Read Online Backstage with Julia by Nancy Verde Barr - Free Book Online Page A

but she also wondered if Sara would be able to meet the demands of both late-night restaurant and early morning television work, so she promoted me to executive chef and gave me more responsibility for the shows. As it turned out, Sara's restaurant schedule and her energetic personality allowed her to continue working with us at GMA until 1984, when she left La Tulipe to work in Gourmet magazine's test kitchens. When, in 1987, she became the executive chef for Gourmet 's dining room, she once again had the flexibility to return to GMA . She eventually became the show's regular food editor, a position she still holds today.
    "Executive chef" is the title Julia chose, and I have always felt a bit squirmy about using it. Traditionally "chef" refers to someone who works in a professional kitchen or restaurant, and the executive chef is the one in charge. Unlike Sara, I had trained not for restaurant work but for teaching, much as Julia herself had, and I never call myself a chef, nor did Julia. Regardless of the title of her The French Chef series, Julia considered and called herself a "cook" and often a "home cook." So I was surprised she used that title for us. Sara explained that years before, while they were working on the PBS television series Julia Child & More Company , there was a bit of a muddle on the set because no one knew exactly who was responsible for what. Julia thought of her assistants as a team of equals, all Indians and no chiefs, and originally did not create a hierarchy of positions. Sara said it caused confusion, so Julia, master of organization, decided to assign a title to everyone. She named her body of assistants "Julia Child associates" and, most likely for want of a more explanatory term, bestowed the title "executive chef" on the person who would tell everyone else what cooking needed to be done and be responsible for seeing that it was. Julia was pleased with the order the titles gave. Liz was officially "executive associate," and when Rosemary Manell worked as the food stylist and not the "West Coast Liz," she was the "official food designer." An artist with her own quirky sensibilities, Rosie disliked the more common term "food stylist," so she suggested "food designer"; Julia added the "official."
    After she promoted me to executive chef, my involvement with her work increased. We spoke and wrote more often about what recipes she would do for her television shows. In a letter she wrote me that summer, she said, "Recipes, script, etc for the Gd. Morning are on their way to you via Judy Avrett. Please give them a harsh look through, and any critiques, corrections, suggestions, most welcome. I won't pick new shows, but am happy to change details, like spinach topping for the oysters Rockef, giant cookies, etc. etc. (No spinach here, which is strange.)" Me, give a harsh critique of Julia Child's recipes? Seemed to me that she'd done pretty well for herself so far without benefit of my comments. I did thoroughly scrutinize the equipment and food lists; seldom was anything missing, but I did not alter her recipe choices even when some of her ideas sounded a bit weird, such as her suggestion in a later letter that we substitute sauerkraut for the spinach on the oysters. I responded more with curiosity than with criticism: "You will have to show me oysters and sauerkraut—never experienced that!" (Since we never did make them, I'm guessing that Julia tried and discarded the suggestion on her own.)
    When Julia asked specifically for suggestions, I gave them. Let me amend that. I zealously gave them. I recently had a good laugh when I discovered copies of my letters to Julia among her papers at the Schlesinger Library in Cambridge. In offering my suggestions, I was, as Liz Bishop would say, like the man who knew how to spell banana but didn't know when to stop. In response to her program list that began with "I have thought of the following eleven for Gd. Morning (but haven't done anything more than