The Home Front: My summer with Julia

Column from October 8, 2009 issue

At the start of that long-ago July, all Julia Child and I shared was a heatwave and a zip code.

The kitchen in my apartment on the top floor of a triple-decker even faced south. Julia lived several blocks away in a lovely single-family, on a leafy street the tony part of Cambridge with its own wine store and Savenor’s.

Although my local grocery and wine seller, Star Market in Porter Square, was just a minute or two closer on my bike than Savenor’s, I found my few dollars went further at Star.
Nothing could compare to Savenor’s selection of the best meats, exotic game, seafood, organic produce, artisanal cheeses and breads, along with lovely cured meats. And of course Savenor’s most favorite customer was Julia, who had to negotiate just a single block of twisted brick sidewalk.

I remember reaching for Julia’s Mastering The Art of French Cooking. My culinary skills were dismal, I had only basic kitchen equipment (which Julia calls the battery de cuisine), and just a handful of reasons to master the art of anything. I was depressed. A divorce loomed. Several times a day I consummated an avid love affair with gin and tonic. A drop in orders had my business on the ropes. I was hot.

My maiden Aunt Joanna, an unapologetic Francophile, had “loaned” me the first volume of Julia’s magnum opus, saying, “I’ll lend you volume deux when you can cook me something respectable for dinner, someday.” Volume I sat gathering dust among my desultory cookbook selection for years before that fateful summer of 1984.

I started at the beginning and I went on cooking through the book three or four times a week throughout the summer. It was fun. Not only did the cooking take my mind off day-to-day matters, cooking with Julia took a prodigious amount of creativity. Though of course Julia would have certainly scoffed at the results, I thought I was definitely on the right track.

By the time Labor Day rolled around I was about half way through Volume I, and I had achieved total self-confidence in the kitchen. It was time to invited friends over for dinner.

No, I certainly didn’t get their expectations up by invoking Julia’s name, and I hid Mastering where nobody could possibly find it. As I casually served this a beautiful cassoulet (beans and meat), I did do just a bit of explaining about the history of the dish. Then I paid careful attention to my guest’s reactions once they set to eating.

The party did not come to a screeching halt as someone slammed their fork down declaring the meal inedible. Everyone murmured nice things, and simply went on talking, drinking and eating. Not so much as a spoonful was left over.

In her cassoulet recipe Julia upholds French tradition by listing the various meats that normally combine with beans. Since not everyone had ready access to wild boar, a staple at Savernor’s, Julia instructed cooks simply to make a martini to marinate a few pounds of pork over night. Great northern beans were a perfect substitute for the preferred, but impossible to obtain, French variety.

I must say I’m very happy for Julia Child’s estate, and her publisher, that Mastering The Art of French Cooking is flying off the shelves at bookstores everywhere giving erstwhile French chefs something “new” to chew on.

In just a few weeks, however, the French equivalent to the Joy of Cooking comes out in English. I Know How to Cook, written by Ginette Mathiot in 1932, is a more practical (less time consuming and healthier) route to the essence of French cuisine than Mastering is.

To this day Mastering influences how I look at raw ingredients, and assemble them into something worthy of eating. Nor do I ever duck the opportunity to whip up a simple batch of mayonnaise
Come to think of it, I never did cook anything French for Aunt Joanna, who died just a few years ago at a ripe old age. I doubt she’ll mind that I have ordered a copy of Ms. Mathiot’s classic.

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