Backstage with Julia (25 page)

"But it's so archaic," I complained to Julia. "Haven't they heard of women's liberation?"

"It will be a long time coming to the European kitchen, so just tough it out in there." Despite the fact that her career had so much to do with opening restaurant kitchens to female chefs, Julia did not consider herself a feminist at all. She believed in equal kitchen rights for all but did not zero in on women. In fact, she disliked being labeled a women's rights activist. It was just not her cause, so she was not about to race into the kitchen wielding a cleaver in order to threaten the men into behaving and treating me as a culinary equal. Assuming my most authoritative (but still diminutive) stance, I returned to the kitchen and got the job done.

Our cultural feature in Bologna was the seventeenth-century wooden surgery amphitheater, Teatro Anatomico (Anatomical Theater), located in the Palazzo dell'Archiginnasio in the old University of Bologna. The original structure had collapsed in 1944, a casualty of World War II air raids, and was then painstakingly salvaged and restored to its original beauty, with its pine paneling, professor's chair, statues, and models. The focal point is the white-linen-clothed operating table that sits in the center of the room so that students and doctors could watch the dissections. Of course, there would be no dissection the day of our visit, but Julia loved the idea—no doubt she envisioned the table laden with a large steer ready to become chops and roasts.

Just as our transportation arrived at the hotel, Sonya realized that she'd left papers she needed in her room. We were on a tight schedule and there was no time for her to retrieve them. "Will you get them, Nancy, and take a taxi over?" Since there was no food at the shoot and nothing for me to do but imagine some poor body stretched out on the table as exhibit A, I didn't have to be there when they were.

"No problem. I'll see you there."

"Here, I'll take your tote bag with me. And hurry, because the shoot is a quick one and we won't be there long."

I got the papers and hopped right into an available taxi.

"
Dove
?" the driver asked. I told him where I wanted to go, in English. He didn't speak English. Sonya had my tote bag with my itinerary and I couldn't remember the Italian name of where I was supposed to be. But I knew the concept of the place, so how hard could it be to explain? I figured
vecchio università da Bologna
(old university of Bologna) was a good place to begin. The University of Bologna, old and new, covers a lot of city territory, and so my comment helped him not at all.

"Non capisco,"
he replied. I comprehended that completely; he didn't understand. So I began tossing out all the Italian words I knew that had anything remotely to do with my image of where I was supposed to be. Museum, that was easy,
museo
, but there are hundreds of museums in Bologna. He pulled over to the side and turned to look at me, fortunately with amusement and not annoyance. Good—I could pantomime. I stiffened my fingers to look like what I thought was a cutting implement, and feigning a look of painful agony, I said
hospital
in English and
historico
, what I thought must be the Italian word for "historical."
Hospital
was pretty close to the Italian word,
ospedale
, but obviously
historico
sounded more like the Italian for "hysterical" than the proper word,
storico
.

"Allora,"
he said, his eyes shooting open in recognition. "
Si, signorina. Subito.
" And he took off at a considerable speed, which he maintained until he came to a screeching halt in front of the emergency room entrance of the local hospital.

I might well still be there had Sonya not sent out an all-points bulletin for me. As the taxi driver and I sat in the hospital parking lot once again trying to communicate where it was I wanted to be, I heard his two-way radio sputter out some Italian followed by the words "Signora Barr."

"That's me!
È mio! È mio!"
I cried, pointing to the radio and then to myself.

I arrived at the Teatro Anatomico just as the crew was getting ready to leave. "What happened to you?" Julia and Sonya asked.

"I had to stop off for a little surgery," I said.

"I hope they didn't remove anything you needed," Julia responded without asking for more of an explanation.

With all my body parts intact, we left Bologna behind and headed south to Tuscany. The crew left in a van, and Sonya, Julia, and I took the long, peaceful drive together, sharing the backseat of a comfortable Mercedes-Benz behind a driver who spoke a smattering of English and could comprehend my Italian. At least he had no trouble understanding me when I conveyed Julia's several requests that we stop along the autostrada for something to eat—usually
panini
, little sandwiches, which in Italian sound so . . . well, little and uncaloric. Julia liked the ham and cheese best. Since snacking was not a Julia thing, her frequent suggestions that we stop had more to with her curiosity about what those roadside eateries offered than her hunger.

Although she would have thought it odd, I've always regretted that I didn't have a tape recorder running during that drive. I only recall bits and pieces of our conversation, but I do remember how richly colorful her stories were. In his wonderful book
The Italians,
Luigi Barzini, Jr. wrote that over centuries, artists credited sojourns in Italy for inspiring the color and light of their paintings. When a person
feels
and not just
sees
Italy, Barzini's observation about inspiration applies to many aspects of life. Our trip was all about food, and to Italians, food means so much more than eating. It is about the joys of gathering around the table with family and friends, about making fruit and vegetables grow, about tradition and memories. When our television family sat down for meals together, we felt Italy. Julia's conversation during that ride reflected that feeling because she spoke of food memories and of growing up in California. She told us how captivated her family had been when her father bought an avocado tree in Mexico and planted it in their backyard. "It was the first avocado anyone in our neighborhood had ever seen, and we all thought it was exotic." In those days, it was.

She told us about a trip her family had taken to Tijuana when she was not yet a teenager and how Caesar Cardini himself made them his latest creation, the Caesar salad, right next to their table. Years after her family's trip, she conversed at length with Caesar's daughter, Rosa Cardini, and then wrote the story and published the recipe for the authentic version of the salad in her book
From Julia Child's Kitchen.
But the written word could not compare with her description during our ride. With a storytelling performance worthy of Scheherazade, she told and pantomimed how the man himself carefully, systematically, and with deliberate drama seasoned the romaine with garlic, olive oil, lemon, salt, coddled eggs, Parmesan cheese, homemade croutons, six drops of Worcestershire sauce, and eight grinds from the peppermill. Slowly and gracefully, she demonstrated how Cardini had gently "scooped under the leaves to make them turn like a large wave breaking toward him" to prevent the tender lettuce from bruising.

"What about the anchovies?" I asked, breaking the spell.

"No," she said emphatically with her index finger raised. "There were no anchovies in his recipe. Worcestershire has a little anchovy in it, and that's how anchovies crept into the salad."

Julia's memories of the family meals at home were more about the fun of being together than the creativity of the food. "My mother didn't cook," she told us. "All she knew how to make were baking powder biscuits, Welsh rarebit, and codfish balls with egg sauce." Otherwise, hired cooks prepared the food, and it was standard meat-and-potatoes fare—average but ample, which was what was important to Julia, who said that as a child she was "always hungry."

Other than relating her mother's limited kitchen skills, Julia spoke of her with great affection. Caro died when Julia was only twenty-five. She was a fun-loving, spirited nonconformist who was tall for her generation and had a high-pitched voice. Julia's mother, like Julia, graduated from Smith, where she excelled in sports and mischief. As Julia described her mother, I thought how similar she sounded to Julia. "She was a free spirit," Julia said, and I have no doubt she was.

Julia spoke about her father with less affection. John McWilliams, a well-to-do real estate investor and successful businessman, was an extremely conservative man, and he did not consider the artsy—I think he said "bohemian"—Paul Child a suitable match for his daughter. "I couldn't believe he would just dismiss the man I loved," she told us. She never really forgave him for that. I found it hard to forgive Mr. McWilliams, never even knowing him, when Julia told us he'd said that she would probably never marry since she was so tall and unlikely to find a man who wanted such an ungainly woman.

I already knew the story of Julia's culinary awakening, but Sonya asked and Julia told us how Paul had introduced her to the art and finesse of fine cooking in China, shortly after they met. "I thought Paul and his friends were terribly worldly and sophisticated, and when they suggested going out to real Chinese restaurants, I was happy to go along. The food was just delicious—like nothing I ever tasted. And everyone at the table talked about the food. What was in the dishes. How they were cooked. That's when I became interested in food."

Then she told the story of that day in November 1948 when, as a thirty-seven-year-old newlywed, on her first day in France, she had the culinary experience that she said was "an opening up of the soul and spirit for me." As many times as I heard and would hear her tell the story of the life-altering lunch she and Paul ate at the restaurant La Couronne in Rouen, I never tired of hearing it. Her face would take on a lover's glow, her eyes glistened with a wistful look, and her speech slowed so she could tenderly illustrate how she savored each dish. "We began with oysters
portugaises
and a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé," she cooed, describing how the wine was chilled perfectly and how the briny, craggy-shelled oysters tasted like none she had known growing up. She told us how each Christmas her father ordered oysters from Massachusetts. "They arrived packed in straw in a large wooden barrel. We ate them for months, and I did not particularly like them." Those oysters
portugaises
were life-altering not just because they began the meal that made Julia vow to learn to cook but because they converted Julia into an oyster fanatic. At the countless restaurant meals I shared with her, she
always
suggested we begin by sharing a large order of oysters on the half shell when they were on the menu. When a restaurant offered multiple varieties, she asked for a few of each. The Oyster Bar at Grand Central Station was one of her first choices when we left the
GMA
studios and wanted lunch before returning to Boston. I didn't like raw oysters much when I met Julia; I love them now.

At that meal in Rouen, Paul and Julia followed the oysters with sole meunière. "It was Dover sole," she said, and neither British-born Sonya nor I needed to hear more to understand that it was the sole prized above all others for its flavor and texture. "He brought it to the table whole." She pantomimed and described how he flawlessly lifted the delicate fish from the bones with a knife and a large fork and presented them each with a perfectly browned fillet, then spooned over the fish "a delicious, simple sauce of browned Normandy butter, lemon, and parsley." To hear and see Julia describe that meal at La Couronne was to listen to a love story.

Barzini's inspirational Italy had wielded its influence on Julia's memories, and I was disappointed when our driver pulled up to our hotel in Florence.

The upside of being in Florence was that we would be staying in the same hotel for three consecutive nights and not moving each day to a new location. Instead of waking early and packing our bags for transport to places south, east, or north, we ate a leisurely breakfast while attempting to translate the Italian newspaper over coffee and Italian croissant wanna-bes. In the evening, before dinner, we lingered over cocktails sitting in cushy, tapestry-upholstered chairs in a lounge just off the lobby, enjoying the occasional melodies that wafted in from the piano bar behind us.

One evening, Julia and I sat in the lounge awaiting a visit from one of her international admirers. Faith Willinger had introduced herself to Julia years before in a letter describing her own insatiable passion for cooking and asking Julia for advice on how to turn her passion into a career. Julia wrote back, telling her to "go to France and eat!" It was her version of Horace Greeley's recipe for success: "Go West, young man." As it turns out, Faith took Julia's advice but substituted Italy for France. She ate, learned, married an Italian, and opened a promising culinary tour business. Faith chronicled her experiences in letters to Julia, and when she read in the Italian newspaper that her mentor-by-post was in Florence, she sent a note to the hotel asking Julia if they could meet. Encouraging young colleagues was one of Julia's career-long commitments, and she sent Faith a return message inviting her to meet us at the hotel for drinks the following evening.

Julia and I settled into chairs facing the lobby so that Faith would see us as soon as she entered the hotel. Julia ordered her regular drink, an upside-down gin martini, and I ordered a glass of wine. My order was easy; Julia was exacting about how she wanted her favorite libation prepared, and it was always a bit confusing to waiters, but more so in Italy, where she had to deal with the language discrepancies.

"It should be in a tall wineglass," she said, gracefully air-sketching the shape of the glass with her hands. "Lots of ice, and then fill it to here with Noilly Pratt vermouth," she said, cupping the imaginary glass in her left hand and pointing to a spot near the top with her right index finger. "Noilly Pratt," she repeated. It was the only vermouth Julia drank or used for cooking. Still holding the phantom glass, she waved two fingers pinched close together over the top and scrunched her eyes. "And ju-u-u-st a splash of gin," she said, drawing it out to emphasize that she really wanted about as much as one could spray from a small atomizer.