Backstage with Julia

by Nancy Verde Barr

  I think the foundation of our friendship formed as soon as I went on the road with her for those early demonstrations in Memphis and New Haven. We traveled well together—a deal breaker for friendship if ever there was one. Can you be flexible? Can you meet, smiling and chatty, for breakfast at 6:00 a.m., even though you were operating on less than five hours of sleep? Will you forgo the aisle seat—without grumbling that an inside one makes you claustrophobic—because there was only one left on the plane and Julia's long legs made any other seat impossibly uncomfortable for her? Is the focus of your day where your next meal will be? And, above all, will you have a good time, and never mention the T-word even when the days are long and the workload staggering?

  That all worked for me. The early mornings and the long days were never an issue, since all my life I never seemed to require more than five hours of sleep; I was thrilled to have someone else awake and ready to talk at five-thirty in the morning. Seating was irrelevant. As Julia liked to note about my short stature, whether referring to an airplane seat or the middle spot in the back of a car, "Nancy can sit there. She has no legs." I was as guilty as the next passionate foodie of swooning over one meal while at the same time planning what and where I would eat the next. And, after 1984, I was happy to send for room service on Sunday nights so Julia wouldn't miss her favorite TV show, Angela Lansbury's Murder, She Wrote.

  The have-a-good-time part was easy. We all loved what we were doing. And we had Liz, who made us all laugh with her quick, irreverent Boston Irish humor. Ten years older than I, Liz had been with Julia for some twenty years, and she gave me my Berlitz class in Julia-ese. She told me about the T-word and warned me, "We never mention the name of that other spread on the table," the one that's not real butter. I learned from her which people we never mentioned by name but only with sobriquets such as "that woman from Schenectady" or a sarcastically toned "your friend from Ohio."

  But more than a language lesson, Liz showed me through her own candid relationship with Julia that Julia did not expect docile veneration from her friends. One day in Cambridge, we were testing Julia's recipe for a free-form meat loaf, which had to look particularly appetizing since it was destined for the cover of Parade. Brown food, such as meat loaf, is always a challenge for stylists and photographers, but that particular meatloaf really pushed the envelope. It was a long way from looking good, and worse, its texture was unpleasant and its flavor just so-so. Julia asked for our opinions, and we made polite comments: "Perhaps more eggs," "It seems a little tight," "Maybe a red sauce of some type on the top," and of course, "Cover it with parsley."

  Then Liz piped up, "It looks like dog food."

  "You're right," Julia said, and scrapped the recipe.

  Liz did not restrict her candor with Julia to the privacy of Julia's home. She needled her in public, and Julia loved it. In addition to working for Julia, Liz consulted for a Boston wine shop. She had an appreciation for and knew much about wines from many countries, and eventually taught wine classes at my cooking school. Frequently in restaurants, waiters would hand Julia the wine list with an announcement from the chef or owner, "The wine is on us. Please choose whatever you would like." No question what he meant. The sky was the limit, and for a moment Liz would get a wistful look glancing at the possibilities. But she knew what Julia was going to order, and she mimicked Julia by mouthing the exact words at the same time Julia told the waiter, "A nice little Beaujolais would be lovely. Thank you." That's when Julia's eyes would twinkle, and she would poke Liz in the arm.

  On nights like that, when our team dined alone, our conversations covered a wide range of topics. We weren't strictly colleagues discussing the latest culinary trends. We were friends talking about current affairs, gossiping, ribbing one another—and occasionally squabbling. My first experience with a family spat was in Memphis, and it was between Paul and Julia. It was also the first time I saw Julia dig in her heels in a way that just told you there was no sense in trying to talk her out of whatever bone she was gnawing.

  And Paul was just as obstinate. On that evening, they locked horns in an unselfconscious, open argument at the table, and it felt just like family. Liz, Marian, Paul, Julia, and I had finished dinner, and although Julia usually enjoyed a nibble of something sweet after a meal, that night the chef had sent so many complimentary appetizers that none of us had room except Paul, who could always be counted on to eat a small dish of ice cream. When the waiter brought his ice cream, he also set a three-tiered tray of small sweets on the table.

  "Who ordered those?" Paul asked.

  "No one," Julia responded. "The chef sent them."

  "I don't think he should send something that no one ordered."

  "It's something chefs like to do."

  "I don't think they should. If no one ordered them, then no one will eat them and they will go to waste."

  "That's not the point, Paul. It's a nice thing to do and someone may want eat one." I had been eyeing the pieces of candied orange peel, but at that point, it was no longer dessert; it was a gauntlet that had been thrown down, and I wasn't about to take sides.

  "If someone wanted to eat one, they would have ordered one," Paul insisted, and so it went, long after we signed the check, all during our departure from the restaurant, and in the elevator ride upstairs. It was not a heated, acrimonious argument, just a test of who would get in the last word. I don't know who did or how long into the night they argued, but they were their usual agreeable selves at breakfast.

  With Julia making it obvious that she was just like everyone else and wanted to be treated that way, and Liz driving the point home by doing so, my rapport with Julia was equally open and unguarded. We liked each other, and the first of Boswell's imaginary drops of friendship began to fill the vessel.

  Our closeness grew as I began to spend more time with her at home. "Come for dinner and spend the night," she said for the first time when we were working on Parade. "I have plenty of room, and you can have your own bathroom," she added, expressing a shared preference we established when we were on the road together—our own bedrooms and our own bathrooms. The bathroom was a draw, but not as much as the fact that sleeping over meant I would not have to deal with daily round trips in the horrid commuter traffic back and forth between Cambridge and Providence.

  To Julia, "come for dinner" meant "we'll cook dinner together first, then we'll eat." Cooking with her for no reason other than eating was different from cooking for work. We didn't have to hurry for the cameras, take notes, or retest. Our meals were simple; we didn't look in cookbooks for fancy new dishes. Still, Julia applied the same careful preparation to everything we cooked, no matter how basic, as she did to her "audience" food. And because teaching and learning were such a part of who she was, cooking dinner was always an opportunity to learn something new.

  The first cooking lesson Julia asked me to give her was how to make risotto. I was slightly surprised that she wanted me to give her an Italian cooking lesson. Overall, she wasn't a great fan of Italian food, nor did she think it involved the discipline and technique of French cuisine. But she loved risotto and was aware that a good one required know-how. The classic Italian rice dish was popping up around the country in restaurants of all ethnicities, in culinary magazines, and at catered events. A well-prepared risotto is ethereal; badly cooked, it's a blob of glue on the plate. Julia wanted me to show her how to make it exactly the way Marcella Hazan had taught me in Bologna.

  "Can you bring the rice, dearie?" she asked when she called me at home. Rice variety is key to a good risotto. The grain must be able to dissolve enough to create the creamy texture yet remain firm enough at the center to deliver the characteristic bite of the dish.

  I had a cupboard full of Italian rice—Arborio, Vialone Nano, Carnaroli. I chose the Carnaroli because, of the three, it produces the creamiest texture. I also brought my own meat broth from my freezer, since one of the most important lessons I learned from Marcella is that Italian brodo and French stock are not
interchangeable. French stock is richer and its flavor is distractingly strong in a delicate risotto.

  Julia stood next to me, observed, questioned, and commented on every step as I made the dish—how long did I sauté the rice before adding the wine, at what pace did I add the hot broth, how much broth and when should we stir in the final butter and cheese. Thank you, Marcella—our risotto was perfect, and Julia and I made it together often. When a grower sent Julia a bag of special California-grown rice, touted to be as good as the Italian Arborio for risotto, we couldn't wait to try it. I didn't think it was quite as good, but that might have been my heritage talking. Julia thought it was—undoubtedly her California roots speaking.

  Usually what we cooked did not involve standing over each other and observing step-by-step preparations, and mostly I remember the easy way Julia applied her culinary training to just cooking. The first time I saw her make her "small chicken stock," I wondered why I had never even considered it. We were roasting a chicken, and Julia said we should make a "nice little velouté" to go with it. Velouté is one of the French "mother sauces" and a first lesson in culinary school. It's made by adding white stock to a flour-and-butter roux and then whatever flavorings or enrichments one chooses. I knew how to do that.

  "Do you have chicken stock?" I asked, walking to the freezer.

  "Yes. But we can make a small chicken stock. We don't need much."

  I didn't know "small chicken stock." I only knew four-hour, twelve-quart-pot stock. Julia cut the wing tips from the bird and browned them in a one-quart saucepan with the neck and gizzards. She then added large pieces of onion (with the skin for color), unsalted canned chicken broth (sometimes just water), a tomato half for a bit of acid, and an herb bouquet, and by the time the chicken was cooked, we had a fine, rich stock for our sauce. Julia's "small stock" was a departure from traditional culinary school techniques and perhaps one of my first understandings of what she meant when she said, "You have to be a fearless cook." If you know what something is supposed to taste like and can get there a new way, "go whole hog and do it."

  Our fearless-cook triumph together was polenta, the age-old, classic Italian cornmeal staple that had become as popular as risotto in American restaurants.

  "Do you know how to make it?" Julia asked me. What kind of a question is that to ask an Italian? Before I learned how from Marcella, I learned how from my grandmother. Their methods were the same: drizzle cornmeal slowly through your fingers—come neve (like snow), Nonna said—into boiling water and stir well to prevent lumps from forming. Nothing to learn there, or so I thought. Julia wondered if we couldn't apply a trick she had learned, I think it was in making grits, that called for mixing the grain first with cold water until it is smooth and then adding boiling water to it and finishing the cooking. Blasphemy! But it worked. There was no loss of texture or flavor and absolutely no chance for lumps to form. Traditionally, as soon as polenta is fully cooked, it is immediately poured out on a plate or board and eaten, or shaped into a cylinder and cooled for later use. Excited with our cold-water success, Julia then wondered how long we could keep the cooked polenta in the pan before pouring it out. So we left the pot on the stove, and as water evaporated we added more boiling water to the pot. It kept perfectly for hours. Julia was so pleased with our results that she decided to use our recipe for an issue of Parade, and then some years later, when she asked me to teach a class with her at Mondavi Vineyards, she suggested I demonstrate our modern polenta. We always thought of the recipe as "our polenta."

  Sometimes for dinner at Julia's there were just the three of us, Paul, Julia, and me, but often friends and colleagues joined us. Either way, we ate dinner in the kitchen, where the Childs preferred to entertain unless a sizeable guest list required the dining room table, which could seat twenty if necessary. The size of the guest list, not its pedigree, determined which room they used. The simple wood table in the center of the kitchen was permanently clothed in one or another of three colorful, Marimekko-style padded vinyl tablecloths that the Childs had purchased several years before. "We can just wipe them down. Whoosh!" Julia told me as she made a quick swiping motion with her arm. She used a round raffia mat, chosen from a large multicolored assortment, to cover each person's place at the table. Oversized light wood chairs with sweeping half-circle backs surrounded the table. Julia and Paul had purchased them in the 1950s when Paul was stationed in Norway with the diplomatic corps, and they made for good, comfortable lounging long after dinner.

  There were two pantries lined up in tandem off the kitchen. The first, closest to the kitchen, was the "baking room," where a slab of marble sat atop the under-counter freezer used primarily for butter, nuts, and sundries used for desserts, clearly marked in the attached Post-it note. Sitting atop the marble top, several French wire baskets and American crockery pots held bouquets of wooden rolling pins in all sizes and shapes. The pegboard attached to the wall next to the top was covered with copper egg-white bowls, balloon whisks, an assortment of baker's tools and a variety of Norwegian pastry molds strange to me.

  The second pantry had glass-front cupboards that stretched from a waist-high counter to the top of the very high ceilings, and wide, deep drawers from the counter to the floor. It held a visual history of Julia's travels with Paul and especially her television career in the form of the dishes, glassware, and colorful napkins she had used for her early shows. From the time I first began sharing those casual dinners at her house, she asked if I would set the table, and I loved choosing from this nostalgic collection.

  "Which dishes would you like me to use?" I asked the first time, thinking that some must indeed be too special for her to risk breakage on such a casual night.

  "It doesn't matter. Whatever you like."

  Next to cooking in that kitchen with Julia, nothing gave me more pleasure than standing on a stool—or on the counter itself when necessary to reach to the very top of those cupboards—and choosing dinnerware. "Maybe the slightly chipped, deep green Provençal dishes with gently scalloped edges," I'd mutter to myself. "Or the pink-flowered faience." That pantry also held the liquor and wine, and Julia might well have thought I was in there nipping, I took so long to choose.

  It never took me any time to decide on the breakfast setting: definitely the Scandinavian china coffee cups called "breakfast bowls." Decorated with a graceful pattern of blue and white flowers, each held the equivalent of at least two cups of coffee, and both the look and feel of the delicate china were lovely. When I watched Julia pour milk into her coffee from a small sterling-silver creamer in the shape of a cow, I regretted drinking mine black. I loved that cow. The tail curled saucily back onto itself to form a handle, and the milk poured from its mouth. I'm not sure why that cow enchanted me so, but even today I can picture every sculpted line of its miniature bovine body.

  On the nights when Julia asked others to come to dinner, everyone cooked or at least helped some way in the kitchen. We delegated simple tasks such as trimming beans and washing salad greens to non-cooks. Philip mixed drinks, and Paul was responsible for selecting and opening the wine. When the need arose, Paul was the official knife sharpener. He would stand at the table expertly and patiently honing Julia's massive collection of knives on a whetstone. I've never known anyone who could bring the sharp edge back to a knife as Paul could. Going to dinner at Julia's was exactly as she described it—"cooking together is such fun."

  Julia's casual manner of having her guests cook with her took the headiness out of the stature of her guests. I met Jacques Pépin and his wife, Gloria, at one of Julia's cook-along meals. They arrived with a pâté, and after setting it out on a platter with all the appropriate garnishes, Jacques jumped right in to cook with us. One of my idols, the late British cookbook author Jane Grigson, came to dinner once, and after chopping vegetables next to each other, we decided to continue our relationship with future correspondence. I met the very tall, very brilliant economist John Kenneth "Ken" Galbraith, President Kennedy's ambassador to Ind
ia, numerous department chairs from Harvard, people with titles and Pulitzers and enough published books to start a library. They were all just cooks in the kitchen.

  With or without company, Julia's meals were unpretentious. The only hors d'oeuvres were Pepperidge Farm Goldfish unless someone arrived with an appetizer or the ingredients to make one. Dessert was often store-bought vanilla ice cream with very good bourbon drizzled on top.

  The meals were simple, but the conversations never were. Julia loved to stir up heated discussions with subjects that would top Emily Post's taboo list—legalization of drugs, abortion, animal rights, and (a Julia favorite) politics. She was a passionate, liberal Democrat who believed that her party was the true champion of the people, the one that could save the world. And, etiquette books be damned, she didn't hesitate to ask those around her where their loyalties lay. She asked me about my politics when a small group of us was enjoying a casual supper in her kitchen.

  "Are you a Democrat or a Republican?"

  "I'm an independent voter," I replied, confident that my independent stance was a highly discerning one. "I vote for the man."

  Her index finger shot up. "No!" she responded emphatically, letting me know my answer was neither discerning nor acceptable. "You have to be one or the other. How are you registered?"

  "W-Well," I stammered, "I'm registered as a Republican, but that's only because I did volunteer work for Senator John Chafee. I vote for as many Democrats."

  "Chafee's a Republican?" The R-word came out as though it tasted bad.