Julia Child and her husband Paul gaze at each other on the cover of her autobiography My Life in France. They’re young. They’ve pinned red paper hearts over their real hearts, signalling a love for the ages When the book, co-written with Julia Child’s grandnephew Alex Prud’homme, was published in 2006 (after Child died), Prud’homme’s friends were confused. “How did they get that cover photo of you with Julia?” they asked him. (And why the love hearts, they must have been wondering.) There lies a clue as to why Prud’homme was close to his famous great aunt. “I look like…

The French Chef in America, Alex Prud’homme’s biography of Julia Child – post-Mastering the Art of French Cooking – wastes no time in reminding us of Child’s charm. The book opens in 1967 when Child filmed a behind-the-scenes look at the White House kitchen. “Welcome to Washington,” Child said to the camera, before delivering her trademark linguistic tic – that sing-songy, preternaturally inviting emphasis on the first person. “I’m Julia Child.” Prud’homme (Child’s grandnephew: the son of Child’s husband’s brother’s daughter) has assembled a tidy look at Child’s later life in The French Chef in America, exploring the period after…

The author’s long and complex relationship with the culinary icon MIMI SHERATON As soon as I received a review copy of The French Chef in America, Alex Prud’homme’s new intricately and intriguingly detailed biography of his delicious, good-naturedly opinionated great-aunt, Julia Child, I went right to the index in hopes of finding my name. That would mean that some of our meetings and exchanges had been worth chronicling for posterity. I suspect this will be standard practice for anyone in the food world whose paths crossed those of the woman whose TV cooking shows brought perfect understanding of French cuisine…

Good morning. Our Julia Moskin is back after hard duty in France, where she spent a few days living in Julia Child’s old house in Provence, shopping in the same stores Child frequented and cooking in her kitchen. She wrote up the experience for The Times today, a beautiful story that manages at once to illuminate Child’s history and to inspire us to cook more, and better. Naturally, there are recipes. Julia made a pretty potato gratin layered with onions, tomatoes and a paste of garlic, anchovies and basil that we’d like to eat, um, tonight. She also made a…

PLASCASSIER, France — When I hefted the rolling pin in my hand, I finally felt it: a thread of energy, a thrill of recognition. I knew I was standing in Julia Child’s kitchen, and I was about to put it to work. In August, having rented it from the current owners through Airbnb, I spent a week living and cooking in La Pitchoune, the house in Provence that Mrs. Child and her husband, Paul, built in 1965 and lived in on and off until 1992. In advance, I worried that the house would have been remodeled and glossed over in…

Alex Prud’homme, a journalist and the great-nephew of Julia Child, co-wrote his great-aunt’s 2007 memoir, My Life in France. Now, Prud’homme has written The French Chef in America, which is described as the story of Child’s “second act.” The French Chef in America tells the story of her life after the publication of her classic cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Julia and Paul Child return to the United States from France and settle in Cambridge, where she reinvents herself as a TV personality and finds her voice. She deals with the success of her cookbooks and her newfound…