Gratin of potatoes is an appreciation of Julia Child: Taste

The movie “Julie & Julia” came out on my 24th birthday. I made chicken from one of Julia Child’s cookbooks, French onion soup and a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting for my friends, and then we all went out and watched the movie together.

Julia Child was one of those people I just always knew existed, she was on PBS or other TV shows. It was that summer of 2009, five years after her death, that I really started to appreciate her.

In preparation for the movie, I read both the books the movie was based on.

Julie Powell’s “Julie & Julia,” which chronicles the author’s year cooking every recipe in Child’s first cookbook, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” “My Life in France,” written by Child and her nephew, Alex Prud'homme, is a memoir about Julia and Paul Child’s adventures living in France, including the writing of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.”

The screenplay, written by Nora Ephron, weaves the lives of these two women together through this shared love of cooking. Child famously didn’t approve of what Powell was doing with her blog-turned-book, but it was a new medium in the early aughts and no one really knew how to define it.

Relating to Powell’s story is easy. She’s a theater major from Texas living in New York, working at a dead end temp job for a government agency and wants to do something meaningful with her life.

I think we all have had times in our life thinking that where we are is not where we wanted to end up. Writing the blog was Powell’s way of giving her life a new meaning.

Child was a woman of a different time. She was born in 1912 to upper-class parents in California, but had East Coast ties.

She went to college and ended up working for the U.S. government, in the agency that eventually became the CIA. That’s how she met her husband, Paul, 10 years her senior.

They married and moved to France as Paul continued his work for the U.S. government. As was the custom, Julia stopped working.

After trying a few different hobbies, she enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu, the famed French cooking school. She was nearing 40, had never learned to properly cook before that and was the only woman in her class.

She met the co-authors of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, and the three began offering cooking classes for the wives of other Americans living in Paris. It was this work that eventually led to the publication of the cook book.

In “My Life in France,” Child details how she wanted the book to be perfect. She wanted to make sure that anyone could replicate these recipes.

Not only did she include detailed instructions, she insisted on graphics so people could see what she was talking about. While Beck and Bertholle were the French in “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” it was Child, the American, that made sure other Americans would be able to make the recipes.

It was this detail that drew Powell, who passed away earlier this year, to the book in the first place.

Paul Child’s work took the couple all over Europe, and the book was completed via international postal correspondence over several years. It was published in 1961.

“My Life in France” begins to wrap up about the time the Childs were moving back to the U.S. after the end of Paul’s career in the U.S. government. This was about the time “Mastering” was being published and Julia’s television career was beginning.

An HBO Max show, “Julia,” picks up where “My Life in France” and “Julie & Julia” leave off. The first season of the show was released earlier this year and has been renewed for a second.

It details the struggles Child and company had starting her very successful PBS show “The French Chef.” Child was not the first person to cook on television.

There were a few cooking shows before, but Child filling the role of teacher, rather than that of exhibitionist, resonated with viewers. She took to the airwaves with the message that anyone could make these dishes with ingredients found at the supermarket and tools found in the average kitchen.

She shows several ways to prepare dishes, including steps that can be done ahead of time  — something she needed to do anyway to make sure those dishes were done in the half-hour time slot.

I know it’s pretty basic for someone that loves food to love Julia Child, but the woman deserves the adoration. She didn’t start cooking until she was nearly 40 and she didn’t start her TV show until she was nearly 50.

At the time, American cooking was headed toward dump-and-go recipes centered around condensed soup and TV dinners heated in segmented trays. While there’s nothing wrong with these conveniences, they’re not as fun when that’s all that’s eaten.

Julia brought joy back to food in America; she spread the message that the act of cooking could be just as much fun as eating. She not only showed cooks how to do something, but she explained why she was doing it that way.

PBS has been uploading classic episodes of Julia’s shows on YouTube, so anyone can cook along with the mother of modern food television.

As the New Year ticks over, think of Julia Child when making resolutions, she knew what she wanted and she went after it. Try one or several of her recipes to start 2023.

Gratin de Pommes de Terre et Saucisson

(Gratin of potatoes, onions and sausages)

Ingredients

• ⅔ cups minced onion.

• 2 tablespoons butter.

• ¾ pound sliced potatoes.

• ¾ pound Polish sausage, sliced.

• 3 eggs.

• 1 ½ cups heavy whipping cream.

• ½ teaspoon salt.

• ⅛ teaspoon pepper.

• ½ to 1 cup grated Swiss cheese.

• 1 tablespoon butter.

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

• Cook the onions slowly in butter for five minutes or so, until tender but not browned.

• Drop potatoes in boiling salted water and cook for six to eight minutes, or until barely done. Drain thoroughly.

• Butter a three-to-four-cup baking dish. Spread half the potatoes in the bottom, then the cooked onion. Over them lay the Polish sausage slices, then the rest of the onion, and finally the remaining potatoes.

• Whisk together the eggs and cream with the salt and pepper. Pour the eggs and cream over the potatoes and shake the dish to send liquid to the bottom.

• Spread the cheese. Dot with butter.

• Bake for 30 to 40 minutes in the upper third of the oven until the top is nicely browned.

Recipe by Julia Child, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle. Found in “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.”

This article originally appeared on Aberdeen News: Gratin of potatoes is an appreciation of Julia Child: Taste