Julia Child biography Archives

Julia Child, photographed in her Cambridge, Massachusetts, kitchen, June 29, 1970. By Arnold Newman/Getty Images.

The first cook outside my own family that I can remember was Julia Child.

Which still seems like a slightly strange sentence.

I was a kid whose priorities consisted mostly of street hockey, hockey cards and figuring out how long I could avoid going to bed. My heroes wore skates, not aprons.

Yet somehow, I would come inside, flop onto the couch and happily watch a six foot two woman explain how to make boeuf bourguignon.

Growing up in Ottawa, America arrived through WNPE and WNPI in Watertown, New York. Those PBS stations were my window into the United States. PBS felt less like television and more like a very well funded public library that had somehow acquired cameras.

Julia Child. This Old House. Sesame Street, which played a real role in helping me learn English. The Electric Company. The Victory Garden. And the occasional documentary about JFK, which somehow sparked my next obsession.

Looking back, it was quite an education.

I don’t remember exactly what drew me to Julia. (more…)

Today would have been Julia Child’s birthday and I am in no mood to be subtle about it. She is one of my heroes. Not just because she could sear a duck without breaking a sweat but because she managed to dominate in a profession where men were used to holding the knife and the spotlight. Julia walked in, taller than most of them, voice booming like a church bell, and showed everyone that authority in the kitchen was not about gender. It was about taste, skill, and the nerve to carry on when you have dropped a chicken on the floor.

I grew up French Canadian so many of Julia’s recipes already lived somewhere in my memory before I saw her make them. Boeuf bourguignon. French onion soup. Duck à l’orange. Coquilles Saint Jacques. Dishes my mother would unveil for fancy dinners, though Julia’s versions always came with something extra, the tacit permission to botch them and keep going. Burn the onions? She would say scrape them up and carry on. Sauce too thin? Thicken it and serve it anyway. The party is not ruined and neither are you. (more…)