Television cooking is history
Bill Buford: Heat
Julia Child with Alex Prud’home: My Life in France
Reading these two books nearly back to back was a fortuitous accident. Buford chronicles life in the kitchen of Mario Batali, a chef made famous by the Food Network and cut in their recent drive to eliminate all read cooking from the network. Julia Child starred in the first successful food show on television, The French Chef, explaining how to cook like a French chef at home. The two books together bookend the era of food television from the middle to the end of the twentieth century.
Buford’s story immediately calls to mind the books of Micheal Ruhlman and Anthony Bourdain who paved the way into America’s soul for books about chefs. Buford, however, brings some serious literary credentials and style to the genre as a former editor of Granta and The New Yorker. His story follows himself as the hapless but enthusiastic amateur cook who talks his way into Batali’s Babbo kitchen through a slight acquaintance. Along the way we learn about Batali, the workings of the Babbo kitchen, and the passion of Italian cooking -- in Italy. Buford’s obsession reaches its pinacle in a several month apprenticeship with the famous butcher who taught Armandio Batali the art of salumi.
My Life in France is a very different kind of story, but just as engaging: it is the autobiography of America’s most influential cooking author. The story begins when Child is 38 years old, newly married, and traveling with her husband to France, where he has been posted by the USIS after the war. She arrives in France without a word of French or any cooking skills to speak of and goes on to love the country and its food and discovers her passion in life, to cook French food. It is a long winding road from there to a grand cookbook and television series, with changing posts throughout Europe and the McCarthy investigations thrown in for good measure. It is a fascinating history not only of Child herself, but of Europe and America in the post war years and the rapid rate of changes that happened.
For myself, I recognized many of the dishes she describes from my own travels in France, which I almost universally detested. For all of the decrying of Italian food as bland and unsophisticated, the food she describes brings vividly to mind Bill Buford’s comment about authentic rustic Italian food: brown on brown with brown on the side. When it comes to food, I will always be a Californian.
Julia Child with Alex Prud’home: My Life in France
Reading these two books nearly back to back was a fortuitous accident. Buford chronicles life in the kitchen of Mario Batali, a chef made famous by the Food Network and cut in their recent drive to eliminate all read cooking from the network. Julia Child starred in the first successful food show on television, The French Chef, explaining how to cook like a French chef at home. The two books together bookend the era of food television from the middle to the end of the twentieth century.
Buford’s story immediately calls to mind the books of Micheal Ruhlman and Anthony Bourdain who paved the way into America’s soul for books about chefs. Buford, however, brings some serious literary credentials and style to the genre as a former editor of Granta and The New Yorker. His story follows himself as the hapless but enthusiastic amateur cook who talks his way into Batali’s Babbo kitchen through a slight acquaintance. Along the way we learn about Batali, the workings of the Babbo kitchen, and the passion of Italian cooking -- in Italy. Buford’s obsession reaches its pinacle in a several month apprenticeship with the famous butcher who taught Armandio Batali the art of salumi.
My Life in France is a very different kind of story, but just as engaging: it is the autobiography of America’s most influential cooking author. The story begins when Child is 38 years old, newly married, and traveling with her husband to France, where he has been posted by the USIS after the war. She arrives in France without a word of French or any cooking skills to speak of and goes on to love the country and its food and discovers her passion in life, to cook French food. It is a long winding road from there to a grand cookbook and television series, with changing posts throughout Europe and the McCarthy investigations thrown in for good measure. It is a fascinating history not only of Child herself, but of Europe and America in the post war years and the rapid rate of changes that happened.
For myself, I recognized many of the dishes she describes from my own travels in France, which I almost universally detested. For all of the decrying of Italian food as bland and unsophisticated, the food she describes brings vividly to mind Bill Buford’s comment about authentic rustic Italian food: brown on brown with brown on the side. When it comes to food, I will always be a Californian.