Free Backstage with Julia by Nancy Verde Barr

eager she was to do her job well—and how resourceful she was. On the mornings that Julia was on live, we were at the studio no later than 5:30 a.m., so there was no time to eat at the hotel beforehand. Not a problem. There was always a huge buffet waiting for us; Paul could have his banana and Julia usually some melon and maybe an English muffin, "well toasted, please." I had relayed this information to Susy during our phone conversation, and at five-thirty that morning, into the kitchen walked this tall, striking twenty-nine-year-old brunette carrying an artfully arranged platter of neatly sliced bananas, melon sections with the rind carefully cut away, and a thoughtful assortment of other fruit. Whether or not there were decorative garnishes, I don't recall; I only know it was a presentation decidedly more attractive than the simple whole banana and half melon I regularly served Paul and Julia. When had she had time? How had she found the buffet and the utensils?
    "Good morning, America!" she exclaimed, lighting up the tiny kitchen with her smile. Julia had invited her to join us "on trial," and Susy came prepared to do the best job possible so that we would keep her. And she was a keeper. She became a cherished friend to Julia and still is to me today; I always think of her as Julia wrote and spoke of her: "that darling Susy."
    Susy was young, effervescent, and ready to gobble up, in the dearest way, all that New York had to offer. A native of Portland, Oregon, and just back from Paris, she seemed a bit like Audrey Hepburn's Sabrina—a sweet, generous girl who had been broadly painted but not tainted with Parisian sophistication. I suspect that Susy's joie de vivre reminded Julia of herself so many years before when she had discovered the joys of Paris.
    Julia queried Susy about every detail of what was going on in the Parisian food world, and Susy filled her in on who was who and what was what in culinary France. Julia would recall—as she said, with "trembling nostalgia"—her early days in Paris, when she first sampled the evocative flavors of French cuisine that had so overwhelmed her appetites. She spoke with wistful reverie of the lessons she had learned under the tutelage of chef Max Bugnard at the Paris Cordon Bleu. I didn't have much to contribute during those conversations since my one trip to France had occurred prior to my epiphanies with chicken Kiev and deep-fried parsley and I had spent more time drooling over haute couture than haute cuisine. But I was a greedy listener, and when I returned to Paris a few years later, the passion of their conversations inspired my trip. I ate in their suggested restaurants and purchased so much cookware at E. Dehillerin and foodstuffs at Fauchon that my customs inspection back in the United States was interminable.
    Talking about Paris seemed to stimulate Julia's memories of the useful French trucs or tricks that Bugnard had shown her, and she decided she should show more of them on the show. Throughout her television and teaching career, everything Julia cooked followed the principles of classic French techniques according to Escoffier. Legendary among chefs and gourmets, George Auguste Escoffier simplified, modernized, and wrote down the lessons of haute cuisine that Antoine Carême had pioneered before him. Escoffier's 1903 Le Guide Culinaire became and remains every serious culinary student's definitive text on how to cook. Julia's way to cook always adhered to the Escoffier method, but in the years following her original shows and initial books, she expanded her recipe repertoire to show that those techniques could and should be applied to "good, plain old cooking," whether it was American fare, Mexican cuisine, or that of Timbuktu. She made meat loaf, hash, guacamole, and hummus with the same Gallic care with which she made the staples of classic French cuisine.
    When she decided to demonstrate some of the useful lessons from Chef Bugnard, she chose a