Cherry Clafouti, Julia Child, and Stella . . .

I'll bet you're among the huge flock of bakers out there who are looking forward to the Julia Child movie, Julie & Julia, that will be in theaters soon, yes? I know I am. I figure it's a good bet that a hefty percentage of the people interested in this film feel some sort of personal connection--and I don't mean in a touchy-feely encounter-group sort of way--to the memory of Julia Child as we knew her from public television.

If you were a kid in the 1960s or 1970s, and cooking or baking was a big deal in your household, then chances are you probably sat through at least a few episodes of The French Chef, and paid some level of attention to it, even if you really wanted to be watching Mr. Ed, Bewitched, or maybe That Girl. (As a pre-adolescent, I coveted Marlo Thomas's hairdo on That Girl, and the way everyone always ended up loving her character, Anne Marie, even though she consistently managed to engender all manner of catastrophe wherever she went. One might say I saw her as the perfect role model.)

You might also be among the legions of readers of Julie & Julia, the book on which the movie is based. I must admit I haven't yet finished the book, which was kindly loaned to me many weeks ago by Holly, one of my kindest and obviously most patient friends (really, she's a gem; everyone needs a pal like her). The story's premise is unique and it pulls you right in, but in reading it I eventually stalled amidst Powell's recounting of her efforts to cook what sound like the least appetizing recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking--stuff like Foies de Volailles en Aspic. (Picture chicken livers in a savory Jello . . . . uh huh, I knew you'd understand.)

My own relationship with the TV personage of Julia Child was channeled, if you will, through my mom, whose name was Stella. Back then, there were only a couple of cooking shows on TV that I can recall--Julia's, and Graham Kerr's Galloping Gourmet. My mom loved watching them both, especially the former.

As kids, my older sister Joanie and I spent hours at my mom's side on summer afternoons while Julia chirped away on the screen in black and white, instructing American housewives of the proper way to render goose fat, unmold coeur a la creme, or achieve the perfect golden crust on a baguette. The three of us would perch on the big bed in my parent's room, a summer breeze moving through the pristine white curtains, and all of us folding clean laundry for the thirty minutes or so of the show. (Joanie and I eventually came to label my mom's particular--and more or less mandatory--towel folding technique as "The Stella Fold.") That's got to be one of my fondest old memories. Not that I loved the program. In fact, I thought Julia's voice was just awful. I can still hear her breath-laden, overly lengthy pronunciation of the word tomatoes as "tommaaaatoes." But, Julia was pleasingly far from intimidating and, clearly, Stella felt some kind of kinship with her enthusiasm and gutsy confidence when it came to food. That brief half hour represented a cheery, and very female, domestic diversion in the middle of a typical summertime weekday.

Stella, just like Julie Powell's mother, had her own set of Child's two-volume masterwork. Well worn as an old pair of fine leather gloves, and pictured above, those books inhabited my parents' house for decades, alongside dozens of other somewhat less awe-inspiring cookbooks. This spring, when I began reading Powell's book, I took Stella's volumes off the shelf where they'd stood undisturbed for a few years now, reverently blew the dust off the bindings (if such a thing can be reverently done), and brought them home to join my own ever expanding cookbook collection. Since Stella's death at the age of 79, two and a half years ago, I'd already taken--with my father's blessing--the vast majority of her wonderful cookbooks, but I'd hesitated when it came to removing these seminal tomes. It had seemed to me that removing them too soon would be unseemly, not in any formal sense that anyone else would notice, but just in terms of my own knowledge of how much they belonged so expressly to her, and because of my sense of how much joy she must have derived from them.

The only Julia Child recipes that I know for certain my mom used were for breads. She perfected, through literally hundreds of batches, the most delicious homemade breads I've ever tasted. Probably her greatest triumph was her French baguette. Until I entered culinary school this past spring, and was offered slices from a very fresh baguette created (I assume!) by the artisan breads class, I didn't realize how completely perfect--truly perfect--Stella's breads must have been. I have renewed admiration and appreciation for her talent and perseverance as a baker, based on that recent experience alone, and I had quite a bit to start with.

A few days after Julia Child died, in August of 2004, my husband and I traveled with our kids on a trip we'd planned to Washington D.C. and while there we made the obligatory trip to the Smithsonian. Julia's actual home kitchen--all of her own belongings, I believe--had recently been recreated and installed in a display there, not too far from the First Ladies' inaugural gowns. It seemed fitting to me that I was able to see her kitchen so soon after her passing. It looked at the same time cluttered, functional, and comfortingly well used. That experience, of looking at the objects she must have handled over and over, is part of what I think of when I think of Julia. I wish my mom could have seen that kitchen too; I imagine she would have stood there gazing quietly, examining all the details for a long time, smiling to herself.

My sister, several years ago, went to one of Julia's book-signings in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and that year for Christmas she gave me an autographed copy of the book Baking With Julia. Of all the cookbooks I own, that is the one I am least likely to part with.

In homage to Julia, and in honor of Stella (who adored sweets of every stripe), I made Julia's very simple and very French recipe for cherry clafouti (accent on the last syllable, bakers!). An eggy, custardy dish, that is sometimes served as part of a breakfast meal, clafouti is also served as a dessert. Julia's clafouti recipes, with several variations, appear in Volume I of Mastering the Art of French Cooking.


Julia Child's Cherry Clafouti

(For a printable version of this recipe click here!)

1 and 1/4 cups milk
2/3 cups granulated sugar, divided
3 eggs
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
1/8 tsp. salt
1/2 cup flour (I used All Purpose, bleached)
3 cups cherries, pitted
powdered sugar, for garnish

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly butter a 7 or 8 cup baking dish (or a 9" cake pan will work).

Using a blender (by necessity I used my food processor and it worked fine) combine the milk, half the sugar, eggs, vanilla, salt, and flour.

Pour one quarter of the batter into the pan. Place the dish in the oven just until it sets. Remove from the oven and spread the cherries over the batter.

Sprinkle on the remaining sugar. Pour on the remaining batter.

Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until the clafouti is puffed, brown, and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Sift the top with the powdered sugar. Serve warm.

* * * * * * *


Stella, above, as a bride on May 17th, 1952. She carried fresh lilacs in her bouquet, three of her four sisters were in the wedding party dressed in sea-foam gowns, and an assortment of finger sandwiches were served at the reception. (P.S. I just realized that the Julia Child movie opens on Stella's birthday, August 7th! How serendipitous, and how perfectly appropriate.)

(My sister, Joanie, on the left . . . I'm on the right. We called these outfits our lemon dresses. This was taken on Mother's Day, circa 1967.)

Speaking of Food Movies . . .

Yeah, I love to bake . . . but I also love watching movies.

In particular, I love movies that find ways to feature food in a beautiful way, as well as interesting food scenes in movies that otherwise have nothing at all to do with food. I've noticed that even in movies that fall into the latter category, often the most pivotal scenes occur while the characters are sharing a meal, are about to share one, or while someone is cooking. Examples abound. In The Godfather, for instance, food is not just sustenance. It's gangland fuel, and boy is it ubiquitous. First there's the wedding feast, which sets the stage for just about everything to come. Let's face it, the wedding feast scene entered the American vernacular a long time ago. How many times has my husband--apropos of nothing--smirked at me and, in the nasal voice of Michael Corleone speaking to his girlfriend Kay, remarked, "You like your lasagne?" or, "He's a very scary guy."

Or, remember the scene where Clemenza is showing Michael how to make spaghetti? I love it because it's so extraneous; it does nothing to advance the film, but it's the kind of little clip that stays in your memory. Miniscule, but somehow meaningful. "You start with a little oil, then fry some garlic. Throw in some tomatoes, tomato paste, fry it and make sure it doesn't stick. You get it to a boil, you shove in all your sausage and meatballs. Add a little bit of wine. And a little bit of sugar. That's my trick." (And whenever I say, "That's my trick," to my husband--also apropos of nothing--he knows just what the reference is, bless his heart.) The Godfather is classic fodder for this kind of thing. Somebody is always shoving something starchy or bready into their mouth. (Come to think of it, a whole lot of shoving goes on in this movie, most of it the bad kind.) When you're a Corleone, even if death is just about staring you in the face, you know everything's probably gonna be okay because, hey, the bread basket never goes empty. It's a movie that can really make you hungry.

Another film I just love, that has nothing to do with food--except perhaps in the way its very scarcity is played up-- is Pollock. All about Jackson Pollock, the American abstract expressionist painter who made his name in the late forties and sealed his own sad fate in the fifties, the movie is a treasure trove of moments too stunning to forget. Visionary genius though Jackson may have been, he sure knew how to ruin a dinner party.

There's a scene near the start of the film where he's sitting at the table with his brother's family, his odd strait-laced mother, and his new, Bohemian, artist girlfriend Lee Krasner. They're eating a large meal. Lee whispers quietly to him, expressing a bit of shock at the overabundance of homey food that must have taken hours to prepare, "Did you people eat like this all the time?" As the scene progresses and the characters chat, it comes out that Jackson's soon going to be abandoned by his older brother and essentially forced to live on his own--a prospect that apparently terrifies him. He responds by becoming increasingly agitated. The volume of his voice rises along with the blaring music from the radio, and he begins frantically banging his fists and forearms on the table while clutching his utensils like a toddler. It's a disturbing scene but it sure serves to let you know the direction in which the story's headed (that would be to Crazy Town). And that's nothing compared to what he does to the elaborate Thanksgiving meal that's destroyed later on in the film; I won't describe that for you. You really have to see it for yourself.

What's my favorite film that does focus largely on food? That's easy. It's Big Night. I adore this movie. Why? Well, maybe because nothing completely horrible happens in it. There is no violence per se. No death. No sickness. It's just a quiet little story that somehow manages to illuminate the lusciousness of regular life, through relationships, through appetite, through the elemental process of touching food and preparing it for the people around you. The principal characters are two Italian brothers--one more Italian than the other--who are trying to make a go of it in their own tiny restaurant somewhere on the east coast. It takes place in the fifties and the clothing, the cars, the music all lend wonderfully to the atmosphere. You get a sense of the striving-for-sumptousness that went along with that particular sliver of 20th century America.

Some of the food preparation scenes are positively meditative, if you're a food-o-phile. The restaurant's kitchen is spare and organized; it goes hand in hand with the older brother's culinary work, which is clean, inspired, and methodic. As a viewer, you can't not want to sample the dishes, having seen the labor and skill that went into them. You wish you could. It's almost enough-- just the "voluptuousness of looking" at the gorgeously prepared, utterly authentic Italian food. (Some famous poet used that phrase, which I've always loved, but I can't remember who the writer was. I'll let you know if I ever figure out who it was.) The film is by turns funny, sad, charming, poignant, but never conventionally action packed. Definitely worth watching.

So, here's my short list, in no particular order, of favorite movies that happen to have at least one or more great food-related scenes, even if the scenes are short and seem on the surface to be inconsequential to the story:

• Big Night (I already waxed rhapsodic.)

• Like Water for Chocolate (A young, broken-hearted Mexican woman literally cooks her sorrow into the food she prepares.)

• Pollock (Like I said above . . .)

• Eat Drink Man Woman (Exceptionally wonderful film, if you're into food and/or cooking; subtitled, just fyi.)

• Waitress (If you love pie, you gotta see this one; not perfect, but still worth it.)

• The Godfather (What more is there to say?)

• Diner (If you've never watched it, stop what you're doing right now and go get it.)

• Avalon (Like Diner, this is another great Barry Levinson film, with many huge, loud, ethnic, family dinners.)

• Girl With a Pearl Earring (Remember the way she meticulously arranges the brilliantly colored vegetables while Vermeer is watching? He knows immediately that he's stumbled upon no ordinary scullery maid.)

• Chocolat (Not remotely a perfect film, but the chocolate scenes alone are worth the ride.)

• Tess (That's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, of course, the 1979 version with Nastassia Kinski. Lasciviously fed to her by a predatory cad, she bites into a crimson strawberry with a look in her eyes that tells us she knows it's just been plucked from the Tree of Knowledge. And in another scene she dines on an enormous hunk of bread while resting in a hay field. A visually beautiful movie.)

What are your favorite food films? Comment, and let's talk about it!

P.S. Really looking forward to the movie based in part on Julie Powell's book Julie & Julia, opening in August '09--another good one to add to the list, hopefully!



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