Haunted by Julia... Oh Julia, Julia, Julia...

[Jinmyo]

In order to truly, viscerally appreciate Julia one must have a direct understanding of how absolutely horrible food was in most of North America in the 1950s and 1960s.

Mushrooms were tinned.

Tomatoes were four to a green plastic tray wrapped in plastic.

Steaks were an 1/8th of an inch thick.

Pork chops about the same thickness but cooked foer twelve times as long.

Margarine.

I kid you not.

People mixed a little packet of yellow food colouring into white margarine.

I had thought England was horrible as a child until I came to Canada for a bit as a child. At least the UK had sausages and steak and kidney pies and fish and chips.

The horror... The horror...

Julia appeared on scratchy black and white TV and waved a sabre about and dropped stuff on the floor and witrh a booming high-pitched voice called us to life and butter and rare beef.

The blessings of sweet St. Julia bear fruit in every decent meal to be had in the U.S. and Canada in one way or another.

She was at the right time and the right place, girded her loins with an aopron, and set to.

Thanks, dear heart.

[rosebud]

Let us not forget that she went on a rampage about grocery stores which CHILLED their tomatoes!!!! I kid you not

Now, when you go to your average grocery story, do you find TOMATOES in the refrigerated section? I think NOT.

It is really impossible to empirically determine what this woman did for American produce.

Are there innumerable reasons why we adore this woman? She changed everything in this beloved land and she learned all of this in FRANCE

[bleachboy]

All that was said above, plus I like to believe Julia's almost singlehandedly responsible for the appearance of SHALLOTS in American markets.

God bless her. Mastering the Art is by far the most messed-up cookbook I own. And in my world, the more junk you've spilled on a cookbook, the better it must be! I think my copy has at least 20 post-its sticking out of the side. To this day, it remains a relevant and trustworthy go-to cookbook for basic recipes and techniques.

Bon appetit!

[chefzadi]

All that was said above, plus I like to believe Julia's almost singlehandedly responsible for the appearance of SHALLOTS in American markets.

God bless her.  Mastering the Art is by far the most messed-up cookbook I own.  And in my world, the more junk you've spilled on a cookbook, the better it must be!  I think my copy has at least 20 post-its sticking out of the side.  To this day, it remains a relevant and trustworthy go-to cookbook for basic recipes and techniques.

Bon appetit!

←

The best, freshest and cheapest shallots in town are at the Vietnamese markets in LA. How things change.

[Dani Mc]

I love Julia. I learned how to make sauces with Julia. 'From Julia Child's Kitchen' is my go-to book for thanksgiving turkey and stuffing. On a visit to see my parents in DC, I dragged my father to the American History Museum for the Julia Child exhibit. We watched some highlights of her show in the replica of her kitchen/studio, including the infamous 'making the raw chicken dance' epi. He now loves Julia too. To see a former military guy to go from someone who saw food merely as fuel to something to be enjoyed and savored was quite something. He opened himself to the experience because of the straight forward, unpretentious way she presented french cooking. He's no longer suspicious of it, and he (former king of dinners at Chilis) is already planning our trip to the Inn At Little Washington. Its really kind of charming.

My 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' Vols. 1 and 2 are the most beat up food stained books in my library, and I love them for that.

ChefZadi, I'm another one of the full fat paradoxes. I'm 5' 10.5", and a size 6 or a 4 (depending on the season), and that didn't happen until I quit dieting, cut out processed foods, and stopped constantly worrying about finding low carb, low fat, and sugar substitute versions of everything. I realise this doesn't work for everyone, but it worked for me.

[chefzadi]

In order to truly, viscerally appreciate Julia one must have a direct understanding of how absolutely horrible food was in most of North America in the 1950s and 1960s.

Mushrooms were tinned.

Tomatoes were four to a green plastic tray wrapped in plastic.

Steaks were an 1/8th of an inch thick.

Pork chops about the same thickness but cooked foer twelve times as long.

Margarine.

I kid you not.

People mixed a little packet of yellow food colouring into white margarine.

I had thought England was horrible as a child until I came to Canada for a bit as a child. At least the UK had sausages and steak and kidney pies and fish and chips.

The horror... The horror...

Julia appeared on scratchy black and white TV and waved a sabre about and dropped stuff on the floor and witrh a booming high-pitched voice called us to life and butter and rare beef.

The blessings of sweet St. Julia bear fruit in every decent meal to be had in the U.S. and Canada in one way or another.

She was at the right time and the right place, girded her loins with an aopron, and set to.

Thanks, dear heart.

←

I suspected this, but was waiting for a confirmation. And yes she is an Angel or Saint for putting America on a different path.

But now I'm wondering how and why it was so bad before she came along. I suspect it has something to do with large Industries churning out packaged foods. I know that Kraft for instance got his first big contracts from the US government to package foods for soldiers during the war. The sin of AMERICAN CHEESE was thus perpetuated. I've heard it called Arkansas brie and spam for vegetarians.

[jgm]

Julia's birthday is August 15. Perhaps we should start thinking now about how we want to celebrate it.

Congress is too stupid to make it a national holiday, but that doesn't mean we can't do something fitting and proper here on eGullet.

[andiesenji]

The roots of the ubiquitous, bland and unimaginative foods of the late 40s and 50 can be traced back to the Great Depression and dust bowl of the early 30s.

Millions of farmers could not survive on the traditional family farm, if they could raise crops they couldn't get them to market and many people couldn't afford to buy anyway.

Big corporations began buying up small farmstead and turning them into factory farms where crops were processed into canned goods at sites near the farms and shipped all over the country.

Feeding the country depended on cheap, standardized foods.

During WWII people were encouraged to have Victory Gardens, in their yards to augment their diets because so much of our regular food supplies were being shipped to the military.

However after the war these gradually fell out of fashion because people had more money, more variety was available in stores and women, who had gone out to work during the war, did not want to retire to being the home maker as before.

Some areas of the country, in particular the south, retained the tradition of the kitchen garden and also maintained a distinct regional cooking tradition, whereas the rest of the country became more homogenous.

Then TV invaded homes all over the country and an enterprising food processory developed the "TV Dinner" - talk about HORROR, this was it!

People who had never known the diversity of the ethnic foods of their parents and grandparents, (often it was considered "un-American" to cling to "foreign" foods), settled for the mass produced stuff that everyone else ate. They were suspicious of odd-looking or different named foods, particularly those with names in foreign languages.

Pizza was an exception. The GIs who came back from serving in Italy began looking for restaurants where they could find the "pies" they had enjoyed in parts of Italy and the phenomena of the pizza "parlor" began to spread. It began in the cities where it had been known since immigrants from the areas in Italy where it was traditional and spread to small towns.

People began to get the idea that there were other foods that were good, nutritious and not scary.

Into this came Julia, just at the right time, when homemakers were beginning to look beyond regional and national food fashions and discovered there was a bigger world out there.

[SWISS_CHEF]

To understand why she was so important we have to put Julia in context with her time:

Founded in 1896, the Internationale Kochkunst Ausstellung, commonly called the "Culinary Olympics", is the oldest and most prestigious international culinary competition in the world.

The 1960 American team, headed up by Paul Laesecke, actually captured the world championship on a menu of Maryland Fried Chicken, Prime Rib, and Stuffed Baked Potato cooked in aluminum foil!

Seeing Julia for the first time must have been very enlightening!

[FistFullaRoux]

The core of Julia's influence was that she put "advanced" techniques into the hands of a housewife in Topeka, at a time where the only person who taught you how to cook was your mother.

She adapted the French techniques and ingredients to readily available equipment and supplies. She showed that housewife in Topeka that she could make a dish suitable for any French dignitary who may happen to come by her home. That was a huge chunk of power to give to people who knew nothing about cooking from other regions in the US, much less the intimidating classical French cuisine.

And the reason American food was in the shape it was in was the cheap automobile, the suburbs, and marketing of "convenience" foods. She came along at the same time the TV dinner did. Thank God someone was able to counteract that. Had she not been around, and noone else could have done it, we would never be having this conversation. We would all be going home to open a can of something. And you will notice that until very recently, progress in that area had stayed within an arm's reach of the original TV dinner, just different packaging and ingredients.

Only recently have they been marketing what would have been considered military survival rations as food.

[chef koo]

what's so great about her? what put her on the map. i know that she had a cooking show and she wrote cook books but i know alot of people that did that. what set her apart fro mthe rest. i think sh'e sreally beyond my time, but i ust hear so much about her. did she invent something to revolutionize cooking or soething like that?

[Thesorus]

AFAIK, she was one of the first real TV chef, and one of the first to really introduce classical french cuisine to the american audience.

[dano1]

how old are you chef???

[Mayhaw Man]

This thread might give you some idea of what she represented to many people.

[Carolyn Tillie]

i know that she had a cooking show and she wrote cook books but i know alot of people that did that. what set her apart fro mthe rest.

←

Yes, a lot of people have cooking shows and a lot of people write cookbooks.

She was quite simply one of the first.

Sure, lots of men have walked on the moon -- but which name pops to mind about who made it special? Neil Armstrong, of course, The First One. To walk and make a difference where others have yet to tread, in ANY field, paves the way for others. She did it with grace and charm and integrity and her life touched millions of people.

[Busboy]

Julia may have been the first TV chef, she was almost certainly not the first person to publish a serious French cookbook in the U.S.

What she did was translate classic and traditional cooking into recipes people could understand and duplicate -- she made French home cooking accessible in a way it had never been. Her first cookbooks remain standards 40 years after publication for that reason.

Probably more important, though, she brought such enthusiasm and joy to the task that people were motivated to get into the kitchen. She was not just a teacher, she was a missionary in a way that few, if any, of those who have followed in her footsteps have been.

[Osnav]

Your question reminds me of my nephew who asked me who the Beatles were.

It is a generational thing.

To many of my generation Julia invented food. To me, Julia took the simple act of fueling my body three times a day and turned it into something interesting and enjoyable.

Julia is of my time, you will find your own muse no better nor worse than Julia.

One thing you owe it to yourself to do though, is to READ. Food has a long and glorious history. It is filled with wonderful characters that have created the steps that have led to our current day situation.

From Marco Polo bringing back pasta to Venice, or the Spanish taking potatoes and tomatoes back to Europe; the history of food is fascinating. Every generation builds upon the previous. To understand where cuisine is today you have to look at the past.

Julia brought us from the Eisenhower/Swanson's TV Diners to the French's love of cooking and food. She taught us to enjoy food.

That's enough.

rikkitikki

[Ducky]

From Marco Polo bringing back pasta to Venice,

rikkitikki

←

Has this issue ever been definatively resolved? I have had several Italians insist to me that it was the other way around: Marco Polo brought pasta to China.

[Osnav]

From Marco Polo bringing back pasta to Venice,

rikkitikki

←

Has this issue ever been definatively resolved? I have had several Italians insist to me that it was the other way around: Marco Polo brought pasta to China.

←

I am not really sure, but it is a good question. I will check on it and let you know.

rikkitikki

[andiesenji]

Julia may have been the first TV chef, she was almost certainly not the first person to publish a serious French cookbook in the U.S.

←

Julia was not the "first" TV chef, however she was the first syndicated one that had a national audience.

The first TV chef was in Los Angeles beginning in 1948 - Chef Milani, one of the founders of the Hollywood Canteen USO, was seen daily on KTLA until 1954.

There was a female chef on KTTV (L.A.), whose name escapes me at the moment (Mama - - mostly German cooking, as I recall) in the early 1950s. She even produced a cookbook which I have somewhere in my collection.

[Moopheus]

From Marco Polo bringing back pasta to Venice,

rikkitikki

←

Has this issue ever been definatively resolved? I have had several Italians insist to me that it was the other way around: Marco Polo brought pasta to China.

←

There is evidence that Italians were making pasta, or at least something very much like it, before Marco Polo. Even leaving aside the question of whether Marco Polo even got to China, as at least some historians now believe he never got further than Persia, and much of what he knew about China was probably second-or third-hand information picked up from other traders.

[touaregsand]

I took a survey of Chinese History course at a major University and we were told that Marco Polo did in fact make it to China.

EDIT: I'll try to dig up my textbook and classnotes somewhere. Oh but it was all so long ago.

Second EDIT: Actually now I'm having doubts about my statement. I'm blanking out the more I think about it.

Edited March 24, 2005 by touaregsand (log)

[albiston]

I have had several Italians insist to me that it was the other way around: Marco Polo brought pasta to China.

I have to admit this is news to me too. Never heard the story before. What instead seems pretty certain is that Marco Polo did not bring pasta to Italy, I have been often told that the whole story was a urban myth spread by the advertising of a Canadian company. And BTW yes, there are historians that doubt his getting to China. One of the theories is that he actually learned the tales he wrote down in "Il Milione" from a fellow prisoner while captive of the Genovese, at the time sworn enemies of the Venetian Republic. I have to admit that I'm no expert on this aspect, just summarizing a very well explained article I happened to read a while ago that pointed out big incongruence in Polo's story.

As far as pasta goes there is a big distinction to be made. Romans already knew fresh pasta and there are documents references to what was called laganae -presumedly the root for lasagne- which are described as similar to tagliatelle or pappardelle.

Dried pasta on the other hand comes very probably from the Arab domination in Sicily and moved from there to Genova through commercial exchanges. Most historians agree that the Arabs developed the drying process first: the old name for pasta tria, still surviving in Sicily, Liguria and some areas of Puglia, would be directly derived from the Arab ithrya, which, as far as I've read, should mean dry dough (any Arab speaker here?). The fact that tria production is documented in Sicily in the early XIII century, about 50 years before Marco Polo's travels, is enough to dismiss the Chinese connection. There are a few Italian historians who claim that actually the Arabs developed the process in Sicily, but the explanations for this always seemed a bit cloudy to me.

[Pan]

Your question reminds me of my nephew who asked me who the Beatles were. 

It is a generational thing.[...]

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I laughed when I read that, but it's a good comparison.

[cakewalk]

Most historians agree that the Arabs developed the drying process first: the old name for pasta tria, still surviving in Sicily, Liguria and some areas of Puglia, would be directly derived from the Arab ithrya, which, as far as I've read, should mean dry dough (any Arab speaker here?).

←

I don't speak Arabic (I'm sure at least some eGulleteers do), but the Hebrew word itriya (itriot in its plural form) is the word used for noodles (egg noodles as well as pasta type noodles.) A lot of Hebrew is derived from Arabic (and vice versa.)

Edited March 24, 2005 by cakewalk (log)