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Sarah Lancashire stars as famous American chef Julia Child in “Julia.” This season, she is grappling with her rising celebrity, and she and husband Paul are looking back at their younger selves when they lived in Europe.
Too many cooks in the kitchen?
Jamais!
Especially when you find yourself in the bosom of Le Cordon Bleu in Paris.
Pots rattle; pans hiss. Aromas dance and knives go swoosh. Pencils up! Having gone there earlier this month on the trail of Julia Child, and to fête the second season of the yummy Max series “Julia,” starring Sarah Lancashire — “a not totally comedy, not totally drama,” as its Canadian co-creator Daniel Goldfarb likes to say — I found myself crash coursing.
Loup de mer, ladies and gent. “Wolf of the sea,” as the translation goes: sea bass in salt crust pastry, served with Choron sauce.
“Puff pastry will give you a good crisp,” Éric Briffard, the chef exécutif and head of Le Cordon Bleu Paris, was telling us through a translator, as a long, miraculous mirror, running the length of this particular room, gave us play-by-by of the kitchen surface. (A bit of hocus-pocus Julia was likely not privy to when she earned her Diplôme de Cuisine from the school in 1951.)
Chefs at the famed Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris display two sea bass in salt crust pastry, made as part of a course in honour of Season 2 of the Julia Child bio-series “Julia.”
Other culinary elves stood on guard as the chef later took pains to use a knife to imitate scales on the crust before two identical showpieces went in the oven, as a co-chef took to whisking the egg yolks needed for the sauce. He did so with Federer-like precision and for at least 20 minutes. Maybe it was 30? I had never seen whisking like that before and — somewhere, out there, in my head — he is still whisking.
This particular sea bass, Briffard said, when I asked, was from the seas of Brittany. “More sea bass in Brittany than in the Côte d’Azur” these days, he noted, adding that they are firmer here because it is colder and the fish are moving faster.
This particular dish, by the way, was originally crafted by the legendary Paul Bocuse and later featured in Child’s game-changing broadcasts. Spoiler alert, darlings: the culinary marvel is featured in an upcoming episode of the newish series. Something that was not particularly easy, as Christine Tobin, the series’ food stylist, informed us. She said they had to recreate the fish over 20 times to get the colouring and texture just so, and in order to maintain “continuity of the filming.”
I wasn’t done yet myself. Returning to the institute on the banks of the Seine in the 15th arrondissement, the group of us had the opportunity to get our hands dirty and stare down our skillets (as so many have done since Le Cordon Bleu was founded in 1895, establishing the very idea of a culinary school, which later became a global brand with schools scattered everywhere from Seoul to Istanbul, and whose alumni include such notables as Yotam Ottolenghi, Giada De Laurentiis and Ming Tsai).
The name of the game that day? Duck! Seared slowly, with caramelized fig and pear. Look, ma, I made my own stock!
Just being here, of course, got me thinking about Julia’s own awakening at Le Cordon Bleu (which, of course, eventually changed the way households cooked an ocean away in North America, and led to her becoming the first food star on television, and begot a food renaissance that continues to this day and can be seen in the vestiges of the Food Network and food influencers on Instagram, when you think about it). 1949! When she ended up in the school’s 10-month program (her tuition fully paid for by the U.S. government, since she had worked in the Office of Strategic Services during the Second World War).
Initially, she had enrolled to help better understand French culture. Alas, the morning class she was in was taught entirely in French and included 11 American soldiers who were studying on the G.I. Bill.
“When I walked into the classroom, the GIs made me feel as if I had invaded their boys’ club,” Child wrote about the class, taught by chef Max Bugnard, in her memoir “My Life in France.” “Luckily, I had spent most of the war in male-dominated environments and wasn’t fazed by them in the least.”
Though Julia valued her instructor, she had a combative relationship with the Le Cordon Bleu headmistress, Madame Brassart. She actually flunked the final exam for her diploma the first time she took it — mainly because she’d been so busy learning the most complicated recipes that she’d neglected to memorize the simple ones. Finally, Child was allowed to retake the exam and graduated. The rest: histoire.
Being in France? A meta-experience in more ways than one because this second season of “Julia” starts with a dreamy departure, in which she and her husband (played by David Hyde Pierce), ducking their home in Boston, return for a vacation, firmly in the grip of middle age. She is grappling with her rising celebrity and the two of them are looking back at their younger selves when they lived in Europe. “Being a tourist in our own past,” as Julia muses in her trademark hooty voice.
Long before Emily, after all, there was Julia. In Paris.
“The first couple of episodes are about the long-term effect of what it meant for those who had been in the generation that fought World War II, both Europeans and Americans, to look back on that at this point,” executive producer Chris Keyser explains. The effect, as always: to create a show that feels “as if you’re watching a souffle and then you realize that there’s something underneath it that’s presenting a little bit of a message.”
Indeed, the second season leans into more of what made its first so fascinating: as much as the show is about food, it is and it isn’t. Julia herself is really just the “Trojan horse” to tell the story of this particular decade, starting “in the early ’60s and going into 1974 … from Camelot to Watergate.” In this vein, the series tackles a host of things (but always with a soft touch): everything from female autonomy to reproductive rights to the civil rights movement. The rise of television itself!
It also leans more into its ensemble, which is one of the best on television, in my opinion — everyone from Bebe Neuwirth to new recruit Rachel Bloom. All while bringing real-life figures into the narrative, as they cross paths with the world of Julia. Hell, even Jean-Paul Sartre shows up in the Paris ep!
Sarah Lancashire and David Hyde Pierce as Julia and Paul Child in Season 2 of “Julia.” The series gives us more shading into one of the most fascinating marriages of all time.
Julia and husband Paul, of course, remain centre stage, giving us more shading into one of the most fascinating marriages of all time. “So much of the show is about second acts, and part of their second act is that their marriage continues to get deeper and more romantic. It gets stronger,” as Goldfarb puts it.
Just like a proper French sauce, it is all in the whisk! Both the show and their union. Dare we say: Bon appétit!
Max’s “Julia” is streaming on Crave in Canada
Twitter: @shinangovani
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Credit belongs to : www.thestar.com
