Julia (everyone's on a first-name basis with her) was keenly aware of her good fortune. In an interview with Leslie Brenner, author of American Appetite (Bard, 1999), Julia quipped that "I happened to come along just at the right time. If it had been a bit earlier, it wouldn't have gone over...People were reading about what the Kennedys were eating. They just needed someone, and I happened to be the right person."

She nearly single-handedly yanked us back from the crumbling edge of a culinary precipice and reintroduced us to the luxuries of French cooking (read: butter, eggs, cream and lots and lots of cognac). Only this time is wasn't just the rich who could afford such extravagance. The growing middle class had money and, like their wealthy predecessors of the '20s, was more than ready to learn and indulge.

Yet what accounted for Julia's uncanny success? Barnard's assessment: "She was highly entertaining, very smart and gave you the confidence to do really elaborate things. She was a great showman."

"Julia's totally nonthreatening," adds Bronz. "I don't understand why — she's six feet tall and wields a knife, yet she makes you feel as if you can do anything." Perhaps Ray sums it up best: "The newly affluent were trying to attain culture. She made French cooking very approachable. You acquired culture without feeling intimidated."

From her TV show, The French Chef, came many classic dishes. Julia made good on Herbert Hoover's promise of "a chicken in every pot" with her wildly popular recipe for Coq au Vin. A simple chicken dish made with mushrooms, onions, bacon and red wine, Coq au Vin was copied in millions of kitchens around the country. The dish was so well-loved that Julia included it in many of her subsequent cookbooks. But while she whipped up Boeuf Bourguignon, Mousse au Chocolat and Duck à l'Orange under the hot lights of the makeshift TV studio in Boston, another movement was afoot.

The late '60s brought social unrest, growing tension over the Vietnam War and hippies with an unquenchable hunger for unprocessed, proletarian food made from scratch. Derogatorily referred to as granola-crunching, Birkenstock-wearing kind of folk, they eschewed anything prepackaged and began making their own products such as fresh bread, peanut butter, tahini and hummus.

Eventually even the most establishment-entrenched conservatives became curious. While it may have been a novelty to travel to the local cooperative to pick up fresh bean sprouts and gawk, it wasn't long before some of the more adventurous traded in suits for tie-dyed T-shirts and opened restaurants. Regular items on the menu were vegetarian chili, guacamole, gazpacho, zucchini bread, lemon bars, carrot cake and, of course, granola.

The schism between Julia's traditional French dishes and the appearance of "hippie food" in the course of only a few years proved jarring at the time. It was the first indication, however, of the speed with which food was evolving. The remaining three decades of the century would only build upon the '60s and surprise us with greater diversity, occasional pomp and unbridled imagination. more >

Recipe
Coq au Vin

 


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