This is a set of special programs on food in fiction -- started in 1997 but never aired. Julia introduces classics "about eating, some cooking, and most of all about people." Stories are performed by actors or the authors themselves, and sometimes chefs step in with recipes.
These programs have been made possible in part by the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts.
HUNGRY VALENTINE is an hour of love stories that center on the kitchen. Actress Nina Gold performs romantic passages from Laura Esquivel's "Like Water for Chocolate"; chef Judy Rodgers takes us into the kitchen of San Francisco's Zuni Cafe for a romantic recipe; and the Irish writer, Edna O'Brien, has a story about fixing lunch for an important guest -- one of her famous stories of "doomed" love.
HUNGRY FOR THE HOLIDAYS is an hour with the actor, Peter Donat, dramatizing the Cratchit family's Christmas feast; chef Mary Risley showing how to make the figgy pudding; and M.F.K. Fisher performing a story she wrote in 1937, about an over-the-top meal in France.
Other programs are built around a tale within the tale of Willa Cather's "Death Comes to the Archbishop" -- and Steinbeck's "Cannery Row"; Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre"; and Anne Tyler's "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant."
Half hour shows include "LUNCH WITH M.F.K. Fisher" -- with her story "I Was Really Very Hungry"; "LUNCH WITH EDNA O'BRIEN," reading her story, "Violets"; and "CHICKEN A LA STEINBECK": In "Cannery Row" the hobos poach a chicken in a 5-gallon coffee can over a low-burning campfire. What they don't know, but Julia does, is that their technique is the same as Poule au Pot, the favorite dish of King Henri IV of Navarre.
1: Hungry at the Homesick Restaurant
Almost 30 years before "locavore" or "slow food" came into the language, before farmers' markets got popular, Anne Tyler invented a fictional restaurant that was way ahead of its time -- The Homesick Restaurant. It's a family story, with two brothers, Cody and Ezra. Ezra started The Homesick Restaurant because he wanted to give people the foods they were homesick for. As Julia Child says, "What Ezra was homesick for was what he never had." His brother, Cody, doesn't care what he eats:
"Cody cut into a huge wedge of pie and gave some thought to food. Couldn't you classify a person, he wondered, purely by examining his attitude toward food? Look at Cody's mother -- a nonfeeder, if ever there was one. ... Why, mention you were hungry and she'd suddenly act rushed and harassed, fretful, out of breath, distracted. He remembered her coming home from work in the evening and tearing irritably around the kitchen. Tins toppled out of the cupboards and fell all over her -- pork and beans, Spam... peas canned olive drab. She cooked in her hat, most of the time... adding jarring extras of her own design such as crushed pineappe in the mashed potatoes." Anything that was left-over. And she burnt it all. This story is about bad food and good -- and people who are both good, and flawed. As for the good food, prominent chefs step in with recipes and insights. Annie Somerville, executive chef of Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, has an easy and delicious way to make a vegetable broth -- and parchment packets of roasted potatoes, olive oil, and herbs, served in their steaming, browned, paper packages, like presents at the dinner table. Mary Risley, winner of the James Beard Humanitarian Award, tells how not to grow herbs.
This show, says Julia, is "about eating, some cooking, and most of all about people."
2 - Hungry in Winter
The British actress, Liz Marks, reads of 8-year-old Jane Eyre’s hunger at the orphanage, where she’s fed burnt porridge -- inedible. Julia Child talks about grains, one of the first things the human being cooked: “Just add water and stir.” The trick is, not to burn. Annie Somerville, executive chef at Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, shows how to cook a delicious dinner dish of grains—a farro risotto with leeks, chard, and mushrooms. Mary Risley, of the Tante Marie Cooking School, presents a simple dessert that would have been a treat for the girls in the orphanage.
Michael Belitsos reads from “Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant,” by Anne Tyler – a book written almost 30 years before words like organic, locovore or slow cooking were invented, before farmers markets or "locally grown." Ezra starts a restaurant serving the foods people are homesick for. It turns out he’s homesick for what he never had. Annie Somerville, of Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, talks about herbs and gives a simple but fantastic recipe for Herbed Potatoes in Parchment Packages. The beginning of a love story weaves between the recipes and the novel excerpts, proving Julia's conviction that “Cooking is almost always about more than food.”
3 - Hungry Valentine
"The way to everyone's heart is through the kitchen," says Julia. And so here are a couple of love stories that have to do with love -- and the kitchen. "Like Water for Chocolate" tells its love story through recipes -- recipes for ink, matches, sealing wax, and delicious things to eat.
Judy Rodgers, chef-owner of the Zuni Cafe in San Francisco, takes us into her restaurant kitchen for a romantic recipe.
Edna O'Brien has a story about fixing a meal for an important guest. It turns out to be a story of "doomed" love. Before performing the story, Edna O'Brien takes us to her mother's farmhouse kitchen in Ireland, with the Mrs. Beeton's cookery book always on the counter. Julia has quite a bit to say about Mrs. Beeton's classic book -- its advice about what the cook does, and the second butler -- and how the recipes relate to the dishes prepared in the story. The program has been made possible in part by a grant from the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts.
4 - Hungry for the Holidays
Everyone knows Julia Child loved to cook, but not everyone knows she loved to read. Long ago she started work on a series of specials that are only just now being completed and aired -- stories about food and a little cooking, but mostly about people. "A Christmas Carol is a lovely story to read over the holidays," she says, "because it has a happy ending." Peter Donat, a star of her favorite TV show, "Murder She Wrote," brings the story to life -- with sounds and music that stimulate the theatre of the mind. Next Julia introduces her old friend, M.F.K. Fisher, who was, in the words of the poet W.H. Auden, "the best prose-writer in America." The recording took place in the author's tiny house set in a meadow, with cows poking their noses to the window. Julia paints a funny, spontaneous portrait of her friend -- especially her "wicked" streak. The story Mary Frances Kennedy reads is "I Was Really Very Hungry," about a meal served off-season in a famous Burgundian restaurant, the passionate chef slaving in the kitchen, the passionate waitress bringing course after course to the only diner in the building, M.F.K. Fisher, whose pleasure shifts to fear as she finds herself "a victim of these stranded gourmets."
5 - Julia Child Presents "A Dickens Holiday Feast"
"A Dickens Holiday Feast" is a gift from the Julia Child Foundation.
After Julia's brief introduction, horseshoes ring on the cobblestones, Big Ben strikes three, and Peter Donat reads of Scrooge, who is busy making people unhappy. The Cratchits are merry, cooking the goose and the Christmas pudding. Old Scrooge has been invited but says Bah! Humbug. Mary Risley shows us how to do the pudding, and behold! Scrooge shows up for the happy ending. Peter Donat, of San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater, has had leading roles in movies like "Chinatown" and TV shows like Julia's favorite, "Murder She Wrote."
6 - Julia Child Presents "Lunch with M.F.K. Fisher"
An unknown side of Julia Child is that she was a reader. The series, HUNGRY, will include delicious readings from stories by Charles Dickens, Willa Cather, John Steinbeck, Cormack McCarthy, Edna O'Brien, and others. All the programs are, in Julia's words, "about eating, a little cooking, and most of all, people." In this program she introduces us to her late friend, MFK Fisher, describing her house in a meadow with cows poking their noses to the window -- and giving a wonderfully funny, spontaneous character sketch of the author's personality, including her "wicked" streak. The story you'll hear centers on a meal at a French roadside inn. It was written in 1937, recorded in 1985 -- the only recording ever made of MFK Fisher reading a story.
7 - Julia Child Presents "Lunch with Edna O'Brien"
The program begins with Edna O'Brien describing her mother's kitchen, with the Mrs. Beeton's cookery book always open: "Mrs. Beeton was quite extravagant... saying, "Take six quail and fourteen pigeons and stuff them into the pheasant, with bacon, cognac..." She laughs. ("We weren't well off...") Julia says she has often used Mrs. Beeton's "excellent" book, with "good recipes" -- and instructions for the butler, the cook, "and all that household help that no one has anymore."
The story begins, "In an hour he is due. In that hour I have tasks to perform, and they of course revolve around him." It turns out to be the start of an affair -- a story of what Edna O'Brien calls "doomed love... painful, full of longing." Chopin's First Piano Concerto helps underscore the emotion.
8 - Chicken a la Steinbeck
Julia says, "Cooking is always about more than food." This program is "about eating, some cooking, and mostly about people."
The people here are Mack and the boys in "Cannery Row." Michael Belitsos has just the right voice to spin their yarn, set beside the Carmel River, where the stream tumbles, fish jump. and insects hum. On the way here the boys have hit a chicken -- "without running too far off the road." They have some onions and carrots that have fallen off a truck. And so begins their cooking adventure.
Between segments of Steinbeck, Julia weaves in comments about their culinary technique. They "have the secret advocated by Escoffier himself: 'Keep it simple.'"
Chef Carlo Middione comes in with a demonstration of poaching a chicken the Italian way. It's pretty easy. You laugh with the crew when Carlo concludes, "If you can't do this you can't do anything." Next, Shirley Fong-Torres takes us to Chinatown and shows what the Chinese do with poached chicken -- from soup to salad to stir-fry.
The guest chefs have stories of their own -- a few of them about Julia -- proving what she says: "Cooking is always about more than food."
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The files are enclosed in a single RAR and, as always, are tagged properly.
https://www.adrive.com/public/H3gMRx/HUNGRY%20-%20The%20Literary%20Julia%20Child.rar
Bob
Replies
Well, that blows my diet. LOL Thank you Bob. -------------------------------- R
I'm on a seafood diet
I see food. I eat it.
Yes, there aren't as many with this delectable subjuect, but what are here are tasty. -------------------- R
Food for thought.
Thanks for sharing.
You're welcome! I wasn't sure if this belonged in food ort in documentaries, but since Food had so little attention, I decided to park it here.