To celebrate the launch of its food channel, the online streaming service Twitch is broadcasting Julia Child’s The French Chef in its entirety. That’s 10 years of that voice, all that butter, and the best cooking on TV in one long joyous uninterrupted stretch.
The stream kicked off yesterday at 9pm GMT. As I type, Child is giving pointers on how best to carve your goose. A steaming bird sits on a platter the size of a small car. Child has at it with a large knife and an even larger fork. “And now,” she exclaims, “you can cook your own goose” – the guttural g resonating with her delightful 1960s warble. One episode ends and the next, without a beat, begins. “Chestnuts,” says Child, “are the schoolboy’s currency”, and suddenly we’re making a savoury purée. “It’s awfully good,” she says, pouring “the whole business” – a batch of herbacious stock and simmered chestnuts – into a food mill.
This show might be a black-and-white relic, with the kind of orchestral theme tune you know from wartime newsreels. But, as any Toby Ziegler fan will corroborate, Child’s legacy is one to protect and celebrate. The erstwhile home-cooking champion looms as large in our culinary backcatalogue as she did in her own kitchen, peering over the rim of a stand mixer from that fabulous height of six feet two inches.
Her manner is casual and spontaneous; she lobs pats of dough and chicken breasts on to her worktop with a kind of waltzing grace. “I’ve noticed, haven’t you,” she enquires disdainfully, “that people – Americans – when eating a piece of pie, often leave the bottom part of the pie crust, because it’s soggy”. All the force of such a disappointment lands on the gs of that last, loathsome adjective.
Whether she’s melting a cup of sugar or whisking a bowl of chestnut cream, Child has such an undiluted love for the task at hand – there’s not the slightest hint of pretence or showbiz savvy. She’s in her element, unperturbed. She’s a whirlwind and a marvel. That’s what keeps you glued to the screen and raring to get into the kitchen. Head to twitch.tv/food – there are days left of this marathon to savour.
