Julia and moi
My 1997 phone interview with Julia Child magically resurfaced. Plus: a side order of Julia's recipe for Tomatoes à la Provençale.
Memory is a funny thing. For instance, I distinctly remember meeting Julia Child, but don’t remember the specifics, other than it was in Manhattan sometime late last century at food-world reception of some kind. She was tall (six feet two) and charming.
Weirdly, what eluded my memory is that I actually interviewed Julia — not once, but twice, in 1996 and then in 1997 — for a book I was working on called American Appetite: The Coming of Age of a National Cuisine.
Not until I stumbled on the transcribed 1997 conversation — a phone interview — hiding deep in the recesses of my computer did I remember it. The 1996 interview is nowhere to be found, but it definitely happened, according to the Notes section of American Appetite.
My interview with Julia
Here’s what I unearthed:
PHONE INTERVIEW
June 23, 1997Q: I've read conflicting things about this; maybe you can clarify: Do you think the American public wasn't ready for your book until it was published?
JULIA: I happened to come along just at the right time. If it had been a bit earlier, it wouldn’t have gone over. When I came along, you had the Kennedys in the White House. And people could get over there [France] by plane. Those two things were very important, and I think the state of food was rather doleful — you know, jello with chopped grapes, bananas and marshmallows and things like that. People were ready, but nothing had come along. People were reading about what the Kennedys were eating. They just needed someone, and I happened to be the right person.
There was French cooking, but it was awfully la-di-dah. They be always writing about these rare and wonderful things. It was the kind of things you’d never understand.
Q: I read that when you were in Washington, you read Gourmet magazine. [Julia was in Washington, D.C. during World War II. Gourmet’s first issue published in January 1941; its last issue was October 2009.]
JULIA: I began cooking. When we got married, I started cooking, because my husband's mother was a wonderful cook. And I was using Gourmet magazine, and started cooking.