Julia Child, the woman who almost single-handedly led Americans out of the hell of soggy green beans and Jello molds and into the Paradise of perfectly roasted chicken with butter-enriched pan sauce, would have been 100 today. She deserves every accolade she gets.
Without Julia Child, I might never have learned to cook. I was a Modern Young Woman, hungry to make my way in the great wide world and determined never to serve in any man’s kitchen. Cooking was the last thing I ever intended to do. But when I saw Julia make cream puffs on TV, I thought, “I love cream puffs. If it’s really that easy…” It was that easy, and they tasted like nothing I had ever imagined, tender and yeasty and totally unlike the leathery shells in the bakery window. The world of food opened up to me and Julia Child had me in the palm of her open, competent hand.
Not too long after that, Children’s Television Workshop hired me to do one of the episodes in a health series for adults. Subject: breast cancer. I guess they figured they should hire a female to produce and direct the thing (there were not many of us around), but the incongruity of putting that subject into the hands of the elfin, sour-tempered male series host hadn’t clicked with anyone. I proposed Julia, an unassailable PBS star and a breast cancer survivor, as co-host. They agreed, she agreed.
Next stop, a meeting in Cambridge to discuss the details. Ruth Lockwood, Julia’s Smith College roommate and television producer, said “We can meet for lunch in Harvard Square, or go to Julia’s.” Guess what I said. Well, you can guess part of it. What you can’t guess is my shameless addenda, “…it’ll be so much easier.” Really? For whom? No matter. Ruth said “OK.” I was shaking with excitement.
A few weeks later, my professional facade as intact as I could manage, our small production team rang the Childs’ doorbell just off Brattle Street. Julia was precisely what you would expect of a Smith girl who’d spent years as the wife of a diplomat. We didn’t know, then, that she herself had served in the precursor to the CIA. She was spontaneous and dignified, classy (to use an old word) but not pretentious, and fluent in the kind of intelligent, amusing small talk that reassures any visitor that it’s safe to relax. I have always been a little offended by the satires of her speaking voice. Dramatic and enthusiastic, I’d say, with pronunciations in the style of a bygone American upper class.
After the initial business discussion, during which I did my best all-business impersonation and she was the soul of accommodation, we repaired to the kitchen for LUNCH!!!!
As she assembled her Salade Nicoise (her default offering to lunch guests, I later learned), this guest, behaving like a New Yorker sneaking looks at but trying to appear totally cool and uninterested in the movie star at the next table, surveyed every inch of this famous room. I took in the counters built high for her convenience and tried to memorize the pegboard on which handsome, dapper Paul Child had drawn an outline of every tool, pot and pan so that each item could easily find its place after use.
A small ramekin of mayonnaise sat before me. I looked, I resisted. I resisted some more. Finally, I could stand it no longer. Surreptitiously, I poked the smallest edge of my smallest finger into its creamy surface and carried it to my impatient taste buds. “Julia’s mayonnaise tastes like MY mayonnaise!” I thought to myself. For a single heady disoriented instant, I felt as one with the great Julia Child. No, what? Oh! My mayonnaise is JULIA’S mayonnaise. Heaven.
Sure that it would be both unprofessional and an imposition to draw her into a cooking discussion, I kept the lunch-time talk focused on the breast cancer show. The wine, though. I did comment on the wine. It was the first truly good white wine I had ever tasted, fetched from his cellar and poured by Paul Child. I have no clue what it was, but every so often I taste something like it, crisp but with body and fruit and a long finish.
Post-lunch: all pro, all the time. But on the way out the door, I could stand it no longer. “Julia Child,” I said, “You changed my life!” Startled, she asked, “How?” I gave details. She asked me what I liked to cook. Suddenly I realized that OF COURSE she likes to talk about food and cooking. That’s what SHE DOES!! Eagerly, I told her about my discoveries and worried over my failure with the Orange Bavarian Cream in Volume I of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. “Oh!” she said, “You must have a VERY EARLY edition! There was a misprint.” And with that, she bounded up the stairs to retrieve a copy of the corrected version. Flood-gates open, I stayed for at least another hour, trying the patience of my team (I didn’t care) but asking every question I could think of and getting every thoughtful, considered, generous piece of cooking advice I could ever have dreamed of, all punctuated by yet more of her runs up the stairs to get me this print-out or that.
She was wonderful. She is my hero. Happy birthday, Julia.
Photo: Flickr
