The Spirit of Julia Child

lives. While we lost the culinary lioness five years ago, Meryl Streep has breathed life into the spirit of this American icon (one icon playing another) for a mainly enjoyable movie. Two of the first cookbooks I ever purchased were volumes I and II of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. You can buy them direct from this site on Amazon just by clicking on my exhaustively researched Cookbooks section at right. The credits today stated that the initial volume is in its 49th printing, that’s about one a year as I count. They share my precious bookshelves (well now climate-controlled storage) with the likes of Simca Beck, James Beard, and many others.

I’m sorry to say that the character of Julie in the movie is hard to identify with. Who can compare a Cordon Bleu graduate who writes the seminal book on French cooking for Americans (without servants in their kitchens) and changes the world? Especially given a depressed, narcissistic wife in Queens who cooks all the dishes in the book in one year and blogs about them. An admirable pursuit and she got an audience, book and movie and is no longer working as a government drone, which is what she wanted. Even the ebullient fairy princess of Enchanted couldn’t make this woman worth caring about. But what they accomplished was night and day.

Perhaps if I was 6′ 2″ I could have faced the disapproving head of Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, and the stony-faced room of professional male chefs that Mrs. Child, the neophyte, chose to join. Probably not. I also was not blessed with the je ne sais quoi that was Julia Child. Twenty years ago when I quit the NYC rat race and went to cooking school, women were accepted. Perhaps not after graduation, which is why I chose to apprentice in the kitchen of a female chef and cookbook author.

The first half of school we learned the basics of French cuisine. I joked at one point that we should have checked our weight and cholesterol before we began and after Phase I. Classic cooking: butter; cream; eggs. And we had to eat everything we cooked. Egg day was always feared, for its difficulty as much as knowing eggs were all we would get to eat all day. Phase II brought in a stagiere who stocked the kitchen for us depending upon the lesson, and cooked us a balanced lunch. Consider that we spent two solid weeks on pastry and baking, so we had to have something nutritious to get us through what was nearly a 12-hour day for me with commuting. There were eight students in the class so we all got individual attention. I’ve had really great teachers in grade school, high school and college (not many, but a few really stand out even years later) but this was literally the most fun I’ve ever had in school. Luckily so, because I blew my entire life savings on it.

One hopes that this book and movie will bring a new generation to cooking, instead of take-out and the prepared aisles of the grocery store. It made such a difference when I shopped the outside (produce, meat, fish, dairy) aisles and only ventured inside for olive oil, rice, soy sauce, pasta and other staples.

Instead of my regular sign-off this evening, permit me to say “Bon Appetit!”