For Gabrielle,
who inspired me to dig out
my inner French girl.
The book has arrived! It’s massive, the pages are
yellow and smell of old paper, and it’s falling apart but I don’t care, I just
love it. Thanks to Amazon.com I have purchased Mastering the art of French Cooking by Simone Beck, Louisette
Bertholle and Julia Child, the 6th edition, form 1961. No worries, I
haven’t given up on the regular bookshops. You can still find me at the Strand, browsing through 18 miles of
books (it’s a process) or at Barnes and
Noble on 86th and Lexington Avenue, with cup of coffee,
accompanied by my friend Gabrielle, fashion magazines, and piles of books on
Interior Design. We decided to cook, but we won’t blog about it. Somebody has
already done it, and not only wrote a book about it, but also turned it into a
movie. Julie and Julia -
surprise-surprise - the book was better than the film, though the lack of
Meryl worked for its disadvantage. The idea came to us, while hollowing out
tiny holes in salmon fillets so we could put garlic in it. Thinking, that
several years ago, I hardly knew how to boil an egg. Anyway, the cookbook is
fifty years old, which is not a lot, but old enough to have history to it. The
history I am really curious about. I wonder which owner am I? Who were the
previous ones? Where are they now? (Under the ground I know, hopefully not all
of them). It was sent to me, by Abigail.A from Santa Cruz, California. It’s
surprisingly clean. Except for the dedication at the front page (From 1964!) it
has no notes or marks or even stains. It won’t be a problem at all, to make my
own, of course. I’m a master at stains. One night Maria and I wanted to open a
wine bottle without a wine opener (things tend to magically disappear when you
need them). So we pushed the cork to the inside of the bottle. I was
finding wine stains all over the kitchen for a week, including the ceiling and
the inside of the cabinets, even though they were closed at the time. I wrote to Abigail.A.
If I manage to discover anything about the story of the book, you’ll read about
it soon enough. I know already we won’t try all the recipes. There is no way I
would pull a knife down the back of some poor lobster. Therefore there is
absolutely no way, I would put my body through digesting 60 pounds of butter.
For the past months, I have been becoming a
Francophile. The interest was always there[1], but
the fascination…I think the real fascination, has started with this book I had
read on Chanel, and well, one thing lead to another. I tend to go through the
phases of an absolute interest about things. And I’m totally aware and unaware
of it too (I can listen to the song that I like ten thousand times in a row,
till I’m so sick of it, I can’t listen to it anymore). Recently I have been
stalking online Jim and Jules, developed
a crush on Louis Garrel, made a third attempt to read Proust, even bought my
first French dictionary. Speaking of the language. There are many reasons, why
one would learn a foreign language. It could be fascination with nation’s
culture, cuisine, history etc. For me the reason is simpler than that. Three of
my French friends forget how to speak English when they’re wasted. After they
have several drinks, I can’t understand the word they’re saying. The reason good
enough to learn, if you ask me. As a revenge (when they’re sober) I molest them
with questions like - Gabbi, how is bread
in French? – Pain - Aww that’s so
cute!! It is scientifically proven, that everything sounds better in
French.
Oh the little plaisirs.
Making an omlette while listening to Serge Gainsbourg’s and Bardot’s Comic Strip
(BAM ! POW ! BLOP ! WIIIIIZZ !) and dreaming to look like Catherine
Deneuve in her young years ( and older ones for that matter). The sensuality ;
the correlation between food and sex. They are making me a little bit less
neurotic and obsessive in my New York ways. I figured, I’m already a
Polish-speaking-with-a-British-accent-New-Yorker-obsessed-with-India. My sense
of nationality is fucked up as it can be. It won’t harm to add a bit of Parisien to it, would it?
Wish us good luck with the recipes. Hopefully we won’t
burn the kitchen down. If we do, well, the only thing to left to do, will be to use
our je ne sais quoi on the landlord.
C’est la vie!
K.
[1] I have visited Paris twice, and as
much as I love New York, esthetically – Paris
is the most beutiful city in the Western Word.
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