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08/27/2012 12:00 AMJulia Child, American food icon and master of French cooking who died in 2004, would have turned 100 on Aug. 15. Her centenary is being celebrated widely this month in the media and in a half dozen new books, including Bob Spitz's comprehensive biography Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child.
Even Smithsonian's National Museum of American History is paying tribute to Child by giving permanent new exhibition space to the famous turquoise kitchen from her Cambridge, Massachusetts, home.
Among the people who were closest to Child is Madison's Jacques Pépin. The French chef's rise to fame coincides with Child's. The two cooked together on TV for more than a decade and much longer as friends, in each other's kitchens.
Despite the occasional embarrassment and frustration during their long friendship, Pépin's affection and admiration for Child is palpable, particularly now, at the 100th anniversary of her birth, as he reminisces about the woman who did so much to revolutionize home cooking in America.
Pépin met Child in 1960 while cooking in the Manhattan apartment of food editor Helen McCully. McCully asked Pépin to look at a transcript of a cookbook that Child, who lived right around the corner, had given her.
"The author is Californian, and she's a very big woman with a terrible voice. She will come here and you'll cook for her," Pépin recalls McCully telling him.
And the rest is history.
"She had just come from France-which was why we spoke French-her French was better than my English," Pépin says. "She had never written for a magazine or newspaper. She hadn't done TV yet. She was entirely unknown."
In 1976 Pépin first published his cookbook, La Technique, which he says, "Child loved." In the '80s, he started teaching at Boston University and whenever he was in town, he and Child would meet for lunch or dinner.
Child also began teaching at B.U. and the two would do an occasional cooking demonstration together, one of which, in 1980, became a PBS special called Cooking in Concert, taped in front of 400 people in Boston. They did another demonstration a few years later that was filmed at Child's home in Cambridge and it launched their widely aired and viewed PBS series, Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home.
When asked to describe their relationship, Pépin points out that it went much deeper than the media focus on their sparring about recipes on the TV show.
"She was a good friend," he says. "We knew each other for 40 years. It's not like we only cooked on television. We cooked many times at each other's houses. We did many classes together at B.U. We had a great time. We were very comfortable cooking together. In some ways, she was more French than I was."
For example, he says, he would prepare the completely American version of the quintessential American food-the hamburger-and Child would be the one to add a French twist.
"We agreed on all the essential things: quality of ingredients, taste, presentation." Pépin says.
He says that Child disliked nouvelle cuisine, which she described as "mortician food."
"It's touched too much. I don't feel like eating it," he recalls her saying.
Pépin says they learned from each other along the way.
"I learned to relax more on television," he says. "Julia always said I tried to do too much. People should learn something, but you can't cram too much into [one show]. And she learned some classic techniques from me."
Pépin's favorite stories about Child reflect how she was always her own person and didn't care about political correctness.
Two of these recollections involved major sponsors of their TV series.
Jess Jackson, owner of Kendall-Jackson Vineyards, and his wife, Barbara Banke, came to see one of the TV shows and asked Pépin and Child beforehand what wine they were going to serve (they had hundreds of bottles of Kendall-Jackson wine in the studio). At the end of the show, while still on air, Child stated, "I want beer."
Pépin asked her, "What do you mean? We don't have beer."
Child had a beer under the table, which she then produced.
Needless to say, it was a tad awkward, Pépin notes, at dinner after the show with Jackson and Banke, who were picking up the tab.
Another incident occurred with Land O'Lakes Butter.
"It's not that she didn't use butter; she used pound upon pound of butter," Pépin says.
They were taping a show when Child decided she wanted to make a sweet dough in the food processor for a dessert instead of the chicken potpie crust they had agreed upon earlier.
Pépin says when he asked her how much butter she wanted to use, she replied that she wanted to use Crisco, which she had never used in any recipe before.
Like the beer, when Pépin informed her they didn't have Crisco, she produced a can she had hidden under the counter.
The president of Land O'Lakes was in the audience with six sales reps.
They ended up compromising, using half Crisco and half butter and producing a perfect dough, Pépin admits.
Bob Spitz, author of the new biography Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child (A.A. Knopf), will give a talk and booksigning on Oct. 1 at 6 p.m. at The Oyster Club, 13 Water Street, Mystic. Includes dinner and book supplied by Bank Square Books. Cost TBD. For reservations and more information, call the bookstore at 860-536-3795.