12 August 2010

Thoughtful Thursday: My Julia Child-hood


So many food-loving North Americans of my generation, and of my parents’, have memories that involve the late, totally great, much-missed Julia Child. I am certainly one of these “many,” with two distinct memories that keep me company always. The earlier one is an aggregate of several memories, rolled together the way that kidhood memories roll... it is of trying to stay up past bedtime, sneaking into the hallway to catch snippets of Grownup TV sounds that came from the living room, where my mother sat reverently, holding a 3-by-5 notepad and pencil (sometimes pen), waiting for wisdom to pour forth from the reedy throat of Mrs. Child. Pour it did, and my mother watched and wrote... watched and wrote... scribbling the entire first series of WGBH broadcasts, absorbing the wisdom of Julia, well before The French Chef Cookbook could be purchased. All I could understand at the time was that Something Important was being transmitted, and the siren call of the fluty voice of La Child was impossible to resist, even though the scolding for being up past bedtime could be profound.

Of course our kitchen contained an early printing of both volumes of Mastering (I don’t need to spell out the whole title do I?), from which she taught me to make basic things like paté brisée for quiche; over time she acquired most of Julia’s books, including the very pretty but maddeningly cumbersome and glossy The Way To Cook (how can you annotate a recipe on glossy paper?). The handwritten notes, however, remain my favorite part of mom’s collection, combining the enthusiasm for food and respect for quality and process that these women shared, and which formed the core of my attitude about eating and my skills (meager though they remain) in cooking.

My second Julia memory is a one-off, a single day in my teens when my mother decided it was worth taking me out of school so that I could accompany her to a Los Angeles store where the reverend (I could say “revered” but it went farther than that with my mom) Mrs. Child was appearing to promote a new book. Although I have no memory of the presentation, I do recall our progress up the receiving line to greet her; and while my mother bubbled about her son attending Harvard (the Child home then being in or near Cambridge), the gracious Julia looked up at me, asked me if I was planning to attend Radcliffe, and smiled kindly as I mumbled my reply. A personal exchange! It was too wonderful, and mom and I chewed on it all the way home (I have not yet finished chewing).

The collage you see before you, which I made in honor of these memories, contains pictures of some of my inherited and bought copies of Julia’s books. I believe I have two-and-a-half sets of Mastering at this point. One of my favorite foodie factoids -- and one of few that I know of which combine the twin excellencies of book design and food -- is that Mastering was designed for Knopf by Warren Chappell. While Judith Jones gets more press these days as the “discoverer” of  Mrs. Child and/or Mastering, whoever at Knopf chose the supreme Mr. Chappell to design the tome gets my unwavering gratitude. You don’t even have to cook anything! It’s simply one of the most beautiful, legible, comfortable food books ever made (I count the two volumes as one book, you see). Better than a teddy bear, if perhaps slightly less soft at the edges.

To mom, to Julia, and to Warren: thanks for the memories (and the food).
Trixie

07 August 2010

Love is a Mysterious Confection... or Concoction

What is love? Seems a simple enough question. I mean, instinctively we know what love feels like, it's the core of our being. But do we know what love is... chemically? It's an old ponderment, the kind that spurs poets and painters to create lasting works -- and musicians, let's not forget musicians... opera composers! Thoughts of love are meat and drink to them. Speaking of drinks, here's one about which an entire opera was written: The Elixir of Love (L'Elisir d'Amore), by one Mister Gaetano Donizetti in the nineteenth century; still relevant today, which just goes to show you, love is eternal. According to this opera, there is actually a tonic that can make love happen. What a wonderful, mysterious concoction. We want some.

As part of the San Francisco Opera Center's 2010 Merola Opera Program calendar, two alternating casts of brilliant young singers are at this very moment in the midst of performances of "Elixir," and we were lucky enough to attend the opening performance just a couple of evenings hence. Nemorino, the innocent, lovesick tenor, eventually wins heart and hand of Adina, the most popular gal in town, supposedly by quaffing said elixir (we know otherwise, but we follow along because the music is SO pretty, and the singers are SO talented, and the production is SO engaging). This is one of the most popular bel canto operas -- it's all about pretty singing, as the phrase implies -- in this one nobody gets sick or dies, nobody even gets hurt, and all voices are raised in mellifluous harmony. Every now and again it's really pleasant to soak in such stuff.

At the end of the evening, as if the delights of the opera and production were not sufficient, a gentle shower of cut-paper "bottles" {see image} rained down on the center section of the theater. We were given our own bottles of elixir! How sweet is that?

Of course we drank ours right away (we have excellent imaginations)... Can't begin to solve the mystery that is love, but it's very nice to drink the elixir, even if only through our eyes and ears, all the same. Cheers! xo, Trixie

25 July 2010

Confection of the Future, now in the present

How many of you intrepid readers guessed "fruit sauce"? You're right! Fruit sauce... slow-cooked plums (in one casserole) and slow-cooked blackberries (in another casserole), overnight in the Aga and then whirred to a pulp (for the plums) and strained to remove seeds (for the berries)... then stirred together in some inexact proportion, et voila! Fruit sauce.

Besides the fruit itself, the sauce contains a little bit of caster ("baker's") sugar, a little bit of blackcurrant jelly -- I don't go for über-sweet sauce because it's going to end up spilled all over much sweeter stuff anyway, so let's preserve the natural tartness.

In the pix below you can see just the sort of sweet stuff it's going to be spilled over: cake and ice cream (there ought to be a law). I made the humble ginger-citron-chocolate chip-sour cream cake yesterday -- this is a tremendously obliging cake, in fact I think the mixer and the Aga know how to do it themselves by now because I have made it so many times; and if you want to know more about it you must write to me, because I'm embarrassed to say how simple it is for then you will know exactly how basic my baking skills are.


I think this fruit sauce is a very happy color! Be happy, eat cake, and watch for the next mysterious confection to come down the pike...
xo, Trix {very full now after eating the photo props, well yeah Dustin helped... he's full now too}

22 July 2010

Who's Who, or, solving the tiniest of mysteries

Yeah, I know it's not a big deal, and you may not even have noticed, but I wrote earlier that Dustin would be the one reviewing Katharine Weber's True Confections. Just want to clarify: Dustin had the book, I nicked it, found it too good to hand back, and now I'm going to write the review... just as soon as I'm good 'n' ready.

So you won't have any of the plot divulged before you're ready, I advise you to run to the book store or library and read it for yourself (which, I suppose, gives you a clue about the cheerfulness of my future report).

Please do yourself one teensy favor: before you even begin to read page one, have a healthy stash of your favorite sweet things right next to your hand (the hand that isn't going to be holding the book)... you will need to be able to reach them without breaking your reading rhythm. When you are done, gather your friends and go out for more sweets! Oh yes I will, too...

Stickler for details (except when I'm not),
cheers, Trixie

20 July 2010

Confection of the Future, seen today in draft form

As if looking into a crystal ball, we glimpse our confectionery future... just take a look at these gorgeous organically-grown, dry-farmed plums and berries (of course we mean that we don't bother to water or fertilize, but it sounds so much better the other way). What will these beauties become? Stay tuned...

In the meantime I want to tell you how much I am enjoying Katharine Weber's latest book, True Confections -- a droll, inventive, truly good read, which we rarely stumble across these days despite tromping through dozens of books every year. Available at your library (that's where I found the copy I'm reading now) and all of the usual places. Still in the early chapters, I won't divulge plot points but I will emphasize how clean and forward-propelled her writing is (from me this is HIGH praise). And when you have a mo, read her weblog, which combines many of our favorite human traits into one easy-to-digest module. Brilliant! I am well on my way to becoming her biggest fan. Golly.

Back to the adorable grindstone of recipe searching,
cheers,
Trix