Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, August 13, 1994 TAG: 9408160021
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By BOB THOMAS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
Just what you've always wanted to know: how to bone a turkey, fillet a salmon, whip up an osso bucco and top it all off with an apple charlotte with two sauces.
"Julia Child & Jacques Pepin: Cooking in Concert" can be seen on Tuesday night at 9 on many PBS stations (including WBRA-Channel 15).
Both chefs have earned reputations with cooking series on television and bestselling cookbooks. Pepin is a native of France who came to New York in 1959 to work at the famed Le Pavilion. Now he travels 30 weeks a year to demonstrate his cooking techniques, and he teaches at Boston University, where the TV special was taped.
Child's no-nonsense cookery has been enjoyed by millions since her TV debut with "The French Chef" in 1963. She is a Pasadena native who graduated from Smith College in 1934 and joined the OSS after World War II broke out. Her first assignment was Ceylon, where she met another OSS agent, Paul Child. They were married in 1948.
While her husband was stationed with the USIA in Paris in 1952, Child enrolled in the cooking school Cordon Bleu. She also took private lessons with famed chefs and with two other women opened a cooking school in Paris. After her husband's other postings in Europe, they settled in Cambridge, Mass. She was interviewed there by telephone.
"It was fun working with Jacques," she commented. "He's a marvelous professional. It was a very good illustration of the professional versus the home cook, which is what I am.
"They [the producers] didn't put a lot of the things in. We assaulted the Cuisinart. There was a stove with a glass top, and you never could tell whether it was on or not. We spent a lot of time cursing out the stove."
Watchers of cooking shows wonder how dishes get cooked within a half-hour broadcast. That was no problem on the Child-Pepin special. "The show lasted about two hours," Child explained. "I think we got everything cooked in time. Jacques is very good at that; he turns the heat way up. It got cooked."
The two chefs have been friends since the 1960s, when he was studying for a master's degree in French literature at Columbia University and beginning to make a name for himself in the cooking world. Both helped found the American Institute of Wine and Food. Both seek more recognition of gastronomy in higher education.
"Boston University now has a master's degree in gastronomy, the first university to have one," she said. "Of course, academics know nothing about it, but it is a good and fascinating discipline.
"There are a lot of people in their 30s, 40s and 50s who are making career changes. They find that being a banker or an insurance or funeral salesman, they're not having any fun. So they decide to go into the culinary field. It's hard work, but it's a wonderful field because people in it are so enthusiastic. They love their work."
Child is currently shooting the second series of "Cooking with Master Chefs" shows in her home kitchen. She was in the midst of making pizza for her own dinner; a recent guest chef taught her how to twirl the dough in the air. She also was preparing a duck, a remainder from another show.
She was asked if she ever prepared a simple meal.
"I love hamburgers," she confessed. "I love sauteed chicken and broiled chicken. It depends on what I'm doing or what I have in the house. I like to cook, and I get depressed if I don't eat well."
But what about all the alarms about fats and cholesterol and sweets, all those good things in life? She takes such preachings in stride:
"I'm in the American Institute of Wine and Food, and we've been having a group of programs about eating well. Most sensible nutritionists say it's moderation and small helpings, a great variety and weight watching. That's the way most of the French do. They don't eat these great big quantities the way Americans do - 12-ounce steaks! I like beautifully marbled top loin. But a small piece."
by CNB