Bella was a college student in the late 60's, in Boston, where Julia Child was a local celebrity. Bella loved watching Julia's WGBH TV show, "The French Chef" and she used Julia's book, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," to plan and prepare her feldgling dinner parties. Inspired by her teacher's cheerful nonchalance, Bella offered her guests quiche lorraine, spinach and cheese souffle, coq au vin, duck with cherries, and beef with bearnaise sauce.
The first time Bella cooked a meal for Perry, she made "something" in aspic. The aspic was a first for both of them, so noteworthy (weird) that neither can remember what the "something" was.
Although Bella's pies and cream puffs had delighted her father for years, they became even better when she made them with Julia's pate brisee and pate a choux. At our Thanksgiving feast, Bella regularly makes 5 different pies, so that each family member can have his or her favorite. The first 4 pies are sure to be cherry, apple, pumpkin, and lemon meringue. But the 5th is a swing pie and, in various years, it has been key lime, pecan, or coconut cream. But Bella's greatest pie triumph came a few years ago, when a Parisian post-doc in her lab at Stanford pronounced her cherry pie, "incroyable!" All thanks to Julia.
We now cook more Italian than French food and several other cuisines as well. We have dozens of excellent cookbooks and, of course, the Web. Nonetheless, Julia's worn, food-stained, 40-year-old book remains on our kitchen shelf. We frequently take it down to make an old favorite, but occasionally we make a new recipe that somehow we have never made before.
The recent film "Julie/Julia" introduced many people to the wondrous Julia Child and renewed our interest in her. When our local bookstore, Kepler's, celebrated Julia's birthday in August with a cookbook sale, we bought copies of her book for Aaron, Nora, and Nathan. We also started watching her TV show all over again on DVDs from NetFlix.
Amazingly--or maybe not so amazingly--we are still learning from Julia. Who remembered that it takes only 20 seconds to make an omelet? What a great idea to put all your ingredients on a tray before starting so that you don't forget any in the rush of cooking. How convenient it is that almost anything Julia cooks can be served with a simple green salad and a crisp Riesling to make a perfectly lovely lunch. But did Julia really think a novice cook would start making a much more delicious French-style meatloaf (a pate) by skinning a duck???
We especially enjoy watching Julia's TV show with Nora and her friend Andrew. Having grown up in an era of highly processed and refined media, they watch in awe as Julia wings it. Taping her show in one continuous, unedited session, glancing at her cue cards, losing her tools, saying one thing when meaning another--Julia never loses her confidence or enthusiasm. How self-actualized was this large and rather ungainly woman, to insist on more and more butter--because it makes everything so delicious!--as long as "you're not on one of those horrible diets." How insouciant she was, commenting affectionately that the much-admired French would disdain the Asian glaze she put on fish, because, "They don't like anything they did not think of."
Naturally, we were delighted when Nora and Andrew offered to prepare us a dinner of Julia's signature boeuf bourgignon, sauteed asparagus, and parsley potatoes. Bon apetit!
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