photo from The French Chef Cookbook,
photo credit Paul Child
Halcyon Days in Santa Barbara
August 13 marks Julia Child's Birthday. This year would be 103, if I'm not mistaken. Sadly, she left us in 2004, but her memory will be with us a long, long time.
About 6 years after I first met Julia, when I had moved permanently to town to work at the bustling El Encanto Hotel, I remember sitting on the terrace of the hotel with Julia and her husband Paul. She said something to me that I've never forgotten:
"What this town really needs is a good Dover sole Meunière."
(You may recall that, as the story goes, it was a Sole Meunière upon arriving on the coast of Normandy that was Julia's first "aha!" moment of the French cuisine she would champion so well.) The idea of "a good Dover sole Meunière" was one I always remembered, and was a sentiment that I took to heart when I was Chef in charge at a restaurant.
It's not as easy putting a Dover sole on the menu as it is, say, a seared ahi. Starting in 1999, I put Dover sole on the menu, and today at Sly's it continues to play an important role for us. We serve it either grilled with Maître d' butter, or, of course, as Julia suggested, Sole Meunière. The classic takes a lot of preparation, as you have to clean the fish, carefully skin it, trim the edges, and then dip it in milk, then flour and carefully sautée it in butter - lots of butter, the way Julia would like it. We even have special oval "Dover sole" pans to cook it in, so the butter doesn't tend to burn.
Perhaps most importantly, most Americans expect the Dover sole to have the bones removed from the Dover sole at the table, so there is a dining room organizational issue, and server skill is important. When we first put the Dover sole on the menu, only one older gentleman on our serving staff knew how to prepare the sole tableside. Now, every one of our servers at Sly's is a whiz at it - good thing, as we often have tables where there's five or six soles to bone for our guests.
As a result of Julia's heartfelt comment, we now serve several tons of Dover sole each year at Sly's. All expertly boned tableside, I might add.
There were many other occasions to meet with Julia, and to cook for several of her birthday parties along the way. I am very proud that in her later years, while living at Casa Dorinda, she was a regular customer of mine in Montecito. When someone wanted to take her out to dinner, often as not she came to the restaurant where I was chef. (Arriving in the Casa's purple Plymouth PT Cruiser. Quite a sight.)
What did Julia like to eat? Over the years, there were many things that she truly seemed to enjoy. There were parties where she came back to sneak an extra piece or two of Quiche Lorraine - her recipe, naturally. Or the time she asked for a second bowl of lobster bisque - my goodness - that's a rich soup. Often she would order a small filet, medium rare, with béarnaise sauce - yes, the sauce was her recipe, of course, the classic one.
Julia's favorite dish? Well, that may surprise you. I'd have to say that it was our hamburger, freshly ground daily, with ripe farmer's market tomatoes, crisp iceberg lettuce, thinly sliced red onions, and French fried potatoes, that, frankly, I learned to cook by reading Julia. We still serve those great fries and that great hamburger at Sly's, just like we used to make for Julia. Heck, we even make the mayonnaise ourselves, just liked we learned from her tutelage.
Like so many chefs, I owe her an awful lot, and am proud to have cooked a few meals that made her happy. Happy Birthday, Julia!
How I met Julia
Like pretty much everyone becoming a chef in the early 1970s, my cooking was - and still is - heavily influenced by Julia's precise, carefully delineated and scientific approach to traditional French cooking. The first cookbook I owned, a gift on my birthday at the age of 16, was Julia's "The French Chef", based on the recipes from her 119 PBS television shows. I later graduated to Mastering the Art of French Cooking and I must admit that my experiments with stews, butter creams, and yes, even the elusive perfect croissant may very well have resulted in quite a bit of extra cleanup work for my long-suffering mother.
The first time I met Julia was the same day in 1984 that I met Annie, who has now been my bride for some 30 years. Annie and I were both cooking for an American Institute of Wine and Food Mushroom and Truffle event at the Music Academy. I was cooking fresh shell pasta with creme fraîche and truffles, and scrambled eggs with truffles, representing my friend Michael Hutchings. Michael was the host for event, which featured stellar attractions like Robert Mondavi and of course Julia. Julia loved the scrambled eggs and said as much. (My-eventual-wife-to-be, Annie, didn't. She thought the eggs were runny.)
Later that same year, before I'd even moved to Santa Barbara, I was up at the Andree Clark Bird Refuge helping Michael Hutchings (now Michael's Catering, here in Santa Barbara) open his restaurant, Michael's Waterside. A protege of the Roux Brothers in London as well as my first sous chef, Michael's Waterside drew national acclaim. Like all restaurants, the opening was a whole lot of work, and I came up from Los Angeles to help a friend out. We were down in the kitchen one morning (I was sleeping upstairs at night) when in the back door walked Julia.
Here's what she had to say, in that unmistakeable voice of hers: "Can I borrow a leg of veal?"
What a question! Of course, Michael had a leg of veal, (They are big!) and was happy to lend it to his friend Julia, and to introduce me as well. I got a chance to tell her how much I had absorbed from her books. LIke everyone meeting someone famous, I probably said something silly and perhaps gushing, but I can assure you that the meeting made my day.
Julia and Russ Morash, the television producer, were right next door in the old California Highway Patrol building, where they had built a set and were shooting the "Cooking with Julia" series. The veal leg was just the prop that Julia needed for the next episode.
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For the next few weeks, Sly's is featuring a Fixed Price menu of Julia's recipes. 3 courses for $35, with wine (That's how Julia would have had it!) for $55. Here's the menu:
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