To know France is to taste its food, to create a dish from scratch, and to savor every bite in the company of friends. For Julia Child, France was a stranger at first in this respect but the country’s cuisine became her great love and life’s work. In Child’s, My Life in France, the famous chef recounts her move to Paris where she learned how to cook and eventually write one of the most successful cookbooks in American history.
You may be familiar with Julia’s story if you have seen the major motion picture Julie & Julia, the true story of one Julie Powell, a thirty-something New Yorker who made it her mission to cook every single recipe from Child’s cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days. Throughout the film, flashbacks to Julia’s life in Paris were interspersed with Powell’s clumsy attempts in the kitchen but it was this movie that made me want to read the full story on just how Child came to be the chef that she was.
Child begins her story with her move to Paris with her new husband Paul and from her first bite in a restaurant on her very first day in Paris she was hooked. Julia’s enthusiasm for food seeps through every page of her autobiography as she describes her determination during her first classes at the Cordon Bleu and at the stove in her own home in the late evenings. You feel her passion for fresh baguettes and fish as she makes her routine strolls through the street markets.
More than anything, Child is absolutely blissful at taking her time and preparing a delicious meal that she can share with good friends and family and it is this aspect of the French life that she tried so much to instill in American homes through her famous cookbook. Her goal was to make French cooking accessible and not intimidating. If you’re like me, once you finish reading this book you will want to get into the kitchen and start cooking up a storm or maybe just move to Paris.
<a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400043468?ie=UTF8&tag=wanderbooklu-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1400043468″>Available on Amazon</a><img src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wanderbooklu-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1400043468″ width=”1″ height=”1″ border=”0″ alt=”” style=”border:none !important; margin:0px !important;” />
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