LE PETIT PRINCE
JULIA’S FACE FLOODED with happiness every time she thought about going “home” to France once again. “La Peetch” would be the respite she and Paul craved from the whirlwind of activity that had begun with a book review program on what Paul described as “an egghead public television station” in Boston. She had cooked an omelette on a hot plate but got so carried away with the demonstration, she forgot to plug her own book. One bowled-over viewer wrote to food critic Craig Claiborne and demanded that he review a book by a big, strange woman she saw on TV. Shortly after, Claiborne’s rave review of Mastering the Art of French Cooking appeared in the New York Times. Soon, The Book was flying off shelves and Julia had a television program of her own.
By 1965, “the French Chef” was finishing her third season, well on her way to becoming a TV star, and while she was eager to share her enthusiasm for the pleasures of the table, the nonstop activity—shopping, scriptwriting, rehearsing, schlepping gear from home, and promotional events—took a toll. The public couldn’t get enough, leaving her and Paul with little time for themselves. And no time or place in her hectic life for a house cat, so she was counting the days until they left for their getaway in Provence, where a kitten was waiting.
Since they would be gone for months, Paul was trying to shoehorn an entire household into their battered trunks—aspirin, toothpaste, toilet paper (the soft American kind), and way too many clothes, including heavy New England overcoats, just in case. Plus his painting supplies, the skillets and gadgets she couldn’t live without, and pegboard hooks to hang them on, just like the ones in the Cambridge kitchen. Fortunately, he told his brother, one crucial item had been taken care of: “Arrangements for a pussy-cat have been laid on.”
When they arrived in Cannes, several of the trunks were missing, especially worrisome since they held Julia’s precious recipe notes for the sequel she had nicknamed “Son of Mastering.” But nothing could dim the excitement as they drove up to their own little piece of Provence for the first time as homeowners. There, just fifty yards from Simca’s old stone farmhouse, stood la Peetch with the afternoon sun glinting off the tile roof and freshly painted green shutters. Paul thought the house looked “smiling & scrubbed behind the ears, as glad to see us as we were to see it.”
They were greeted by the usual tsunami of barking, tail wagging, and miaouing, and the yelps of an exuberant new puppy. As bonjours and air kisses flew, Julia looked around hopefully for the special poussiequette Simca had promised. Finally, she spotted a pair of bright eyes calmly studying the newcomers from the safety of the stone steps, as if waiting for a formal introduction.
Julia knew the white, black, and brown kitty was The One when he jumped down, rubbed against her ankles, and made a quizzical trilling sound. This people-loving kitten had already acquired a reputation as a Prince Charming who could coax treats from anyone and who ruled the whole menagerie with, as Paul proudly noted, “the loudest purr in Christendom.” Julia happily surrendered to his charms and decided to name him “le Petit Prince.” He was the first in a line of la Peetch cats over the years to answer to that noble name.
Julia and Paul were bone-tired from the long travel day, but relieved when they got word that their precious trunks had been found at the station. They would collect them in a few days when Julia made the first of her weekly trips to Elizabeth Arden for her mise en plis, her curly do.
That evening, Simca invited them for a sumptuous meal marked by several rounds of welcoming toasts. In a pleasant after-dinner buzz, Julia and Paul ended their first la Peetch day on their own terrace, drinking in the sweet night air. The lights of the tiny village of Plascassier shone across the valley and stars glimmered in the cobalt sky. Their new amour, le Petit Prince, padded out from the shadows of the mulberry tree, leaped nimbly onto Julia’s lap, and purred so loudly Paul feared he might wake the neighbors.
Once again, Julia rested in the embrace of her three loves—an adoring spouse, la belle France, and a poussiequette of her own.
Bienvenue!
FOIE GRAS
CHRISTMAS WAS JUST around the corner and the three “mad women of La Peetch”—Julia, Simca, and Avis DeVoto, their friend and agent who’d come from Boston for the holidays—were as excited as les enfants waiting for le Père Noël. It was also foie gras season, and the trio of cooks couldn’t wait to get their hands on the quivery pink livers. In a raucous mix of English and French they argued about which delectable dishes to cook up for their holiday feast. Would they grind it with truffles for spreading on croutons? Would they blend it with prunes to stuff the traditional holiday goose? Would there be any left when they were done tasting?
To a stranger it sounded chaotic, everyone talking at once above the sounds of slicing, dicing, pounding, and sautéing. But to Paul’s practiced ear, and from the safe distance of his den, it was “a jolly, pleasant symphony accompanied by the smell of hot olive oil and a sense of gustatory goodies to come.”
The feline residents saw no point in waiting. They wanted their goodies, and they wanted them meow! Banished from the kitchen and wild with the scent of goose liver, the cats hurled themselves at the door, sticking like magnets to the screen. Unmoved, the three cooks just raised their voices a notch to drown out the din. A pampered Petit Prince was especially incensed at being exiled from his domain, but for once Julia ignored her favorite’s pleas. She was methodically making notes in her looping script about each step in the cooking process. She didn’t want to miss a chance to learn something from this boisterous foray into foie gras.
Julia and Simca carried on about the best way to temper the assertive taste of goose liver: Add cognac, port, or Madeira? Which spices? How much pork fat? Such spirited debate was nothing new. The strong-willed partners kept up a friendly battle over how to cook every dish. Simca insisted that every recipe be authentically French, but Julia cared more that American cooks be able to easily duplicate it with supermarket ingredients. With a best-selling book and a wildly popular cooking show, Julia was now more confident challenging Simca. They argued as if lives were at stake, but in the end they always worked out a compromise, because they kept their eyes on the prize: How does it taste?
The bond between them was wide and deep. They shared a passion for France, for fabulous food and teaching others how to make it—and for cats. They even shared joint custody of a favorite kitty. When the big black-and-white cat stayed with Simca, she answered to the name Whiskey, and at la Peetch, Julia called her Minoir. They were both taken with her dainty habits. She liked to watch TV, strike dramatic poses, and drink water from a glass at the dinner table.
As the dinner hour approached on Christmas Eve, the whole house smelled of goose cracklings, and Paul followed his nose to the kitchen, where the three triumphant cooks stood back admiring their elegant pâtés. Paul popped open a Dom Pérignon to salute their team effort. The not-so-happy cats, still pouting and pacing outside the door, had failed to melt any hearts.
It was a grand Christmas dinner, everyone agreed, including the cats, who, in the spirit of the season, forgave all after they feasted on the remains of the gloriously golden goose. But some cats were more equal than others. Only le Petit Prince tasted the divine pâté.
Whiskey/Minoir
MINOU MALADE
JUPAUL TOOK CHARGE of the animal kingdom when Simca was away teaching in Paris, and it kept them hopping: “What with cats and dogs and feeding them, we are a veritable veterinary establishment right here!” With so many needy critters around, work on the final editing of Julia’s French Chef Cookbook slowed to a crawl. The cats were happy, but her New York publisher not so much. Julia shrugged: “Voilà—la vie!”
One day she dashed off a distressed note to Simca. One of her favorites, the big gray Minou, looked très malade. “Yesterday he was the most miserable eye-streaming old pussy imaginable—when they say ‘sick as a cat’ he was it.”
She and Paul dropped everything, bundled the poor thing in an old blan
ket, and nestled him on the backseat of the Peugeot. He was too sick to put up much of a fight. They shooed his miaouing posse out of the way and took off for the nearest vet, in Grasse, where they were alarmed to hear that a dangerous virus was making the rounds of neighboring farms.
Julia could hardly bear to look into Minou’s soulful eyes when they had to leave him overnight, but she was anxious to get home, suddenly fearful for her Little Prince. She watched over him all night as he became listless and wracked by fits of sneezing. In the morning, another frantic ride to Grasse with an unwilling passenger curled in her lap. She stroked his head and urged Paul to please take the twisty country roads just a little faster.
After the Little Prince got a shot of antibiotics, she insisted on taking him home to his castle, where she could administer megadoses of motherly love. For days she and Paul nervously followed the other kitties around the yard listening for any tiny achoo! The pussycat plague eventually ran its course, but not before she had to give Simca the sad news that her handsome gray cat did not survive. The medicine came too late, and when he refused even the chicken liver pâté she brought from home, they had to face the awful truth that this Minou had run out of lives. They were devastated: “A very sad business, and we both cried, in fact I am still crying.”
Their only solace was a more hopeful prognosis for their own poussiequette, although it was still touch and go. “The darling Petit Prince has had his third injection and will take some medicine for four days.… We pray he will be all right, and shall watch him carefully.” Their prayers were answered. The vet marveled at the miraculous recovery and gave full credit to Julia’s potent brand of TLC.
CAVALCADE OF CATS
LE PETIT PRINCE, the kitty with the powerful purr, was the first in a cavalcade of cats Julia pampered at la Pitchoune. Only Paul knew how deep Julia’s attachment was to each of them. He confided to his twin, “A cat—any cat—is necessary to Julia’s inner satisfaction.”
When they returned to Cambridge each year, their sadness at leaving a special cat eased only when Simca wrote that their kitty had been coaxed into rejoining the miaouing chorus at her kitchen door. “Your poussiequette stayed in front of la Pitchoune for 48 hours, always hoping to see the door open, but he didn’t want to come, despite our appeals. We had to take him in our arms and carry him into the house so that he’d finally agree to eat. Alors, then he did justice to his dinner, and now rests for the night in the kitchen waiting for breakfast.”
Letters between the two partners crossed the Atlantic almost daily, packed with recipes and notes that kept their cookery bookery enterprise humming. Julia’s jammed typewritten pages and Simca’s scrawls in a mélange of French and English captured the daily rhythms of their lives, spiced with local gossip and the doings of their favorite cats. No surprise, the subject was often the capricious feline palate.
Julia: “How is my pussycat (I think of her every time I throw out a boiled chicken neck!)”
Simca: “La Minimouche behaves herself very well, demands her share at dinnertime and waits until she has been fully served.… She looks splendid—let’s hope she doesn’t become enormous.”
Julia: “How is our Minimouche? Is she getting very big? I hope so, as I adore great big poussiequettes.”
Handle with care
Simca ruefully replied that Julia’s kitty was too much the gourmand and sometimes resorted to thievery despite her generous portions. One day, in the blink of an eye, she gobbled half a pastry tart that was waiting to be garnished. Julia was amused by the antics of her little thief: “Our Poussiequette sounds magnifique.”
While on vacation at the log cabin Paul and Charlie built in Maine, Julia wrote letters to Simca that filled her in on the status of her extended family of cats: “PS: The two pussies here, Pewter and Copper, are beginning to show their age a bit, both are 14, and though still catching mice, are beginning to look big and ruffled and a bit elderly.”
Julia with her sous chef in Maine
She enjoyed her foster kitties but pined for news of her true loves at la Peetch. She implored Simca for reassurance that out of sight did not mean out of mind. Or heart.
Julia: “We do hope Minimouche will remember us some months from now?? Perhaps we should rush over for 2 days to refresh her memory.”
Simca: “Your pussycat hasn’t forgotten you because this grand cat is constantly parked between la Pitchoune and le Mas, in expectation of your arrival.”
Julia: “How good it will be to see our dear ones.… Tell Poussiquette to get herself ready for us.”
As the time for the reunion approached, Julia couldn’t contain her excitement: “Please tell Minimouche that we are almost on our way.”
In her last letter to Simca before departing Boston, Julia looked forward to a kitty welcoming party: “Shall you be bringing your little poussiequette? We hope so. I shall stop at Le Casino in Cannes and get some raw liver pour enjôler [to entice] Mlle Minimouche who will have forgotten us. “
No chance of that. At the sound of that familiar high-pitched trill, Julia’s poussiequette bounded out of the bushes and raced up the path to her customary post in front of la Pitchoune. While the liver was lovely, there was really no need for gifts. Julia’s kitchen door was open again at long last.
BIRTH DAY SURPRISE
WHILE MOST COUNTRY cats never know where their next meal is coming from, the Bramafam kitties had it made, wearing a path between the kitchens of two world-class cooks who were both gaga over felines. One scrawny cat called Minimere was a mother lode of kittens over the years. Julia had a soft spot for the “Little Mama” because she knew that as long as the fertile feline stayed around, she’d never run out of poussiequettes.
Back in Cambridge Julia looked forward to the frequent birth announcements from Simca: “La Minimere has brought 3 kittens since this morning: a light gray one, like herself; a white and gray one; and an all-black one.” A happy Julia wrote back at once asking which one would be her special poussiequette: “We need a tough cat (un dur) who adores people, who is a gourmand, who is jolly and playful and who likes to walk with us, and wants to be with us every minute.” As the matriarch of the Bramafam kitty clan, Simca took her matchmaking seriously and always found the perfect fit.
One summer when Julia and Paul arrived at la Peetch for a short stopover, Minimere was predictably pregnant. Since the cat was eating for two or three or more, Julia filled her bowl to overflowing and rubbed her back until she was drowsy. Soon there would be new kittens to love. But because they were leaving soon to vacation with friends in Norway, they worried that the Little Mama might choose their house for her lying-in hospital.
JuPaul were no match for the wily mother-to-be. On the prowl for a secluded spot to deliver her brood, Minimere lurked near the kitchen door for a chance to sneak inside and settle in a half-open bureau drawer, a cupboard left ajar, or a soft basket of laundry. When Simca knocked, carrying a warm tarte aux poires, the cat slipped in and disappeared down the hall.
The next evening, amid a soothing soundtrack of twilight warblers, Julia sat correcting recipes while Paul jotted notes to Charlie. Suddenly an avalanche of tumbling bottles, splintering glass, and an ear-piercing “Yowwwwl!” jolted them to their feet. As they raced toward the din, a wild-eyed Minimere darted by as fast as her drooping tummy would allow.
The clever kitty had found an open closet, clawed her way up the coats, and built a cozy nest for her confinement on top of some bottles Paul had stashed on the shelf. Paul and Julia groaned at the mess but had to admire Minimere’s persistence and agility, and though it took the rest of the evening to clean up the sticky shards of Cinzano bottles, they counted their blessings. At least it wasn’t one of Julia’s precious Château d’Yquems. Never ones to cry over spilled wine or pass up a chance to celebrate, they opened the last unbroken bottle and toasted the mother-to-be.
When the spooked cat failed to appear for breakfast the next morning, Paul assumed she was “spawning future bottle-br
eakers in the hollow of some olive tree.” They knew the proud mama would soon come around toting her kittens by the scruff of the neck. When she dropped the miaouing balls of fluff at the kitchen door, Julia would be ready with some choice chicken parts and saucers of cream. Like any doting grandma, she couldn’t wait.
Mama-to-be up a tree
Eyes on the prize
“LIKE PUSSIES IN CATNIP”
THE MINUTE ANOTHER season of The French Chef was in the can, Julia and Paul started packing for Provence, where the pace of life slowed. Once settled in their snug retreat, Julia jotted to Freddie, “Left Paris absolutely bone-chill-frigid at 3 PM, came down out of clear blue sky w/ sun! Glad to be home w/ our own Pussy, our China tea, our houselet, our quiet, our sun, our flowers.…” And she added a bright red marginal note: “Our new pussy is a dear—tiger back and white feet & face & little tiger mustache.”
They named her Minimouche, and like all kittens, she was in perpetual motion. As soon as Paul opened the shutters in the morning, she shot outside like an arrow toward a bull’s-eye—a ring of yellow pansies around the olive tree—while Julia sang out, “Alors, Minimouche, fais oui-oui!” The kitten helpfully “watered” the flowers, then raced back for breakfast. On warm days they ate in the shade of the mulberry tree and lingered over the Nice-Matin newspaper, while the kitty chased lizards in the sun.
Julia’s Cats Page 6