000.
The newly released documents will clarify these and other issues, said William Cunliffe, an archivist who has worked extensively with the OSS records at the National Archives.
"We're saying the OSS was a lot bigger than they were saying," Cunliffe said.
By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE and RANDY HERSCHAFT, Associated Press Writers
Famed chef Julia Child shared a secret with Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg at a time when the Nazis threatened the world. They served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created in World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt.
The secret comes out Thursday, all of the names and previously classified files identifying nearly 24,000 spies who formed the first centralized intelligence effort by the United States. The National Archives, which this week released a list of the names found in the records, will make available for the first time all 750,000 pages identifying the vast spy network of military and civilian operatives.
They were soldiers, actors, historians, lawyers, athletes, professors, reporters. But for several years during World War II, they were known simply as the OSS. They studied military plans, created propaganda, infiltrated enemy ranks and stirred resistance among foreign troops.
Among the more than 35,000 OSS personnel files are applications, commendations and handwritten notes identifying young recruits who, like Child, Goldberg and Berg, earned greater acclaim in other fields — Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a historian and special assistant to President Kennedy; Sterling Hayden, a film and television actor whose work included a role in "The Godfather"; and Thomas Braden, an author whose "Eight Is Enough" book inspired the 1970s television series.
Other notables identified in the files include John Hemingway, son of author Ernest Hemingway; Quentin and Kermit Roosevelt, sons of President Theodore Roosevelt, and Miles Copeland, father of Stewart Copeland, drummer for the band The Police.
The release of the OSS personnel files uncloaks one of the last secrets from the short-lived wartime intelligence agency, which for the most part later was folded into the CIA after President Truman disbanded it in 1945.
"I think it's terrific," said Elizabeth McIntosh, 93, a former OSS agent now living in Woodbridge, Va. "They've finally, after all these years, they've gotten the names out. All of these people had been told never to mention they were with the OSS."
The CIA had resisted releasing OSS records for decades. But former CIA Director William Casey, himself an OSS veteran, cleared the way for transfer of millions of OSS documents to the National Archives when he took over the agency in 1981. The personnel files are the latest to be made public.
Information about OSS involvement was so guarded that relatives often couldn't confirm a family member's work with the group.
Walter Mess, who handled covert OSS operations in Poland and North Africa, said he kept quiet for more than 50 years, only recently telling his wife of 62 years about his OSS activity.
"I was told to keep my mouth shut," said Mess, now 93 and living in Falls Church, Va.
The files will offer new information even for those most familiar with the agency. Charles Pinck, president of the OSS Society created by former OSS agents and their relatives, said the nearly 24,000 employees included in the archives far exceeds previous estimates of 13,000.
The newly released documents will clarify these and other issues, said William Cunliffe, an archivist who has worked extensively with the OSS records at the National Archives.
"We're saying the OSS was a lot bigger than they were saying," Cunliffe said.
Friday, March 28, 2008
A Chat with Julia Child's Nephew
By APRIL LISANTE Philadelphia Daily News
For the Daily News
SHE WAS brining, roasting, kneading and sautéing when Emeril Lagasse was in diapers, and Rachael Ray wasn't even a gleam in her parents' eyes.
At a time when cooking wasn't cool - and certainly not on television - Julia Child single-handedly pioneered a new gastronomic course for the world. But the familiar, larger-than-life persona of her celebrity years had humble beginnings as a shy, awkward, sometimes inept culinary student.
Though she is known mostly for the television fame she gained late in life, her love affair with French cooking began as a lark, a thirtysomething's determination to learn a few dishes to please her new husband.
Some of her most intimate culinary experiences as a young woman are captured in the memoir "My Life in France" (Knopf, $25.95), based on Child's dictations to her great-nephew, Alex Prud'homme, in the days before her 2004 death from kidney failure at age 91.
Prud'homme also used old letters, photos and handwritten recipes from Child and her husband, Paul, that passed through the family for decades to recreate Child's years in France, from 1948 to 1954, when she learned to cook.
She went to France with her worldly husband, a U.S. State Department employee who was 10 years her senior. Child's efforts to remedy her ineptitude in the kitchen and her lack of knowledge of French cuisine sparked an obsession that produced, well, historical results.
Prud'homme's book, published in 2006, has just been optioned by Sony Pictures for a movie starring Meryl Streep as Julia and Stanley Tucci as Paul. Nora Ephron - no slouch in the kitchen herself, and writer/director of films such as "Sleepless in Seattle" and "Heartburn" - will write and direct the film, scheduled for a 2009 release.
We chatted with Prud'homme, a freelance journalist and novelist who lectured at the Free Library of Philadelphia last month about the book, the movie and life with Child.
Q: Julia sort of fell into cooking, and in the book she is almost like an alien landing on another planet when she arrives in France. Tell me about what that was like for her.
A: These are stories she'd always talked about - the five years of her life when she was living in France with Paul after the war. She arrives not speaking French and not able to cook more than pancakes. And in typical Julia fashion, she signs up for French lessons. She becomes obsessed.
After a year, she signs up at the Cordon Bleu [cooking school] and learns to cook and how to teach and how to shop in the French way, which means not just buying a piece of meat wrapped in plastic. It means talking to the butcher and asking him about the weather and his daughter.
This was an important life lesson for her and for me. There are lessons embedded in these stories. We try not to hit the reader over the head with them, but they are simple and they can be applied to life. Take time, do things carefully, and, above all, have fun. It's a simple statement, but profound . . . I think it's going to be one of her enduring legacies, this positive, rigorous approach to life . . .
Q: Why are only the years from '48 to '54 the focus of the book?
A: This was the moment of epiphany for her. She arrives as a blank slate in her mid-'30s, she doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up. She is with her husband, a sophisticated man, and he takes her to this important place at this moment in history.
Q: In the beginning of the book, she talks about her first meal in France when she arrives. It is bizarre to hear Julia Child talk about not knowing what a shallot is, or hearing about her shock that they drank wine at lunch.
A: She always referred to this meal [in the town of Rouen] in a dreamy way that she'd play in her mind over and over. One thing that was fascinating was how memory works. She was 91 at that point when she was talking about it, and her health was not great. Sometimes she could not remember what she did the day before, but she could remember specifics from 50 years earlier - the texture and taste of food and people and places she had seen.
Q: Did you get to know her well from this book-writing process?
A: I thought I knew her pretty well, but when you spend intense time going over things from 50 years ago . . . yes.
Q: What was it about French cooking in particular that drew her?
A: I could never get her to articulate what it was about French food that rang her bell. She loved Chinese food second best, but there was something about French food. We talked around this question, but she said it is the seriousness with which the French take the food - the ritual, the rules and the great pleasure in it.
Q: In the forward of the book, you mention that she and her husband talked about writing this book for a long time, and that you waited a long time for her to agree to do it. How did you finally convince her? Do you think it was her husband's death [in 1994] that convinced her?
A: The book is dedicated to Paul, and his photos illustrated her book. He had already experienced Paris in the 1920s as an artist. He really encouraged her [to learn to cook]. He pushed her. He was a teacher and important influence on her life. She was hoping to meet his high standards, but she took it and ran for it.
At first, I had a hard time getting her to tell me these stories . . . I'd say, "Julia tell me about your first building in Paris where you stayed." She'd say it was a building. It was odd because here's a person who spent her life on the stage performing, but she was actually a modest person who never talked about herself. She never got around to writing the book because she didn't want to toot her own horn.
Q: You were able to write the book mainly because of the letters Paul sent to your grandfather, his twin brother, during these years in France. How was it having all these letters to work with?
A: Paul was a wonderful writer, very descriptive. It was almost like he'd written these letters for us to use to write this book 50 years later. I felt like a pirate discovering a pile of gold coins. I was able to unlock Julia by reading her sections of Paul's letters and it would sort of transport her. . . . I think it was just luck that we were able to work on this thing together. Paul's stories got her going.
Once we got her ideas down on paper, I would go out to Santa Barbara and we'd do interviews in her little apartment from January 2004 to August for a few days each month. [Julia died two days after she and Prud'homme had met about the book for the last time.]
Then I took another year to finish the book and essentially be a ventriloquist. I had to take off my journalist hat and take on her voice. I just used stories she wanted to use. The tone we wanted to set was you [the readers] are sitting at a café table with Julia, and she is telling stories about her life.
Q: What do you think Julia would want the book to convey?
A: She was always modest and would downplay her evolution in American gastronomy. . . . She wants to inspire people. She wants people to love food and cooking and do it with others - to take food more seriously and to take the time to do it right. And above all, have fun.
Q: Are you excited about the movie?
A: Sony Pictures has optioned it and combined it with a book written by Julie Powell ["Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen," Little, Brown & Co.]. Powell spent a year recreating every recipe from Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." I am happy about that. I think Julia would be pleased. *
For the Daily News
SHE WAS brining, roasting, kneading and sautéing when Emeril Lagasse was in diapers, and Rachael Ray wasn't even a gleam in her parents' eyes.
At a time when cooking wasn't cool - and certainly not on television - Julia Child single-handedly pioneered a new gastronomic course for the world. But the familiar, larger-than-life persona of her celebrity years had humble beginnings as a shy, awkward, sometimes inept culinary student.
Though she is known mostly for the television fame she gained late in life, her love affair with French cooking began as a lark, a thirtysomething's determination to learn a few dishes to please her new husband.
Some of her most intimate culinary experiences as a young woman are captured in the memoir "My Life in France" (Knopf, $25.95), based on Child's dictations to her great-nephew, Alex Prud'homme, in the days before her 2004 death from kidney failure at age 91.
Prud'homme also used old letters, photos and handwritten recipes from Child and her husband, Paul, that passed through the family for decades to recreate Child's years in France, from 1948 to 1954, when she learned to cook.
She went to France with her worldly husband, a U.S. State Department employee who was 10 years her senior. Child's efforts to remedy her ineptitude in the kitchen and her lack of knowledge of French cuisine sparked an obsession that produced, well, historical results.
Prud'homme's book, published in 2006, has just been optioned by Sony Pictures for a movie starring Meryl Streep as Julia and Stanley Tucci as Paul. Nora Ephron - no slouch in the kitchen herself, and writer/director of films such as "Sleepless in Seattle" and "Heartburn" - will write and direct the film, scheduled for a 2009 release.
We chatted with Prud'homme, a freelance journalist and novelist who lectured at the Free Library of Philadelphia last month about the book, the movie and life with Child.
Q: Julia sort of fell into cooking, and in the book she is almost like an alien landing on another planet when she arrives in France. Tell me about what that was like for her.
A: These are stories she'd always talked about - the five years of her life when she was living in France with Paul after the war. She arrives not speaking French and not able to cook more than pancakes. And in typical Julia fashion, she signs up for French lessons. She becomes obsessed.
After a year, she signs up at the Cordon Bleu [cooking school] and learns to cook and how to teach and how to shop in the French way, which means not just buying a piece of meat wrapped in plastic. It means talking to the butcher and asking him about the weather and his daughter.
This was an important life lesson for her and for me. There are lessons embedded in these stories. We try not to hit the reader over the head with them, but they are simple and they can be applied to life. Take time, do things carefully, and, above all, have fun. It's a simple statement, but profound . . . I think it's going to be one of her enduring legacies, this positive, rigorous approach to life . . .
Q: Why are only the years from '48 to '54 the focus of the book?
A: This was the moment of epiphany for her. She arrives as a blank slate in her mid-'30s, she doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up. She is with her husband, a sophisticated man, and he takes her to this important place at this moment in history.
Q: In the beginning of the book, she talks about her first meal in France when she arrives. It is bizarre to hear Julia Child talk about not knowing what a shallot is, or hearing about her shock that they drank wine at lunch.
A: She always referred to this meal [in the town of Rouen] in a dreamy way that she'd play in her mind over and over. One thing that was fascinating was how memory works. She was 91 at that point when she was talking about it, and her health was not great. Sometimes she could not remember what she did the day before, but she could remember specifics from 50 years earlier - the texture and taste of food and people and places she had seen.
Q: Did you get to know her well from this book-writing process?
A: I thought I knew her pretty well, but when you spend intense time going over things from 50 years ago . . . yes.
Q: What was it about French cooking in particular that drew her?
A: I could never get her to articulate what it was about French food that rang her bell. She loved Chinese food second best, but there was something about French food. We talked around this question, but she said it is the seriousness with which the French take the food - the ritual, the rules and the great pleasure in it.
Q: In the forward of the book, you mention that she and her husband talked about writing this book for a long time, and that you waited a long time for her to agree to do it. How did you finally convince her? Do you think it was her husband's death [in 1994] that convinced her?
A: The book is dedicated to Paul, and his photos illustrated her book. He had already experienced Paris in the 1920s as an artist. He really encouraged her [to learn to cook]. He pushed her. He was a teacher and important influence on her life. She was hoping to meet his high standards, but she took it and ran for it.
At first, I had a hard time getting her to tell me these stories . . . I'd say, "Julia tell me about your first building in Paris where you stayed." She'd say it was a building. It was odd because here's a person who spent her life on the stage performing, but she was actually a modest person who never talked about herself. She never got around to writing the book because she didn't want to toot her own horn.
Q: You were able to write the book mainly because of the letters Paul sent to your grandfather, his twin brother, during these years in France. How was it having all these letters to work with?
A: Paul was a wonderful writer, very descriptive. It was almost like he'd written these letters for us to use to write this book 50 years later. I felt like a pirate discovering a pile of gold coins. I was able to unlock Julia by reading her sections of Paul's letters and it would sort of transport her. . . . I think it was just luck that we were able to work on this thing together. Paul's stories got her going.
Once we got her ideas down on paper, I would go out to Santa Barbara and we'd do interviews in her little apartment from January 2004 to August for a few days each month. [Julia died two days after she and Prud'homme had met about the book for the last time.]
Then I took another year to finish the book and essentially be a ventriloquist. I had to take off my journalist hat and take on her voice. I just used stories she wanted to use. The tone we wanted to set was you [the readers] are sitting at a café table with Julia, and she is telling stories about her life.
Q: What do you think Julia would want the book to convey?
A: She was always modest and would downplay her evolution in American gastronomy. . . . She wants to inspire people. She wants people to love food and cooking and do it with others - to take food more seriously and to take the time to do it right. And above all, have fun.
Q: Are you excited about the movie?
A: Sony Pictures has optioned it and combined it with a book written by Julie Powell ["Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen," Little, Brown & Co.]. Powell spent a year recreating every recipe from Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." I am happy about that. I think Julia would be pleased. *
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