Child’s play - how Provence seduced TV chef Julia Child

Julie & Julia: Meryl Streep stars as Julia Child in Julie & Julia
Sarah Woodward10 April 2012

The first cookery book I ever owned was Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking, thrust into my hands by my tutor at university after I had (unwisely) invited him to dinner. But then he added that I should also borrow a copy of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking from the library.

Twenty years later I finally met the indomitable lady who can safely be credited with introducing America to French food, just as David did for a Britain still in the throes of rationing. I was at the opening of Copia, the now sadly closed food-and-art museum in California's Napa Valley, which was the brainchild of the late winemaker Robert Mondavi: Julia Child was there to open the restaurant which bore her name. She was terrified but luckily she loved the food.

But it was not until I visited the house in Provence which Child had bought as a holiday home with her diplomat husband that I understood how both Child and David shared a common theme. David wrote that her introduction to French food was when she lived in Paris; Child, too, received her induction to gastronomy in the capital. But both were seduced by Provence's sunnier climes — and the food.

Kathie Alex, who these days runs
cookery courses at La Pitchoune in the Var, where Julia and her husband Paul summered after his retirement, remembers how they "loved to eat pissalidière (the provençale version of pizza, with anchovies and tomatoes) under the mulberry tree".

Kathie is an American chef who studied with Child's great friend and neighbour Simca Beck and worked at Moulin de Mougins, in the nearby town of Mougins. Julia met her while taping a segment on Provençal cooking for Good Morning America. Julia apparently once wrote to Kathie: "I'm counting on you to teach Americans about butter and cream!" . But as I learned on the course I attended at La Pitchoune, Kathie has also introduced them to olive oil and freshly picked basil.

Kathie has kept Julia's kitchen intact and it is clear from the amount of equipment that Julia loved to cook (her Boston kitchen, donated in her will, is now an exhibit in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC). But as she told me: "What I really loved was the food shopping, especially in the markets. And then, of course, going out to a local bistro for lunch afterwards. It was often too hot to take fish up the hill."

Even on the Riviera, the French still shop in markets. The market in Nice is unmissable — look out for socca, the chick-pea flour bread which remains the market traders' staple.

Find yourself in Antibes or Cannes and just a step back from the sea there are markets selling everything from fresh fish to basil plants.

But for autumn days it is worth heading back up the twisty roads into the hills for a picnic, with a basket full of mushrooms preserved in olive oil, fragrant tomatoes, some goat's cheese, sliced salami and of course a baguette or two. On the way up, stop to pick a few sprigs of thyme in the garrigue, as the scrubland on the rocky outcrops is know locally.

The Var is good walking country, best appreciated when the weather is a little cooler and the colours of the trees are at their most vibrant. Personally, I only feel I deserve that glass of local red wine after I have climbed a hill.

Watch out, though, for signs that say "chasse en cours". We are not talking about truffle or mushroom hunters here but the locals looking to shoot wild boar, especially when the animals are after the grapes in the vineyards. And the hunters use rifles.

Should you feel the need for culture, there are medieval villages and churches aplenty to visit. The parfumiers of nearby Grasse offer tours, while you can also visit the olive oil mills of Brague in the nearby village of Opio. The Picasso Museum in Antibes is splendid.

But then it is precisely that variety which first attracted Julia Child to the region. Where else could you be eating bouillabaisse in a fancy seaside restaurant and a few hours later up in the hills be contemplating a daube de boeuf for supper? Especially when it is cooked (under expert tuition) in the late grande dame's kitchen.

Julie & Julia, starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams and written and directed by Norah Ephron, is now on general release.

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