On the nature of Food

We watched 'Julie/Julia' last night and was not impressed. I think the concept is great, take a cook book and cook every recipe (assumes that every recipe is worth cooking or that in the process you become more proficient).

One of the things that struck me about the film (have not read the blog) was the absence of endorsement from Mrs Child for the project. In fact I later discovered that she thought it was a completely facile project. She also noted that the food was rarely commented on (in the movie the only adjective is 'Yum') and never addressed the flavours or textures.

I felt overall that the movie did nothing for cooking and was a missed opportunity. I did feel however that Meryl Streep did a fine turn as Julia C and it is always a pleasure to see Stanley Tucci. But there was so little emphasis given to the cooking in the movie, so little attention paid to ingredients, to ovens, pots, pans, frying, blanching, steaming or roasting. Poaching does get a mention but the emphasis is on the reaction of the protagonist to the finished product. Given that the idea of the film is cooking it becomes a movie blog with a character who has no language to communicate the raison d'etre of the cook book.

If I were to recommend the reader to any good food movies I would simply start and finish with 'Big Night' (thank you, Mr Tucci). Here the meal is important, the ritual of preparing the meal, concentrating on the available time for dishes, guests and music all follow in order with finality being the mouthfuls of this amazing feast. It's a movie that takes food seriously, its about people who are serious about food, it's a recognition that food like music has an audience. Its a lovely movie.

I mentioned at the start that to cook every recipe in a book should in the least improve your proficiency in the kitchen. The movie implied the Julie character cooked dishes blind without having tested them first. This I find hard to swallow as they had just moved into a new place and had no experience with the oven. Every oven is different, they cook differently, they heat differently. Some have an uneven heating distribution, some heat from above but not below, one side more than the other etc. The variations are endless but the upshot is - you need to know your oven because only then will you know how to adapt recipes to suit it's behaviour.

But I will finish by acknowledging that all this started with a blog (like this one) that took off and got turned into a movie. So firstly, well done. My Blog is my personal ramblings where I am the main character. Occasionally I'll look at something else, but it will always be from my viewpoint. The movie (not the 'Julie/Julia' blog) is intended for an audience whereas the blog can be entirely personnel. If the movie was looking at the herculean task of cooking recipes it treated it like pressing each key on the keyboard of a piano ('Today I cooked aspic', 'Today I pressed Middle C - Yum').