Google honors her today with its doodle:
Child opened our eyes and minds and taste buds and hearts to much more than French cooking. She passed on the sheer joy that
can come from a meal of fresh, seasonal ingredients, prepared with respect and shared with friends.
“You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated
masterpieces—just good food from fresh ingredients.”
Her seminal first book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, basically roused Americans from
the post-war somnolence of convenience foods and invited us all to venture
out into new regions of cookery because we’d be well rewarded.
Her culinary credo was pretty much “de l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de
l’audace”; but she backed it up with meticulous investigation into how things
work, constant practice and unquenchable curiosity. She gave us permission to
experiment, to fail and (above all) to enjoy.
“Learn how to cook—try new recipes, learn from your
mistakes, be fearless and above all, have fun.”
The first Julia Child recipe I ever attempted was
her “Selle d’Agneau Rôtie” (roast saddle
of lamb). The butchers at the upscale food market in downtown Durham, N.C., had
photocopies of the pages from Mastering
Volume II to hand out. They assured me that the saddle was an amazing cut and that Child’s take on it was the way to go.
God bless ‘em—they were right. The meat cost a
freaking fortune, but Julia was right there beside me and the dinner was
stunning.
(I didn’t realize until I recently started reading a
biography of Child that I had a somewhat close connection with her. I of course
knew that she came from Pasadena (as do I), but it turns out that one of her
childhood houses was smack behind the one where I grew up, in the southern end
of town. Well, blow me: I used to peer into that back yard when trimming the ivy. Why is it that was one of the few back yards I didn't invade and explore? And the house where she grew up was around the corner. Way before my
time, of course, but still.)
Mastering and her French Chef TV series for PBS opened that saddle-of-lamb world to a
lot of people. I’m frankly not wild about the part of that world includes the
Food Network and all its pompous self-involved twits; but you have to take
the good with the bad—and know how to tell the difference.
It wasn’t all haute cuisine for Child. She enjoyed
burgers from In ‘n Out, and McDonald’s French fries—until they switched from
cooking them in lard to vegetable oil on account of the nutrition Gestapo.
“The only time to eat diet food is while you’re
waiting for the steak to cook.”
She liked what she liked and didn’t apologize to
anyone for it. She lived her life that way, too.
On this her 100th birthday, I hope you
are taking time to enjoy a lovely meal (perhaps including one of her 100
favorite recipes) and spare a minute for Julia Child.
Bon appétit! Really.
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