After 37 viewings of Julie and Julia, Camille Bavera has still not mastered the art of French cooking. She has, however, learned to live la vie Parisienne – 524 recipes at a time.
I moved to New York City for the second time during the height of summer, 2020. My apartment wasn’t the size of a shoe box – it was more suitable for housing a single earring. I was the little golden hoop, and I shared the apartment with two slightly bigger hoops.
The kitchen was non-existent – just a stove, one square countertop, and a couch that doubled as a tattoo bed for my flatmate’s clients when they would show up drunk, begging for new ink. We lived above the hottest French restaurant on the Lower East Side, and real estate was premium.
One of my two roommates was enrolled in culinary school, and she would often while away an afternoon julienning potatoes and carrots. She kept an 800ml container of duck fat in our fridge and gave me all the poisson en papillote she made in class: fragrant fillets of tilapia with thinly sliced lemons, and crisp, oily rosemary sprigs in packets of parchment paper. Between her dirty blonde hair and futile attempts to actually cook in our apartment, she reminded me of Julie Powell, the home cook responsible for the Julie/Julia Project, which, at that time, was my obsession.
“Have I, in fact, ever emulsified, clarified, or ever really known what an aspic is?”
In my world of leftovers, raw carrots, and microwaved meals, the film Julie & Julia was my escape to better things – the real-life story of another struggling New Yorker who coped by working her way through Julia Child’s first cookbook. I might not have had a window in my bedroom, but I sure had a TV set, and I watched that movie over and over.
The film tells Powell’s story: the lamentable life of an insurance secretary tasked with processing the after-effects of September 11th. In her words: “Someone who spent her days answering phones and doing copying, who is too disconsolate when she gets back to her apartment at night to do anything but sit on the couch and stare vacantly at reality TV shows until she falls asleep.”
Powell loved cooking and set herself the task of working through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in just one year: Behold, the Julie & Julia Project.
For those who may not be familiar, Julia Child was the woman responsible for introducing French cooking to the United States in the form of one 524-page cookbook that made the cuisine both palatable and easy to understand for non-Europeans.
Anyone who does not know either the cook or the book, well, Powell questioned their very existence. “Do you know Mastering the Art of French Cooking? You must, at least, know of it… even if you just think of it as the book by that lady who looks like Dan Aykroyd and bleeds a lot, you know of it.”
Sure, I know it, but have I cooked from it myself? Have I, in fact, ever emulsified, clarified, or ever really known what an aspic is? Absolutely not. Nonetheless, I chose to spend my time with the people who did – and I dare say I could now use any fancy utensil put in front of me.
“I know that food can make anything better – if not downright palatable”
While I didn’t cook, I bonded with the central character. Julie, played by Amy Adams, and I were basically in the same boat. Her in the sprawling Queens, me, in the cramped streets of Manhattan. We both had some form of an NYC kitchen and a lot of time on our hands, but I didn’t use mine like Julie did. I just watched her cook.
I preferred to eat glamorous leftovers on my crusty bedroom floor while I re-watched the movie for the umpteenth (36th) time than try to use a kitchen myself. I can quote it and hum every song on the soundtrack in time, but I preferred to live vicariously, watching as Julie trialled and errored those 524 recipes in 365 days.
She failed a lot, and I felt bad. I didn’t relish the fallen roast on the floor, or the miserable walks in the pouring rain after a fight with someone she loved. I was in my Hinge dating era, too, I might add, so I had plenty of my own romance drama to bring back to my television screen at night. I worked my way, scene by scene, through our collective emotional turmoil.
Therefore, while I may prefer to eat leftovers or eat tofu à l’orange instead of the Julia Child masterpiece, deep in my core I know how to cook, and I know that food can make anything better – if not downright palatable. So, thank you, Julie Powell, for teaching me about an undying passion for food that can make you do crazy things, like watching a movie 36 – no, wait – 37 times.