Just like Julia

My daughter was stationed at the counter, ready to help with the strawberries.  "I know how to hold it like Julia Child!"  she said.

And indeed, she did.

We were making some strawberry-rhubarb sauce (yes, again!) and my assistant had helped herself to the largest knife available and was nimbly chopping up the strawberries.  I admit it, I was a little nervous.  She was not.  She had her fingertips tucked in, just like Julia, and was having a blast.

A while back, I'd borrowed the French Chef DVDs from our local library and we'd watched a few episodes.  I vaguely remember pointing out how Julia kept her fingers tucked away from the blade, but we spent more time laughing at her inability to find things that we, with the camera's view, could see.  She slapped the behemoth lobster, making us all laugh.  By the time she pulled a steamy, bubbling tripe dish out of the oven, we were all ready to try it, and I had a hankering to stuff some sausages of my own (far superior, she insisted, to what you find at the store).

I don't suppose old French Chef reruns are typical family entertainment, here or elsewhere, but I'm glad we watched a few episodes together.  I'd never seen any of them, and I was struck by the pure fun of the episodes.  I always assumed Julia Child was...well, you know, Julia Child.  And yet, reading her memoir a while back, I was amazed to learn she wasn't the Julia Child we know until later in her life.  No matter the time or book, one senses with overwhelming certainty that she was herself, through and through.

At dinner this evening, my son recalled two lines of a poem I'd told them months ago - uncannily appropriate:

"You got a bell man, ring it,

You got a song man, sing it."

I love cooking and spending time with my children, and I hope that whoever they may be, they'll find some pleasure in the kind of time we're spending together. Knives and all.
By Robert Creeley:
One bell wouldn’t ring loud enough
So they beat the bell to hell, Max,
with an axe, show it who’s boss,
boss. Me, I dreamt I dwelt in
someplace one could relax
but I was wrong, wrong, wrong.
You got a song man, sing it.
You got a bell man, ring it.

Keeping it Light

For a while there, it was all about French cooking. Between Julie and Julia, butter made a comeback, boeuf bourguignon was all the rage, and we even hosted a poulet-en-croute dinner for a few friends. My favorite thing from Mastering the Art of French Cooking though, is the omelet.

I love reading that book because it works as a cooking instruction book and as a delightful diversion. I have a tendency to wander from the page, try new ingredients and methods, not always with the desired results. My mother handed down her love of an orderly kitchen along with the notion that recipes are “suggestions”. This helps me a lot when it is 6 o’clock on a weeknight, everyone’s hungry, and I need a substitute ingredient for whatever we’re making. It also encourages creative use of the pantry (another hand-me-down talent). 

The downside is that it's easy for me to forget to learn the basics somewhere along the line.

Omelets are about as basic as you can get. Eggs, butter, salt and heat. Then there’s the flip, just to keep it interesting.  If you follow a Julia Child recipe, it turns out just like it should. 

I read My Life in France first, and there was so much attention devoted to the omelet, I was hooked. I ordered a set of Mastering from my favorite used book place and lugged them around on car trips, read them at my desk over lunch, too late at night and so forth. Then it was time.

My friends came over after work for omelets before going to see the movie. We had a delicious salad fresh from the winter garden, French wine (bien sur!) and…perfect omelets!

I was feeling pretty confident.

So, the next morning, I made omelets for my kids.

Let's just say that's not how it looked in the cookbook.....

After several minutes of the floor-rolling-belly-clutching kind of laughter, I scooped the eggs up and they were delicious.  My kids love to know that perfection isn’t the goal – how much easier things are that way! The wonderful thing about cooking? You always have another meal coming up.