Julia Child died in 2004, but she’s still commanding attention on American TV. The legendary chef’s lovable small screen personality still fascinates us all, but especially culinary types.
So PBS has brought “Dishing with Julia Child” to the screen with six episodes beginning April 3. In a cozy, chatty format that Child would have loved, the network has invited nine superstar chefs to watch her reruns and provide pithy running commentary. Imagine “Mystery Science Theater 3000” but without any snark, just love.
Martha Stewart praises her talent as a teacher. Éric Ripert and José Andrés laud her cooking techniques. And Rick Bayless, Carla Hall, Vivian Howard, Sara Moulton and Marcus Samuelsson all chime in. But it’s Jacques Pépin who knew her the longest and the best. He still fondly remembers their friendship, which began when the young chef, who had cooked for heads of state including Charles de Gaulle, struck out for the U.S. in 1959 and made a big splash here.
Pepin worked under Henri Soulé at Le Pavillon, the restaurant that defined French cooking in the U.S., turned down an offer from Jackie Kennedy to helm the White House kitchen, and flipped burgers and developed recipes for Howard Johnson’s during what he calls his “American apprenticeship.” He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Columbia University.
And his list of honors goes on and on: Daytime Emmy, James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award, France’s Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and even the Légion d’honneur. A prolific writer, he’s penned 25 cookbooks and contributed to the pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, Food & Wine Magazine and many other top publications.
But a big part of his legacy will forever be entwined with Julia Child’s. Both pioneered a brand of cooking show that sought to teach techniques while entertaining audiences with titles such as “Cooking in Concert” and “Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home.”
While he was more than 20 years her junior, the duo made a powerhouse match, the culinary equivalent of Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev. They had a magical kitchen and on-camera chemistry, engaging in famously funny sparring matches about black or white pepper, kosher salt, even stealing ingredients from each other’s mise en place. He cooked the last dinner in her home, an intimate charity event for 12 guests.
So we jumped at a chance to reminisce with Pépin — and he interrupted a recipe he was preparing to post on social media to come to the phone.
Q: It’s great that all these chefs appear on the show. But you spent more time with her than any of them. Did it bring back a lot of memories?
A: I met Julia in 1960. So I knew her for half a century, basically. And when I met her, actually, we spoke French because she had just come back from France and her French was probably better than my English at that time. I had only been here like six months. So we became friends.
She always said that we started cooking together — which, I mean, we have 22 years difference between us — but she meant that we cooked in a bit of the same style. I was working in Paris in the ’50s, she came there at the end of the ’50s, so we were kind of trained in the same types of things, you know? We had a good time together. I mean we did argue a lot, but we had a good time.
Q: What did you guys talk about when you were off camera?
A: Recipes, the food world, what was going on with different chefs … all of those things.
Q: So she was fun to be with?
A: Oh yeah, yeah, she was fun. You know, I like to drink. She liked to drink. So we did drink. And she loved to work for PBS and I did, too. She didn’t need to kowtow to endorse any products — which she never did. I never did either, but sometimes it went too far. I remember when we were shooting the series, one of the sponsors was Kendall-Jackson. I knew Jess Jackson, I became friends with him, he sponsored all my shows. And he was very generous. They probably had over 50 or 60 wines. And he told me, you can use any other wines you want, French, Italian it’s fine with me. So, we did the show and at the end of it I remember I told Julia, “OK, we have a piece of beef, or some type of meat, what would you like to drink with that? Do you want a merlot?” She said, “I want beer.”
Q: What do you miss about her as a friend?
A: Julia was Julia. People always ask me how was she off camera and she was exactly the same off camera or on camera. She was never pretending. I would cut a piece of meat and she’d say, “What do you call that piece of meat again?” Or we would go on the road and people might ask a question about galangal (Thai ginger) or something like that. And she would say, “I have absolutely no idea what that is.” She had no problem saying if she didn’t know something. I think, it came through that she was very genuine.
Q: On this series we get to watch parts of the old shows. What do you remember about how she cooked?
A: We got many letters saying that she was much more French than I was. … I remember one time we cooked spinach and I put spinach in the skillet that I had just washed so it was a little wet and she said, “No, no, no! You have to boil the spinach in water and you refresh it under cold water. Then you press on it and then we have spinach ready to cook.” I said, “I remember doing that in Paris in the ’50s but now we do it this way.” So we had a big argument. But like I said, Julia was often more French than I was.
Q: That’s so funny. And the arguments were fun. Do you think they made for good TV?
A: Yes! People always thought that things were planned but the menus and recipes were not planned at all. In fact when we finished the show, it took two years to put it on the air because we had no recipes.
Q: Really?
A: We cooked the way that you cook at home with your spouse, with a friend, and all in a very natural way. I happened to put scallions in that dish. Why? Because they happened to be on the table.
Q: What did she teach you about being on TV?
A: She would say, “This is television. So you have to lighten up and smile.” That being said, at the end of the show she would be the first one to say, “OK, what did we teach today?” The teaching part was always very important to her.
Q. There’s an artistic part to television, too. It’s very visual. And you’re a painter. Did presenting food for the camera come easily to you?
A: It’s interesting that you say that because visually I like food to look good, but I was never very interested in that part of nouvelle cuisine — and neither was Julia — with arranging the tiny, newborn vegetables on the plate. Julia said, “People have touched that thing too much. I don’t want to eat it.” We don’t have to rearrange everything until it gets cold. I was never for that. I think that food, if you put it naturally on a plate, it looks good if it’s done fresh.
Q: You say on the onion soup episode of this series that TV was a great vehicle. Do you think that you and Julia were some of the first chefs to show the world that it was a great way to teach cooking?
A: I don’t know. I think it was a challenge at the time when Julia and I cooked, because prior to that I remember seeing a show from James Beard. And it was crazy because at that time you were not supposed to look at the camera, you were not supposed to know that the camera was there, it was just a voyeur. So James Beard is in the kitchen and you have one minute when nothing is happening. No one is talking. …It was really boring because you are not conversing with the camera. When I started doing television with Julia we thought of it exactly the opposite; we discussed with the camera, like a friend, to explain what we were doing.
Q: So did you think of it like you were just talking to a friend?
A: Yeah. She would ask me, “What are you doing?” So I talked to her. In a sense she was the camera for me or I spoke directly to the camera, it was one or the other. Yes, we thought about that.
Q. You’re one of the world’s most accomplished chefs. I can’t let you go without asking for your insights during this coronavirus lockdown when we’re all cooking like mad. What should we be doing?
A: Plant your own garden, get close to nature. A couple of days ago, I did a video. I went outside to pick dandelions. It’s kind of a rite of the spring for me. So do that at home. Maybe people who are confined at home used to cook once a week or once a month. Now they have to cook every day. Maybe that will put people closer together. Maybe the family will learn again to cook together, to sit down together, to eat and to talk together without having to talk to your iPhone all the time. So that may be a good thing coming out of it actually.
Q: What do you think Julia would have to say to chefs during this crisis?
A: She would have given advice. She would have tried to do some shows. She would have tried to answer any questions. She would have tried to sponsor as many restaurants as she could. She would have done anything to help.
‘Dishing with Julia Child’
When: Premieres April 3 at 10 p.m. Friday on KQED. Find details on screening dates and streaming options at https://video.kqed.org/show/dishing-julia/.
Episodes
April 3: “The Whole Fish Story” and “The Good Loaf”
April 10: “Your Own French Onion Soup” and “Boeuf Bourguignon”
