I have been a big fan of Julia Child since reading Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously three years ago. I found a copy of Mastering The Art of French Cooking, Volume One (1) (Vol 1) at a yard sale and read My Life in France in my ever-widening appreciation of Julia Child’s life and work. I’ve used MtAoFC a few times to cook basic recipes like roast chicken, crepes, and aioli, but I haven’t gotten to the point where it is my primary resource for cooking tips and recipes. I’ll admit I often go online for a recipe and end up sifting through hundreds of variations of whatever I’m looking for before deciding to make some variation of the variations. (Borracho beans, anyone?) This is fine, but it’s time-consuming and chancy. I end up getting an approximate idea of what I should do rather than the best advice possible.
Thus, my delight upon discovering Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom: Essential Techniques and Recipes from a Lifetime of Cooking, a short collection of the fundamentals for almost all recipes that Julia Child developed during her years of experimentation. The book is only 127 pages long, including the index, yet contains a treasure-trove of accessible information. The chapters are outlined like this:
1. Soups and Two Mother Sauces
2. Salads and Their Dressings
3. Vegetables
4. Meats, Poutry, and Fish
5. Egg Cookery
6. Breads, Crepes, and Tarts
7. Cakes and Cookies
Brilliant. In fact, this book is so simple and user-friendly, I can even imagine keeping it on hand when I go Food shopping as it would be an invaluable resource if I became inspired to make a soup or bread and wanted to make sure I had the right ingredients.
I will be testing this book out this week with the recipes for Light Chicken Stock (pg 4) and French Bread (pg 81). However, I have no doubt that the recipes will be useful and accurate.
This is Julia Child, after all.
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