John F. Kennedy Library Foundation; WGBH Forum Network; Remembering Julia Child; 4079-2007_11_20.avi

Good evening. I'm Tom Platinum, Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. On behalf of John Shaddick, CEO of the Kennedy Library Foundation and all of my library colleagues, I thank all of you for coming and acknowledge the sponsors of the Kennedy Library forms, including Lead Sponsor Bank of America, Boston Capital, the Lowell Institute, the Corquan-Genets and Companies, and our media sponsors, the Boston Globe, WBUR and NECM. This forum is offered in conjunction with one of our special exhibits on display in our museum, Jacqueline Kennedy entertains the art of the White House dinner. One of the many changes Jacqueline Kennedy made upon becoming first lady at age 31 was to replace the then White House chef, a former Navy cook who had endeared himself to Mamie Eisenhower not through his cooking, but for his flair in decorating elaborate cakes which she delighted in presenting to charity bazaars. Mrs. Kennedy turned instead to René Verdone, a French-born American five-star chef in the Kennedy White House, the art of entertaining definitely included fine cuisine.

Our special guest this evening Judith Jones knows something about that topic, a legendary senior editor and vice president at Alfred E. Kanoff. Ms. Jones has held shape modern cookbook publishing, bringing towering figures such as Julia Child, Edna Lewis, and Marion Cunningham into print. Though that is only a portion of her story, as a very young editor in Paris, she was responsible for double day first publishing the Diary of Anne Frank in the United States, and later went on to edit a number of distinguished authors, including Anne Tyler, John Hersey, and John Updike. Of Mr. Updike, she notes that while his early books were racy for their times endearing in print, Mr. Updike himself eats very plain. In her new memoir, The 10th Muse, My Life and In Food, on sale in our bookstore and they'll be assigning directly after this conversation. Ms. Jones shares her fascinating life story with special emphasis on her own love

of cooking. It was not destined to be so, raised in part under pressure in Ara New England fair, she describes meals with her grandmother being served on a regular weekly schedule. Wednesday night was macaroni and valvita, and Friday the dreaded boiled salt cod and potatoes. Moreover, she was trained by her parents not to talk about food at the table. It was considered crude to do so, she writes, like talking about sex. But times change, and she opens her book, recounting her 90-year-old mother announcing she had an important question and wanted an honest answer. Tell me, Judith, do you really like garlic? Her mother looked crestfallen, Ms. Jones, right when she answered yes, for to her garlic represented everything alien and vulgar. Her mother simply could not understand the wayward path her younger daughter had taken. I moderated this evening as Cheryl Julian, food editor for the Boston Globe and co-author of The Way We Cook. After studying at the

Cordon Bleu and London and Paris, Ms. Julian had dreams of becoming a pastry chef and owning her own shop. Friends here in Cambridge gave her the opportunity to run the legal sweet shop for two weeks. It was the perfect cure she's been writing about food ever since. It is fitting that we meet during this week when sharing a special meal connects us annually with family and friends. Let me conclude with two images from the 10th Mews, Mews, both involving Evan Jones, Judith's late husband, fellow editor, and co-author of three books on cooking. The first is on the eve before Ms. Jones was due to undergo major surgery. Evan Jones himself, recovering from a recent illness arrived in her hospital room with a candlelit feast, including pate, cheese, baguette, and wine. When the rather conservative doctor walked by, he did a double take and then smiled, offering his nod of approval. And it was Evan who posted an Alfred North whitehead quote on the refrigerator door. Cooking is one of those arts which most requires to be done by persons of

religious nature. For the end of her touching memoir, Ms. Jones notes that the word religion springs from the root, relegar, meaning to bind, to tie fast, to reconnect. And concludes, isn't that what we do when we cook? We connect again to the earth, the source of our food, and we bind to one another in the sharing of it, the breaking of bread together, the celebrating of life. Please join me in welcoming Judith Jones and Cheryl Julian, a bon appetit, and happy thanksgiving to all. Judith, let's start in 1961. You and Julia Child have been corresponding for several months about mastering the art of French cooking. She and her husband Paul had just moved to the big house on Irving Street in Cambridge. You were addressing one another as Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Child. She walked into your office at Alfred Knapp. What did you picture and what was she

like? Well, we had gotten to know each other quite well through these letters instead, in spite of the fact that we still addressed each other formally. But I wasn't fully prepared for the impact of this woman. Not only was she about six, two, and had this wonderful voice, but she just said whatever popped into her head. And Paul, her husband, was with her, and I felt more nervous about him because my office is usually quite messy. And there was something a precision about him. You could see that he was very much her enabler, and now men need to say things like, submit it to the test, Julie. So I was felt afterwards when he came out, get several people to help me meet and not the office. So he would think I was a little more efficient, perhaps. But Julia was just immediately so likable and unique. And the fact that this

big Smith College girl with a tweed skirt and a sort of tight perm and this big fruity voice had written about French food. This fascinated me. And of course, I fell in love with the manuscript. I had fallen in love with it. And I'll bet you do a better Julia child than anyone else who ever knew her because you were so close. Well, people have their own versions. But in the 10th muse, you write that at the time you were a French editor at Canop, what authors were you working on? Well, Alfred Canop, the house of Canop was very much a mom and pop little or almost like a hobby rather than a business in those days. And Blant was very much a full partner. And she was extremely interested in bringing books particularly from France right after the war.

So she was the first to publish Tammu and Sartre and people like that. So I worked with the translations, which was a lot of very challenging, you know. Describe the American food scene at the time. Well, when I got back from a three-week vacation in France, which turned into three-and-a-half years there, and I was just full of my love of French food and evident I loved to cook together and go to the markets. And we came back here and it was like a wasteland. You'd go to the supermarket. You couldn't even find a leak. They never heard of a leak or a shallot or fresh herbs even parsley. You couldn't get fresh mushrooms. And almost the winter you had iceberg lettuce and those, you know, overgrown turnips and things like that boiled to death. So that was an immediate challenge. How was I going to cook all these delicious French things when you couldn't get

in your cocotte that you brought back? Yes, I brought back what they call a cocotte, which was, this is a cast iron pot. Now look who's there. It's all beautifully enameled, but I bought it at the flea market. And I carried it home because I just had to have that connection with French cooking. Mastering had been refused twice by the Boston publisher Houghton Mifflin. When it landed on your desk at Canop, it was obviously a massive manuscript unlike any other cookbook. What made you think that Americans who were delighted with frozen food and quick meals of the time would go for it? Well, the gentleman of Houghton Mifflin called to his child in after they read the second version, the supposed revision, shortened form. And they said to her Mrs. Child, no American woman is going to want to know that much about French cooking. Well, it just so happened, but I did. And I felt, if I feel this way, there must be others out there. I also had this sense

that the time was right. In fact, Julia often said to me, Judas, you and I were born at the right time. And we were. What was happening was that for the first time, a secretary on a small salary could go to Paris on an economy flight and sit down and have a real French meal and a beach stroll. The GIs were coming back, had come back from Asia and Europe. And their taste buds were awakened. They were ready for something more. And I think that was a profound factor. And also the fact that the Kennedys, when they were in the White House, they changed the way a dinner should be given. And had a French chef, René Vedon, delicious French meals that were cooked with finesse. And all that was just in the atmosphere at that time. And so I don't know that you follow,

you follow your bliss, your hunch in publishing. At least it was easier when in those days we're more of a big business now. We have to look at profit and loss. But in those days, you could just say, if I believe in it, why don't other people? So can you tell us the story of calling Craig Claiborne at the New York Times to ask him to review Julia's new book? Yes, I was very nervous. I called people like James Beard, who I'd never known. And Craig Claiborne was then the editor of the New York Times, I called him up. And he said, and is I still quite southern-boys, well let's have lunch together and talk about it. So we sat down to lunch and being the good reporter that he was, he was through lunch, he was finding out about me. And I told him how my husband and I had a little outdoor grill. We had a tiny little pet house apartment on E663. And we would grill outside.

And people would hang out the windows and sometimes wave to us and say, good luck. And you could see there were all envy. Well, Craig loved the story. And he said, would you let me write a story about you and Evan cooking together? Have me up for a meal. I'll bring up a photographer. Oh, I promise I'll take a look at that. What is it, mastering an outdoor furniture cooking? So he did. And he wrote a wonderful story. It was a broiling hot summer day and we had to fire up the grill and we made it all. I think there was a roast lamb and we'd recently been in whales and I did a little dish of cockles and mussels. So Craig wrote a pretty nice story. He wrote two wonderful stories. First he wrote about you. And then. And then about a month later when mastering was launched. He really, as the French would say, was bull they say, really turned around. And he ended up saying this book will become a classic. So that brings us to the subject

of your great good luck. What does it take to turn luck into many, many successes, one after another? Well, I think that I mean, as I looked back on my life, I was sort of struck by the fact that there were so many coincidences, so many pieces of luck. But if you don't rock down them, nothing happens. And for instance, the reason I stayed in Paris three and a half years was when I was supposed to go home. I was sitting in the twill of regardons and I was looking up at the beautiful light of Paris and the smells of cooking in the evening and just thinking, I cannot leave this place. And I hooked my purse over the bench I was sitting on and I got out and put my book onto my arm which sort of feels like a person I walked about a block and I realized I'd left it

behind. Freud would not have called us an accident. I went back and sure enough it was gone. My passport was gone, my ticket home, my travels checks. In other words, little Judy Bailey had no identity. And I could have sort of boo-hooed and told my parents to send me a ticket. I thought, you know, this is an act of fate. Listen to it. Follow it. And I did. Time to make lemonade. Yes. There was another moment like that in Julia's life when she did her first TV segment in Boston to promote mastering. And the station received 27 letters. I read that that was the most male they had ever received. Yes. Can you describe that day and what happened? Well, it was, as I remember, it was a sort of literary show, a couple of gentlemen talking about the books they've read.

And they asked Julia to come on and she said, well, if I'm in Vienna, television, I'd better bring along an omelette pan. And in the station? Yes. The station was WGBH. The station was WGBH, yes. And so she wrote an omelette pan and a little Bunsen burner or something like that and a dozen eggs. And pretty soon she was showing the men how to make the perfect flint omelette, flipping it into the plate. And the station got all these letters saying, get that woman back on television. And then you write about her going on the today show. And she had no television, so she had no idea what it was. She had no idea what the impact was. No, no. It was made her omelettes all over again. Yes. When you cooked with Julia in her Cambridge kitchen, was it intimidating? I went to dinner there. And when I went, she always handed me a whisk and a difficult task.

I thought it was sort of a test of some sort. Is that what would happen? I never felt it was a test because she sort of treated me as kind of devil's advocate. She would sometimes test to see if I understood her directions for making pastry. And she set me up at this big marble table. She had gave me this huge, heavy rolling pin. And I had to smear the ice cold butter into the flower dough. And I just did it to show her how difficult it was and how much she had to explain. I mean, it was a more of a partnership, not sense. But we would work sometimes eight, ten hours a day stopping and having only corned beef hash blunch. Several times. But even the corned beef hash, she told me how to put a little beef broth in so that it cooked down and caramelized. And you

got that noise browning. Anyway, around 10 o'clock, she'd say to Paul, Lompisky, why don't you make the drinks and set the table and drink it as well? 10 p.m. Yes, 10 p.m. So she'd say to me, you just want to make a nice little potato dish. So I did my version of potato, potato's Anna, which was a very loose version. She'd look over my shoulder a little bit. You know, what are you doing yet? But when she ate them, she said, this is delicious. And she made the main course and we poured the wine and we fell in about it about midnight. And the next morning at 6 o'clock, I'd hear thumb, thumb, thumb. Paul and Julia doing their morning exercises. You went on to publish many more unknown authors. One was concert pianist Michael Field in a volume on leftovers. I wonder if your colleagues

at Knopf thought that you'd gone off the deep end. Well, culinary classics and improvisations. And improvisations. Because leftovers was such a dirty word. And of course, with Michael Field, he was such a showman that his leftovers took more time than the original dish. That was so fancy. So it didn't seem as though I were stewing to leftovers. Okay. You were looking around for another gifted cook, you write. How did you meet Middle Eastern expert Claudia Rodin? Well, that was a nice coincidence, too, because Evan's brother, who was a foreign correspondent, was posted in Jerusalem. And he wrote us a note and said, we've been hearing about this wonderful cookbook. Everybody's been cooking from it. I'll bring you a copy when I next come. And it was Claudia Rodin's book of Middle Eastern food. And it was really a revelation. It was our first

introduction to the Middle Eastern food. And I think one of, I discovered something through her and later through Mother Joffrey and several others of that. Very often, people who had been really abruptly torn from their childhood roots were very wonderful writing about cooking and remembering it and recreating it and learning it because they didn't learn to later in life. And so they were very good to you and me in our kitchen because they inspired us and also enabled us because they recounted their own experiences learning. And I found that that kind of writer was really better than the professional. They brought something very special to the writing of these books. And then came Marcella. Marcella has on. Yes. I interviewed her twice at

Restaurants in Boston. And the second interview, the owner himself had to start waiting on us because her demands were so outrageous. What was your experience? Well, I don't like to tell tales out of school, but I did bring it up in the book because it was just an example of someone I worked with that couldn't allow the collaboration because she couldn't, one she had no respect for Americans were all idiots. And two, she couldn't really take constructive criticism. So I remember one day we were working up in her apartment and I said, you know, I made this recipe and there were pools of fat around the pasta. And I think that maybe for Americans, it was just the beginning of the fear of fat mania too. I said, I think for Americans maybe butter and olive oil, you could pull back

a little bit and it tasted a little bit better. And she turned to Victor, her husband, she said, brought to you, she said, I always said, or so, made a point of not learning English or something Victor could intervene. So I just quietly got up and put my coat on. But they pulled you back. They did hold me back. Not for long. No, not for long. So let's go back to France in the late 1940s. You're in your 20s. In Paris you're working for a publisher and double day, I believe. Yes. And you're told to send a rejection letter for the manuscript of Anne Frank's diary. Well, that's a little off. It's okay. So I was told to take care of a whole pile of projections that Frank Price, who was my boss, that he'd read them and there was nothing we wanted there. And among these manuscripts was an advanced copy of a book in French. And on the cover was Anne Frank's face. And I thought, you know, it just drew me in.

So I sort of curled up on the south and started reading it. And I didn't stop all afternoon. It got dark. And when my boss came home, he said, what are you doing here? And I said, we've got a sentence in New York. They have to publish it. And he said, what? That book by that kid. But you know, that's publishing. You'll find hundreds of stories like that. But people, they're just getting rid of things too fast and they don't look beyond. Well, I think you have proven that you have a knack. It was around the same time you met Evan Jones and began a lifetime in the kitchen with him. It sounds like your dinner table was a coveted place to be. Tell me what a typical evening would be like at a dinner party at your house at the time. When we were in Paris or back in New York. Yeah. Well, I so much wanted to reproduce,

but it's just an ordinary French meal. And we'd go to some lengths sometimes. I mean, I tell the story about how we had this wonderful sausage. It was actually our first dinner together. And it was, we asked, it was called Buddha Blanc. We asked what was special about it. And they said, we only have it at Christmas time. It is made with beautiful chicken and veal and truffles and cream and, you know, the whole recitation. And we said, well, we'll order it. Well, it was so wonderful, unlike anything I'd ever tasted. And when we came back, we couldn't find Buddha Blanc. So we got a sausage stuff for it. And fortunately, I had published Jen Gricheson's The Art of Short Country. Sure enough, there was a recipe. And for years, we made Buddha Blanc. So for the dinner, I wouldn't say we'd have that every time, but I might have made a nice little path today. And I might have something like, I'm rare occasions I might have made

something like a ball of tonne with different meats. But more likely, something like a veal marango or a booginou or a wonderful salad. And oh, it's cheese. Cheese with the salad or at the end of the meal. And of the main course. And some little pastry maybe. Now, at the time in America's, I remember it, there were many people who were taking a day to make a dinner party and cook out of mastering. And did you hear about these people and sort of a cult across the country? It was kind of a cult. And it happened among our friends. I mean, people who've never cooked a meal before. And suddenly having six people to dinner for us, recourse evening. And we'd begin to think, one of what Julia's child recipe we're going to get

tonight. And it did happen across the country. I was once in an elevator in the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, a big elevator with Julia. And Julia said a few words. Meable, her voice was unmistakable. And a man back in the back of the elevator said, that's Julia's child. Hey, Julia, what are we having for dinner tonight? It was just magical. One year, a particularly bad one in which you and Evan were both ill, you decided to rent a house in the Northeast Kingdom in Vermont for six weeks. You write. And the place that you bought, which I went had the privilege of going to last summer is very remote. You have Vermont roots. I gather the houses near where you went as a child. Not too far. I mean, they'd come up from

Montpelieu, which is about 35 miles, and sometimes camp at the lake over in Greensboro. My husband, my father's family, we have pictures of them in the middle of camps and outdoor cooking. You travel from New York and in the car and you fill that wonderful story about where you sat in the car and that you were sitting on the, not the trundle seat, but the, oh yes, yes, the, the rumble seat. The rumble seat. Sorry, yes. My family had a little dog call that we called the little brown bone and three people sat in the front seat. My sister always got the place in front and I sat back in the rumble seat with our cook Edie and it took two days and finally when we got up north of Rotland over Menden Mountain. Something over. Yeah. Something over the road. Yep. It would always rain. We'd pull the ponchos over this and finally arrive at my grandmother's

house in Montpelieu and it was, it was just heaven to get there. Did the house in Vermont remind you of those times and the place? No, because I think it's a little more remote and rustic. But it always reminded Evan of Wales. He was a great welchrovenous, as most welchmen are and I think we just, we just felt, we were renting it that summer and we just felt we have to have this house unfortunately the man who had built it was selling it and it opened up a whole new aspect of food for both of us. I mean, we had a garden and you had to put up with the vicissitudes of a very short growing season. We had a wonderful friend named Adele Dawson who was a naturalist and she walked the land and the woods with us and showed us all the wild things that you could pick and

we built a pond and we put trout in it. I'm afraid that the the great blue heron got word of the trout before we got many for dinner but anyway we learned and more recently I've known this wonderful mushroom woman, Nova Kim who it just knows the forests and can lead you to mushrooms like a homing pigeon and it's extraordinary and this greatly broadened my feeling about food and being in touch with the sources. I just, this is a passage I'd just love to read from Wendell Barry because it sums up what it feels so strongly. As Wendell Barry wrote in the unsettling America of America, if you take away from food the wholeness of growing it or take away the joy and conviviality of preparing it in your own home then I believe you were talking about

a whole new definition of the human being. That's so lovely and I think two more recently books like Fast Food Nation and the omnivores dilemma have awakened me to the fact that we have been very irresponsible about not attending more to the sources of our food and have let the food industry really change the way we raise beef to the table, the way we milk our cows to death, raise poultry and it is very, very shocking and I think this led me to suggest to my cousin who's up on the same mountain side who is a farmer that we raise a few cattle for the market, the girls. The girls. So we bought six pregnant angus girls and had our first little six calves the next

spring and I'll have to tell you the first one was born in early March and it was 37 degrees below that night and my cousin John went out to bring the extra hay and he found this little calf on the ground almost frozen so he and his wife brought it back to the house and they fired up the wood stove and they got out the hair dryer they got out some of the sun their sons jackets and pretty soon this little creature was daughtering to his feet and saying I'm hungry I want my mother's milk so they had to take him back out at 37 below and he found his mother's milk and how does his fill and then his mother started licking him all over which was the worst thing she could do because he was freezing again so back into the car he went and they built a little pen and he spent the first couple of days of his life in the Rammels' farmhouse kitchen so when he goes to market

I will at least feel that he's been brought up with tender loving care and it makes a huge difference you're a long way from the upper east side yes and now tell us the beaver story your famous beaver story all right that pond we built one summer a beaver decided that this was a nice place to build his dams and tear down trees and in other words just ruined the whole their whole pond within one summer and he even came we the first we tried to ignore it but when he was back the summer second summer and had really worked all around the pond so that all the trees were down and pulled in this to try to so that he was going to build his little pavilion for his wife and little beavers and he was stopping up the dam which was about to overflow and flood the county road so we realized he had to go and a couple of farmers said well

we'll sit out there and kill him but who's going to do it and finally my son and law offered what had gone in my name and he sat down dawn and dusk for about three days at the end of the three days one morning quite early I heard four shops fired and the next thing I knew the beaver was being dragged up the driveway and I looked out at it with its fur sort of glistening in the early morning sun and I just felt something that I can only describe as out of this thing and I said we have to honor this creature we have to we'll have to eat this liver for breakfast so we had this liver for breakfast and it was delicious just warm and lovely and then we had his haunch but dinner nicely braised red wine and then there is I had done a cookbook with Angus Cameron it was a great hunting fishing man he was a fellow editor

cannot and in that book was a recipe for fried beaver tail my husband had contributed the recipe I don't think he'd ever made it but and there was great controversy some hunters thought it was just a gel nobody would do it another thought it was one of the great delights so it's sort of to defend Evans honor he had done a few years before I said I've got to make that fried beaver tail well if you've ever seen a beaver's tail it is pure hard rubber so you scrape and scrape and scrape all that leather off and inside is something that looks really like Mauro and the rest we said to take that out poach in a little acidic water and dry it drain it and then dip it in a big and bread crumbs and fry it well I thought it was absolutely delicious to me it uh the word

that the French have is uncle which means anxious in English and isn't a very attractive word you think of you rye heap in dickens who was the anxious man but uh it that's what it tastes is like that that melting almost buttery pure fat and uh I loved it but I must say that my son-in-law and my deaf daughters I think maybe somewhere in this audience said haven't we had enough of that beaver and the problem went away and the problem went away good uh so I gather that you invite lots of writers up to standard mountain and uh in Lidia Bastionic came with an entourage yes and uh what what was that that scene for us well the Lidia the last minute called and said uh do you mind if I bring my mother

sitting out at all and uh and then she said my mother's boyfriend I said not at all so we gave them the guest house and they were wonderful it was like having the whole family back and we were cooking finishing recipes and doing some photography and uh Giovanni who was the mother's boyfriend about 90 years old sat there feeling the garlic for us as fast as we as we used it and believe me we used it fast and her mother Aminia washed the pots and pans and then finally at the end of an exhausting day we would set the table outside as the late sun went down and eat the dishes and our many of you would tell us these wonderful stories about back in their homeland and how they had had to leave and came to America and how wonderful the French the American immigration people were to them and it was just one of those magic moments and and her food is extraordinary

her food is the best you must have to do a lot of swimming you have to you have to tell about when you swim and what what temperature it is up there well I've never taken the temperature I've never taken the temperature because I might be afraid but I do swim starting about the end of July and I try to make it stretch to Labor Day if we haven't out of frost and it is a very icy pond but you can't use to it it's a great feeling so you're not one of those people who goes up and dips her toe in and says I can't do it no I dip my toe in and I get in very slowly so you have all these cookbook successes and and you still keep a handful of fiction writers and poets so who's on your roster today well I have a new book by John Uptight coming next fall we've just putting through which is called the widows of Eastwick he is he's revisiting those

witches I have a wonderful book by Ann Mendelsson on which we're calling the Milky Way on the whole subject of milk and how different parts of the world different climates who who drinks the sourd milk only the yogurts and all the the cultured melts and what we have done to milk in America and that's an appalling story too it's a wonderful book and she gets you to do little experiments with her as you go along see taste butter for instance for the first time by just putting on near tongue and thinking about it meditating and letting that butter speak to you and then do the same thing when it's warm the same thing when it's browned it's it's it's it's one of one of one of a kind book and and and what's it like to edit a famous author they each one is different mm-hmm a lot of people have asked why I didn't write more about publishing or more about

the authors I'd worked with and I feel really that the relationship between an editor and a creative writer who is can be a very private person that it's sort of a sacred trust and you know you don't tell tales about it you know I told John up dyke and he said to me it's it's it's sacred mm-hmm it's very different with cooking because cooking is much more of an outgoing thing and I work with people who are primarily cooks and I try to help them find their voice and they have taught me so much that in this what was really a journey in food that I experienced they are very much a part of it so I don't feel I'm betraying something to write about them mm-hmm mm-hmm who who are the cookbook authors who are also really lucid writers well I think modern job through Rod's beautifully mm-hmm I think Chloe Rod's Chloe Rod's beautifully I think

that as far as making you understand food Julia was the best and she used wonderful this rule words not in a bowl combined the first mixture with the second mixture which is how recipes are written today but plop it into a bowl slap it around massage it uh toss it uh that's what you want to know and then you want to know what's happening what to expect what happens if it suddenly starts craddling on you uh and she's right there with you there's nobody like her so what what is happening today I I know that there is a side to cooking uh especially on television that people who are serious cooks don't admire um but then again uh Litty Abustionic is on television mm-hmm and um and other good cooks so what what's going on in America a little bit

of everything or a little bit of everything and I do think that the food network you know they advertise themselves now as uh we're more than about food well who wants to be more than about food food is a fascinating subject so they think they have to entertain and I have a feeling we're going to get sick a bit the pendulum is going to swing again and as you say it's not all bad Litty's shows are wonderful and so instructive and and many you feel warm about food and wanting to do it but uh I think we're sort of in a bad patch now maybe too many cookbooks were published and there's a glut and people weren't tough enough about does this book really make a contribution do we need a book about how to use up zucchini I mean use a little imagination well if we if we swung the other way would it be people uh cooking again inviting people in yes I'd love to

see more emphasis on home cooking uh more strategies for for working with ingredients how to keep them how to use foods again so that home cooking to me is a rhythm through the week and it's just a world apart from what goes on in a professional kitchen and I think that young people are a little star for that I often have them say to me why can't cook from that book it's so expensive and you have you know three fresh herbs are cold for and you buy a dank packet a dollar ninety nine or something and a few drops of truffle oil which I think is a hoax anyway and uh it did that's not they're not thinking of the needs of the home cook who has a budget among other things in time constraints yeah uh two two of the extraordinary home cooks who you edited were

Mary and Cunningham and Edna Lewis yes sort of opposite ends of the spectrum I think of them as the two grown dorms of of cooking and uh both respecting simple ingredients and finding pleasure in cooking mindfully you know spending just stirring something nicely and listening to the sounds and uh I think that more voices like that we need Mary and Cunningham you found she she became the modern fanny farmer of course and you found her by accident didn't you or through James Beard or yes fan the the uh the fanny farmer and people the candy company had taken over the book and it had become what I call a collection of box top recipes and uh I think they knew it because sales were falling falling and particularly Frank Benson who was the president

of the company he talked to a number of publishers and they said well we'll do this and we'll do that and we'll just have some color pictures and things like that and he didn't buy it and I was asked to talk to him and I said the only way to salvage this book is to absolutely redo it from top to tell and create a new voice I mean fanny's gone but create a fanny farmer like voice but for the end of the 20th century and it was Jim Beard of course he always had the answer for everything and who suggested Mary and Cunningham and all I knew was some of this correspondence and his faith in her she was a California woman middle age came to cooking very late but he so believed in her she just said she has the taste of American cooking and he showed me some of her ladders and she came east and met the fanny farmer people and we were all sold and Edna Lewis

uh Edna Lewis came to me because she was doing a book she had a collaborator writing with her on the little restaurant that they had in New York what was it called in Harlem you know now it was on on in the West 40s tiny little restaurant she'd been asked to cook there she was a black woman from Virginia and her grandfather had started this little community they called free town there was a community of farmers and they raised of course their own food and shared the reaper and the artister and so on and uh but the book that they had done was really more the restaurant recipes and it was she they were with another publisher and I wasn't really much interested in one more little restaurant book but they did come to see me because the president of random house told them to because they weren't they had some questions

and Edna started talking I got her to talk because she I knew she had a story you couldn't look at her and not know she made her own sort of African dresses out of Batik material and she's very tall and she moved so beautifully in big dangling earrings and the way she laughed and so I got her talking about her past and free town and I said you know that's the story you should be writing that's the book I want so she said well we'll try and about a couple of weeks later a chapter came back and it was okay but it wasn't that voice and I said I was disappointed and I said Edna you've got to find a way of writing this yourself you don't need to a collaborator and fortunately that's her collaborator got up and said you're absolutely right and bowed out anyway to make a long story short Edna was working at the Natural History Museum and she came she had thirsty so she came in every Thursday afternoon and we

talked and I'd say don't do any go right home and write it just as you've told me and she did on long legal path and that's how we put the book together so talking makes the best writing well she came from that southern oral tradition too and she wasn't self-conscious but she wrote beautifully I mean she just needed a few comments and periods and I understand that you travel with your writers when I can and I particularly have since I'm done because we we always were on a trip and search of food which is such a wonderful way to travel because you get into people's homes and the markets and ask questions so I've been doing that with some of my writers like the assignments and you know you went to China or it also ran for East Yacht yeah and there was a lovely story about that because we went up north in Laos to the one propound we're staying in a little hotel in Nina assignments talk to them about maybe putting on some local dances or

some kind of little ceremony and they said oh I think the women of the village would love to do that and so they had this what they call the welcoming ceremony and a dozen women brought different little offerings of food and there was one woman who was really old and she walked she walked across the pavilion on her knees with a little offering and she headed straight for me and she said I want to give this to you and then she said I know I want to thank you someone so old coming so far to meet us and honor us and you're traveling to France with Joan Nathan yes yes I went to Alsace from her new book and I went to Israel with her which was a very moving experience you just you've just had the feeling that all sat down and ate together everything would be fine yes yes so today you are swimming in your frigid pond when you're in

Vermont no and doing yoga to stay fit and you're surrounded by your children and your step children and your nieces and your nephews and your devoted writers you told me recently that you consider this your old age and when you decide to stop working and you'll enter what you call your old old age what do you picture well I think I'm not going to do any of that before I have to and even in my old old age I hope I'm cooking right up until the end there's there was a wonderful Italian saying Octavola Nonson Betia something like that my Italian isn't very good it did the idiot told me this and it's it's at the table when never grows old and then Brielle Severance said while all the other pleasures may fade you can have the

pleasures of the table up to the end so that's what I believe in I'll drink to that yeah thank you okay so there are two microphones out if anyone has any questions due to this happy to answer them for you my wife and I were Julie Charles devotees of 40 years ago when I was those days and among other things she always used a stirring paddle a spoon a flat wooden paddle and she recommended getting him at a place called the bridge store which we found we lived in New York at the time and I got enough of them so that we're still using them they are excellent they are the only only way to stir the we've been back to the bridge store I wanted to get something

for like that for my my children and a last the bridge store is still there but it's not the same bridge store by a long shot they have of course a big website but neither on the website nor in the store do they have these paddles nor do they have nor do they shop people they even know what I'm talking about yeah I have searched for them up and down I haven't been to Paris looking for them is there any place I wouldn't mind ordering it from Paris where do I get such a thing that's a very good question do you know uh there's no more wouldn't have been they're not a Taylor in in Paris oh well you have to go to Paris I'm surprising you can't find them on a website but I try William Sonoma I mean it's that's gotten a little fancy but they might have some food wouldn't I know exactly what you mean with the plot yeah I'll be on the lookout for one

I presume you've been to New Orleans and I'm curious what you may have to say about the food culture of New Orleans and in particular Cajun and but especially Creole cooking and food culture and then secondly when you were introduced the introducer mentioned garlic and that prompts me to ask a question about garlic which is I can remember people saying if you're going on a date you want to ask your date if they're having garlic too before before you go ahead and have something with garlic and I mentioned this to a

prominent political figure who's actually came from a family had a restaurant and he got very indignant and said oh it's nothing it's nothing about that it's it's a garlic thing is a prejudice against immigrant immigrants immigrant food practices so I wonder if you could say a little about garlic and about that that sort of an anecdote well let's start with the garlic I think that the part of it is that prejudice against the immigrants people smelling of garlic I mean in front you wouldn't or in Italy or any country that uses garlic regularly wouldn't have it to ask whether your date had it I mean because they would have all had it but Jim Beard used to tell a wonderful story about an opera diva who was Italian and ate a great deal of garlic and her the leading man said I cannot stand singing with her anymore either the garlic goes or

she goes so the the director of the Metropolitan Opera called her in and said you have to give up garlic or no no longer sing with us so this woman just ate all the garlic she could over the weekend just because because this is her last gas and she went in early in the week and the director said fun you smell absolutely clean and then Jim would do would do this sort of sniff sniff up his own and he said if you eat enough then you're absolutely purified so there are no answers but I grieve to you about the snobby and the first question of was more about it was really about oh no oh no it's a lot of people feel I think that no orlands is a very special place for food and obviously in the United States and maybe it's probably because of a French influence

through the what's called Creole although nobody really knows quite what Creole means but I think perhaps it really was the most interesting place in America when my husband and our were doing research for his book on American food we went there a couple of times and so if anything else it was like Europe because everybody was talking about food and the markets and exchanging things but it was a very the French influence that Creole it was just a very wonderful mixture coming together of taste I think it's one of the really original cuisines don't you well because it has its roots in in the indigenous settlers and they weren't ashamed to hook that one and they so many of our ethnic cuisines got buried during that terrible period when we were also puritan but not New Orleans. Can you suggest anybody who writes well about that

food either New Orleans or Creole or even Cajun cooking offhand? I just think of it was a southern historian writer do you remember wrote about New Orleans? I'm sorry I'm trying to book proposal someone. Well thank you. When when you are traveling around America with Evan did you did you see I think a lot of people think that there is a cuisine in New England and there's a cuisine in California and then there's just one big nothing in between. Nishmash. One big can in between. Which of course isn't true. Apologize to all the Midwesterners. And because the Midwestern cooking is some of the best home cooking in the country but what did you see when you were when you were traveling?

Did you see these distinctions? Yes and the different ethnic pockets I mean some of the Scandinavian influences in in Minnesota are highly Germanic in Wisconsin and Iowa and I remember once we were in Butte-Montana and they had a game and fish celebration and the food was fabulous people bringing different dishes from but again and again we would hear talking to people we would hear the story of second-generation immigrant wanting to become American not wanting to identify with the ethnic foods of his parents and you know eating just fast and easy and on the run and but more American that way but I think we've overturned a lot of that because there is a real appreciation in us for all kinds of different ethnic strandings and the way we sort of embrace some of the new immigrants of the the that came in in the 80s when the new

immigration act passed. It I think there's no country like us where I mean in terms of that openness and trying everything so it's good and bad. If you had to recommend a cookbook to someone who had never ever cooked in his or her life and you absolutely nothing about food do you have a cookbook you would recommend? Mastering the Art of French Cookbook. I'm sure you why because there is no book that explains cooking and teaches you techniques and any art form you learn the basics and then you take off and pirouette on your own but if you don't learn the basics you're never particularly good and the French cuisine is really the the basis of Western good refined cooking you won't go wrong and it's you have somebody holding your hand the whole way.

I have a feeling that well I think the reality actually that an America is obsessed with fat-free living and it's my observation that if you eliminate fat you eliminate flavor so do you think with this craze for eliminating fat in milk and dairy products poultry almost everything we buy today is advertised as being fat-free and I personally like fat. Well I think it's crazy and I think it's dangerous because you eliminate one thing like that and then you compensate with others and I think taste is extremely important and as you say he's so tastes good without any fat. I think we went overboard in the 90s actually and I think we're beginning to swing back. I mean now butter and pure pork fat is considered much better for

you than these hydrogenated products or what junior would call that other spread. She wouldn't give it a name. Thank you. I think her books are wonderful. I think she opened up Italian regional cooking to us in a way that nobody else had done before. I still found her a little rinses on certain things but she's she's she's good cook. She's great cook. I think Lily about Stihanna just asked a couple of books of come close. Very close. She has an Italian family cookbook. She has a recipe for risotto and if she was making it she was talking

and I said I wish we could get those thoughts down and she created what I call a little meditation along the way and we did it in a different color so that impatient people can just skip it but if you read those those meditations the stirring is so enjoyable that it goes by in a flash no it's not time consuming it's it's creative and deeply satisfying and I think that's what she gets across and it's a very important message. Because we have pumped all these things into it the comments say for what we've taken out of this it's what you want to get back to is non homogenized pure milk and we've done that with so many products.

Can you comment on the slow foods movement? Do you want to comment on the slow foods movement? No. Do you know about it? Yes of course I do. I think that it's done some an enormous amount to awaken people again to it originated I believe in Italy didn't it? And the whole idea is to instead of it's an antidote to the fast food movement and fast food that's taking over Europe and getting people to concentrate once again on the rear way of cooking with the and the roots of the cooking and paying attention particularly to local products and it's it's it's a good movement that has been spreading and getting the word out so I think it's very valuable. It actually I think prompted the locomotive what's called the locomotive

movement which is which is eating eating locally. Which you you seem always to have done instinctively rather than as a fashion today and yet you know we can't go so far in that direction I mean in northern Vermont there's the growing season is very short and if we had to be local all year long it would be mighty limited. There's always a balance. Like the pilgrims pots of beans today. Speaking of Thanksgiving could you share with us what you're having for thanks giving dinner? Well I think I'd like to do a goose once both because I love goose and also you can put away those pots of good goose fat for the whole winter to cook wonderful things in

particularly potatoes onions and you can even make your own what they call confit you know cooking duck or goose in its own fat. So I think I'll do that and I squash dish. You know I've been so busy out on the road I never knew as an editor how hard writers work to once it's not enough to write a book you've got to get out there and sell it. So I really have been so busy the last few weeks that I haven't thought I haven't even bought my goose so I hope there's some still in the market. What are you going to have so? We are having the standard American menu for the tastes that don't like human curry chili peppers or salt. My question relates to your switching roles you had illustrious careers in editor

and handled all sorts of books but now you're the writer and you have a relationship with an editor and I was wondering if you could talk about that experience. Well it's very humbling to begin with because I found myself making some of the same mistakes that I catch authors doing. You know you get stuck on a word you think it's a wonderful word and suddenly you've used it 20 times in one show or one chapter. I had some hesitation when a younger editor cannot who loves France has a European wife and a house in the door done so we share a lot and he'd seen some of the pieces that I'd written and he was the one that urged me to do this book and I had some hesitation about doing it with the way house I worked for because it seemed a little chelvanistic or something but I have found out he said you're wrong I mean if I haven't said she worked there

50 years people will be behind you and that's a pretty good feeling and it has been it's been wonderful to get out and talk to small booksellers to talk to the people who buy books to get a response to get a feeling of what it is you're all looking for so to me that's been the real reward and I just my editor was mostly encouraging ask some good questions. Wasn't afraid of you. No. I'm not intimidating. Did he give you a nice? Oh what? A nice on the manuscript. Oh no. Tell that story that's so funny. I when I was interviewing writers about Judith when I wrote a story about her a couple months ago in the Boston Globe one of the writers there was a big party for to celebrate Judith's 50th anniversary at Knoff and all of the writers were sitting together and one of them said it's

so gratifying to get the manuscript back and to see a nice in the margins and another one turned around and said well that's funny I've never gotten a nice in the margins and the third one turned around and said neither have I. Suddenly all your children were rebelling. That was a dangerous moment. So now that you've been around promoting the book and met some of the people who have learned to cook from the other books that you've edited if somebody walked in tomorrow with the perfect manuscript something to get you really excited. What what would the subject be? I'm not sure I can pick a subject. I just do know that we need to be paying more attention to enabling and exciting people to cook again because we've got to win them back.

It's not something you can squad but I'd go out and say write this book. It has to come from somebody who has a passion and has fired up and concerned. As Judy was she had to bring French cooking to all of you. She was determined to and she wouldn't give up even when the boys in Boston said nobody in America is going to buy this. So that's what it comes from. It's very hard to prescribe something. So that's the common denominator among all your worries that is to me. A passion and I really ask myself is this book going to make a contribution? Do you think that many people in your position, many cookbook editors have to ask themselves is this

book going to make money rather than is this book going to make a contribution? Well I think more and more we're pressured that way because publishing has become a big business and it's not a business. It's a horse race. It's very hard to know. You can't say what's going to. Suddenly win the race or just even be out in front. But somehow all of yours have won the race. And then they've had the passion and I've had some that are bombed. I won't mention them but we read the book closely, will we then on? No because I can't understand why they have. So you take each one personally. I take one. Yeah, I'm very personally. Again, it's like your children. Well, thank you all very much for coming.

Judith is signing books if you follow the line to the bookstore. Okay.