Forever Julia!

Categories: Cookbooks , Nonfiction

Julia Child's life is an open book, or at least the years she spent in France before the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  Finished after her death in 2004, My Life in France is co-authored by her great-nephew, Alex Prud’homme.  It is an amusing account of how she fell in love with Paul Child, France and good food and leads up to her success in the 1960's as public television's beloved French Chef who converted America to a new appreciation of food. 

Readers of Appetite for Life: the Biography of Julia Child by Noel Riley Fitch
will find little information that is new, but this book has Julia written all over it.  Who else would call the onerous work she put into writing, “cookery-bookery”, and her light, affectionate style pervades the story.   

Meticulous testing and retesting of recipes and techniques became the hallmark of Child’s books either in partnership or later writing solo and one appreciates the labor and devotion poured into all of her cookbooks.  Almost a decade was spent writing the first book while Child and her co-authors anguished over whether an American firm would want to publish a book with such attention to detail in the post-war era of instant cake mixes and frozen foods

While the book follows Child’s professional development, it also is about her love affair with her husband, Paul, her deep devotion to France, its people and, of course, its cuisine.  Charmingly illustrated with photographs taken mainly by Paul, the book is strongest in its early years when the Childs, newlywed, settle into domesticity in a Parisian apartment with, ironically, a kitchen straight from hell.  Julia learns to speak French, goes to cookery classes and decides to write a book.  Not quite as simple as all that, but she makes everything sound like jolly fun and her gusto for life resounds throughout the book. 

Julie And Julia : 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen : How One Girl Risked Her Marriage, Her Job and Her Sanity to Master the Art of Living by Julie Powell would be fun to read right after this.  Powell is famous as the woman who decided to cook every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year and recorded her successes and failures in a popular blog which led to a book contract about her experience.  She isn’t a newlywed but the kitchen she and her husband share in a New York apartment sounds almost as bad as Julia’s in Paris.  She didn’t have to learn a new language and wasn’t living in a foreign country, (she's a transplanted Texan so maybe it was a foreign country) but her adventures in cookery eerily echo those of her idol, the one and only Julia Child.

Grab a glass of wine, preferably French, a comfy chair and dip into Julia and company. And don't forget without Julia's influence we wouldn't have baguettes at the grocery, pate in the deli case and easy availability of wonderful cheeses and wines.  To the mother of the American food revolution, a hearty merci.