Cooking Blog - Bon Appetit . Thanks for the memories, Julia

I see maybe four movies a year - I'm just not a movie person but one coming out soon is penciled in my book. Julia and Julie - based on two true stories, the first, Julia Child's My Life in France (co-written with her nephew) and on Julie Powell's blog of 2002-2003 when she made a dish every day for a year from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Can't wait. I think any of us who had access to a kitchen from 1960 onward and exposed to The French Chef, the PBS cooking show, have been influenced by Julia Child. Her books were my bibles in the kitchen. I was fearless in following her recipes – all my friends were. August issue of Bon Appetit magazine has a delightful tribute to Julia and a suggested menu of her classics. Were she still living she would be 97 this month and the article is a birthday tribute. The dessert made me smile. I first made a Reine de Saba cake in 1976. It was my contribution to a Julia inspired potluck amongst my circle. It was such a hit that I made it again a week or so later for a small dinner party at my house. One of the guests raved about it. Blooming with my success I offered to bring it to a celebration they were having for a major life event at their house in the next month. “You will?” wonderful and this rather exotic woman who choreographed modern dance (her husband composed quite strange atonal music) hugged me. “We have eighty people coming”. I gasped, regained my composure and the day before the party made ten Reine de Saba’s – didn’t make another for twenty-five years!

Julia Child inspired heroics in the kitchen. I lived in Cincinnati 1975 to 1981 and although the details escape me now, for some reason the architect who had designed our house in the sixties became a dear friend and at one point lived with us for several months. Didn’t know it at the time but he was entering into dementia and rather strange behaviors resulted. I taught at a university and had two children. I came home one day to find the kitchen in total chaos, every single pot I owned dirty and the table set for dinner. Woody had had a “Julia moment” and made dinner. The centerpiece of the meal was a bloody roast duck and the carcass had been ”pressed” to produce ‘juice”. Another time I was teaching and there was a knock at my door – it opened to reveal Woody looking agitated and beckoning me. Fearing something terrible had happened at the house I rushed over to him – he grabbed my arm and literally dragged me to the parking lot – “Just look “ he said. And there in the back of his VW, suspended in a sling made from a sheet was, as he put it, “the perfect French loaf”. Back home I discovered that he had ‘modified’ my beautiful new Jennaire by removing all the shelves and lining the inside with clay tiles to reproduce a French bread oven.

Ah, Julia, thanks for the memories, the inspiration, and the laughter in the kitchen and for encouraging my efforts to master the art of French cooking. Bon Appetit. I plan on making the full suggested menu from the August Bon Appetit and will enjoy every moment of doing so – and I’ll lick the bowl when I make the Reine de Saba.

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