Julia Child-mania Continues…
I’ve finally gotten around to watching the first disc of The French Chef on DVD - spurred on by, guess what…Julie and Julia.
Julia Child started hosting The French Chef on public television station WGBH Boston in 1963, growing out of presentations that Child had done to promote Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol 1, the famous French tome she co-authored with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle.
At the time, cooking shows were in their infancy. Today, TV chefs have all sorts of resources to instruct them how to cook on camera, so a lot of it comes off as rather glossy and stylized. The refreshing thing about The French Chef is how unfussy, and even clumsy Child is on camera. Goofy, even. During an episode devoted to what she gleefully calls a “french fry free for all,” she shows us how to fry potatoes four ways, and warns viewers to keep “kooks” and “kiddies” away from the hot fat. The same lady who we see chatting with Nice market vendors in French as she buys olives and capers for a salad Nicoise is human enough to lose the handle on one of her frying baskets, and fed up with it, chuck the whole thing under the counter. Adorable. I’ve only worked my way through six episodes, but I particularly like the one that centers around bouillabaisse and another episode about french onion soup during which Child goes into a long speech about knives.
