“I never did ask her if this actually did happen on her show, but when she was cooking a duck, supposedly she dropped it and picked it right up and just kind of patted its butt off and said, ‘It’s fine. ‘ “
–Christopher Gross, chef at Christopher’s, Phoenix
It is in a little hallway outside the studio of radio station WBEZ, while waiting to make a midmorning guest spot, that Julia Child is asked if that did happen on her show–if she actually dropped the duck, etc.
“I never did,” she says in the ever-startled voice that is uniquely her own. “People say, ‘But I saw you do that.’ All I did once was, I was flipping a potato pancake and it fiipped onto the stove and I picked it up and put it back in the pan and I said, ‘You’re alone in the kitchen.’
“We did drop a whole load of broccoli on the floor, but we had to stop the tape and redo it.”
Someone emerges from the studio to greet her. Another author is still on the air with host Mara Tapp. Julia Child, in town to promote her latest cookbook, “In Julia’s Kitchen with Master Chefs” (Knopf, $35), is up next, at 11 a.m.
Would she mind, the woman asks Child, taking a few calls from listeners? “No, not at all,” she replies. “Just no ‘best,’ ‘worst,’ ‘last meal’ questions. I’m asked those all the time.”
Back to the dropped duck and other great moments, real or imagined.
“It’s interesting when people say, ‘I saw you do it.’ Or that ‘I saw you pick up the bottle of wine and take a swig of it’–which I would never do. On television.”
She is 82 years old now, and it is 34 years since “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”–born of her training at Paris’ Cordon Bleu school and her own teachings, with two French colleagues after World War II–began her rise to fame. When she stands today, it’s with a slightstoop but she remains a formidable woman. The voice is the same voice that entered our consciousness in 1963 through television’s “French Chef “
She prepared a boeuf bourguignon on her first show. Now, she would say later on this day a creative chef “would rather be dead than cook that old chestnut.”
There are good questions from WBEZ listeners. One is about weeping meringue. (“I always get a meringue question,” she would confide.)
Tapp has done her homework and presses the proper buttons. One of them: health-oriented food labels.
“One of my strong feelings is, Why do they have it all in metric? Nobody knows anything about metric,” Child says in a restrained roar. “Someone says, ‘How many grams are in it?’– What does that mean?”
Once, she says, she was approached by a young, particularly health-conscious man.
“He must have had no fat at all,” she says. “But he was covered with dandruff. You think that’s attractive?
“With moderation, small helpings, you can eat anything. I’m a good advertisement, don’t you think? Have fun and enjoy your food. If you’re afraid, you’re probably not going to digest well, and it will all turn sour, and you’ll get dandruff too.”
Jimmy Sneed, chef at Frog & the Redneck, Richmond, Va.: “She’s uery blunt and opinionated. The first time I was introduced to Julia, I’m looking to make a good impression, so I said, ‘So, you must haue known Madame Broussard at the Cordon Bleu. ‘And Julia looked up and said, ‘Now that was a despicable woman. ‘ “
It is a short walk from the radio studio to the Berghoff restaurant. Along the way, she tells Chicago stories: of her father, who was from tiny Elwood, near Joliet; of visiting the 1933 World’s Fair during her senior year at Smith College; of another restaurant, below street level, “famous for its hamburgers.”
The Billy Goat?
“Yes, the Billy Goat. The hamburgers were good. People were shocked that I would go into a place like that.”
At 98 years old, the Berghoff is one of the city’s institutions, but Child has never set foot in the place. She likes the Chicago murals, the feel. She’s also amazed that, at 11:45 a.m. on a weekday, it appears to be packed. A table has been reserved. Anonymity is impossible.
The dark breads and butter arrive moments after the party is seated. Child reaches for a piece and slathers it with butter–an early health-police target. “Then,” she says with clear satisfaction, “they found out margarine was worse than butter.”
Brandon, the waiter, suggests a Berghoff label beer. The party complies. Child goes with Brandon’s suggestion of the dark, and it’s served efficiently “It’s good,” she says.
Two companions order sauerbraten for one, German pot roast for the other. Child orders the knockwurst-bratwurst appetizer. “It’s small,” Brandon warns.
“Make it bigger,” Child says.
When it arrives, it is bigger. Two uncut, chubby sausages. Brandon, really trying hard brings condiments: “They wouldn’t be right without horseradish. And mustard. Dusseldorf of course.”
Of course. Child likes the sausages, loves a companion’s mashed potatoes, is impressed by Brandon. “He’s a very good-looking man, isn’t he?
Brandon suggests a dessert. “I’m kind of partial to the Black Forest cake,” he says, “or the Sacher torte.” Go for the cake, he suggests, and Child agrees. He returns, instead, with the torte.
“This,” Brandon says, “comes at the owner’s suggestion. Herman Berghoff.”
Herman should have trusted Brandon. “Good,” she says, after a bite, ” but it shouldn’t be chilled. The chocolate is better at room temp.”
Soon, Herman and Jan Berghoff, unaware that the torte has gotten a cool reception, emerge with a camera. Son Pete takes the pic- ture. Everybody smiles.
Charlie Trotter, chef/owner of Charlie Trotter’s, Chicago:”She greatly demystifed something that seemed very complext to a lot of people. She just sort of knocked it off its high horse and said, ‘Hey, it’s just food. It’sjust cooking. It ain’t no big thing. ‘ “
Child heads to Tribune Tower, where she will prepare a fish dish for CLTV, the local cable news station, in the newspaper’s test kitchen. On a counter is a stack of books to be autographed. Outside, several Tribune staffers who are accustomed to celebrity visits are nonethe- less very excited about this one.
One tells a variation of the duck story She is informed of Child’s denial
“It did happen,” she insists. “It was a chicken. “
But–
“Honest to God, it did,” she says, eyes abug. “I saw it.”
Sure. And Julia took a swig from the wine bottle …
“She did. I’ve seen that one too. Maybe she was just smelling, but it looked like it was swig- ging.”
The fish is prepared without incident. The show’s host signs off–not well enough.
“You’ve got to say your name with more authority” Child tells her. ‘And mole distinctly”
It is about 3 p.m. She is scheduled to go on the air at 3:35 p.m. with WGN’s Ian Punnett in that station’s studio downstairs. For now, there’s time to talk.
Her new book, a companion to a PBS series brings 26 “master chefs” from around the United States into her Cambridge, Mass., kitchen. The chefs create their specialties. On camera Child is us, asking the questions we would ask taking an occasional taste.
The book is pretty. The recipes are intriguing. The shows are classic Julia Child. Sneed of Frog & the Redneck said he previewed his episode in a Washington hotel room. Child and other chefs were there.
“When I said, ‘Now we’re going to cook the pasta in stock,’ two of the chefs -and Julia (or the air)- expressed surprise,” Sneed said “And I’m like, ‘Everybody knows that, don’t they?” Apparently not. ‘Why? What do you use? Water?’ “
“She doesn’t beat around the bush,” said Trotter. “She doesn’t like something, she says so. If she likes it, she says so. It’s just the way she us.”
“I’m whipping up a dessert,” said Christoper chef Gross, “and I’m doing egg whites I’m going, ‘For egg whites, when they’re room temperature, they come up faster and nicer and Julia goes, ‘Oh no, no, no. You have to be careful with salmonella.’ And I’m going `Oh gosh.’ ” Soon after, nearly complete version he’d prepared earlier–chocolate mousse in chocolate tubes temporarily held together tape–arrive in the kitchen. The heat from the lights causes them to burst, one tube ata Mousse is everywhere.
“And I looked into the camera,” said Gross, “and I said, ‘Is this a nice time to say “cut”?”‘
He didn’t know if that mess made the show but for the chefs, the slips didn’t seem to matter.
“In many ways, it was probably the experience of my lifetime,” said Rick Bayless of Chicago’s Frontera Grill and Topolobampo. At 82 years old, if I had a quarter of the energy of that woman, and the curiosity of that woman I would feel like I was a remarkable person.”
The chefs, not Child, are what her book and this series are about.
“I’m not territorial,” she says, waiting patiently while Paul Harvey occupies Punnnett. “It’s good for young people to see what chefs are like as human being, so they’re encourged to go into the business.
“Because there are so many people who have jobs they don’t really like–they’re just not nourishing to them as human beings. It’s wonderful to be working at something you’re passionate about, isn’t it?”
She has passionate opposition.
“I suppose complete, militant vegetarians would be against me,” she says. “And animal rights people, who know nothing about how to raise livestock. I’ve often said–which angers them even more–that if our homeless could be housed and fed as comfortably as special-fed veal, they’d be very lucky indeed.”
And, of course, those folks who describe, say, lasagna as “heart attack on a plate.”
“I wish people would take a more adult point of view, not feel so scared of things,” she says.
“Then they could eat sensibly and enjoy their food.”
Punnett’s producer escorts Child into the studio. The host, off the air, has her sample a sauce he made from the new cookbook. She likes it.
“Maybe it’s better than the original,” she adds. Back on the air, two callers get through but merely fawn.
“Two more questions,” Punnett says.
“Let’s make them good ones,” Child adds.
They are better. The Last caller tells of a biogaphy of former baseball player and spy Moe Berg in which Child is linked to the OSS, World War II precursor of the CLA. It’s true, she says. Before she met her husband, Paul Child, and moved with him to Paris after the war, she worked for the agency in Washington, Ceylon and China. She did filing.
“So that recipe for chocolate bombe had nothing to do with your training in the OSS?” Punnett says.
Child replies: “I would’ve filed it under ‘bombe,’ cross-referenced to ‘chocolate.’ “
Rick Bayless of Frontera Grill/Topolobampo: “A lot of people who have sort of popped up around her take themselves so incredibly seriously. She makes cooking so much fun. “
It is 5:45 p.m. at the Robert Adrian cookware store on North Halsted Street. Child is to be at the store for a 6 p.m. book signing. About 50 people are lined up outside. When Child arrives just before 6, the line is past 250. Some have brought books, some of them copies of her early ones; most will buy theirs at the store. One couple will buy 12, mostly the new one, and these are not cheap books.
Many in line are men. “Actually,” says Chris Holtkamp of Chicago, ” it’s for my mother-in- law, for Mother’s Day.” Most are women who unconditionally love Julia Child.
“She’s a woman who for so long has made a mark in the cooking industry which traditionally men had always done, say Sara coffou , an executive recruiter Chicago, Women really admire her for that reason.
The people keep coming. In the end, store owner Jim Burst said, there would be more than 1,000 of them. Child stayed until 8:45 p.m. –nearly three hours– signing for all who came.
Then I woke up the next day and she was on the radio,” Burst said. “It was 7:15 in the morning.”
Julia Child, master teacher, on being told a Tribune staffer swore she saw that fowl drop: “Isn’t that interesting? One thing that did happen, it was a turkey or something and it was wrapped on a counter in back of me, and it began sliding into the sink …”
And with that, she burst into the most wonderful laugh.
This is one of Julia Child’s recipes. “It’s so simple, and yet you can vary it is so many ways,” she says. She starts by poaching fish and serving it with a simple sauce made from the poaching liquid and parsley. But sh also suggest the following variations:
– Whisk butter and herbs into the poaching liquid.
– Spread chopped tomatoes or mushrooms over the fish.
– Top the ready-to-cook fish with cooked sliced red and green peppers and garlic; after cooking, boil the pan juices down with tomatoes. Pour over the fish and chill.
FILLETS OF SOLE POACHED IN WHITE WINE
Preparation time: 25 minutes
Cooking time: 15 minutes
Yield: 6 servings
This recipe is adapted from Julia Child’s “The Way to Cook.” Other fish options include trout, orange roughy and tilapia.
2 pounds skinless, boneless sole fillets Salt, freshly ground white pepper
2 tablespoons minced shallots or green onions
2/3 cup dry white French vermouth
2/3 cup fish stock, chicken broth or water
2 or 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
2 tablespoons flour Fresh lemon juice to taste
l. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Pat the fish dry in paper towels; go over it carefully with your fingers to remove any remaining bones. Score the skin sldes in several place with the tip of a sharp knife. Season both sides lightly with salt and pepper.
2. Sprinkle half of the shallots in the bottom of a buttered, heat proof baking pan and lay in the fish, skin-side down and with the pieces slightly overlapping. If the fillets are very large, fold them in half. Sprinkle the remaining shallots over the top of the fish. Pour in the vermouth and stock or water to come two-thirds of the way up the llets. Cover with a piece of buttered wax paper, buttered side down.
3. Set the dish over medium heat just until the liquid starts to bubble, then place in the lower third of the oven. Bake until the fish is opaque or milky white, usually 5 to 7 minutes.
4. Remove fish from the oven; transfer to a warm serving platter using a wide, slotted spatula. Cover with foil and return to the turned off oven to keep warm while you make the sauce.
5. Melt 1 tablespoon of the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir in flour; cook and stir 2 minutes. Stir in fish cooking lihtly coat a spoon, about 5 minutes. Remove pan from heat alnd add remaining butter, 1/2 tablespoon at a time, to taste Swirl pan ao allow the butter to melt before addding the next piece. Season with lemon juice, usually about 1/2 teaspoon; stir in parsley.
6.Pour sauce over fish and serve immediately.
Nutrition information per serving:
Calories …205 Fat ……6 g Cholesterol …..90 mg
Sodium …..210mg Carbohydrates ….3g Protein …..32g
