Julia Child seems to be everywhere these days.
The Julia Child Challenge premiered in March on Food Network. A documentary called Julia was released last year. And the Julia show on HBO Max was just renewed for a second season.
My creative mentor wrote an article about discovering Julia Child because of these fictional portrayals. And Dorie Greenspan’s latest newsletter is all about the woman who is in charge of the food on the HBO show, Julia. (Can you imagine that gig?!)
I wrote about Stanley Tucci last week who played Paul Child in the 2009 film, Julie & Julia. In his memoir, Taste: My Life Through Food, he writes lovingly about watching Julia Child on his family’s black and white television.
I always knew of Julia Child, but until I started to cook, I didn’t know anything about her. I saw her on talk shows growing up. I saw Dan Aykroyd play her in a skit on SNL.
Right around the time I started culinary school, the book Julie & Julia was released. Julia Child was always on the periphery of my cultural knowledge. Reading that book and signing on as a culinary student made me want to get to know Julia better. I was hungry to know more about her. Next, I read My Life in France, Appetite for Life, and As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia child and Avis DeVoto.
I was stunned to learn that she and I had a lot in common.
Did you know that she didn't start cooking until she was 37 years old?
I started culinary school at age 36.
She didn't get married until she was 34.
I didn't get married until I was 35.
Julia's love of food and cooking blossomed in France.
My love of food and cooking took me to France.
Julia worked for the OSS and recently was outed as a spy during that era.
I...well, I've watched a lot of spy movies.
Seeing Julia so much this spring made me think about the day that my mom and I spent together circa 2009.
We drove about an hour away to Birmingham, a chic suburb of Detroit, where we window shopped, stopped at Penzey's spice store, and saw a matinee of Julie & Julia. I don’t have a lot of movie memories with mom, so the times we went to the cinema are easily remembered.
Being a film geek, I chose the cinema, the Birmingham 8, a throwback to old movie palaces and one of my favorite places to see movies in Detroit. Mom & I took our seats as the lights went down and were transported to Paris in the 50s with Julia Child. Once the credits rolled, we realized that we weren't ready to come back to reality.
The movie is based on the book, Julie & Julia, by Julie Powell, a temp worker in New York City who decided to use Julia Child as her muse and cook her way through all the recipes in Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Writer/director Nora Ephron cleverly intertwines this modern-day story with the story of Julia Child's days as a newlywed and cooking student in Paris, based on Child's book, My Life in France.
The best parts of the film are, no surprise, the parts about Julia Child's life in France. This time period includes her falling in love with food and cooking and ultimately attending the Cordon Bleu. She goes on to teach some cooking classes and embarks on writing what would later become her masterpiece, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, a cookbook for American women who want to learn how to cook classical French dishes. Streep plays Child as a sassy, fun-loving, adventurer who still can't believe that she's finally found someone to love her. Tucci's Paul Child is a quiet, intellectual type who is in awe of his wife.
Watching the first season of Julia inspired me to make a recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I decided on Coq au Vin, chicken in red wine with onions, mushrooms, and bacon, since it was the first recipe Julia worked on for her show, The French Chef. After a quick inventory I only had to shop for pearl onions and a bottle of red.
Julia allows for making the sautéed mushrooms and brown-braised onions ahead of time so I took advantage of that tip. I typically can’t find pearl onions easily but I lucked out. Wait, the recipe says peeled pearl onions. I remembered a trick so I boiled some water and blanched those little onions for about thirty seconds and then showered them with cold water. Five minutes later, peeled pearl onions!
I loved seeing those little onions’ journey to turn into brown braised pops of flavor.
I followed the recipe precisely. OK, I admit to one transgression. I didn’t boil the bacon lardons before browning them in the pot. But I had a whole chicken and butchered it. That has to make up for it, right?
The recipe calls for cognac and some flambé action. Unfortunately, I don’t have photographic evidence of that, but it did happen. My hands were full and I didn’t want to inform G of the flambéing because he would’ve been concerned (rightly, so, I am not the most coordinated person you’ll meet). So I went about my business and voila! I flambéed! No burns, nothing went up in smoke. I bragged and said, “G, look! I flambéed!” He was surprised, supportive and, dare I say it, impressed.
I’ve ignored the main event of the dish because it behaved properly. Browned, bathed in wine and chicken stock, it was some of the most tender chicken I’ve had in a long time. Julia recommends serving it with boiled parsley potatoes. I didn’t have potatoes in the house, so I served it with buttered egg noodles.
Seeing so much of Julia Child this spring has brought me so much pleasure and revived some happy memories. I am completely charmed by the HBO show, Julia. I’ll have to explore some more recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I’m sure G wouldn’t say no to chocolate soufflé.
Thanks again for reading! I care about you, please don’t forget to eat your greens.
This is such a great read, Kim! I love eating coq au vin but I’ve never tried making it. I admire your bravery (flambé scares me haha) and commitment to the recipe, and the finished dish looks absolutely delicious! Also, the show Julia on HBO has been on my radar for awhile, and reading this has given me the final push I needed to start watching it.
Beautifully written, Kim! I can never get enough of Julia, especially the Julie & Julia movie, I watch it 2-3 times a year and finds that Julie and I share a lot, like you and Julia 😉. I follow the author of the book on Twitter and she's so different than the character in the movie. I wish they portrayed her more realistically, it would have made it an even better film. Now I wonder, what will you be making next from "Mastering"? And can we please all go back to old school blogging days???