{"id":13217,"date":"2016-11-06T18:42:34","date_gmt":"2016-11-06T23:42:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alexprudhomme.com\/?p=13217"},"modified":"2016-11-06T18:42:34","modified_gmt":"2016-11-06T23:42:34","slug":"book-review-alex-prudhommes-french-chef-america-profiles-revolutionary-julia-childs-second-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alexprudhomme.com\/2016\/11\/06\/book-review-alex-prudhommes-french-chef-america-profiles-revolutionary-julia-childs-second-act\/","title":{"rendered":"[Book Review] Alex Prud\u2019homme\u2019s The French Chef in America profiles the revolutionary Julia Child\u2019s second act"},"content":{"rendered":"

The French Chef in America, Alex Prud\u2019homme\u2019s biography of Julia Child \u2013 post-Mastering the Art of French Cooking \u2013 wastes no time in reminding us of Child\u2019s charm. The book opens in 1967 when Child filmed a behind-the-scenes look at the White House kitchen. \u201cWelcome to Washington,\u201d Child said to the camera, before delivering her trademark linguistic tic \u2013 that sing-songy, preternaturally inviting emphasis on the first person. \u201cI\u2019m<\/em> Julia Child.\u201d
\nPrud\u2019homme (Child\u2019s grandnephew: the son of Child\u2019s husband\u2019s brother\u2019s daughter) has assembled a tidy look at Child\u2019s later life in The French Chef in America, exploring the period after her quick ascension to the status of America\u2019s first celebrity chef that followed the publication of her first book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 1961.
\nAll successful authors face pressure from the publisher to knock out a sophomore effort, but Child\u2019s need to do so was tempered by the success of her TV show, The French Chef, which premiered in 1963. As Prud\u2019homme notes, it wasn\u2019t the first cooking show, but she was certainly the first celebrity chef. Child became an authority, called upon for interviews and cooking segments on late-night talk shows, sought after for her cultural commentary and authoritative expertise. She visited the White House twice: in 1967 and then nine years later to film a special commemorating the American bicentennial. Mastering the Art of French Cooking\u2019s second instalment came out in early 1970. It wasn\u2019t a sophomore slump, but by the early 1970s, appetites had changed \u2013 largely thanks to Child herself \u2013 and so it didn\u2019t quite have the game-changing effect of its predecessor.
\nChild was meticulous in her research. She was delighted, Prud\u2019homme writes, to discover that the word \u201cchowder\u201d has Canadian origins: it comes from chaudieres, the word used by French Canadian fisherman for the pot in which they cooked their catches. Unfortunately, that particular bit of research came in preparation for the ill-fated Thirteen Feasts mini-series, which was meant to be a look at the traditional cooking methods of the thirteen colonies, filmed and released to coincide with the U.S. bicentenary.
\nCo-host James Beard\u2019s onscreen persona \u2013 dull, unengaging \u2013 combined with Child\u2019s husband\u2019s ongoing health issues and the struggle PBS faced in getting the series green-lit to result in its khiboshing. But it\u2019s hard not to think now that Thirteen Feasts was ahead of its time: in 2016, anthropology and cookery go hand-in-hand; that combination \u2013 if Netflix\u2019s most successful food documentaries are to be believed \u2013 is now an easy sell.
\nCalling Child herself ahead of her time, however, as Prud\u2019homme\u2019s book illustrates, is to do her the disservice of understatement. She was at once a revolutionary and a pragmatist. Child was no fan of nouvelle cuisine, concerned that its fussiness and rejection of the classics was unhealthy.
\nIn the 1970s, when Mastering\u2019s second volume was released and Child found herself out of step with the world \u2013 her charm and potato pancake-dropping laissez-faire was no match for sex, drugs and rock n\u2019 roll \u2013 she switched gears, Americanizing her recipes (which is not to say adopting any shortcuts or frozen-food cut corners \u2013 Child hated that type of thing) in From Julia Child\u2019s Kitchen, which she wrote somewhat reluctantly in the first person.<\/p>\n

\n
\nThough perhaps not a match for her first, Child\u2019s second act also has its influence. This month will also see the release of a new book from Anthony Bourdain, whose 1999 memoir, Kitchen Confidential, propelled the chain-smoking, hard-drinking cook to international stardom. The timing was right: there had been nothing quite like it, and in the intervening years, chefs \u2013 Bourdain among them \u2013 have become the new rock stars.
\nBut Bourdain, now a devoted father in his 60s, is settling in to his own second act, and responding \u2013 as Child did in 1975 \u2013 to the prevailing trend in the gastronomic zeitgeist: eating no-fuss, back-to-basics good food. Bourdain\u2019s latest, his first cookbook in more than a decade, is called Appetites. Child, who prioritized culinary experimentation, encouraged getting your hands dirty and was never wholly comfortable with the idea of celebrity chefdom, would no doubt approve.
\nThis review was originally posted on The National Post<\/a>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The French Chef in America, Alex Prud\u2019homme\u2019s biography of Julia Child \u2013 post-Mastering the Art of French Cooking \u2013 wastes no time in reminding us of Child\u2019s charm. 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