Julia Child made me lunch.
It was in April 1981. She was living then in Cambridge, Mass., not far from Harvard Square in a house I remember as white, and my notes remember as built in 1870. Nothing about it hinted at the legend within.
She was already a superstar. Her first TV show, “The French Chef,” (though she saw herself more as a cook than a chef) had been born in 1963, a year after she went on Boston’s WGBH to show how to properly beat egg whites.
When I knocked on her door nearly 20 years later, much of America talked comfortably about creme brulee or celery a la Grecque, and she was why.
We sat in the kitchen.
It was large, one reason she and her husband, Paul, had bought the place; and it looked out onto a wooded back yard. The table at which we sat — or, at first, Paul and I sat because she was up making lunch — was covered by a plastic tablecloth with blue flowers on it. The refrigerator was from Sears and had a black door (“Why not?” she explained). The range was a 35-year-old Garland professional model. In an era when not everyone seemed to own a professional range, it was the only clue that this was somebody’s kitchen.
There was a painting of an egg hanging on one wall and Paul, who had designed the space, pointed out that there were round shapes all around, from the egg to the pans and Cuisinart blades hanging on hooks mounted on a sheet of green pegboard. Knives clung to magnetic strips, and there were lots of gadgets — she was an unrepentant gadget nut — everything out in the open.
Paul, the more serious oenophile of the two, opened a bottle of chenin blanc, and poured the first of what would be many glasses. He was 78 then, 10 years older than she, and a good deal shorter (she was over 6 feet tall); but, off camera, he was an absolutely equal partner.
They had met in Ceylon during the war, both of them OSS (Office of Strategic Services) officers. He had been a lumberjack, a waiter (in Hollywood), a teacher (in France), an artist, a judo black belt.
Julia McWilliams came from Pasadena, had been nicknamed by her brother as “Duke the Puke,” had striking blue eyes, played basketball.
They waited until after the war to marry, until they had a chance, she said, “to look each other over in civilian clothes.”
She chopped some celery, and, as she finished each spear, she’d pop the last bit into her mouth. She liked having people in the kitchen when she cooked, so she wouldn’t miss the conversation. We talked about “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” an espionage series then playing on public television.
“Couldn’t make sense of it,” she said.
I was supposed to be there interviewing her for a profile, but mostly we just talked. She mentioned the meal of sole meuniere and oysters and a perfect Comice pear she had on her first visit to France in October, 1949, and how that meal had launched her interest in food.
Mostly we didn’t talk about food.
She said that Paul was good at woodcarving and that he could fix anything except a car.
“She’s good with a snow shovel,” he said.
You’re wondering what she served.
Here’s what I wrote then:
There was the wine, quite a lot of that, and Brie, and homemade wheat bread that she sliced then stabbed with the end of a long knife and passed in a wonderfully forceful, no-nonsense way, and good strong coffee in huge mugs, and some chocolates that had been given to them by a Planned Parenthood organization she had spoken to in Rhode Island.
The recipe for the chicken salad she made is on page 443 of “From Julia Child’s Kitchen.” It was served that day on a bed of finely diced red and green peppers and cucumbers.
I asked her what the recipe was called.
“Chicken salad,” she said, and then added, “you might call it `poulet a la minute.’ That means `quick chick.'”
Now, 23 years later, the kitchen where we chatted casually, though, for me, unforgettably, has been packed up and sent to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The house was sold. She moved to California. Paul died in 1994. Julia died in her sleep Thursday night.
After the piece was published in the Tribune, she sent me a postcard. She said she had liked it, found it “lively.”
From her, “lively” seemed apt. Life was what she embodied, life to the fullest, to the last drop and crumb. She had sat across the now-museum-piece table and said, “I’ve been cooking 30 years now and I’m still learning, which I’ll continue to do until I’m 103, then I’ll taper off.”
