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Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen
Books: CookBooks: French Cooking: Item 7
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Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchenby Julie Powell
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107 of 144 people found the following review helpful: Excellent Read. You won't even miss the recipes. Buy It., September 26, 2005 Reviewer:B. Marold (Bethlehem, PA United States) - `Julie & Julia' by Julie Powell is a new and welcome addition to a very select class of culinary writing, the `Personal Memoir'. The only other work I know in this entertaining genre is Amanda Hesser's `Cooking for Mr. Latte'. The most important thing both books have in common is that neither offers you serious culinary advice. While Ms. Hesser's book has a goodly number of recipes, she presents them more as a look inside her personal favorites than as a major culinary reference. Ms. Powell's book has no recipes, as all the recipes in question come from Julia Child's first and most famous book, `Mastering the Art of French Cooking'. Both share that exquisite charm in revealing cooking disasters. Ms. Hesser's revelations are a bit more satisfying, as she is a culinary professional at the time of her writing the book. Ms. Powell embarked upon the quest leading to this volume while she was a temporary secretary at an unnamed federal agency dealing with the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. She was living with her husband in a smallish and cantankerous apartment in Long Island City (Queens) and was finding herself in need of a direction in life. Since she also felt the need to learn how to cook better, she hit upon the project of cooking every single recipe from Julia Child et al's masterpiece, generally referred to as `MtAoFC'. There is an odd parallel with Child's life here in that Julia Child took up cooking after World War II and shortly after marrying Paul Child and moving to Paris, where Child was posted with the U.S. Embassy. This left Julia at loose ends, especially after having filled an important and satisfying role in the OSS (Office of Special Services, forerunner of the CIA) during the war, in Ceylon, where she met her future husband. To make this project even more interesting to our current author, she decided to announce the project to the world on an Internet blog and on it record her progress, with the ambition to complete all 524 recipes in one year (365 days). Thus, the lion's share of this book is anecdotes on the preparation of selected recipes or groups of recipes from `MtAoFC'. Note that Ms. Powell's `MtAoFC' is really just Volume I and not both volumes. If nothing else, this book is a confirmation of just how huge a cultural, or at least culinary icon is this cookbook by J. Child, S. Beck, and L. Bertholle. Ms. Powell's book would not be half as interesting if it were done on the basis of virtually any other cookbook which comes to mind. I have enormous respect for Ms. Powell's integrity in working through all the recipes in the manner she did, as the author resorted to very few shortcuts, at least on the first or second time with each technique. The fact that the author and her cohorts took the trouble to track down marrow bones and calves hooves made for a doubly interesting story, even if one suspects that the culinary results may not have suffered one wit if the author had relied on Knox unflavored gelatin rather than taking the effort to render gelatin from an authentic animal source. What may be a little surprising is the difficulty Ms. Powell and company had in finding some of the ingredients in New York City, but then, none of them were culinary professionals familiar with insiders' knowledge of Gotham's provisioners. Unlike Ms. Hesser, Julie Powell had no direct contact with her subject, Julia Child. The only documented contact was a short note from Ms. Child to Ms. Powell wishing here well and expressing gratitude that Ms. Child's work had a positive effect on Ms. Powell. Since Ms. Powell's culinary Labors of Hercules were finished in August 2003; this event roughly coincided with the death of Julia Child. It is understandable that this event had less emotional effect on the author than it did on some of the author's family. In writing this book, Ms. Powell got access to letters between Paul Child and his future bride and wife, Julia McWilliams / Julia Child and publishes a selection of these letters from 1944 in Ceylon to 1949 in Paris. While I am familiar with much of the general information in these letters from reading Julia Child's biography, `An Appetite for Life', some of the details of the salty language used between the lovers is almost worth the price of admission. Some of you who have little taste for culinary memoirs may react to the notion of book with indifference, but I do suggest you consider it if you have any thoughts of embarking upon making any recipes from `MtAoFC'. I should also warn you that Ms. Powell's chapters often deal with some of the most difficult recipes in `MtAoFC', as it is the problems arising out of these which make the best reading. My own experience with Ms. Child's book is that most of the recipes are, indeed, relatively simple. But, as Ms. Powell clearly states, echoing an important precis by Richard Olney in `Simple French Food', `simple' is NOT the same as easy, and nothing worth doing is likely to come easy to the inexperienced. Ms. Powell (and her copy editing handlers at publisher, Little Brown seem to be much more experienced at writing than they are at cooking, as Ms. Powell's exploits make good, if not necessarily scintillating reading. Like the candid comments from Paul Child's letters, Ms. Powell seems to have held little back, except for those confidences connected with her government job and the identity of her friends. Ms. Powell is not quite the expert writer like M.F.K. Fisher, Ruth Reichl, or Amanda Hesser for that matter, but her stuff is engaging. I was just surprised Ms. Powell did not give us the URL for her blog or the page references in `MtAoFC' for her recipes used in each chapter.
Product Review
Julie & Julia is the story of Julie Powell's attempt to revitalize her marriage, restore her ambition, and save her soul by cooking all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the art of French Cooking, Volume I, in a period of 365 days. The result is a masterful medley of Bridget Jones' Diary meets Like Water for Chocolate, mixed with a healthy dose of original wit, warmth, and inspiration that sets this memoir apart from most tales of personal redemption.
When we first meet Julie, she's a frustrated temp-to-perm secretary who slaves away at a thankless job, only to return to an equally demoralizing apartment in the outer boroughs of Manhattan each evening. At the urging of Eric, her devoted and slightly geeky husband, she decides to start a blog that will chronicle what she dubs the "Julie/Julia Project." What follows is a year of butter-drenched meals that will both necessitate the wearing of an unbearably uncomfortable girdle on the hottest night of the year, as well as the realization that life is what you make of it and joy is not as impossible a quest as it may seem, even when it's -10 degrees out and your pipes are frozen.
Powell is a natural when it comes to connecting with her readers, which is probably why her blog generated so much buzz, both from readers and media alike. And while her self-deprecating sense of humor can sometimes dissolve into whininess, she never really loses her edge, or her sense of purpose. Even on day 365, she's working her way through Mayonnaise Collee and ending the evening "back exactly where we started--just Eric and me, three cats and Buffysitting on a couch in the outer boroughs, eating, with Julia chortling alongside us."
Inspired and encouraging, Julie and Julia is a unique opportunity to join one woman's attempt to change her life, and have a laugh, or ten, along the way. --Gisele Toueg
From Publishers Weekly
Powell became an Internet celebrity with her 2004 blog chronicling her yearlong odyssey of cooking every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the art of French Cooking. A frustrated secretary in New York City, Powell embarked on "the Julie/Julia project" to find a sense of direction, and both the cooking and the writing quickly became all-consuming. Some passages in the book are taken verbatim from the blog, but Powell expands on her experience and gives generous background about her personal life: her doting husband, wacky friends, evil co-workers. She also includes some comments from her "bleaders" (blog readers), who formed an enthusiastic support base. Powell never met Julia Child (who died last year), but the venerable chef's spirit is present throughout, and Powell imaginatively reconstructs episodes from Child's life in the 1940s. Her writing is feisty and unrestrained, especially as she details killing lobsters, tackling marrowbones and cooking late into the night. Occasionally the diarist instinct overwhelms the generally tight structure and Powell goes on unrelated tangents, but her voice is endearing enough that readers will quickly forgive such lapses. Both home cooks and devotees of Bridget Jones–style dishing will be caught up in Powell's funny, sharp-tongued but generous writing.
Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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