My mother loves Christmas. I have fond memories of handmade cards, Christmas tree cakes, glitter, glue, pine cones I collected that we would transform into ornaments and centerpieces. On our tables were orderly stacks of construction paper, fruitcakes in festive wrappers, tins of divinity, and bowls of egg nog. (If we happened to be spending Christmas in Savannah my grandmother and mother made everything doubly perfect. My grandmother’s long pantry was full of wonders – she made her own mince meat pies and fruitcakes – including real candied fruit, giant pecans from trees on my great-grandmother’s property, and lots of ingredients that went into multiple batches of perfect fudge.)
Sandra, my mother.
When I was a child, I spent Christmases in, among other locations, Alaska and Florida, New Hampshire and Germany. I especially loved Germany. The winters there were mild, with just the right amount of snow. I learned to love Glühwein and beer. My mother continued cooking, adding German cuisine to her repertoire. We spent a Christmas in Garmisch, and one evening during our stay there I was introduced to the benefits of the sauna when I wondered into a spa and a group of men and women showed me how to properly schvitz. We would emerge from the steamy cabin and walk out onto a snowy roof deck to walk around and cool down, then repeat the therapeutic cycle.
As an adult, I have enjoyed the holiday season in Paris and Munich and Sweden and Barcelona and New York, among other places. I have cooked and eaten in all of those locales, and at every meal, be it a beer and sausage in Trier or a 20-course feast in Donostia, my grandmother and mother were beside me in spirit.
My mother, Sandra, does not cook as much as she once did, and my grandmother died in 2013; around this time every year I remember Ida’s mincemeat pies, her chicken and dumplings, her Savannah kitchen. She taught her daughter well. Next year I will spend Christmas with my mother and father. And we will cook.
My grandmother Ida taught me much about cooking, and I am glad I told her she did.
A giant in the kitchen, in more ways than one. (Photo courtesy estate of Julia Child)
I am celebrating her birthday in her absence. She would have turned 102 today, and she would have done it in style, sitting at a table surrounded by friends and loved ones. Paul would have been there, of course, the love of her life. Their courtship and long relationship should be the envy of us all. James Beard would be at her side, as well.
I won’t speculate about the menu, but I would not be unhappy for Julia Child if a waiter brought her sole meunière at some point during the meal. I feel a lot of passion for that dish, because it is what awakened Child’s senses and opened her mind to the wonders of good food, and the preparation of it. It was November, 1948, and she and Paul had just arrived in France. They were on their way to Paris, but needed to eat during the drive. It was Julia’s (allow me to refer to her as “Julia”) first meal in France, and she writes of it in “My Life in France” in this manner:
Rouen is famous for its duck dishes, but after consulting the waiter Paul had decided to order the sole meunière. It arrived whole: a large, flat Dover sole that was perfectly browned in a sputtering butter sauce with a sprinkling of chopped parsley on top. The waiter carefully placed the platter in front of us, stepped back, and said: “Bon appétit!”
I closed my eyes and inhaled the rising perfume. Then I lifted a forkful to my mouth, took a bite, and chewed slowly. The flesh of the sole was delicate, with a light but distinct taste of the ocean that blended marvelously with the browned butter. I chewed slowly and swallowed. It was a morsel of perfection. … At La Couronne I experienced fish, and a dining experience, of a higher order than any I’d ever had before.
As a child, I watched Julia on television. I am sure that back then I did not know what to think of her. My mother was born in Savannah, as was I, and I was very familiar with crab and shrimp and clams and pheasant and fried chicken and Cornish hen and even some less familiar sorts of seafood, but this tall woman with the funny voice … well, she had a way with those things that was different. She made me want to learn as much about them as I could. Little did I know that she would become a profound part of my life. I’m grateful she did, and I am certain many of you feel the same.
Julia Child became, and is, an international star.
Every chance I get to “mingle” with Julia I take. In Napa, I visited Copia – the cultural and educational center dedicated to the discovery, understanding, and celebration of wine, food, and the arts in American culture – to see some of the pots and pans and other tools that she used in her Cambridge, Mass., kitchen. Copia, which she helped found, is now closed, but those pots and pans are in the Smithsonian, so when I was in D.C. in 2013 I visited them there.
A kitchen for the ages. (Photo courtesy estate of Julia Child)
I’ve spoken with people who met her, and with a few people who cooked with her. In Houston, I ran across a letter she wrote to Robert Del Grande, which now hangs in his restaurant, RDG+Bar Annie. I talk about her with people all of the time, and when I met Mike Lata in 2007 at Blackberry Farm we talked about how she is the reason he cooks. I have many of her books, and never tire of watching her shows: her solo ventures, segments with other chefs, and the beautiful series she made with her great friend, Jacques Pépin. I never met her, but it is not because I did not try. Once, when I was in Cambridge, I went to her house and knocked on the door. No one answered … I assume she was away. I don’t know what I would have done if she had answered.
Most profoundly, I cook with her. Not a day goes by that I don’t see her, in my mind’s eye, standing at a stove or counter, chopping an onion or pounding a piece of veal or hoisting a pot. She, in ways that I have yet to fully realize, taught me how to cook, taught me how to see the wisdom and grace that food possesses. And that is much more of a gift than that little boy watching her on television all those years ago could have ever expected.
Thank you, Julia, and Happy Birthday. I love and miss you.
My grandmother, Ida Boyette, died early this morning. She was 84, and had heart disease, and more recently suffered a series of strokes. She was tired. A few hours before she left this world I kissed her forehead, told her I loved her, and left her room for the final time.
Ida Boyette and James Brock, her first grandson.
It’s always too early to say farewell to someone you truly love.
She indeed lived a full life, raised six children, and is one of the main reasons I cook. For many years we visited papa and grandma in Savannah, at least once a year, and my memories of those visits are primarily of her kitchen, whose door we most often used to enter and leave the house. The door took us to the backyard, and its window held an amazing view of a giant oak tree, full of Spanish moss. (If I was not in the kitchen, I was in that yard, which was also graced with a beautiful old magnolia tree, my grandfather’s garden, and the healthiest azaleas I have ever seen.)
Ida and James.
Ida and James, doing what came naturally at Thanksgiving.
Back in that kitchen, my grandmother was probably breaking down a chicken or two, preparing to fry them for a hungry crowd. (My grandfather, James Calvin Boyette, was a hunter and a fisherman, and at one time even raised quail in that yard, so there was always something that needed attention, from dove to squirrel to bass to cobia and everything in between. And more often than not, his wife was left with the task of cleaning what he and his sons and friends brought home.)
I did not know it was happening, but what Ida was doing in that kitchen in Savannah entered into me, slowly and surely. She was, of course, taking care of her family, feeding a husband and children and visiting relatives. But she was also thinking diligently about what she was preparing, and I remember many moments when the joy she was feeling erupted in the kitchen: laughter as blue crabs scampered on the counter near the sink, when shrimp flipped in cold water. I smell still the ingredients she used in her mincemeat pies, the raisin and spices.
There was a large table in the dining room, and we all gathered there. In that kitchen, and around that table, I developed, over the years, a passion for working with food, for cooking, for taking ingredients and transforming them into something that made people smile. I learned from her, in short, how to create.
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