The moment the guests set down their hamper, Minette’s radar detected a gentleman caller. She hurtled down the stairs into the salon and screeched to a halt as Jean raised the lid. Maquis stepped boldly from the basket and locked eyes with Minette. Love at first sight it was not. The tomcat flattened against the floor, his tail puffed up three times its normal size, twitching and snapping.
Minette assumed a similar defensive crouch, but welcomed the intriguing guest with short little burping noises. Her come-hither tones were lost on Maquis, who snarled as he inched backward toward his basket. Like Julia, Minette was a stranger to rejection, so she redoubled her flirtatious purrs—ronron, ronron—but that only made Maquis more desperate to disappear.
The standoff lasted more than four hours while the picnickers ate their way through the basket of delights. Occasionally they heard the star-crossed lovers miaouing as they moved from the salon to the kitchen to—momentarily promising—the chambre à coucher, but the magic never materialized. Every so often Julia took a peek, but it was clear the romance was a nonstarter.
Not a moment too soon for the exhausted Maquis, Jean returned him to his hamper, his macho reputation in tatters. Au revoir. À bientôt. For a while, Minette rubbed against the closed door but soon ambled off to nose around the leftovers. Like any spurned lover, she would eat her way out of a broken heart by finishing off a bowl of crème anglaise.
A SWELLEGANT, ELEGANT PARTY
LIKE HER SISTER, Dort was a people person, so it didn’t take long to find a community of simpatico friends, mostly expats living a version of la vie de bohème on the Left Bank. She found an unpaid job at the American Club Theater, and soon a parade of actors, writers, scene painters, puppeteers, and musicians was hanging out at Roo de Loo, where food, wine, and conversation flowed freely. She began keeping steady company with Ivan Cousins, who, like Paul, was everything her straitlaced Republican father was not. A free-spirited aspiring actor who once took classes with Gregory Peck, he too fell under the spell of the infectious McWilliams joie de vivre. Also like Paul, Ivan was a foot shorter than his sweetheart.
Julia was delighted by Dort’s knack for filling the house with offbeat characters, and the stepped-up social whirl. Paul not so much. He preferred small dinner parties for close friends and was happiest spending an evening with his two femmes, Julia and Minette. But even he applauded Julia’s plan to throw an ambitious party for the wedding of their friend Hadley Mowrer’s son. Captain Jack Hemingway lived in Berlin and his bride in Idaho—why not get married in Paris? The Mowrers asked Julia to be the matron of honor because she was the only friend they had in Paris who was taller than the bride.
Julia didn’t care. She was thrilled, not only to be in the wedding party—in a suit and hat she made herself—but to show off her growing culinary skills. She envisioned a star-studded guest list—the groom’s father, Ernest Hemingway, might even show up. Dort was awestruck watching her sister whisk egg whites into submission and expertly flatten chicken breasts with her wooden cudgel. She had never seen such a gaggle of gadgets growing up. Their mother, Caro, mainly visited the kitchen on the cook’s night off to fix one of her specialties—baking powder biscuits, Welsh rarebit, and codfish balls—or to supervise the children making melted cheese sandwiches.
But ooh la la—just look at Julia now! The sisters chortled, picturing their father’s face when he learned that his Smith College–educated debutante daughter had found her bliss. As a cook! A French cook at that. He dismissed the French as fainthearted snail-eaters.
Among the terrines, pâtés, and mousselines—some store-bought, some homemade—that jammed the sideboard was Julia’s pièce de résistance, a whole sea bass in quivering gelée. Thumbing through Larousse Gastronomique, she saw an elaborately decorated fish that seemed just the thing to impress arty guests. After studying the photos, she used an edible palette of carrots, watercress, tomatoes, capers, and mayonnaise to “paint” scales, fins, and other piscine details on her fish canvas. After a few sips of cooking wine, she let her imagination take flight, and when she was done, her bass sported a sly grin and one squinty eye. She judged it to be amusing, though not quite ready for Larousse.
As twilight fell on Roo de Loo, the soft glow of candlelight magically transformed the shabby-chic salon. The worn sofa and chairs were pushed against the wall, the faded satin draperies pulled back, and the windows thrown open to the perfumed air of a perfect June evening. It was almost party time, and Minette, who was interested in the fanciful fish but didn’t like crowds, scampered off at the first clang of the elevator cage.
The room soon filled with some faces Dort had only seen in magazines—friends of the Mowrers and Paul’s old chums from the twenties. Julia was especially thrilled to meet a tiny woman in a floppy-brimmed hat who held court in a corner of the room between frequent trips to the buffet. The exotic, birdlike creature with the hearty appetite was none other than Alice B. Toklas—she and Gertrude Stein were the groom’s godparents. As the evening wore on, heads swiveled when each new guest arrived, the room abuzz that Papa Hemingway himself might appear and expound on his latest novel or the exploits of the six-toed cats he doted on at his Havana home.
The buffet table looked as though a famished army, not a band of picky guests, had descended, leaving only fish bones and a few tired parsley sprigs. The reluctantly departing partyers showered Julia with a litany of favorite dishes and compliments to the chef. Her first big society affair was a whopping success.
When the front door closed for the last time, Julia surveyed the mountain of dirty dishes and cursed her failure to properly train the cat. By now Minette, like all good daughters, should have been willing to help with kitchen cleanup. But alas, it was too late to teach this cat new tricks. Minette’s idea of “helping” was to lick eggs or fish off plates. Julia lamented, “I must have brought her up wrong.”
LE CAT CLUB DE PARIS
WHILE JULIA WAS browsing through Le Monde with Minette one lazy Saturday morning, a photo of a cat sporting a chic chapeau caught her eye. Le Cat Club de Paris was holding its annual show. Who could resist? So later that afternoon JuPaul found their way to le Continental, an ornate fin de siècle hotel with a gilded banquet hall full of miaouing cats. Beneath a gigantic crystal chandelier, dozens of large cages festooned with paper streamers, flowers, and flags lined the room.
Julia and Paul strolled from cage to cage peering at the diminutive decor. Lucky kitties lounged on overstuffed sofas or reclined on stacks of pink satin pillows, and a few indolently batted feathery toys and stuffed mice across the tiny carpets. Fastidious felines, and the occasional human, preened in the mini mirrors on cage walls. Exhibitors who were sticklers for detail matched the furnishings to their breed—pampered Persians snoozed on oriental rugs, while sleek Siamese ate fresh sole from lotus-themed china.
Some cages attracted passersby with flirtatious notes: “Je m’appelle Nitou et je suis très gentille.” (“My name is Nitou and I’m very sweet.”) Julia was easily seduced. Eyes dancing, she rushed up to each kitty condo, wiggled her fingers through the mesh, and crooned endearments. Some doting owners even let her cuddle their prized pussies. More than once Paul had to persuade her to give the kitty back, step away from the cage, and move on. As the cat fanciers beamed, Julia blew kisses and trilled “Bonne chance” to her new fuzzy friends. Her ebullience was contagious, in any language.
Paul had witnessed this “Julia effect” many times before and could see it coming. “Those curious, green orbs develop a phosphorescent sparkle and that mobile mug takes on a look of pleasurable anticipation and the first thing you know, she’s imbued the atmosphere with her own aurora-borealis.”
The flamboyant exhibitors were as fascinating and eccentric as their pets. They gossiped about the competition, shared tips on coping with finicky eaters, and whispered surefire hair-ball cures. As the afternoon wore on, Paul’s tolerance for extreme cat-centricity reached its limit when he noticed one kitty whose owner had fitted him
with a pair of green cat’s-eye sunglasses. The pussycat in shades was curled up beside a coffee table with a box of tiny cigarettes and an ashtray. Another wore pink silk booties. Paul grumpily chalked it up to frustrated motherhood, but Julia got a kick out of the over-the-top spectacle.
As Paul was the first to admit, his own disposition was not nearly as sunny or forgiving as Julia’s. More prone to melancholy, he ruminated to his brother that their personality differences were real but never a source of conflict. He knew he got the best of the bargain: “I hate to think what … I might have been without that face to look at.”
That afternoon, Julia’s face was beaming. She was happy to be in the company of so many kindred spirits who were unashamed to publicly adore cats. Attending cat shows became one of her favorite outings wherever she happened to be. Julia Child was now a cat lady and proud of it.
CATHEDRAL OF CUISINE
WHEN THE ALARM went off at six thirty on a chilly October morning, Julia wondered what she had gotten herself into. Still snozzling from a nasty cold, she kicked off the covers, dumping Minette onto the floor. The rudely awakened cat trotted up to the kitchen but would have to wait for Paul to get her breakfast, since Julia barely had time to gulp down a glass of tomato juice before dashing off. By the time she revved the Blue Flash, her jitters had vanished and she brimmed with excitement.
She was on her way to le Cordon Bleu, said to be the best culinary school in the world, to learn everything she could about French cooking. Urged on by friends who swooned over her dinners and with a notion to open a restaurant one day with her belle-soeur, Freddie, she needed more formal training. All they had now was a name, “Mrs. Child’s and Mrs. Child’s.” What they lacked was know-how. Paul’s enthusiasm for the project was fueled by self-interest: Behind their wives’ restaurant, he imagined he and Charlie would eat like princes, throwing parties for all their friends.
That first morning Julia had no illusions—she would roll up her sleeves and prove she could keep up with the chefs-in-training. She had struggled to convince the school’s director, the sour Madame Brassart, that she belonged in the yearlong course with the serious students, not the six-week course for housewives, and she gladly plunked down “450 smackers.” She discovered that the “serious” students were eleven former army cooks studying on the GI Bill, with ambitions to take over a family bakery in Nebraska or a pizza parlor in New Jersey. She quickly sized them up: nice guys, but not an artist among them. She’d been around army bases during the war and wasn’t intimidated by this all-male group, but Paul gleefully noted that “the boys are bravely trying to get used to the idea that their masculine club has been invaded by a dame.”
Class met from seven fifteen to nine thirty every morning in a narrow basement kitchen with two long cutting tables and three gas stoves running down the middle, with electric ovens and an icebox at either end. Julia didn’t inspect the facilities too closely—there were rumors about the school’s spotty hygiene, and as time went on she was sure they could use Minette’s discreet mouse relocation services.
Students could lunch on what they made that morning, but she ran home to cook for Paul and amuse the pussycat, who pined for her playmate. At two thirty, it was back to school for the chef presentations in a large upstairs classroom with banked seats: “Just like a hospital where the interns sit up in a Roman amphitheatre & the surgeon (a visiting chef) demonstrates how to amputate a leg (make a cream sauce).”
She instantly liked the seventy-year-old Chef Bugnard, who once studied under the great Escoffier. His informal style suited her: “It’s a free-for-all thing and you got to keep your ears open and ask what you want.” As they sliced, chopped, and stirred, Bugnard called out measurements in rat-a-tat French and regaled them with inside stories about recipes and the famous chefs who created them.
Julia thanked her lucky stars, and Berlitz, for her fluency in French, and even more for the long hours tending her own stove. She felt supremely ready for this new challenge and, after only a week, crowed, “I have noticed the most TREMENDOUS difference already in my cooking.… How terrible and funeraille [deadly] if we had a cook!”
Practice makes parfait
Her aspirations were already clear. In homage to the great French gourmand Brillat-Savarin, she signed one of her letters home “J. Brillat-Child.”
PAW DE DEUX
THE FIRST DAY at le Cordon Bleu went by in a blur, and as soon as the afternoon demonstration ended, Julia strode out onto the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré with a shopping list in hand. Tonight’s dinner for Paul, Dort, and Minette would reprise pigeons rôtis délicieux—tender little birds stuffed and skewered just the way Chef Bugnard did them in class. La chasse (hunting season) was in full swing, and shop windows were strung with game. She discovered that the French, and their pussycats, were happy to find birds of every feather roasted, stewed, fried, and fricasseed on their dinner plates.
Julia got to work plucking the pigeons, tucking bits of butter under the skin, and carefully threading them onto skewers. Like Julia, Minette was in constant motion, pirouetting from sink to stove and back again, leaping for tidbits that fell from Julia’s hands. It was a kind of coup de ballet parisien, as French chefs call their habit of scooping up food that falls on the floor and, with a shrug, tossing it back into the pot. In Julia and Minette’s own “paw de deux,” nothing edible ever hit the floor.
When the pigeons were done, Julia arranged them on the platter, feet daintily tucked under. The cranky dumbwaiter had decided to take the night off, so she had to carry everything down to the dining room herself. But the presentation of her first Cordon Bleu meal for Paul and Dort cried out for something special, a touch of drama perhaps. Julia raised the platter aloft and nodded to Minette, who hadn’t taken her eyes off the juicy birds all afternoon. The cat didn’t need to be asked twice—she sprang onto Julia’s shoulder and draped herself around her neck like a live boa. The pair triumphantly descended the staircase to a thrilled chorus of ooh la las.
To Paul and Dort’s delight, Julia diligently did her homework every night, and they gladly devoured it, but Paul felt a bit like a “kitchen widower.” If he wanted to be near his wife, he had to sit in the kitchen and watch her practice pulling the guts out of a chicken through a tiny hole in its neck or removing all the bones from a goose without tearing the skin.
The sight of Julia in her blue denim apron, with a wooden spoon in each hand, and Minette leaping for scraps reminded him less of a balletic pas de deux than a symphony, with Julia as the kettle-drummer: “The oven door opens & shuts so fast you hardly notice the deft thrust of a spoon as she dips into a casserole & up to her mouth for a taste-check like a perfectly-timed double-beat on the drums. She stands there surrounded by a battery of instruments with an air of authority & confidence.”
In just a few months, Julia was sure she had entered a whole new world: “I feel it in my hands, my stomach, my soul. There is so much to learn, so much to practice. I feel I have my foot in the door and am beginning ‘to see,’ but I have such a long way to go.”
Paul’s hit parade of dishes included coquilles Saint Jacques, canard à l’orange, crème Chantilly, galantine de volaille, and soufflé Grand Marnier. Although he didn’t regret a single bite, he was clearly losing the battle of the belt. Since Julia started at le Cordon Bleu, he had been forced to add three more notches and was flirting with a full-blown crise de foie, the tummy trouble everyone called “American stomach in Paris.” Dort’s belts seemed to be getting tighter too. Minette, however, wasn’t worried—everyone knows that French cats don’t get fat.
CORDON BLUES
JULIA HAD FOUND her bliss. After six months at le Cordon Bleu, she knew twenty ways to cook fish and could bone a duck in her sleep. She finally had a focus for her life, but her mind wandered as she watched Chef Bugnard whip up yet another baba au rhum, and she dozed off when he prepared sole à la normande for the fourth time. More sleep was beginning to sound good after so many mornings up at
six and practicing in her own kitchen often past midnight.
It was time to move on. Paul’s job would keep them overseas for a while, so that restaurant dream with Freddie was on hold. But Julia was hatching another plan—a cooking school for Americans in Paris. Her school would offer students something Madame Brassart’s exalted école could never deliver—friendly, supportive instruction along with a passionate appreciation for food.
At le Cercle des Gourmettes, a ladies’ eating club, she met two lively Frenchwomen, Louisette Bertholle and Simone “Simca” Beck, expert cooks with food always on their minds. The three hit it off and in an instant, the faculty of l’École des trois gourmandes, “The School of the Three Hearty Eaters,” was in place. Only one thing was missing: a piece of parchment bearing a Maltese cross on a blue sash, Julia’s official diploma from le Cordon Bleu, to hang on the wall of her kitchen classroom.
To get it, all she had to do was pass the final exam, but her nemesis Madame Brassart was stalling. She still fumed over Julia’s insistence on taking the course for professional cooks rather than the one for “fluffies,” and for months ignored Julia’s pleas to schedule her test. She relented only when she got a subtly threatening letter on US Embassy stationery, hinting that word might get around about the school’s mistreatment of American students, especially the many GIs whose regular government checks kept it in business. Elated, Julia rehearsed some of the more challenging recipes she’d mastered: filet de sole Walewska, poularde à la toulousaine, sauce vénitienne. She couldn’t wait to strut her stuff. Allons-y!
On test day Julia’s pen flew across the page of the written exam. She confidently handed Madame her paper and followed her down the hall to the demonstration kitchen for part two. When she read the directions, she stopped smiling. The wily one had set a trap: cook three servings of œufs mollets with béarnaise sauce, côtelettes de veau en surprise, and crème renversée au caramel. Julia couldn’t believe her eyes. This was a menu for beginners, not for serious students like herself who expected, even welcomed, a rigorous test of culinary prowess.
Julia’s Cats Page 4