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Julia Child, la Grandes Gourmande · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
0:13
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0:21
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0:23
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0:34
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2:47
Speaker 2: So well, that's right. Well, Chuck, I say we get
2:52
Speaker 2: cracking with our episode today because I'm excited about this one.
2:56
Speaker 2: We're talking about Julia Child, arguably one of the most
3:01
Speaker 2: well known cooks chefs of all time.
3:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I have to step out real quick because
3:07
Speaker 3: I've got the dickens out of my finger.
3:11
Speaker 2: That was pretty good. Actually I wasn't even gonna try it.
3:13
Speaker 2: But that was a dead on Julia's Child.
3:16
Speaker 3: Well, that was a dead on. Dan Ackroyd as Julia Child.
3:19
Speaker 2: I think you topped him, to tell you the truth.
3:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, if you grew up in the seventies,
3:24
Speaker 3: in the eighties and even into the nineties, and you
3:28
Speaker 3: ever surfed around your cable TV to and cross PBS,
3:34
Speaker 3: there was a good chance that the wonderful Julia Child
3:38
Speaker 3: came into your life in some way. I remember watching
3:40
Speaker 3: her a little bit when I was a kid even
3:43
Speaker 3: and just thinking like, who is this giant, tall woman
3:47
Speaker 3: that talks funny cooking in front of my face?
3:50
Speaker 2: But you were never intimidated by her, were you?
3:53
Speaker 3: No? I mean, she was always just so friendly and gregarious.
3:56
Speaker 3: I just had an instant liking.
3:59
Speaker 2: Yes, she was a very very likable person. But even
4:03
Speaker 2: if you're not familiar with Julia Child and you live
4:06
Speaker 2: in the United States and you like decent food that's
4:09
Speaker 2: not processed, you owe an enormous det to Julia Child
4:13
Speaker 2: because you can argue that she almost single handedly introduced
4:17
Speaker 2: America to real food through French cuisine. Yeah.
4:23
Speaker 3: I mean, these days, it's taken for granted that you know,
4:28
Speaker 3: farmed a table and ingredients that matter, and food preparation
4:32
Speaker 3: and sort of taking pride and cooking at home like
4:34
Speaker 3: that is just so commonplace. But that was not the
4:39
Speaker 3: case when Julia Child was coming into things. She really
4:42
Speaker 3: revolutionizes and sort of rocked America's culinary world.
4:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, like this was the time when she came around,
4:48
Speaker 2: when people were making jello molds with like ground beef
4:54
Speaker 2: in them, like that was nice. That was like showing
4:58
Speaker 2: off for a dinner party kind of stuff.
4:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
5:01
Speaker 2: So we'll talk about all the impacts she had and
5:04
Speaker 2: why she was so beloved. But to start, we'll go
5:07
Speaker 2: a little further back toward the beginning. And if you've
5:10
Speaker 2: ever heard her speak, you really did do a pretty
5:13
Speaker 2: good impression. A lot of people think that she was British,
5:17
Speaker 2: and she was not British. She was American. She was
5:20
Speaker 2: born in Pasadena. Apparently her accent was one of those
5:24
Speaker 2: mid Atlantic accents that she was taught growing up in
5:28
Speaker 2: private schools and private college, Smith College in Massachusetts.
5:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, she was Julia McWilliams. That's how she was born,
5:36
Speaker 3: and didn't have British parents either. They had some money though.
5:40
Speaker 3: Her parents were pretty well to do. Her dad was
5:42
Speaker 3: a financier and her mom was an heiress of a
5:45
Speaker 3: paper company. So she grew up with the cook in
5:48
Speaker 3: the house. But it wasn't that that did it. As
5:52
Speaker 3: you'll see, she had quite a circuitous route to becoming
5:56
Speaker 3: the most famous cook in the world and had a
6:00
Speaker 3: pretty interesting life up until that point.
6:04
Speaker 2: She really did like a surprisingly interesting one. She was
6:07
Speaker 2: apparently a disaster in the kitchen and really didn't start
6:12
Speaker 2: cooking until I think she was in her forties, maybe
6:15
Speaker 2: late thirties. I saw that the closest brush she had
6:19
Speaker 2: with being a gormand and a host was when she
6:24
Speaker 2: was the chair of the refreshment committee for the senior
6:27
Speaker 2: prom and the fall dance one year at Smith College.
6:30
Speaker 2: And that's not really much of an exaggeration. That really
6:33
Speaker 2: probably is the closest she came to being a foodie
6:37
Speaker 2: before she got into cooking later on in life.
6:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, she was a history student. She was going to
6:43
Speaker 3: be a writer. And like I said, she was tall.
6:45
Speaker 3: She was six foot two, and she was athletic. She
6:47
Speaker 3: played basketball, she played tennis, she played golf. She graduated
6:52
Speaker 3: in nineteen thirty four and moved to New York and
6:55
Speaker 3: was you know, I said, she wanted to be a writer.
6:56
Speaker 3: She was an advertising copywriter for Sloan's, which was a
6:59
Speaker 3: burn at your company. So that was her first gig.
7:03
Speaker 3: But she was always a well liked person. She was
7:06
Speaker 3: very like I said, gregarious, That wasn't just a TV
7:08
Speaker 3: persona very very sociable people really seemed to like her
7:13
Speaker 3: her whole life. She was a life of the party.
7:15
Speaker 3: But she wasn't like just you know, even though she
7:17
Speaker 3: loved her wine. She wasn't just some some souse at
7:19
Speaker 3: the party. She was apparently pretty you know, responsible human
7:22
Speaker 3: early on.
7:23
Speaker 2: Like if she put a lampshade on her head, she
7:25
Speaker 2: remembered doing it the next time.
7:27
Speaker 3: It was on purpose, yeah, exactly.
7:29
Speaker 2: She also had a really great work ethic, which served
7:33
Speaker 2: her well throughout the rest of her career. But really
7:36
Speaker 2: from the outset helped her because when World War two
7:39
Speaker 2: broke out, She's like, I want to become a spy.
7:42
Speaker 2: So she joined the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services,
7:45
Speaker 2: the direct predecessor of the CIA, and worked directly under
7:50
Speaker 2: no less than wild Bill Donovan, the guy who founded
7:52
Speaker 2: the OSS.
7:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was a general and apparently that she didn't
7:57
Speaker 3: you know, have a whole lot of like direct interaction
7:59
Speaker 3: with him. But it was a a very big gig
8:01
Speaker 3: for her. It was pretty menial work. Even though it
8:05
Speaker 3: was a job of you know, responsibility that she was
8:08
Speaker 3: put in. It was kind of pre computer work, like
8:10
Speaker 3: they needed human beings to do stuff that computers would do.
8:15
Speaker 3: So she would type up profiles on note cards of
8:19
Speaker 3: OSS officers just to keep sort of in the file
8:22
Speaker 3: cabinet before they had you know, computers to do that
8:25
Speaker 3: kind of thing, along with several other women that she
8:27
Speaker 3: worked with. And like I said, she was charming. You said,
8:31
Speaker 3: she had a great work ethic, and she got promoted
8:34
Speaker 3: like several times through that job.
8:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she actually was promoted to become a member
8:40
Speaker 2: of the Emergency CEE Rescue Equipment Section, which was tasked
8:45
Speaker 2: with coming up with a shark repellent because sharks were
8:49
Speaker 2: a problem for down pilots shipwrecked sailors. I think at
8:54
Speaker 2: least twenty sailors had been attacked by sharks since the
8:57
Speaker 2: beginning of the war, and this is only a couple
8:59
Speaker 2: of years. So they needed some sort of shark repellent
9:03
Speaker 2: that would keep sharks away, but that was also highly portable.
9:06
Speaker 2: Apparently shark repellent did not exist to this point, and
9:09
Speaker 2: the shark repellent they came up with was so effective
9:12
Speaker 2: it's still the shark repellent that's used today.
9:15
Speaker 3: Yeah. They would also you know, bump into c mines
9:18
Speaker 3: that were supposed to hit German U boats and detonate
9:20
Speaker 3: those which is no good for the cause or for
9:23
Speaker 3: the shark obviously.
9:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you son of them?
9:28
Speaker 3: So man, what a line. So she was in the
9:32
Speaker 3: test kitchen essentially trying to come up with a shark repellent.
9:37
Speaker 3: Obviously had a lot of different tries on this. I
9:40
Speaker 3: think there were over one hundred different attempts at this recipe,
9:44
Speaker 3: and what they came up with ultimately was a mix
9:46
Speaker 3: of decayed shark meat, organic acids, and what was the
9:53
Speaker 3: copper acetate was sort of the main ingredient that capped
9:56
Speaker 3: it all off.
9:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, copper acetate. They figured out with black dye mimics
10:02
Speaker 2: the scent of a dead shark, and I guess sharks
10:04
Speaker 2: don't like to go near other dead sharks. And they
10:08
Speaker 2: figured out how to bake it, basically make this into
10:11
Speaker 2: a little cake, you know, a cake meaning like a
10:14
Speaker 2: little puck, not a cake like a birthday cake, right,
10:17
Speaker 2: And you could attach it to your life vest and
10:19
Speaker 2: it would apparently keep shark's way for six to seven hours.
10:22
Speaker 2: It's not bad, no, And she very facetiously but also charmingly,
10:27
Speaker 2: referred to that shark repell and as her first big recipe.
10:30
Speaker 3: You say it like her?
10:32
Speaker 2: I okay, my first big recipe.
10:37
Speaker 3: Oh that's perfect. That's also sounds like half of your
10:40
Speaker 3: Halloween characters.
10:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really was pretty bad. Wait, hold on, let
10:44
Speaker 2: me do it andsly bar first.
10:46
Speaker 3: Per We had one person that wrote in and said
10:50
Speaker 3: they couldn't get through it.
10:51
Speaker 2: I know, I felt kind of bad for him.
10:53
Speaker 3: Oh that's right. From forty four to forty five, I
10:56
Speaker 3: think these were her last two years in the OSS.
11:00
Speaker 3: She served as chief of THESS Registry and was sent
11:05
Speaker 3: to some pretty far away places. She went to China
11:08
Speaker 3: and Ceylon which is modern day Sri Lanka, and had
11:12
Speaker 3: some really top notch security clearance. It was you know,
11:15
Speaker 3: she really worked her way up the ladder in the OSS.
11:18
Speaker 2: I saw that she had top secret, the highest level
11:20
Speaker 2: security clearance for that assignment, which is it's just nuts.
11:25
Speaker 2: One thing that we'll see later on is that she's
11:28
Speaker 2: basically always considered herself a feminist, and that's a good
11:30
Speaker 2: example that she worked her way to the top of
11:32
Speaker 2: the OSS to have the highest possible security clearance during
11:37
Speaker 2: the forties at a time when women were not really
11:40
Speaker 2: I know that women worked a lot to support the
11:43
Speaker 2: war effort, but that seems like an unusual position for
11:46
Speaker 2: a woman at the time.
11:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, you know, due to her hard work.
11:51
Speaker 3: One of the biggest things that happened though, in the
11:53
Speaker 3: OSS was that she met her future husband, Paul Child.
11:58
Speaker 3: He was an officer and I say that not you know,
12:00
Speaker 3: and like, oh, she met her husband there, so that's
12:03
Speaker 3: what matters. But she met her life partner and love
12:07
Speaker 3: of her life who helped nurture her career and serve
12:11
Speaker 3: her and they, by all accounts, they just seem like
12:13
Speaker 3: this really really wonderful couple, like the kind that you always,
12:18
Speaker 3: you know, want to be in yourself, that kind of relationship,
12:20
Speaker 3: you know.
12:21
Speaker 2: Yeah. I saw from basically every source that talked about
12:24
Speaker 2: it that they were the envy of their friends.
12:26
Speaker 3: Yeah.
12:28
Speaker 2: So yeah, they stayed together. They were married for almost
12:30
Speaker 2: fifty years, from nineteen forty six until Paul died in
12:34
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four.
12:35
Speaker 3: That's right. And the takeaway here is is they landed
12:40
Speaker 3: in France at one point in nineteen forty eight as
12:42
Speaker 3: part of his assignment in the USS. And when they
12:46
Speaker 3: were in France, they and you know, it's that sliding
12:49
Speaker 3: doors thing. Had they not gotten station in France, who
12:51
Speaker 3: knows if we ever would have gotten Julia Child. Yeah,
12:54
Speaker 3: because he was a foodie and she wasn't. And he said, hey,
12:57
Speaker 3: I'm going to take you out to a real French
12:59
Speaker 3: meal and see what you think. So he took her
13:02
Speaker 3: to this very famous restaurant. How do you pronounce that, Josh,
13:05
Speaker 3: La Couron la Choron, which is the Crown. This is
13:09
Speaker 3: in the Normandy region along the river there in northern
13:12
Speaker 3: France and it has been a restaurant since the thirteen forties,
13:18
Speaker 3: so it is legit. Some people claim it's the oldest
13:21
Speaker 3: inn in all of France.
13:24
Speaker 2: That's pretty cool, so they know what they're doing with
13:26
Speaker 2: French cuisine, which, by the way, if you don't really
13:30
Speaker 2: understand French cuisine, and I don't really claim to, I
13:33
Speaker 2: appreciate it, but it's not like that's what you mean,
13:36
Speaker 2: and I are making on Tuesday night at Rome yet
13:41
Speaker 2: because I got her cookbook recently and I'm really about it.
13:45
Speaker 2: But just to kind of like a little back of
13:47
Speaker 2: the envelope sketch of it, French cuisine French cooking was
13:52
Speaker 2: the first cuisine in the world to be recognized as
13:55
Speaker 2: a World Heritage by UNESCO. That's how distinct and important
14:01
Speaker 2: French cuisine is, and this is the moment when Julia
14:04
Speaker 2: Child was introduced to it, this lunch at La Couron.
14:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, and as I understand it, French cuisine, I've watched
14:11
Speaker 3: a lot of Top Chef over the years, all of it.
14:14
Speaker 3: In fact, French cuisine is very humble, a very basic ingredients.
14:18
Speaker 3: It's not this fancy thing you think of, you know,
14:21
Speaker 3: French food if you don't know much about it, as
14:23
Speaker 3: being like super super fancy. But it's actually very humble,
14:26
Speaker 3: with very basic ingredients, but really quality ingredients, really perfect technique,
14:32
Speaker 3: real fats, real butters, real cream. That's French cuisine. Basically,
14:37
Speaker 3: it's like impeccable technique, you know, paired with very simple,
14:42
Speaker 3: humble but very well sourced ingredients. Well put, I hope.
14:46
Speaker 2: So made by frenchies. You forgot that part.
14:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, generally so.
14:50
Speaker 2: At this lunch in nineteen forty eight, her first French meal,
14:55
Speaker 2: she had oysters, all right, pule fume wine, which is
14:59
Speaker 2: the official savat okay, and soul Moniere Mounier means Miller's wife. So,
15:05
Speaker 2: like you were saying, humble, simple dishes, it's a soul
15:08
Speaker 2: fish that's floured and made with capers, lemon, butter, parsley,
15:14
Speaker 2: and not much more. And she said that that first
15:18
Speaker 2: true culinary experience. There's a few quotes I think we
15:22
Speaker 2: should trade off with. She said that it was an
15:25
Speaker 2: opening up of the soul and spirit for me that
15:28
Speaker 2: first meal. It changed her life quite literally.
15:32
Speaker 3: Yeah. She also said it was a kind of coming
15:34
Speaker 3: to Jesus and what else.
15:37
Speaker 2: She said, it was the most exciting meal of my life.
15:41
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then that dish that dover soul that you
15:43
Speaker 3: know you it's fried fish, you flower some soul, fry
15:47
Speaker 3: it up in some butter, put some I think. I
15:50
Speaker 3: think the lemon and parsley and capers is part of
15:55
Speaker 3: any what is it the miniere, mouniere moniere, I think moniere.
16:00
Speaker 3: That's basically what it is. But a very simple dish,
16:03
Speaker 3: and that became one of her, you know, one of
16:05
Speaker 3: her big signature dishes.
16:06
Speaker 2: Yeah. Put a little ketchup on there. You're in hog heaven.
16:09
Speaker 3: Oh man, you and my daughter.
16:11
Speaker 2: So because she was moved by she likes ketchup. Huh.
16:14
Speaker 3: Oh, God is so annoying.
16:15
Speaker 2: She's very cool, I know. But in common it gets.
16:18
Speaker 3: Her to eat some stuff she would normally eat.
16:21
Speaker 1: Uh.
16:21
Speaker 3: So that's good.
16:22
Speaker 2: I guess like broccoli.
16:24
Speaker 3: No, she didn't put it on brocle She don't like brocoli, but.
16:26
Speaker 2: She eats I don't like broccoli either. Does she hate peas.
16:28
Speaker 3: Too, No, she loves peas. She in fact, she eats
16:31
Speaker 3: frozen peas as a snack.
16:33
Speaker 2: Well they're really that's probably like that distinction erases all
16:38
Speaker 2: of the similarities because I hate peas so much. Oh yeah,
16:41
Speaker 2: I hate them so much, chuck.
16:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, she loves sushi now, which was a big surprise
16:45
Speaker 3: for us.
16:45
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
16:46
Speaker 3: She just kind of started eating it when I got it,
16:49
Speaker 3: and uh, because I think she likes stealing my food.
16:51
Speaker 3: M So it started as a joke and then now
16:53
Speaker 3: she's just eating it.
16:54
Speaker 2: Do you remember what kind she eats? Is it like
16:57
Speaker 2: California hotels or gear Man?
16:59
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, Nacgeary and just any kind of crazy role
17:02
Speaker 3: I get, Julie.
17:03
Speaker 2: Man, that's awesome.
17:04
Speaker 3: That's great soy sauce.
17:05
Speaker 2: Though you're not supposed to eat much soy sauce if
17:08
Speaker 2: any with it.
17:09
Speaker 3: I don't care supposed to her not. I'm telling you
17:11
Speaker 3: what I like.
17:12
Speaker 2: Oh that's fine. I'm just saying like she's actually she
17:14
Speaker 2: could go to Japan, right, now and they wouldn't bat
17:17
Speaker 2: an eyelash at her for it.
17:19
Speaker 3: Hey, you think I don't remember our sushi episode. I
17:21
Speaker 3: didn't know.
17:23
Speaker 2: We did the black Hole episode twice.
17:25
Speaker 3: That's a good point, all right, So where are we?
17:28
Speaker 3: Julia Child has eaten this meal. It blew her mind
17:33
Speaker 3: because she was raised on American food, like you said,
17:35
Speaker 3: was not a foodie, and not only American food, but
17:38
Speaker 3: in recent years post war American food, which is when
17:41
Speaker 3: stuff started to get really sort of mass produced and
17:44
Speaker 3: not very good, like very processed, and this French food
17:48
Speaker 3: just blew her mind.
17:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, so she wanted to understand how that could happen, right, Yeah,
17:54
Speaker 2: So she started taking cooking classes and again like she's
17:56
Speaker 2: a total novice here, and I think she's again in
18:00
Speaker 2: the late thirty So this is nineteen forty eight. She's
18:02
Speaker 2: about thirty six at this time, and her life has
18:05
Speaker 2: just changed, like she's just figured out what she wants
18:07
Speaker 2: to do in life. So she starts taking classes, ends
18:11
Speaker 2: up enrolled in the Cordon Bleue in nineteen fifty one.
18:15
Speaker 2: That same year, she founds her own cooking school that
18:18
Speaker 2: she runs out of her own kitchen with her who
18:22
Speaker 2: would become long longtime collaborators Simone Beck and Louise at Bertol,
18:28
Speaker 2: and they founded the school called Lecole de Toois Gormond,
18:32
Speaker 2: which means the School of the Three Gourmands.
18:35
Speaker 3: That's right. I didn't get this verified, but I did
18:38
Speaker 3: read somewhere that she was either the only woman in
18:41
Speaker 3: her class at La Cordon Blue or one of only two.
18:43
Speaker 3: Maybe m It just you know back then, and you know,
18:46
Speaker 3: there's still a lot of sexism in the in chef's
18:50
Speaker 3: kitchens and restaurants. It's come a long way, but for many,
18:53
Speaker 3: many years it was a profession of white men. Yeah,
18:57
Speaker 3: you know, I feel like that's something we say a
18:58
Speaker 3: lot on the show, but that's the case. Within ten
19:01
Speaker 3: years of being at Locordon Blue, she had sold her
19:06
Speaker 3: best selling cookbook that you just bought. I guess, did
19:09
Speaker 3: you get the og?
19:09
Speaker 2: Yeah?
19:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, what's the name of.
19:11
Speaker 2: That, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
19:14
Speaker 3: That's right, seven hundred plus pages. And then about fifty
19:18
Speaker 3: years after she enrolled at Licordon Blue, her actual kitchen
19:22
Speaker 3: that she cooked in would be in the Smithsonian Museum
19:25
Speaker 3: of American History as a permanent exhibit. Pretty neat, pretty amazing.
19:30
Speaker 2: I say, we take a break and we'll come back
19:31
Speaker 2: and we'll talk about that cookbook that I got, because
19:34
Speaker 2: it was groundbreaking, to say the least.
19:36
Speaker 1: All right, learn and Stuff with Joshua John stuff fishin up.
20:14
Speaker 2: So Chuck. You said, you mentioned the Mastering the Art
20:18
Speaker 2: of French Cooking, this cookbook that Julia Child maade with
20:22
Speaker 2: Simone Beck and Louisette Bertol, and it was designed specifically
20:28
Speaker 2: for America, for the United States, to introduce them to
20:33
Speaker 2: French cooking. And up to this point, cookbooks were basically like,
20:36
Speaker 2: take a little handful of flour and throw it at
20:40
Speaker 2: you know, the elf that's helping you, and put a
20:43
Speaker 2: little oil in there and fold it together and voila like.
20:47
Speaker 2: They were not very helpful, and they assumed that you
20:50
Speaker 2: already had some sort of training, maybe apprenticeship something like that.
20:54
Speaker 2: The Mastering the Art of French Cooking did the exact
20:57
Speaker 2: opposite because, having not that long ago in a total novice,
21:01
Speaker 2: Julia Child realized what people who are being exposed to
21:05
Speaker 2: this new way of cooking, new foods, new techniques, new ingredients,
21:09
Speaker 2: would need to know, and that was essentially everything. So
21:12
Speaker 2: they laid out everything that you would need to know
21:15
Speaker 2: to make these recipes in this cookbook training anyone who
21:19
Speaker 2: bought this cookbook on French cuisine.
21:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, like, you know, a recipe might have said, Julian
21:26
Speaker 3: these carrots and then put them in butter, and she
21:29
Speaker 3: would say, well, what if they don't know what that means,
21:31
Speaker 3: here's how you, Julianne, right, And not only that, but
21:33
Speaker 3: here's the kind of knife that's ideal for that kind
21:35
Speaker 3: of thing.
21:36
Speaker 2: And butter too.
21:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the boy she talked a lot about butter. Yes,
21:40
Speaker 3: but like, here are the tools, here are the techniques,
21:43
Speaker 3: and here's how you do all of these for these
21:44
Speaker 3: five hundred and twenty four recipes. And it really just
21:48
Speaker 3: sort of it broke down a wall in that it demystified,
21:53
Speaker 3: you know, sort of high class cooking because she's like,
21:56
Speaker 3: this is something that you can do in your kitchen. Yeah,
21:59
Speaker 3: you know, sheboygan exactly.
22:01
Speaker 2: Oh, sheboygan went nuts for this. Of course, all the
22:04
Speaker 2: men grew up pencil thin mustaches and war berets. The
22:08
Speaker 2: women all wore pencil pencil pants.
22:11
Speaker 3: Pencil pants, pencil skirts.
22:14
Speaker 2: Now what are the little short almost clam diggers, but
22:16
Speaker 2: they were much more salt. I thought they were pencils something.
22:19
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know. Maybe I know what you're talking
22:21
Speaker 3: about though.
22:21
Speaker 2: Culottes No, no, I don't think those are French. I
22:25
Speaker 2: think those those no country will claim those.
22:29
Speaker 3: Uh. The coach of the Falcons wearsos, which is probably
22:31
Speaker 3: why it sucks so bad.
22:32
Speaker 2: It's crazy.
22:35
Speaker 3: So on the book, you know, where she's demystifying the
22:39
Speaker 3: process and talking about quality ingredients and quality fresh herbs
22:43
Speaker 3: and high quality butters and good meats, you would think
22:46
Speaker 3: that'd be like a slam dunk because they would say,
22:48
Speaker 3: no one's ever done anything like this before. But it
22:51
Speaker 3: got rejected, you know, like most success stories in the
22:54
Speaker 3: book world, there's usually like, yeah, I got rejected by
22:57
Speaker 3: like eight publishers, and she got rejected quite a bit
23:00
Speaker 3: before she finally landed with an editor named jud The
23:04
Speaker 3: Jones at Alfred Knopp Publishing.
23:07
Speaker 2: Yeah. So Judith Jones was already a legend by this
23:10
Speaker 2: time because just a few years before she kind of
23:12
Speaker 2: discovered this obscure French book and recognized how important it
23:18
Speaker 2: was and had it translated into English and published it
23:20
Speaker 2: as the Diary of am Frank. So she was the
23:23
Speaker 2: editor who got the Diary of a Frank out to
23:26
Speaker 2: the English speaking world. So she already had a pretty
23:29
Speaker 2: great nose for this kind of thing, and she recognized
23:32
Speaker 2: that in mastering the Art of French cooking, not that
23:35
Speaker 2: it would be as important necessarily as the Diary of
23:37
Speaker 2: Am Frank, but not necessarily that it would be that
23:42
Speaker 2: far behind as far as changing the world goes, or
23:45
Speaker 2: at least the United States.
23:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, we should do a short stuff on Judith Jones. Okay,
23:51
Speaker 3: can you imagine, like walking into any publishing event, She's like,
23:55
Speaker 3: by the way, Diary Van Frank and the art what
23:59
Speaker 3: it meant the mastery of French cooking?
24:01
Speaker 2: What is it mastering the art of French cooking?
24:03
Speaker 3: You? Yeah? She would say it better than that, she'd
24:05
Speaker 3: say both those those are mine.
24:06
Speaker 2: Those We should also do an episode on Anne Frank sometime.
24:11
Speaker 3: Yeah. I'm surprised we have it.
24:12
Speaker 2: Actually I am a little bit too.
24:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's let's do that.
24:15
Speaker 2: So one of the other things that made the cookbook
24:17
Speaker 2: finally successful when it did get published, and boy was
24:21
Speaker 2: it successful. I saw in one place that had spent
24:23
Speaker 2: five years on the bestseller list, but I couldn't find
24:26
Speaker 2: any other place to verify. It's still worth mentioning.
24:29
Speaker 3: But we were on there for two weeks.
24:31
Speaker 2: We sure were, Buddy, I think more than that, actually,
24:33
Speaker 2: I think it was due. Okay, let's say two and
24:36
Speaker 2: a half. We'll split the difference. But frenchiness was very
24:39
Speaker 2: chic at the time.
24:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was a French chef in the White House kitchen.
24:45
Speaker 3: Of course, you had you mentioned Audrey Hepburn and wearing
24:48
Speaker 3: those French clothes. French designers Jackie Kennedy was as well.
24:52
Speaker 3: Pencil pants, pencil pants. That French wine was starting to
24:55
Speaker 3: be a thing at a time when you know, again,
24:58
Speaker 3: now wine is so popular, but it wasn't that hugely
25:01
Speaker 3: popular popular in the United States at the time. So
25:04
Speaker 3: French wine kind of became a thing.
25:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the first volume was so successful. A few
25:10
Speaker 2: years later, I think nine years later, in nineteen seventy,
25:12
Speaker 2: they released volume two to had another two hundred and
25:15
Speaker 2: fifty seven recipes and apparently you can spend up to
25:19
Speaker 2: ten k Actually I saw more than that to buy
25:22
Speaker 2: assigned volumes one and two together.
25:25
Speaker 3: Oh wow, of the first edition, that's awesome.
25:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they became bibles for cooks in America.
25:32
Speaker 2: And again, this it wasn't like people were already primed
25:35
Speaker 2: for this, This was what made people primed to consider
25:39
Speaker 2: cookbooks Bibles in their kitchen in the United States.
25:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know Judith Jones also the Bible, that's right,
25:46
Speaker 3: she helped write it. So everyone's probably saying like, yeah,
25:53
Speaker 3: this book's great, But what about television, because that's where
25:56
Speaker 3: I remember her from my childhood. Here's where we get
25:59
Speaker 3: to TV because she moved around Europe during the nineteen
26:01
Speaker 3: fifties with her husband Paul, came back to the States
26:04
Speaker 3: in the sixties. I believe they had come back before
26:08
Speaker 3: on some if you want to say, visits, maybe some
26:11
Speaker 3: forced visits. When her husband Paul was called for the
26:15
Speaker 3: blacklisting blacklisted McCarthy hearings, so that was a thing. I
26:21
Speaker 3: don't think he got in trouble though, right.
26:22
Speaker 2: No, they were friends with a woman who was a
26:25
Speaker 2: suspected communist in the government and they wanted to know
26:28
Speaker 2: about her.
26:29
Speaker 3: Right, so they brought him in. But they ultimately landed
26:33
Speaker 3: for good in Cambridge, mass And when she was, you know,
26:38
Speaker 3: promoting her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I
26:41
Speaker 3: finally got it. She went on PBS at WGBH there
26:45
Speaker 3: in Boston for a book review show called I've been
26:47
Speaker 3: reading ellipses and she was just doing a little demonstration
26:51
Speaker 3: on how to make an omelet. She brought everything with her,
26:53
Speaker 3: you know, her a little hot plate and saw tape
26:55
Speaker 3: in her tools and her eggs, and everyone loved it.
26:58
Speaker 3: Everyone was like writing into the station saying, like, this
27:01
Speaker 3: woman that you had on cooking that omelet was funny
27:04
Speaker 3: and gregarious and we just loved her and we also
27:07
Speaker 3: learned something. And so they said, hey, we should give
27:10
Speaker 3: you your own TV show.
27:12
Speaker 2: Yeah. Within a year, the French Chef, her first cooking show,
27:15
Speaker 2: was on the air on WGBH. And this was at
27:18
Speaker 2: a time where cooking shows were not a thing. A
27:21
Speaker 2: lot of people say, the fact that cooking shows are
27:23
Speaker 2: so widespread today you can essentially thank Julia Child for
27:26
Speaker 2: that too, and thank the French Chef. It had a
27:30
Speaker 2: ten year run, and because it was a PBS joint,
27:34
Speaker 2: other PBS stations around the United States picked it up.
27:37
Speaker 2: It made its way to Europe and the UK via
27:40
Speaker 2: the BBC. It became a really big show very quickly,
27:45
Speaker 2: and Julia Child became the most widely recognized chef in
27:47
Speaker 2: the entire world, at the very least in the United States.
27:51
Speaker 2: During this period, the early sixties to the early seventies.
27:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, we had a TV show for a year.
27:57
Speaker 2: We did. We became the most widely known koochs in
28:01
Speaker 2: the world, if not at least the United States.
28:04
Speaker 3: One thing I'm learning is it to compare our career
28:07
Speaker 3: to Julia Child's humbling experience.
28:11
Speaker 2: You were a spy for that little while, or you
28:13
Speaker 2: pretended that you were at parties.
28:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. She won an Emmy and a Peabody
28:18
Speaker 3: Award for that show, and this is just a little
28:21
Speaker 3: feather in her cap. I think it was the first
28:23
Speaker 3: TV show in the United States to feature closed captioning
28:27
Speaker 3: for the death and heart appearing community.
28:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, open captioning. I saw where it was for everybody.
28:33
Speaker 2: Everyone read it.
28:34
Speaker 3: But yeah, oh is that what close captioning means?
28:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, where you have to select it to sw Yeah.
28:39
Speaker 2: I didn't know that either, so I guess it was
28:41
Speaker 2: open captioning. But yes, that didn't exist on TV until then.
28:45
Speaker 3: I'm just learning so much because of you, my friend.
28:48
Speaker 2: Hey, right back at you, buddy.
28:52
Speaker 3: So you know, the TV show was a big hit.
28:54
Speaker 3: She because she was just so lovable and she wasn't patronizing,
28:58
Speaker 3: and she you know, had her closing phrase, bon appetite,
29:03
Speaker 3: and she would just she would get in there and
29:05
Speaker 3: get dirty and make mistakes, and like she would want
29:08
Speaker 3: people to leave the you know, the editors, to leave
29:10
Speaker 3: the mistakes in therese She's like, that's part of cooking.
29:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a big deal because it also not only
29:14
Speaker 2: made her approachable, it made the people watching who were
29:19
Speaker 2: trying these recipes too, realized that she wasn't infallible and
29:23
Speaker 2: therefore they didn't need to worry about not being infallible too, Like,
29:27
Speaker 2: mistakes are part of it. You just learned from them. Yeah,
29:30
Speaker 2: but like that was she made it way more approachable
29:34
Speaker 2: to people by doing that. Yeah.
29:36
Speaker 3: And I also read that this is from I believe
29:39
Speaker 3: the women who made the documentary about her, Julia, which
29:42
Speaker 3: is really really good. Okay, that another reason that she
29:46
Speaker 3: left the mistakes in was especially for women, because she
29:50
Speaker 3: felt like women felt like they needed to always feel
29:55
Speaker 3: bad when they messed something up in life, period, but
29:58
Speaker 3: especially in the kitchen. And she was like, no, it's
30:01
Speaker 3: okay to mess up and and while you're in that kitchen,
30:04
Speaker 3: like you know, it was kind of an opposition in
30:09
Speaker 3: a way to like the feminist movement at the time,
30:11
Speaker 3: which is like get out of the kitchen, Juli. Your
30:13
Speaker 3: child was saying like, no, like, get in that kitchen
30:16
Speaker 3: and own it and cook for you and learn to
30:18
Speaker 3: make stuff that you want to make and not just
30:21
Speaker 3: like maybe what your husband and kids are yelling at
30:23
Speaker 3: you to make, like like take over the kitchen as
30:27
Speaker 3: something that you love doing and that's for yourself.
30:30
Speaker 2: Right. I saw a Bustle magazine describer as a vamp,
30:34
Speaker 2: which I'm not familiar with, but they based on context,
30:37
Speaker 2: it seemed like it was a good thing.
30:40
Speaker 3: What does that stand for? All right? Well, Josh just
30:46
Speaker 3: told me if air what it stood for, and I agree.
30:49
Speaker 2: My joke. So you mentioned mistakes. There's actually some famous
30:54
Speaker 2: mistakes that she made. One was she was pulling a
30:56
Speaker 2: cake from the oven and apparently it fell flat on camera.
31:01
Speaker 2: She said something like, well, that didn't work out. Can
31:04
Speaker 2: you say it?
31:05
Speaker 3: Well, that didn't work out?
31:07
Speaker 2: Very nice? And then everybody knows that she once dropped
31:10
Speaker 2: an entire raw turkey on the floor on camera. Let
31:15
Speaker 2: this in. Pick the turkey up off the floor, kind
31:18
Speaker 2: of brushed it off and put it in the oven
31:20
Speaker 2: and baked it like nothing ever happened.
31:23
Speaker 3: Apparently I would do that.
31:25
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, we did a whole episode on the five
31:27
Speaker 2: second rule.
31:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean for a raw thing like that.
31:30
Speaker 3: I know it sounds gross, but you can wash that
31:32
Speaker 3: thing off and bake it and it's fine.
31:34
Speaker 2: Yes, that you don't have a cooking show.
31:38
Speaker 3: No, exactly.
31:39
Speaker 2: So yes, the fact that she did this, well, I
31:41
Speaker 2: should say not the fact, because that's actually an urban legend,
31:44
Speaker 2: a rumor. It's something did happen, but it morphed into
31:49
Speaker 2: like the most spectacular version of itself. No, it wasn't.
31:54
Speaker 2: Snope stated it back to at least nineteen eighty nine,
31:58
Speaker 2: but she wants. The closest they could find was that
32:01
Speaker 2: she was flipping a potato pancake and flipped it out
32:05
Speaker 2: of the pan onto the countertop and it crumbled. Yeah,
32:09
Speaker 2: and she said, like I think, she said, when you're
32:13
Speaker 2: in the kitchen, nobody can see you. And she pushed
32:15
Speaker 2: it back together and put it back in the pan
32:17
Speaker 2: and cooked it. Yeah.
32:19
Speaker 3: I love that because that's how it goes when you're
32:20
Speaker 3: cooking in your house. You know.
32:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never not flipped a potato pancake onto the countertop.
32:29
Speaker 3: She had, you know, a string of successful cooking shows
32:33
Speaker 3: after that first one, all the way from the seventies
32:36
Speaker 3: through the eighties into the nineties. I believe she had
32:40
Speaker 3: twelve Emmy nominations total and seven wins. And by the
32:45
Speaker 3: time she got into the nineteen nineties, they were shooting
32:49
Speaker 3: that show in her home kitchen in Cambridge. Her husband
32:52
Speaker 3: Paul designed this kitchen that was like part kitchen, part
32:56
Speaker 3: TV studio, and you know, just so they could in
33:00
Speaker 3: time at home, and he was heavily involved. Apparently at
33:02
Speaker 3: times he was on the floor with Q cards and
33:05
Speaker 3: he helped design the original patch for the three Gormands
33:10
Speaker 3: that when she worked with the other two chefs, and
33:13
Speaker 3: so they were really a sort of a power couple
33:16
Speaker 3: working together to enrich her career.
33:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, chuck us say we take our second break and
33:21
Speaker 2: come back and talk about why Julia Child is so beloved?
33:25
Speaker 1: All right, We'll be right back, learn and stuff with
33:40
Speaker 1: Joshua John stuff.
33:43
Speaker 4: You shine up, all right?
34:04
Speaker 3: Why was Julia Child so beloved? I feel like we've
34:06
Speaker 3: already made a case, but let's talk about it some more,
34:10
Speaker 3: all right.
34:11
Speaker 2: I Mean we've covered some of it, but not at all.
34:14
Speaker 2: A big one is that she introduced fresh ingredients to America.
34:17
Speaker 2: This is really kind of we hit on this, but
34:19
Speaker 2: it's worth saying. This is a time when people were
34:22
Speaker 2: using canned soup as an ingredient, not just the can soup, right,
34:26
Speaker 2: So everything was very processed, and she insisted on fresh ingredients,
34:31
Speaker 2: like there was no way around it. You had to
34:33
Speaker 2: use these or else these things were going to turn
34:35
Speaker 2: out very well. But at the same time, she also said, like,
34:39
Speaker 2: you need to let the food stand on its own, Like, yes,
34:42
Speaker 2: you want herbs, but you want the herbs to compliment it.
34:44
Speaker 2: You don't want the ribs to cover up. You don't
34:46
Speaker 2: want to use a bunch of a one on your
34:48
Speaker 2: soul muniere. Like you let the thing stand on its own.
34:53
Speaker 2: You let the fish taste like fish. Like that was
34:57
Speaker 2: kind of like a like a sub I guess of
35:01
Speaker 2: introducing fresh ingredients, teaching people to enjoy the thing that
35:04
Speaker 2: they were cooking rather than the thing that they were cooking.
35:08
Speaker 2: Plus again a one.
35:09
Speaker 3: Sauce, Yeah, exactly, and that technique. You know, if you
35:13
Speaker 3: cook a piece of fish perfectly, you don't need anything
35:16
Speaker 3: more than a little salt and pepper and butter and
35:19
Speaker 3: maybe a squirt of lemon. Even telapia yeah. But despite
35:24
Speaker 3: all this, she was not a food snob. She was
35:26
Speaker 3: very approachable. She loved in and out Burger. She used
35:29
Speaker 3: Helman's mayo and her tuna salad. Apparently she like Costco
35:34
Speaker 3: hot dogs even.
35:35
Speaker 2: I don't blame her.
35:37
Speaker 3: I never had one.
35:38
Speaker 2: What's Oh, they're great. They're like a.
35:40
Speaker 3: What's different though, isn't it just a hot dog?
35:43
Speaker 2: Yes, it's just a hot dog. But do you know
35:45
Speaker 2: how every once in a while, your school lunch would
35:48
Speaker 2: give you something that you're like, this is amazing. Yeah,
35:52
Speaker 2: that's like, they're hot dogs. They have their own taste,
35:55
Speaker 2: and it's an amazing taste. But they are on par
35:57
Speaker 2: with like a school lunch type hot dog.
36:00
Speaker 3: In the best way I got you.
36:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, people go to Costco just to eat the hot dogs.
36:05
Speaker 2: And the pizza's not bad too, but it's worth going
36:07
Speaker 2: to just for the hot dogs, which technically, in a
36:10
Speaker 2: weird way, gives it one Michelin star.
36:14
Speaker 3: Well, you know, buddy, our friend Joe Garden, a friend
36:18
Speaker 3: of the show, a former writer of The Onion. Joe
36:22
Speaker 3: lives there in Woodstock and he posts pictures on his
36:25
Speaker 3: Instagram eating those Costco hot dogs.
36:26
Speaker 2: See, he knows what's going on.
36:28
Speaker 3: Joe always knows what's up.
36:29
Speaker 2: He's got his finger on the pulse of Julia Child.
36:33
Speaker 3: That's right.
36:34
Speaker 2: So she also reintroduced America to wine. At the time America,
36:39
Speaker 2: Americans were drinking the stuff that's now on the bottom
36:42
Speaker 2: shelf of grocery stores.
36:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, the jug wine.
36:45
Speaker 2: Yeah. So not only did she reintroduce America to wine,
36:48
Speaker 2: she normalized She normalized it by doing the same thing
36:52
Speaker 2: she did with mistakes. She drank wine on camera as
36:56
Speaker 2: part of her show on some episodes. Apparently she was
37:00
Speaker 2: started to get a little tipsy. She never got drunk
37:03
Speaker 2: or sloppy or anything like that. But the fact that
37:05
Speaker 2: she was drinking this wine, and by the way, pretty
37:07
Speaker 2: good wine, made Americans realize what they were drinking was
37:12
Speaker 2: just bottom of the barrel stuff and let's see what
37:15
Speaker 2: else we've got. And as a result, California wine became
37:18
Speaker 2: super dominant, essentially in part from her normalizing it. Yeah.
37:24
Speaker 3: I think that happened in the seventies when California started
37:27
Speaker 3: making good wine on par with the French according to
37:31
Speaker 3: everyone but the French. She also liked beer, and this
37:35
Speaker 3: sounds very gross to me, but she enjoyed something called
37:37
Speaker 3: an upside down Martini, which is you swap themouth parts
37:41
Speaker 3: in the gin, so it's much more of amooth than gin.
37:44
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's also lower ABV, so you don't kick yuh're
37:48
Speaker 2: trashed as quickly.
37:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, but man, that's kind of one of the good
37:51
Speaker 3: parts about a Martini.
37:52
Speaker 2: Right for sure. She also had a really great sense
37:55
Speaker 2: of humor, apparently, another long standing rumor that sometimes fans
37:59
Speaker 2: would confront with. They were like, I remember that time
38:02
Speaker 2: you drank some wine directly out of the bottle on
38:05
Speaker 2: one of your episodes, and that apparently never happened either. Again,
38:09
Speaker 2: it was just the extreme version of what she was
38:11
Speaker 2: actually doing, which is kicking wine out of her glass.
38:14
Speaker 2: But she said I would never do that on television.
38:18
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah. And you know I opened with the dan
38:22
Speaker 3: Ackroid bit if you didn't know what I was doing.
38:25
Speaker 3: It was a very famous SNL skitch from back in
38:27
Speaker 3: the day in seventy eight where dan Akroid portrayed Julia
38:29
Speaker 3: Child where he cut the dickens on up his finger
38:33
Speaker 3: and you know, blood's just going everywhere. Of course, they
38:37
Speaker 3: have the blood pack just squirting blood all over everything.
38:40
Speaker 3: And he was a big fan apparently, and that was
38:43
Speaker 3: a real incident. I think about a month before that
38:46
Speaker 3: sketch where she was working with Jacques Papin on Tom
38:50
Speaker 3: Snyder's Tomorrow Show, where she had cut herself pretty bad,
38:53
Speaker 3: and I guess that was the inspiration for that.
38:55
Speaker 2: She also apparently was very proud of that sketch and
38:57
Speaker 2: thought it was hilarious. So the videotape of and would
39:01
Speaker 2: show people sometimes and then at a really particularly fun
39:05
Speaker 2: enthusiastic dinner party, she might act it out like words
39:08
Speaker 2: for her by heart.
39:09
Speaker 3: Can you imagine?
39:10
Speaker 2: Oh, I would have loved to have seen that.
39:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, incredible.
39:13
Speaker 2: She was also super charming and funny on TV appearances,
39:17
Speaker 2: but particularly Letterman. You can watch compilations of her on Letterman.
39:21
Speaker 2: She could hold her own against Letterman, no problem.
39:24
Speaker 3: Yeah you sent me that one clip. I actually think
39:27
Speaker 3: I remember seeing that in high school. But Letterman was,
39:31
Speaker 3: you know, I love Letterman, he was. I felt like
39:33
Speaker 3: he was not being too kind about the food.
39:36
Speaker 2: Sometimes he's cranky.
39:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I felt a little bad for her and
39:40
Speaker 3: that she was serving him. Kind of a version in
39:42
Speaker 3: this one of a tartar what do you called, Yeah,
39:45
Speaker 3: a of a steak tartar. But it was with ground
39:48
Speaker 3: beef and melted cheese, and he just sort of kept
39:50
Speaker 3: making fun of it and then he spit it out.
39:52
Speaker 3: And at the end I think she said something that
39:54
Speaker 3: kind of made me feel bad. She was like, well,
39:55
Speaker 3: maybe next time I can serve something you like or
39:57
Speaker 3: something like that.
39:58
Speaker 2: Well, she used in a seedling tour to melt the cheese,
40:02
Speaker 2: which is pretty hilarious. I had the impression that they
40:05
Speaker 2: didn't have the equipment she needed to make a burger,
40:07
Speaker 2: so she made the most out of it.
40:09
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, Well, using a torch is very commonplace in
40:13
Speaker 3: kitchens now, but Dave made it. I guess back then
40:15
Speaker 3: it was unusual because Dave was like, thought it was
40:17
Speaker 3: the weirdest thing you'd ever seen.
40:18
Speaker 2: Sure. One other thing we mentioned too that we have
40:21
Speaker 2: to touch on is she was known for her love
40:23
Speaker 2: of butter. She taught America to cook all through the
40:27
Speaker 2: decades where America started to become health conscious and fat
40:30
Speaker 2: free and all that stuff, and so she would become
40:32
Speaker 2: criticized for pushing things like real butter on people, and
40:36
Speaker 2: she would say things like, well, if you're afraid of butter,
40:39
Speaker 2: use cream instead, which is at least as butter. And
40:44
Speaker 2: her whole thing was like, yes, she shouldn't just be
40:47
Speaker 2: gorging yourself on butter all the time. But if you're
40:51
Speaker 2: going to make a meal, use the real butter and
40:54
Speaker 2: enjoy every bite of it. Like, that's the point is
40:57
Speaker 2: enjoying every single bite of this stuff, not enjoying every
40:59
Speaker 2: single bite until you start eating mindlessly because you eat
41:02
Speaker 2: this ten times a day. Right, Yeah, And she had
41:05
Speaker 2: she quote she quoted Oscar Wilde, which I thought was great,
41:09
Speaker 2: but she said everything in moderation, including moderation.
41:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great quote. I got a little kitchen
41:17
Speaker 3: tip if you're health conscious and you're thinking, like I
41:20
Speaker 3: don't want to use a lot of butter, I use
41:22
Speaker 3: olive oil or whatever.
41:24
Speaker 4: Use that olive oil.
41:25
Speaker 3: But you can also throw in like one pad of
41:27
Speaker 3: butter in with that olive oil. You can mix those
41:31
Speaker 3: two things and it's great. Sure, and it adds just
41:33
Speaker 3: a little unctuousness that olive oil won't give you.
41:35
Speaker 2: I love that. Yeah, and don't forget the A one.
41:40
Speaker 3: My friend Clay still loves that stuff so well.
41:43
Speaker 2: It's it's classy.
41:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's a very specific taste. I love
41:48
Speaker 3: that tart, tangy A one. I just don't use it, so.
41:51
Speaker 2: Chuck, we talked about volumes one and two of Mastering
41:54
Speaker 2: the Art of French Cooking. We should say, in addition
41:56
Speaker 2: to the string of successful TV shows, she had a
41:59
Speaker 2: bunch of cook but bo but these were her two classics,
42:02
Speaker 2: and put together is seven hundred and eighty one recipes
42:05
Speaker 2: between the two of them. But if you go on
42:08
Speaker 2: to food sites and you look up something like Julia
42:10
Speaker 2: Child's best recipes, some of them kind of percolate to
42:15
Speaker 2: the top where you're like, you see them on just
42:17
Speaker 2: about every list, And I think that we should go
42:20
Speaker 2: over a few of those starting now.
42:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. If you've ever seen the movie Julia
42:26
Speaker 3: and Julia, did you see that?
42:28
Speaker 2: I haven't.
42:28
Speaker 3: I heard it was great. It's really good. That is
42:31
Speaker 3: the story of a woman named Julie Powell who I
42:37
Speaker 3: think was sort of felt lost in life and wanted
42:39
Speaker 3: to dive into this project of cooking every recipe. I
42:43
Speaker 3: think she had a blog or something. Maybe. Yeah, it
42:45
Speaker 3: was a really good movie though. Amy Adams played Julie Powell,
42:48
Speaker 3: who very sadly passed away a few years ago at
42:50
Speaker 3: the young age of forty nine, and Meryl Streep, I
42:54
Speaker 3: don't know if she won the Academy Award. I know
42:56
Speaker 3: she was nominated for playing Julia Child. So it sort
42:59
Speaker 3: of tells those two stories together. And it's a wonderful
43:03
Speaker 3: movie from Nora Ephron. But in that movie, she's cooking
43:07
Speaker 3: all the recipes. And one, the big, big one from
43:10
Speaker 3: the book that she was most well known for that
43:12
Speaker 3: she really wanted to master out of the gate was.
43:14
Speaker 2: The buff Bogagnon, which is essentially a beef stew with
43:18
Speaker 2: red wine. But again, take some deceptively simple ingredients and
43:23
Speaker 2: put them together in the right way, it's going to
43:26
Speaker 2: produce a smash hit dish. And that's what Beeborgangnon is.
43:30
Speaker 2: What else keish lorraine, which everybody knows you can get
43:33
Speaker 2: keish lorraine at the grocery store by the slice. Yeah,
43:37
Speaker 2: because Julia Child introduced it to the United States with
43:41
Speaker 2: her cookbook.
43:42
Speaker 3: That's right, very again, very simple clean recipe. Bacon, onions,
43:46
Speaker 3: egg cream, a few cheeses, some spices of course, eggs.
43:51
Speaker 2: Well, I just real quick about bacon. Remember I said
43:53
Speaker 2: that she didn't want to cover up the taste. She
43:55
Speaker 2: wanted to let things to stand on their own.
43:57
Speaker 3: Yeah.
43:57
Speaker 2: One of the things she talks about mastering the art
43:59
Speaker 2: of French cooking was that with American bacon, you have
44:04
Speaker 2: to blanchet first to remove the smoky flavor. So you
44:06
Speaker 2: actually lightly boil it for a little bit until you
44:10
Speaker 2: get the smoky flavor off, and then you start to
44:12
Speaker 2: use bacon, which I think is actually a huge tip
44:15
Speaker 2: for a lot of people out there.
44:17
Speaker 3: Believe me, if they don't like smoky flavors, I guess.
44:20
Speaker 2: Or But the problem is is the bacon smoke smokin
44:23
Speaker 2: This is going to take over like that's all you're
44:25
Speaker 2: gonna taste, whereas you're not. If you can get rid
44:27
Speaker 2: of that smoky flavor, then you're you're in hog heaven.
44:31
Speaker 2: As she always said.
44:33
Speaker 3: I don't mind. I like that apple with and I
44:35
Speaker 3: also cook it in the oven. I think that is
44:37
Speaker 3: the best way to cook bacon, agreed. And they on
44:40
Speaker 3: a baking feet.
44:41
Speaker 2: With the little elf laying on it to keep it flat.
44:45
Speaker 3: Uh what about a cassoulet. That's a very classic French dish.
44:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pork and beans, poultry sausage. There's a dark
44:52
Speaker 2: brown crust on the top of the whole thing. She
44:54
Speaker 2: had a great quote about that.
44:57
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, cassoulet that best of bean feast is everyday
45:01
Speaker 3: fair for a peasant, but ambrosia for a gastronome. Though
45:04
Speaker 3: it's ideal consumer is at three hundred pound blocking back,
45:08
Speaker 3: who's been splitting firewood NonStop for the last twelve hours
45:11
Speaker 3: on a sub zero day in Manitoba.
45:14
Speaker 2: And like, if you look at pictures of the caselet,
45:16
Speaker 2: it's like, I want one so bad.
45:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks really good.
45:21
Speaker 2: And what about chocolate Moose.
45:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's another one that apparently she made a mistake
45:27
Speaker 3: on air. It didn't set correctly, and you know that
45:30
Speaker 3: moose has to set. But good chocolate moose is out
45:34
Speaker 3: of this world.
45:35
Speaker 2: Yeah. I couldn't find the episode, but apparently a nineteen
45:38
Speaker 2: ninety two WAPO article mentioned it. But supposedly it is
45:42
Speaker 2: surprisingly easy to make and the outcome is just amazing.
45:47
Speaker 2: I saw light airy, silky smooth. It says, the endless meal,
45:52
Speaker 2: and it's just a few ingredients including rum, chocolate coffee.
45:56
Speaker 2: And she teaches you these techniques of how to make,
45:58
Speaker 2: how to fold it, how to win the egg whites,
46:01
Speaker 2: and just get it just right. And yeah, yeah, every
46:04
Speaker 2: time I hear chocolate moose, I think of chocolate moose
46:07
Speaker 2: from top secret.
46:09
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, he's great. This is good movie. Rip Val Kilmer.
46:14
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I forgot about that.
46:17
Speaker 3: And then, of course French onion soup. I know that
46:18
Speaker 3: you and I both talked on the air about our
46:20
Speaker 3: love for French onion soup. If it's on a menu.
46:24
Speaker 3: There's two things in my life. If it's on a menu,
46:27
Speaker 3: I will get it. One is French onion soup and
46:29
Speaker 3: the other is a French dip sandwich.
46:31
Speaker 2: You love the French, two of.
46:33
Speaker 3: My favorite things, and it's not on you know, the
46:35
Speaker 3: most menu. So when I see it, I order it.
46:38
Speaker 3: And that French onion soup a crusty on top and
46:40
Speaker 3: that delicious oniony broth in the bread. It's just one
46:44
Speaker 3: of life's treats.
46:45
Speaker 2: Have you ever made it?
46:46
Speaker 3: I've never made it myself. I should try that.
46:48
Speaker 2: It's really good. All it takes is patience. It's not hard,
46:52
Speaker 2: but it takes a while for everything to come together.
46:54
Speaker 2: It takes a while to like genuinely caramelize the onions.
46:57
Speaker 2: But man, it is so it's really good.
47:02
Speaker 3: Don't you just get one of those Lipton packets?
47:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, out of the cayn that's how I do it.
47:08
Speaker 3: Well, you take one those Lipton packets and you put
47:10
Speaker 3: it in a turkey burger. That's what you do.
47:12
Speaker 2: Uh. Yeah, that's supposed to be pretty good. I've not
47:14
Speaker 2: had that. I found a recipe for a roast that
47:18
Speaker 2: has a packet of ojou, you know, the dry oju packet,
47:22
Speaker 2: a packet of ranch dry ranch mix, pepperccini, and like
47:29
Speaker 2: maybe one other thing and a roast and you put
47:31
Speaker 2: in a slow cooker and it's supposed to be a
47:33
Speaker 2: knockout dish. And I can't wait to try it.
47:36
Speaker 3: Man, we got you got to watch Julia and Julie
47:39
Speaker 3: and Julia and then start cooking that stuff and let
47:43
Speaker 3: me know how it goes.
47:43
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, I definitely plan to make some stuff, so
47:45
Speaker 2: I'll let you know for sure, all right.
47:47
Speaker 3: Uh. Sadly we're at the end of this episode.
47:50
Speaker 2: Uh.
47:50
Speaker 3: And Julia Child met the end of her life at
47:54
Speaker 3: the almost age of ninety two. I think she was
47:56
Speaker 3: just a couple of days short of her ninety second
47:58
Speaker 3: birthday when she passed away at her home at the
48:01
Speaker 3: time in Monticito, California, in August two thousand and four
48:04
Speaker 3: of liver failure.
48:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, l Ain Ducasso, I think is the only three
48:09
Speaker 2: star Michelin, Chef in the World, said today the entire
48:13
Speaker 2: community of cooks is sad and feels like orphans.
48:17
Speaker 3: Oh man, I know.
48:19
Speaker 2: And that's sad, that's brutal.
48:20
Speaker 3: Yeah.
48:20
Speaker 2: So she's actually buried in one of the more interesting
48:23
Speaker 2: places I've ever heard of. Had you heard of the
48:25
Speaker 2: Neptune Memorial Reef before?
48:28
Speaker 3: No? That sounds kind of cool though.
48:29
Speaker 2: Yeah. So they took her cremated remains mixed together with
48:32
Speaker 2: some concrete and formed a headstone out of it, put
48:36
Speaker 2: it underwater. I can't remember how deep it is, but
48:39
Speaker 2: this is an acre long underwater cemetery off a Key
48:43
Speaker 2: Key Biscayne in Florida. And on the headstone, again made
48:47
Speaker 2: from her cremated remains, there's a plaque with a knife
48:51
Speaker 2: and a fork inscribed on it and a quote from
48:53
Speaker 2: her fat gives things flavor.
48:56
Speaker 3: I love it.
48:57
Speaker 2: Yep.
48:57
Speaker 3: That's pretty fun for a scuba diver to see, I
48:59
Speaker 3: bet for sure.
49:01
Speaker 2: So rip Julia Child, and thanks for everything.
49:05
Speaker 3: That's right. Our berets are off to you.
49:09
Speaker 2: Let's see, we talked about Julia Child. You took off
49:12
Speaker 2: your brain. Yeah, that means it's time for listener mail.
49:17
Speaker 3: All right. So this is from Nathan Weinger and Carmel Indiana,
49:23
Speaker 3: and Nathan went through the trouble of calculating how many
49:26
Speaker 3: Olympic pools deep and how many big macs we are
49:30
Speaker 3: Okay as a show, he loves it. He says, I
49:33
Speaker 3: love nerd math. So I did some calculations using my
49:35
Speaker 3: trustee search engine. I found out there are over twenty
49:39
Speaker 3: six hundred episodes of stuff you should know. We're just
49:42
Speaker 3: going to use twenty six hundred to make it simply.
49:44
Speaker 3: So okay, all told, the average length is forty five minutes,
49:48
Speaker 3: which that makes me feel good because that's what we'rehooting for. Yeah,
49:52
Speaker 3: he said, I'm going to He said that seems low though,
49:54
Speaker 3: so I'm going to adjust it up to fifty five.
49:56
Speaker 3: I think these days is forty five. They used to
49:57
Speaker 3: be longer, so that's probably what he's witnessing. At average
50:01
Speaker 3: conversational speed, humans speak about one hundred and thirty words
50:03
Speaker 3: a minute. So you guys do a great podcast, and
50:05
Speaker 3: as pros, have honed your conversational skills to not be
50:08
Speaker 3: fast nor slow. So I'm going to stick with that
50:10
Speaker 3: median figure.
50:11
Speaker 2: Thanks.
50:12
Speaker 3: The average number of letters per English word is five,
50:15
Speaker 3: but since you often talk about subjects that require words
50:17
Speaker 3: like spectacular and hint or kaifex. I'm going to up
50:21
Speaker 3: your average to six. And finally, we're going to convert
50:24
Speaker 3: your speech into inches based on the size of a
50:27
Speaker 3: standard size twelve font, which is point one sixty seven inches.
50:30
Speaker 3: I'd love this stuff. So based on all that, we
50:33
Speaker 3: can get inches per word, one inches per minute a speech,
50:36
Speaker 3: one hundred and thirty inches per episode, seventy one to
50:39
Speaker 3: fifty total episode inches, eighteen million, five hundred ninety thousand
50:44
Speaker 3: in total episode feet, which is one point five four
50:48
Speaker 3: nine one sixty seven feet. That equates so one episode
50:52
Speaker 3: of stuff you should know equates to the depth of
50:55
Speaker 3: two hundred and thirty eight thousand, three hundred and thirty
50:57
Speaker 3: three Olympic swimming pools, a bit short of Josh's estimate
51:01
Speaker 3: of ten to fifteen million, and for the sake of
51:03
Speaker 3: transparency and Chuck's liking, that is seven point seven four
51:10
Speaker 3: five and change million, big max at an average of
51:15
Speaker 3: two point five interest per Burger.
51:18
Speaker 2: Wo Man, who is this?
51:20
Speaker 3: This is Nathan Wenger or Winger? Okay, I'd say Winger.
51:24
Speaker 2: I think it's Winger in the tradition of Kip Winger.
51:28
Speaker 3: Well, it's w E though, so that's Nathan. He's in Carmel, Indiana.
51:31
Speaker 3: That's a lot of work to go through names.
51:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, Nathan, I could tell you're a true fan with
51:35
Speaker 2: that little trusty search engine aside, I caught that.
51:38
Speaker 3: I love it.
51:39
Speaker 2: Thank you for doing that. I always wanted to know
51:41
Speaker 2: how many big Max we are and Olympic pools. So
51:44
Speaker 2: thanks a lot, Nathan, and happy Thanksgiving to you, and
51:48
Speaker 2: happy Thanksgiving to all of you out there, including our
51:51
Speaker 2: Canada friends. And if you want to send us an
51:54
Speaker 2: email like Nathan did, send it off to Stuff Podcasts
51:57
Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com.
52:02
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
52:05
Speaker 3: more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio
52:07
Speaker 1: App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.