Backstage with Julia (11 page)

Charlie obviously adored her back. At one point he said to Paul, "I hope you don't mind, but I'm in love with your wife."

"Not at all. I'm in love with her myself," Paul responded.

When Julia scripted a segment that would include one of the co-hosts, she gave a good deal of thought to what would make it most entertaining. The blowtorch was a good answer. Today there are small blowtorches made especially for kitchen use, but when she discovered its usefulness, it was the ordinary, three-foot-long hardware-store type. Without waiting for the broiler to heat up, she could caramelize the top of crème brûlée, ignite wine sauces, and brown the meringue on a baked Alaska. She loved her blowtorch and immediately saw its appeal for television. On one hand, it meant that food could be "broiled" directly on the set, without ever leaving the camera's view to go to the oven. On the other, it provided Julia with an infinite number of humorous opportunities to surprise. She liked to keep the bright red, utilitarian tank hidden under the counter and whip it out, startling her TV host. "Now you will need your trusty kitchen blowtorch," she'd announce before lighting it with a loud whoosh.

Knowing it made for such good television, she thought in detail about how and when she'd use it for the best effect. When she sent me her ideas for an upcoming gig at
Good Morning America,
her list started out with the names of what she wanted to do without any specifications until she got to number ten, which was more detailed: "Baked Alaska with blowtorch & David." The blowtorch spot turned out to be all the more entertaining because at first the flame actually incinerated part of the meringue and then it went out altogether. David tried to relight the torch and then tried to turn off the gas, but he was laughing too hard to get a handle on what he was doing. Meanwhile, Julia forged ahead, explaining what she was doing, and then poured even more liqueur on top of the meringue. The piece of cake she served David would have inebriated ten men. Relaxed and unflappable, Julia had turned a goof into a hilarious piece of television.

Steve Bell inadvertently became her ultimate straight man. Steve was an ABC anchor who was accustomed to reporting serious news from behind a desk. Occasionally he filled in for David on
Good Morning America,
and one of those times happened to be a morning when Joan Lunden was also away. I don't think he expected that cooking would be part of his duties that morning, but he approached it with good humor.

Julia was making crepes, and the script called for her to have one pan on the stovetop in front of her and a second pan a few feet down the counter on a hotplate for Steve. As usual for our setups, there was a crockery pot of utensils sitting between their stations. With the cameras rolling, Julia poured batter into both pans and began to explain to the audience how to proceed and how simple it was to make crepes for a crowd. It's a good guess that Steve didn't spend a lot of time in front of a stove. As his batter turned black on the bottom of the pan, he tried in vain to flip it over as Julia was doing. Even if he'd had the flair to flip a crepe, it wouldn't have done him any good at that point because the once light and shimmering batter was now smoking like a teenager behind the gymnasium at a school dance. In a desperate attempt to salvage the crepe, Steve reached for a tool from the pot of utensils, but his crepe was already history. Unruffled, Julia swooped down on the situation like a fire brigade that's seen it all and simply lifted the crepe from the pan and flung it to the floor. "That's okay," she said, pouring more batter into his pan. "Just start over." Then the problem escalated beyond that of a burnt crepe. Steve had chosen a rubber spatula as his tool and because he was laughing so hard at Julia's crepe toss, he left the spatula resting directly on the surface of the hot pan and the rubber melted, gluing the tool to the pan. Steve and the entire control room were convulsed in laughter, but Julia continued on as though nothing unusual had happened—and I'm not sure she did know exactly what had happened until we tied a bow around the sadly deformed spatula and asked her to sign the handle for Steve.

Julia was never shy about tossing a few risqué ad libs into the mix—not surprising, considering she was the same person who in 1956 sent a Valentine card to friends that bore a photo of her and Paul in a bathtub covered only with bubbles and inscribed with the message, "Wish you were here." Given her nature, it was natural that her provocative playfulness would surface when the cameras were rolling. So we may have gasped, but we weren't altogether surprised, when at the end of a segment, after David smiled warmly, clinked his wineglass against hers, and wished her "Bon appétit," Julia smiled back and responded, "Or as we often say, bon appe-titty." Cookbook author and television personality Merle Ellis told me that it was Julia's unselfconscious naughty side that had landed her the regular gig on
GMA
in the first place. Before Julia became part of the
GMA
family, he was a regular on the show, appearing weekly in a popular spot as "The Butcher." Merle, of whom Julia was very fond, invited her to join him for a tour of a meatpacking plant. Julia, a butcher wanna-be, jumped at the chance. When the small group that included Merle's
GMA
producer came to the "kill room," the consensus was to pass it up, but Julia wanted to see all aspects of the butchering and insisted that Merle escort her into the room.

Merle, Julia, and the producer viewed the killing, gutting, and skinning operations and then arrived at the tenderizing station. They watched as men placed two large paddles on either side of the carcass. When a large bolt of electricity shot through the paddles, it caused the animal's tail to suddenly shoot upright and rigid. "I can think of other uses for that!" Julia gleefully exclaimed. A few weeks later the producer called Merle to ask for Julia's phone number, and she soon had a contract with ABC.

In spite of the usually overwhelming amount of work, the very early hours, and the occasional snafu, it didn't take me long to realize that I loved—no, adored—television food work. What's more, I seemed to have a knack for it, because Sonya soon hired me to work on segments with other visiting chefs and celebrities. For the next seven years I worked with more celebrities, cookbook authors, and chefs than I can recall. It was all such fun, but no one ever brought the same magic to the show as Julia did. Julia Child plus food plus television was simply a winning combination.

And there were perks involved in working with her. Not the kind of employee incentives associated with health plans, retirement benefits, or the right to participate in office football pools, but the sort that expanded our knowledge of what was notable in the food world, what was evolving into becoming notable, and who was making it happen.

When Julia arrived in New York for her monthly gigs at
GMA
, she did so with a stack of invitations to restaurant openings, wine tastings, book parties, luncheons, and dinners. There were always more invitations than time allowed, but she accepted the ones she could, and always requested that she be able to bring her assistants as guests. I ate my first lunch at the famed 21 with Julia, as well as my first dinners at Union Square Café and Montrachet, which then were not famous but would become so. It was with Julia that I tasted my first, exquisite bite of American foie gras and met the delightful Ariane Daguin, who was just establishing her foie gras business, D'Artagnan, in the United States. As I savored the delicacy in front of me, Julia gave me a brief history lesson about Ariane and her renowned father, André Daguin, who was then chef-owner of the Hôtel de France in Gascony and a towering figure in the gastronomy of that area. And, being Julia, she stretched her neck way up and gave me a visual description of
gavage
(the way geese are force-fed). She finished by giving all of us at the table her opinion that it does not offend the hungry birds to be fed in such a way, contrary to the views of many people in the business and virtually everyone who was an animal rights activist.
Gavage
remains a point of controversy, and whether Julia was right or wrong in her opinion will most likely never find a definitive answer; it's been argued since Egyptian times. But the point is that before she made her determination about its cruelty or lack thereof, she made sure she had all the facts and saw the process for herself. I think I was a bit on the fence on the subject, probably because I adore foie gras. So on a trip to California, she decided we should visit a Sonoma foie gras producer so I could see for myself. Unfortunately, the owner said they were not feeding the geese at the time of our visit, so I was unable to make my own analysis. It would have been futile for me to give an opinion after that, since Julia would have said,
You haven't seen it for yourself, so you can't say.

Perhaps the party that most beguiled me was a dinner at the Four Seasons where I met the legendary British culinary writer Roy Andries De Groot. I needed no explanation from Julia of who he was. My copy of his book
Recipes from the Auberge of the Flowering Hearth,
published in 1973, was tattered and worn, not from my use but because I had only learned of it when I discovered it in a used-book store. I was so taken with it that I read most of it sitting cross-legged on the dusty bookstore floor. His story of how he went to France seeking the history of the liqueur Chartreuse and in the process discovered the existence of two women who cooked with the seasons is not only an influential culinary classic but also one of the most beautifully descriptive accounts of gastronomic discovery—all the more incredible since De Groot was blind.

Julia was extremely generous and thoughtful to include us in all that her culinary status afforded her, and when James Beard invited her to a tasting of champagne and chocolate ice cream that he was hosting, Susy and I saw just how far her thoughtfulness extended. We were working at the studio and had not quite finished all the prep we needed for the next day. But Julia had to leave, since she was expected to say a few words with Beard at a given time and then had to go on to another event. Her afternoon schedule was crowded, and a limousine was already waiting outside to take her to the Beard party and then on to the next and the next. "I hope you can finish in time to make Jim's party," she said. "Leave as soon as you finish all this."

Almost an hour later, Susy and I finished. Looking at the time, we realized that unless we found a taxi immediately we would probably miss the party. As soon as we opened the door to leave the studio, we saw the downpour and we knew that finding a taxi at all would be nearly impossible. We had no raincoats, no umbrellas, and several blocks to go. As we descended the stairs, a driver stepped out of the limousine parked at the curb and asked, "Are you Susy and Nancy?"

"Yes," we answered.

"Mrs. Child sent me here to wait for you and said I should bring you to the party."

It was a thoughtful, generous thing to do, but when I look at the larger picture of who Julia was, I know that her efforts to include us in her many outings were not solely out of her generosity. She wanted to introduce us to the entirety of the culinary world—a world she had the foresight to know was undergoing important and exciting changes.

Chapter 4

My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate—that's my philosophy.

—Thornton Wilder,
The Skin of Our Teeth

Wysiwyg. That's what Russ Morash said when members of the press and fans asked him to reveal exactly what the real Julia Child was like in person. Those in search of a juicy story most likely hoped to unearth tales of a misanthropic madwoman who hurled pots and pans at kitchen assistants, or hear stories of a prima donna who lazed about conceitedly watching reruns of her own programs while kitchen slaves served her coq au vin and croquembouche on a tray emblazoned with her image. Russ, who was not only her director but also her good friend, was in a better position than most to know, and he gave the true and definitive, succinct and explicit answer—"wysiwyg." It may sound like a word from Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky," but don't reach for the dictionary.
Wysiwyg
is not a word. The letters stand for "what you see is what you get." And that's the truth of it. Julia was just as down-to-earth, unpretentious, and unselfconsciously outspoken in the company of friends as she was with the cameras rolling. She was just as humorous and deliciously quirky. The
real
Julia Child was right there to see, whether you watched her on a TV screen or sat next to her at the dinner table. She was always Julia.

To say that Julia was always the same person does not mean that she was without depth or breadth. There were many prismatic dimensions to her personality, many layers. Discovering those layers did not require a special guidebook or road map. You only had to spend time with her. And I was getting to do just that.

If I had to describe my working association with Julia, I would say that at first it was gradual, and then it was simply all of a sudden. When she made me executive chef at
GMA,
she also asked me to assist her at a few of the many demonstrations that she gave on a regular basis to promote her own work and to raise funds for charitable organizations. That meant traveling with her and seeing her out of the public light. Then Julia offered me another job. In 1981, she gave up her
McCall's
column and accepted an offer to be the food editor for
Parade,
the popular Sunday newspaper insert. Her monthly features were much more elaborate than her column had been and they would reach a much wider audience, a fact that greatly appealed to her.
Parade
shot the photos for the first series of "From Julia Child's Kitchen" in Santa Barbara, California, where Julia and Paul had just purchased a condominium. Julia worked it out with
Parade
to have the shoots take place on whichever coast she and Paul were living at the scheduled time, and she asked me to serve as her executive chef for the East Coast team when she shot the next series in Cambridge in the spring of 1982.