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Comment by nerdjon | Hacker News Reader

I find it fascinating going back and watching some of her cooking shows. I like when she isn't afraid when she makes a mistake and can just carry on.

I somewhat regularly cook from the art of French cooking (or the way to cook and baking with Julia) and some of the recipes have not aged particularly well (for my taste at least) but many of them are still fantastic.

A lot of butter yeah... a stick of butter to make burgers, something that I never used butter for before, sure stuck out to me but it was really good. I just don't do it every day.

It has been helping me improve my cooking skills as well.

I still love the variants that the cookbook focuses on. I have a ton of cookbooks, and I have not seen such a focus on variants on the same recipe as is this book. I am sure there are others out there and this isn't unique to her, but it is my favorite part of her book.

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> A lot of butter yeah... a stick of butter to make burgers, something that I never used butter for before, sure stuck out to me but it was really good. I just don't do it every day.

Cant remember which TV Chef Personality said this (probably Gordon Ramsay) but they made a big distinction between restaurant cooking and home cooking at one point. In restaurant cooking stuff like basting a burger in butter is often the norm because it's flavor country and flavorful food is what keeps customers coming back. When you're cooking for yourself it's a bit overkill and if you do stuff like that all the time you're going to need to see a heart doctor at some point.

Anthony Bourdain? "In the world of chefs, however, butter is in everything. Even non-French restaurants—the Northern Italian; the new American, the ones where the chef brags about how he’s “getting away from butter and cream”—throw butter around like crazy." https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/04/19/dont-eat-befor...

Her Coq au Vin is a bit of work but it still tastes fantastic. A lot of those variants are a bit weird today, but I like to see them as ideas. I could see them being standards in the post-war mileau.

What I really don't care for are her treatments of vegetables. She famously couldn't stand non-soft (al dente?) vegetables. Also I guess it's "French" but she puts a lot of effort to make some recipes white, eg Poulet a l'Ancienne. Eh, I can't be bothered.

Still my hardback Vol 1 of MTAOFC is looking pretty ragged from steady use over the last 30 years, sniff.

Would you recommend any of Child's books to a vegetarian home cook today? (If not, would you happen to have other recommendations for French vegetarian cooking, leaning toward seasonal produce, for the soft of home cook/baker who prefers to weigh their dry ingredients?)

That's the main secret to all the food you eat when you eat out: tons of salt, butter, and sugar.

+ the command of high heat. The above 3 without command of a stainless steel skillet is almost pointless.

Non-stick cookware and convenience has ruined the "art" or rather practise of getting just enough crap stuck to the surface/deglazing. Or the art of letting stuff like eggs/fish fillets sit undisturbed until they crust and easily slide off.

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