After my mother my first major influence in learning how to cook was Graham Kerr. I watched his television program, The Galloping Gourmet, intently, with fascination and laughter. Reacting, perhaps, to his flamboyant style and charming manner I began to experiment with his recipes and bought a copy of his book based on the program. I still have a GG spurtle, a sort of stirring stick, given to me by some friends.
I began to read cookbooks, particularly James Beard. However, I longed for a broader, more sophisticated exposure to cooking. I began to watch Julia Child’s The French Chef on PBS. I finally embarked on my major, multi-year cooking project. I made every recipe in Julia Child’s, Louisette Bertholle’s, and Simone Beck’s monumental Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Unlike the author of Julie and Julia, I was not a young woman, I did not live in New York, I didn’t blog about it, and I didn’t write a book about the experience. Even if I had I can state with confidence that Amy Adams could never have portrayed me credibly.
However, I did complete the project. Over the period of several years I made dozens of different sauces and hundreds of dishes, in many cases using ingredients with which I was unfamiliar. Asparagus. Eggplant. Goose. Tripe. The first time I had ever eaten tripe was when I had prepared it myself. I still love it and, frankly, my preparation of it was the best I’ve ever had to this very day.
I made dishes I’d never heard of. Gallantines. Ballotines. Quenelles. Dacquoise. To this day a dacquoise with apricot filling and rum buttercream frosting is my favorite cake. I learned techniques I had never imagined and used them over and over again. I only gave myself a dispensation from a few dishes on the grounds of extraordinary expense or unavailability of ingredients.
Slowly, painstakingly, I became a cook. A very good cook. A very good French cook.
I’m sure that Julie Powell and I are not the only ones who’ve set out to cook every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I had certain advantages so I suspect I had a leg up over some others. I already was a fairly decent cook. I had a family tradition of cooking—my dad’s family owned a restaurant, my maternal grandmother was an excellent cook, and my mom was a good cook. I am very tenacious.
And all through college I cooked 300 breakfasts six days a week. Additionally, for years I prepared lunch for twenty people every Saturday, cooked for 150 at least once a month, and cooked for 500 at least once a year. There is absolutely nothing like cooking for a crowd to enable you to hone your skills.
Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Julia Child. Thank you, Julia. Your book was my cooking school.
Kerr was also my first influence. Julia and Jeff Smith came along a bit later. I didnt go as far as you did with the French cooking, and never did it for a living. TBH, I didnt think Fench cooking was really any better than most other real cuisines, just better than passed for American cooking at the time. I would rather have a good Bún Thịt Nướng or pork bulgogi than anything in a white sauce. That said, absent Julia, I am not sure we would have made it this far in broadening our food horizons as far as we have, or at least as fast as we have.
Steve
Kerr was also my first influence. Julia and Jeff Smith came along a bit later. I didnt go as far as you did with the French cooking, and never did it for a living. TBH, I didnt think Fench cooking was really any better than most other real cuisines, just better than passed for American cooking at the time. I would rather have a good Bún Thịt Nướng or pork bulgogi than anything in a white sauce. That said, absent Julia, I am not sure we would have made it this far in broadening our food horizons as far as we have, or at least as fast as we have.
Steve
… I learned techniques I had never imagined and used them over and over again. …
In my opinion, technique is more important than a recipe, and this is the reason many cannot cannot duplicate them. I am guessing you know when to apply them with recipes that do not spell them out.
I liked Alton Brown’s Good Eats, but he is not a chef – not even close. He would demonstrate techniques that a regular person could use. Most shows usually do not go into detail. He would also explain why in some cases you should add wet to dry and in others dry to wet.
Of course, hooking a drill to a pepper grinder gets my attention fast.
So when is the fist annual “The Glittering Eye” social? If Dave cooks I’ll make a beer for the occasion.
My problem with Julia is location. Her recipes are easy enough to do in Chicago where variety is the spice of life, but down here we’re all pork chops and smoked turkey necks.
Mexican immigrants have brought tripe, and I do like menudo. I haven’t found what looks like a good recipe.
When I was going through Mastering the Art of French Cooking, it was almost 40 years ago. The conditions you’re describing where you are don’t differ that much from the conditions in Chicago then. Forty years ago in Chicago there wasn’t nearly the variety there is now. You could find practically anything if you looked hard enough but even that wasn’t as easy then as it is now. Nowadays practically anything is just a mouse click away.
A mouse click and a shipping and handling fee away.
Well, there is that. I’m an Amazon Prime customer. I save thousands in shipping costs annually by making business purchases that way. In making any purchase I determine the Amazon Prime price and compare it to the best online price and the best local price, factoring in travel time and cost. I pick whichever is lowest.
That’s what I do – I order a lot of stuff from Amazon. A nice side benefit from a Prime account are the free movies.
I have Prime, too. Nonetheless, veal don’t come cheap. Not that my mother approved of my eating veal anyway. She was reared on the farm with cows with names.
No veal, no demi-glace.