Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Vol. 1 & Vol. 2) are my favorite cookbooks of all time. If you do not own them already, I highly recommend you purchase them immediately.
Why a Picture Project?
In 1961 when Vol. 1 was originally published, photography was exorbitantly expensive. Including photos in Julia Child’s, Louisette Bertholle’s, and Simone Beck’s masterpiece was completely out of the question. Although Paul Child’s drawings are charming and helpful and Julia’s instructions are precise and friendly, I’ve always yearned to be able to SEE the finished recipe.
Luckily, we now have the technology to make that happen!
How is this different from Julie Powell’s blog?
I fell in love with Amy Adam’s portrayal of Julie Powell in the 2008 movie Julie & Julia and found Meryl Streep’s version of Julia Child inspiring. It broke my heart when Julie’s project was scoffed by Julia as trite and gimmicky. After reading several articles about it from Julia’s point of view, it’s easy to understand where she was coming from.
Flinging around four-letter words when cooking isn’t attractive, to me or Julia. She didn’t want to endorse [the book]. What came through on [Julie Powell’s] blog was somebody who was [cooking] almost for the sake of a stunt. [Julie Powell] would never really describe the end results, how delicious it was, and what she learned.
Judith Jones, editor of Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vol. 1 & Vol. 2
One of the main components of getting my culinary degree (Escoffier School of Culinary Arts) online was writing out detailed descriptions of the transition of each recipe and technique we studied. As tedious as it seemed at the time, this exercise was crucial to the learning process.
It’s with this in mind, that I’ve taken on the challenge of cooking and photographing all the recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In each post, you’ll find process shots, the finished plated recipe, the French and English name, page number and volume, how delicious (or not) it was, what I did wrong, what was especially wonderful, level of expertise, and whether there was anything particularly challenging about the recipe.
To say the least, photographing ALL the recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking will take much longer than 365 days to complete.
Let’s see what you’re cooking!
If you love Julia Child, having fun in the kitchen, cooking French food, and beautiful photos of culinary delights, I hope you come back every week to find new pictures of Julia’s recipes. You can even pop over to my VIP Facebook page and post your pictures of her recipes, hang out, see what people are making, and make new friends.
Giving Credit
At the risk of plagiarizing but for your convenience, I am including a generic recipe in each post. Recipes can not be patented but should not be plagiarized either. The recipes in these posts do not have Julia’s voice, humor, or the many tidbits of her delightful wisdom. For those, you’ll need to flip through Mastering the Art of French Cooking and spend time with her there.