In the 1960s, the American kitchen god Julia Child (1912-2004) became famous at one time, and Chua Lam, a famous gourmet in Hong Kong, China, once called her “Zhu Child” because of her surname. Julia’s life is quite legendary. As a native American, she is famous all over the world for making top-notch French cuisine. She has published recipes and hosted a large number of TV food shows. Many restaurant chefs, home cooks, and food lovers regard her as a mentor, and even regard her recipes as the supreme textbooks and family heirlooms.
Julia was born in Pasadena, California, in 1912, into a wealthy family. Her father was a conservative businessman who ran the family estate, and her mother, a paper mill heir, was warm and social, but, like most of her girlfriends, she didn’t spend much time in the kitchen. Julia is the eldest of three children, including a younger brother and a younger sister. Julia loved sports in her childhood and was quite talented in tennis, golf and basketball, and it was these sports that made her a proud height of nearly 1.9 meters. In 1934, Julia entered Smith College, where she majored in history. After graduation, she moved to New York to work as a typist for an advertising agency. In 1937, Julia returned to California, worked in an advertising company and insisted on writing for the local media.
During World War II, Julia worked for the US Strategic Intelligence Agency, responsible for processing field reports and classified documents sent back by intelligence personnel. In the summer of 1944, Julia was sent to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) by the OSS (Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the CIA), where she met her future husband, Paul Child. Later in the war, she and Paul were sent to Kunming, China, to continue their relationship while feasting on delicious Chinese food. Paul was a foodie, having grown up in Boston, the son of a bohemian mother who had lived in Paris and cooked well. Therefore, under the influence of his mother, Paul, who is a painter, photographer, poet and mid-level diplomat, loves wine and food, and he is familiar with dishes such as mussels in white wine, beef stew in Burgundy red wine, and duck with orange . When it comes to cooking, Julia was still a complete layman at that time. Although she loved to eat and eat since she was a child, due to her superior family background, there have always been several cooks in the family, so she did not have much cooking experience. It never occurred to me to be successful in cooking. To her, these dish names are just a bunch of foreign words that are difficult to pronounce and understand.
It has to be said that the acquaintance with Paul not only made Julia a happy and happy marriage, but also opened the door for her to explore food and cooking. Before her wedding with Paul in the United States, Julia signed up for a Los Angeles culinary school course in order to welcome the life of a housewife after marriage, and ambitiously cooked Paul’s first meal: braised ox brains in red wine. It’s a pity that the finished product after tossing was terrible and the taste was not very good. As Paul admitted in an interview many years later, “Julia’s craftsmanship was really not good at first.” Paul didn’t take this matter to heart and was “willing to put up with her poor cooking skills”, but this setback still caused Julia to compete with herself deep in her heart, and her desire to learn cooking became stronger up. In the first year of marriage, Julia would refer to “The Joy of Cooking” or “Gourmet” magazines every night to try to make different dishes. Although she was often in a hurry and ended in failure, she never thought of giving up.
In the winter of 1948, Paul got the opportunity to work at the US embassy in Paris, in charge of the exhibition department of the US News Service, and Julia followed “like luggage” to this fresh land. When she first arrived in France, Julia was very excited but nervous, because she was always worried that this “old American hat” would be looked down upon by the delicate French. However, the friendliness of the French made her integrate into Paris quickly, and she also ate the best food she had ever eaten in her life. After settling in Paris, Julia devoted herself to learning the language and culture of her new home country, and gradually fell in love with the glamorous dishes and talented chefs. Those days in France were the most wonderful time in Julia’s life, with so many pleasures that the eyes were too dizzy. She experienced the awakening of her senses, and also found the direction of her career and life.
In order to learn cooking, the 37-year-old Julia walked into the door of Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Institute in France. Founded in Paris in 1895, the college is the world’s first and largest vocational training school for western cuisine and dessert baking. The Le Cordon Bleu is the highest honor award for Western food and pastry majors, and most of the Le Cordon Bleu teachers are recipients of the Le Cordon Bleu. On the day of enrollment, Julia had weak knees due to a cold and a runny nose, but she suddenly discovered that the 6-week intensive training that was originally planned to register had turned into a one-year course. Tuition cost $450 a year, which was no joke at the time. It turned out that the intensive course was an improvement class for professionals, and the school’s teachers insisted that Americans could not cook at all, and Julia’s cooking skills were naturally not up to standard. In desperation, Julia could only learn systematically from the basics. During her Le Cordon Bleu studies, she studied under a chef who was almost 80 years old, and every day was like being in paradise. However, with the passage of time, Julia gradually discovered some deficiencies in the management and teaching of Le Cordon Bleu, and gradually came up with the idea of developing a culinary career on her own.
The good news is that this year’s study experience has really changed Julia completely. Originally, she had always been content with a carefree and happy life, seldom caring about anything except her husband and cats, but now she could hardly leave the kitchen. Although she was often praised by Paul, Julia at this time was still far from a true gourmet master. When I invited my friend Winnie to dinner, she didn’t weigh the flour according to the recipe and substituted chicory for the spinach, resulting in a Florentine cake that tasted terrible. However, Julia’s principle is: Never say sorry for the dishes you make, even if the dishes are poorly done, you should eat them with a smile, and then learn from your mistakes.
In addition to her husband’s enlightenment and encouragement, Julia’s career success also benefits from the full cooperation between her and her friends. Based on the common interest in food and cooking, Julia met French chefs Simone and Louise. Simone was brought up by a British nanny since she was a child. She speaks elegant and decent English. She loves food and is good at baking and desserts. Louise is “the perfect French girl in the hearts of Americans”, petite, neat and kind. At the time, the two were co-authoring a cookbook that would introduce Americans to the French diet. Louise contributed several recipes to the book, and Simone amassed more than a hundred recipes from her own experience, her mother’s notebook, home cooks, restaurant chefs, and more. But they just dryly put together the recipes without explaining the French attitude to food and the way it is prepared. A friend suggested to them, “Find an American who is crazy about French cuisine to work with you. This person should understand French cuisine, and at the same time be able to see and explain French cuisine from an American perspective.” Obviously, Julia is a perfect fit. their expectations. She gladly joined the team and, together with Simone and Louise, co-organized the cooking class that was finally named “Three Eaters Gourmet School”, dedicated to spreading the traditional French cooking techniques.
It was not until the beginning of September 1952 that Julia read the unfinished manuscripts of her partners for the first time. She not only saw the unlimited potential, but also found many problems: the language was not American enough, and the overall conception was not suitable for American families. Not suitable. To perfect this cookbook, she decided to turn rewriting into rewriting. However, the political chaos after the war led to frequent job changes for Paul. The couple first moved from Paris to Marseille and then to Germany, but cooking and writing have always been the focus of Julia’s life. It was not until 1959 that the 750-page thick book “Mastering the Cooking Art of French Cuisine” was finally completed. Because the publishing house that originally planned to cooperate could not accept such a “cooking encyclopedia”, Julia and others had to cut down the first draft and send it to Judith Jones, the female editor of Alfred A. Knopf Publishing House, a subsidiary of Random House. hands. Judith was deeply impressed by the book’s detailed illustrations, precise details, and approachable style, and finally published this now-classic book in 1961, and Julia has since embarked on the journey of “American history”. The Road to the Queen of Gourmet. Interestingly, the original proposed title was French Cuisine in an American Kitchen, but Judith found the title “unattractive and unclear”. In order to collect titles, Julia offered a reward to her relatives and friends: a large jar of truffled foie gras sent directly from France. Presumably no one could resist this mouth-watering temptation.
In order to promote her masterpiece, Julia participated in the book program of Boston’s WGBH public television station, and demonstrated the practice of French cooking in front of the camera. I want to watch her cook.” The TV station followed suit and officially launched Julia’s “French Chef” series in 1963. Julia’s burly figure seems to be out of place in the kitchen, but in fact it complements each other perfectly. With her unique voice and startled way of speaking, the food show she hosts is lively and interesting, attracting countless viewers. However, Julia’s cooking teaching process is not always perfect, and there are often embarrassing situations. But no matter what, she always had a way to adapt to the situation, and even joked, “Anyway, you are in the kitchen, no one can see”. It is said that once, Julia dropped the turkey on the ground, not only did she not panic at all, but she picked it up, washed it, and continued to cook. Yeah, that’s what everyone does when it happens in your own kitchen.
The “French Chef” series became a hit. On Thanksgiving Day in 1966, Julia’s head appeared on the cover of “Time” magazine. At the same time, Julia also confirmed plans to launch a sequel to “Mastering the Art of French Cuisine.” In the decades that followed, Julia remained active in publishing and television, spreading her philosophy on life and her passion for cooking. She has published more than a dozen cookbooks and one TV show after another: “Julia Child and Friends” in the 1970s, “Come to Julia’s Dinner” in the 1980s, “Julia Child and Jacques Bipin” in the 1990s. In 2000, Julia, who was nearly 90 years old, was still in the public eye – how could she give up the joy of cooking?
The only regret is that after so many years of cooperation, Julia and Simone gradually drifted apart, and eventually parted ways and no longer participated in each other’s food careers-Julia turned to TV cooking teaching and writing, and Simone chose In order to return to personal life and cooking teaching. Simone has a relatively selfish personality, is often stubborn, and is used to directing others, but she is unwilling to practice the recipes by herself. Moreover, Simone doesn’t pay much attention to details, and treats the recipes in a big way, which has serious differences with Julia’s cooking philosophy. Julia’s good habit of asking for perfection in every detail makes her recipes incomparably detailed, and the accompanying many embarrassments she has personally experienced are also warm for readers to learn from.
In 2004, Julia died suddenly in her sleep due to kidney failure. Before that, she had been co-authoring her autobiography “My French Years” with Alex Prudhomme, which described in detail the most cherished people and things in her life: Mr. Paul, beautiful France, And all sorts of culinary and gastronomic pleasures. Julia calls her lifelong love of the kitchen “my favorite and most used room in this house”, where she cooks her own happy life. In this book, we can see Julia’s self-confidence, calmness, calmness, persistence and final success, and even feel the healthy and upward force.
In 2010, Hollywood evergreen Meryl Streep was nominated for another Oscar for Best Actress for the film “Julie and Julia,” a film about the lives of two women. become completely different. At the age of thirty, Julie’s secretarial work is lackluster, and she desperately needs something new to break her monotonous life. She accidentally got Julia’s recipes from her mother, started a crazy food plan called “Julie and Julia”, and successfully cooked 524 dishes in the book in 365 days, making ordinary The kitchen becomes a magical place of creation. In this strange and interesting cooking process, she changed the mediocre life with her passion and tenacious perseverance, and found the joy of life that had been forgotten. The film also intersperses the story of Julia more than half a century ago. She lived in France and lived an ordinary life, but “eat” her own wonderful career and delicious life, and the food made Julie and Julia realize their taste buds. Roaming, the docking of souls and the transfer of positive energy.
Perhaps, many brilliant careers just originated from a simple hobby, but how to achieve this career depends on a persistent heart. In the final analysis, Julia’s dedication to cooking stems from her continuous love of life and her sincere affection for her family. So, living in this era of fast food, should we also regain our love for kitchen and food, and feel the beauty of life in our appetite and daily life?
