Backstage with Julia

Backstage with Julia by Nancy Verde Barr Page A

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Authors: Nancy Verde Barr
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clearly marked streets. Julia's route called for zigzags onto barely noticeable, seldom labeled, and often poorly paved streets. To this day, I can find my way to 103 Irving Street with those eekies, but I couldn't tell you the name of the streets I took, because Paul and Julia simply called them "eekies." What's more, if they did mention street names, they used their own appellations: the street with the tilting chimney was "Slanted Chimney Way," and the one with the white fence was "White Picket Street" regardless of what the street signs said.
    So I followed the eekies and pulled into her driveway having cut a good eight minutes off my trip.
    Julia let me in the back door—she never used the front—and I followed her up a short flight of stairs, through the high-ceilinged hallway, and into her kitchen. It was not glamorous. In fact, it was downright funky. Pegboards, painted the shade of fading grass, hung floor to ceiling on nearly every bit of wall space. Attached to them was a batterie de cuisine that would tax the capacity of a Williams-Sonoma warehouse. Knives, carbon- and stainless-steel-bladed, stood at the ready in descending order of size from large chef's knives to small paring ones along two magnetic strips attached to either side of the kitchen window, where a person who was more interested in decoration than function might have hung café curtains. There were more knives, including a very large Chinese cleaver, nestled in a hollowed-out groove next to a wooden cutting block abutting the counter. "I'm a knife freak," Julia confessed.

    Julia in her Cambridge kitchen.
    A professional six-burner Garland range that Paul and Julia had purchased used in 1956 for $429 dominated one wall, and above it hung a handsome set of long-handled, flat copper lids designed to cover any size pot or pan. Linoleum, in a spattered pattern common in the 1950s, covered the floor. Yellow Post-it notes inscribed in Julia's hand clung to numerous surfaces and instructed how things worked. The one on the dishwasher told exactly how much soap to add and which buttons to press; on the electric coffeepot were detailed calculations on how to measure the coffee (both per pot and per cup); the note stuck to the door of the small under-counter freezer used for baking ingredients listed what was stored inside. A Post-it on the bathroom door asked departing occupants to leave the door ajar, "to air the joint out." And, because at one time someone had inadvertently left a scoop in the icemaker, causing it to break down with a scrunching noise that Julia imaginatively imitated for me, that note said, "DO NOT leave scoop in ice machine."
    The kitchen was the epitome of Julia's no-nonsense approach to cooking and to life—a visual expression of her practical personality. The pegboard organization, a system Paul and Julia first devised for their small French kitchen in Provence, was a sensible solution to storage constraints. Paul cut and painted the boards, and then, after each pot, pan, and tool was in place, he outlined it with a thick tracing of black marker, so when an item was lifted off the peg, the remaining ink shape told exactly where that tool and only that tool fit. The boards not only provided ample space for equipment but prevented the problems that can arise from having revolving teams of workers in the kitchen. It annoyed Julia to no end if someone used a piece of equipment and then put it where it didn't belong, thereby forcing her to hunt all over for it when she needed it. The pegboards and the knife strips showed exactly where those tools belonged, and there was no excuse for not putting them there. The Post-its prevented newcomers from clogging the dishwasher with an excess of soap or putting odor-exuding ingredients into the freezer with odor-absorbing bits of pastry and sticks of butter.
    Julia Child's culinary sanctum may not have been worthy of a center spread in House Beautiful, but it was one of the most

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