This past weekend, a group of us went to an early showing of Julie & Julia, the new Nora Ephron film about Julia Child and the young blogger who cooked her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year.
It’s a charming picture, perhaps a bit lightweight and fluffy, but then, it’s Nora Ephron; the main characters are two women who find themselves through cooking—not exactly deep stuff. Everybody at the store plans to see it. Well, except for David: there are no car chases or semi-automatic weapons, and nothing gets blown up.
Meryl Streep as Julia is absolutely brilliant, capturing her so completely—the voice, the fidgety mannerisms, the almost child-like enthusiasm for discovery in the kitchen and at the table—that there are moments when I almost forgot it was Meryl Streep playing Julia Child, and not the woman herself.
I don’t know of anyone else who could have taken on a modern icon like Julia and pulled it off half so well.
In Amy Adams’ capable hands, Julie Powell’s gradual self-discovery and growth from confused, self-absorbed girl to confident, generous woman is surprisingly touching and appealing. It is Meryl Streep and Julia Child, however, who really carry the film.
Having been a drifting architect who gradually found my way into cooking and later, teaching and writing about it, there was so much about Julia’s part of the story that caught me on a gut level. But the scene that got to me most was at the very end, when Paul comes into the kitchen with the mail and hands Julia that package that you just know is the first copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
As she grasps that book and slides it out, she starts to hop up and down, exclaiming “Oh, Paul!” over and over.
I’m not ashamed to tell you, I burst into tears. I know exactly what that feels like—that moment when you take that first copy of your first book into your hands for the very first time. There is nothing else like it.
But part of the reason it moved me so much was because the real Julia was an intimate part of my first book moment. As I pulled that first copy of Classical Southern Cooking from its bubble-wrap book bag, that hopping up and down excitement evaporated when I found the recipe where the last corrections were supposed to have been made.
Instead of a pristine, crystal clear, and finally correct recipe, there was a hopelessly garbled mess in which the reader is told to add melted chocolate to a seven minute frosting and beat it for three minutes. Well, as you no doubt know, when you beat fat into a meringue, it just collapses into a gooey mess—a scientific fact that I had learned the hard way. Needless to say, I was devastated.
I’d just recently met Julia, so I called her for advice, knowing this kind of thing must have happened to her. She chuckled amiably and in that inimitable warble said soothingly, “Oh, my dear, it’s happened to all of us! It took fourteen editions to get all the corrections made to Mastering the Art. And those are the ones we know about!”
“If anyone should notice,” she went on, “don’t apologize: just thank them for bringing it to your attention and tell them it’s being corrected in the next edition.”
“Oh, Julia,” I sighed, “when they have this chocolate goo flying all over their kitchen, they’re going to notice!”
“Not necessarily dear,” she replied with another chuckle, “They’ll probably just think they did something wrong.”
Well. It was not a proud moment, but we all have to be humbled by not-so-proud moments every now and again. I’ve always been grateful to Julia for being there to ease the embarrassment and make me feel as if my book was still wonderful despite this flaw.
Watching that movie brought that kind, generous woman keenly back, and just made me want to get in the kitchen and cook.
So, we went back to my house and, pulling out as much French copper cookware as I could use, I cooked everything that is featured in my Morning News column this week—buttery sole Meuniere (Julia’s first meal in France) with haricots verts a la Maitre d’Hotel, plus an old favorite, Salade de Pomme de terre a la Parisienne—a light potato salad dressed with dry vermouth, oil, a touch of vinegar, minced shallots, and, of course, salt, pepper, and parsley.
We finished with a handsome free-form apple tart that was the first apple “pie” I ever made on my own, out of her fourth book, From Julia Child’s Kitchen.
As soon as the weather cools, I’ll take out my flame orange Le Creuset French oven and make her brilliant boeuf bourguignonne. And her sumptuous soupe á l’oignon. And maybe a cheese soufflé. Who knows? I might even bone a duck.
At any rate, I’ll be cooking from Julia’s books—not manically racing through them in a single year, but slowly, comfortably, savoring every moment of discovery and rediscovery that they bring to my kitchen and palate.
That’s how I think Julia would’ve liked to be remembered.