Julia Child and Julie Powell Reviewed

Hubby and I went to see Julie and Julia last night. This work about the lives of Julia Child and Julie Powell was written and directed by Nora Ephron in a film that parallels events in the life of Julia Child and contrasts them to those of aspiring chef-novice Julie Powell played by Amy Adams. The premise is that Julie will cook all 524 recipes from the cookbook written by Child in 365 days and write a blog entry reflecting upon that experience from both a personal and culinary perspective.

I cannot recall investing so much empathy with a movie ever before. Meryl Streep captured the essence of that joyful spirit, Julia Child. Perhaps she played it a bit over the top - a tad exaggerated, and nearly a caricature. Some critics wrote that the two concurrent stories were one story too many. I disagree. The past is handed on to the future in which each layer is sediment upon which the next layer is built.

On the other hand, the pure joy of the woman, the exuberance for life was all there in the movie. That was intact. Meryl Streep did a fantastic job and I bet she didn't mind bulking up for the part either. One imagines in the days leading up to production that Ms. Streep joyously savored gourmet meals with the knowledge that her contract had required her - actually required her - to gain X number of pounds.

I became inheritor of two volumes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking from my friend Susan's mother's library. Inside the front cover of each there is a note, "To Polly, Christmas 1970, George (Marco Island Vacation)." They whisper from the past, a treasure lovingly scribbled with Polly's marginalia as she interacted with the books to prepare meals for a family raised in the solid upper middle class of the Midwest.

This is the kind of family any sane person might have chosen for herself: nurturing, functional, educated. Dad - the level headed engineer; Mom, the family anchor. Susan was one of the most grounded people I ever met. She was my running buddy in my younger days, a major physical fitness nut, and more interested in the simplest nutrition than cooking so those lovely editions became mine. My gain, Susan's loss. I wonder if she thinks of those books as the hubbub of this new movie splashes across the media?

Watching the movie was a déjà vu experience for me.

I, too, have tried to poach an egg Julia Child style and obtained the same sorry results that Julie did. The first egg spread out into a formless stringy membrane of coagulated protein floating in the pan - a jellyfish-like mass with tentacles.

Dump the whole thing and start again. This time, make it a rolling boil, put a little vinegar in there, create a swirling vortex, and drop the egg in the dead center of this Charybdis and keep it swirling with a wooden spoon, have your slotted spoon ready and take care to pull it out before the yolk cooks solid, and Voila! Success! The perfectly poached, ovoid egg. It is not a small victory.

Hours.

It crawled there in my kitchen like the vermin from Kafka's Metamorphosis, confused and desperate and skittering under the toeplates. Or perhaps it was more like a pet I knew I would have to "put down" but I tarried in that 'tween time where one fluctuates between the thought and the act.

Finally, I did the deed, wincing as Julie the character did, but many, many years before she did.

Did you know that lobsters "squeak" when you finally get up your nerve to plunge them in the water? They say it's escaping air - I'm not sure. I haven't tried it since.

Then there was the time on her television program when Julia Child flopped this monstrously huge, intact, monk fish on her chopping block. The French cook is not squeamish about starting out with the freshest ingredients and believes in getting as close to the freshest source as possible. Certainly, this fish had been purchased off the boat still flopping. Knife at the ready, Julia Child nevertheless appeared doubtful about the job before her. I don't recall the details - perhaps I squeamishly flipped the channel.

And what could have looked more delectable than the chicken en croute pulled hot from the oven in the movie? The crisp, buttery overcoat of pastry - yum! Nope, I won't do that - you can now buy puff pastry perfect and ready-made. For your amusement, if you haven't already done it, look up the recipe for this and contemplate the sheer difficulty of it, the discomfort of dealing with the icy cold butter repeatedly with your bare hands, the unlikelihood that it will turn out at all. View the number of steps in the process. It is a work of love, an art, a science all to itself.

Anyone who has cooked long enough knows the distress of letting a wonderful beef bourgignon burn in the oven - been there, done that. If you do not have the time to recoup before a seriously important feast, your ingenuity is taxed. The good cook has a plan B for dinner parties - perhaps some steaks already thawed?

The scene in which Julia Child was determined to get her knife technique just right was hysterical. I empathized. It is the hallmark of a good cook - it must be effortless; it must be made to look easy. I adore the Food Channel and watch each new chef critically for a good knife technique. If they don't have it, I write them off as amateurs and move on to the home decorating channel.

The Person, Julia Child

Then there is Child's largeness - I can relate for though I am average height, I am pear shaped so radically that I, too, would rather shop the market than the European boutiques for clothes. As a tourist in Barcelona, instead of cruising the clothing shops, I idled longingly in the famous marketplace in Barcelona the Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria (or La Boqueria) on the street called La Rambla. It was distressing to be in a kitchenless hotel room with the cornucopia of the most incredible fresh meat, fish and produce I had ever seen on display.

There is a picture of Child touching hands with the wonderful chef, Jacques Pepin, in a photo for a collaboration with for a cookbook Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home - a passing of the baton of French cuisine? She looked frail, old, hunched - a shadow of her larger-than-life self. The picture is poignant in that we are all on that inexorable forced march to the same uncertain horizon.

Even the vices of Julia Child somehow only serve to endear. She embraced all the sensual experiences that being alive could offer. From time to time in my life, I've been there, done that, too.

About Julie

Like the character Julie Powell, I share my passions through writing a website. Though Julie's was a blog, the distinction between the two continues to blur and one is hard pressed to compare and contrast the distinctions. If you should have interest in such things, watch the video above.

On such occasions one feels guilty to have bought the cranberry sauce in a can because you don't like the dish anyway and are only serving it because it is Thanksgiving and cranberry sauce is expected on the table. After every Thanksgiving, most of it went down the garbage disposal. I did, however, finally find a recipe for made-from-scratch that was actually yummy. It had orange peel and nuts in it. If I can find it again, I'll put it up for your perusal. I hope my children remember these family feasts in times of reflection or tribulation as islands of contentment in lives too harried for anything more than what my father, a restaurateur, used to call "throwing your food behind your ear." These moments with family are too precious for such short shrift.

More than that, the lives of Julia Child and Julie Powell documented in the movie is about trying to find yourself, who you are, what you want to do, at an age where other, more planful folks are well established. Inevitably, there are moments of existential angst for we all wish to leave footprints in the sand of time. It is all about "legacy." Like Julia Child, I found myself, over forty, wondering what I was going to do when the children were gone. Sadly, Julia didn't have any children. I regret this for her. Perhaps they would have taken the "edge" off her vocation? Perhaps, then, we are all the inheritors of her legacy in their stead? My life, like theirs, is also the writing life. Both Julie and I have the advantage over Julia Child. For her, it was necessary to labor for nearly a decade to complete the Herculean task of her cookbooks. However, for a website, the writer can post one page at a time, building a book and sharing it simultaneously, page by page, day by day. The middle-man of the publisher is skipped and your writing is judged instead by your viewer. Your success or failure is measured by your traffic statistics and clicks. Visitors vote their confidence in your writing by coming to your site and your progress is measurable every morning as you watch that traffic grow.

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