A Child is Born

Happy Birthday, Julia.

Thanks for giving me a childhood of delicious food, cooked with love by my parents from their splattered cookbook bible. 

Quiche

Chicken Breasts

Spinach or Salmon Souffle

Mustard Chicken

Chez Julia

As a young girl visiting my relatives in Providence, R.I., I remember how slowly and deliberately my aunt would drive through her neighborhood at night. I thought perhaps she was just more cautious than my own mother, but I soon learned that she drove slowly not for fear of running over a small child, but because she wanted to see how other people decorated their homes.

Other People's Places (You down with O.P.P.?) are endlessly fascinating: the decoration, the paint colors, the wallpaper, the books on the shelves, the light fixtures. Who doesn't become a complete voyeur when given the chance to peek into someone else's living space?

Celebrity homes can either be especially intriguing, or incredibly boring. The homes of C-list celebs in In Touch, for example, often seem to have been decorated by publicists eager for their client to appear legit.

Chefs are curious subjects for home tours, because at least one room is their's and their's alone: the kitchen. But what about the rest of the house?

Exhibit A: The home of Julia and Paul Child. The above photos are from an August, 1976 Architectural Digest piece on the Child's home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. What's so glorious about this photo spread, is that while we all know her kitchen ("the beating heart and social center of the household," as she calls it in the article), it's rare to catch a glimpse into the rest of her home: the living room, the dining room, the pastry room off the main kitchen, and the "grass-papered" music room. The Child's home seems especially familiar, warm, and thoroughly lived in - in other words, a home worthy of driving by slowly.

Julia et Jim

With so many menus in the New York Public Library collection, it's not uncommon for me to stumble upon a gem I've never seen before. The menu featured here is one such example. Had a patron not requested this 1975 dinner menu honoring James Beard and Julia Child a few months ago, it would still be sitting in its box downstairs. But thankfully the request was made, and I was introduced to this charming item.

The dinner, which was sponsored by the Wine & Food Society of New York, was held on Halloween night at the Pierre Hotel. And in addition to a traditional menu of food offerings, the organizers wrote creative "recipes" for both Julia and Jim, wherein the ingredients and techniques that make up these two unique personalities are written out in a recognizable recipe format. The result is clever, sassy, and fun.

Meryl as Julia

According to Variety, Meryl Streep is scheduled to play Julia Child in the screen adaptation of Julie Powell's hit blog/book Julie & Julia. Amy Adams is to play Julie Powell, and screenwriter, and food writer, Nora Ephron is on deck to write and direct.

Besides Dan Aykroyd's famous send-up of Ms. Child on Saturday Night Live, I was interested to learn that Maureen Stapleton, best known to many as Ma Kelly in the wholly underrated Johnny Dangerously, played Julia Child on stage in a little-known production called Bon Appetit! put on by the Classic Stage Company in 1991. Writes Mel Gussow of the New York Times, "With an abandon that is characteristically Julia Child, she stages a race between a hand beater and a mixing machine and is caught up in the exercise. As the actress sings and pretends to cook, Todd Sisley accompanies her on the piano, underlining the words with food music. Mr. Hoiby, as composer, reaches his pinnacle when Miss Stapleton beats her imaginary egg whites into stiff shining peaks. At this point, the music ripples." Oooh.

If you can think of any other actors who have played Julia, please share. I personally think Meryl Streep will play her wonderfully. Just by watching her effortlessly crack eggs in The Hours, one can tell that Meryl knows her way around a kitchen.

Julia Child in America

Tomorrow night, Wednesday, October 10th, the Library is hosting a panel discussion on Julia Child in America with Laura Shapiro, David Kamp, Molly O'Neill, Dan Barber, and moderated by Melanie Rehak. The event will be held in the South Court Auditorium at 7:00pm. Tickets are $15.00.

For more information, please call (212) 930-9213 or email csw@nypl.org

Copia

In the summer of 2003 I visited Northern California for the first time. It was both an eye-opening and mouth-watering experience: Mission burritos, lunch at Chez Panisse, dinner at Piperade, and best of all, an afternoon at Copia.

Copia is a cultural arts center devoted to food and wine. One can easily spend the day wandering through their edible garden, stopping for a wine tasting, taking in an art exhibit or cooking class, and staying for a film. Copia also boasts Julia's Kitchen, a restaurant named after Guess Who. On that afternoon in 2003 I had the pleasure of taking a class called World O' Melons taught by Brigid Callinan. The melon and chile salad I learned that day has secured a place in my permanent cooking repertoire.

Last month I went back to Copia. My friend and I attended a Taste of Copia event which includes a garden-fresh, three-course meal and cooking lesson. The instructors - chef, garden expert, and wine educator - demonstrate how to make the dishes and pair them with wine. We started with an Arugula and Beet salad served with Ricotta Salata and a Lemon Verbena vinaigrette. Next was Capellini with Ahi Tuna, Tomato, Summer Squash, Olives and Basil. Desert was a Lemon Cream frozen sandwich. One of our wines, a deliciously dry Riesling from Washington State, was immediately purchased at Cornocopia to take back to NYC.

Although I've yet to eat at Julia's Kitchen, Copia was nice enough to send the Library some menus to be included in our Menu Collection. They'll be entered into the database shortly and will be available for researchers to peruse now and in years to come.

Now if only they would open a Copia East.

Garden Melon Salad

(adapted from Copia's World O' Melons)

2 medium-sized ripe melons, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces
2 limes, juice only (to taste)
2 shallots, thinly sliced
1 ripe red chile, seeded and very thinly sliced (I use jalapeno sometimes)
1T honey, to taste
Extra virgin olive oil, to taste
Salt, to taste

Place melons in a large bowl and sprinkle with lime juice, honey, and salt. Allow melon to sit until salt is dissolved, then toss in shallots and chiles. Taste melon and adjust sweetness, then drizzle salad with olive oil to taste.

Frozen Lemon Cream Sandwiches
(From The 150 Best American Recipes by Fran McCullough and Molly Stevens)
One 7-oz. container cold crème fraîche
1/4 c. lemon curd
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
12 crisp butter waffle cookies
1/4 c. finely chopped unsalted pistachios (or almonds)

Line a small baking sheet with waxed paper. Use an electric mixer to beat crème fraîche, lemon curd and lemon zest in a chilled bowl until firm peaks form. Arrange half the cookies on a baking sheet and spoon the lemon cream on the centers, letting it ooze gently to the edges. Top with remaining cookies, pressing down gently. Transfer the baking sheet to the freezer and freeze until the sandwiches are firm, at least 4 hours.

Spread the nuts on a plate and rolls the edges of the sandwiches in them. Serve at once.

Julia Child

Although I'm not one to read too much into coincidence, I would like to point out that Julia Child and I share a birthday: August 15th. So while I was chowing down on hamburgers and buffalo wings, Julia, no doubt, was eating Dover sole in culinary heaven shaking her head at my American ways.

The Library has a large collection of Julia's works, both by and about her, including the very recent biography Julia Child by culinary historian Laura Shapiro. The two-volume set of Mastering the Art of French Cooking (first editions, no less) are available along the shelves in the Main Reading Room, side-by-side with Julia's tome The Way to Cook. My Life in France, Julia's collaboration with her nephew Alex Prud'homme, is also in the stacks and, in my humble (Leo) opinion, is one of the most enjoyable reads of the past few years.

Although the Library doesn't have the DVD set of PBS series The French Chef, a rental is highly recommended. You may not be able to watch all episodes in one sitting, but "The Omelet Show" is worth multiple viewings alone.

There are also some wonderful websites devoted to her life and kitchen, with especially moving tributes following her death in 2004. The Schlesinger Library in Cambridge is the proud holder of her papers, as well as Child's cookbook collection which she donated to the Schlesinger in 1990. In addition to Julia's papers, they also house the papers of Simone Beck and Avis De Voto, who was instrumental in getting Mastering published.

And finally, the Library will have a special event on October 10th called Julia Child in America. The panel will include Molly O'Neill, Dan Barber, Laura Shapiro, and David Kamp. Moderated by Melanie Rehak. Tickets are 15 dollars.

Bon Appetit!