from $55-$65 for adults. Visit www.ciecatering.com or call 217-314-9125 to register or for more information.

Lincoln Land Community College has just announced a “Julia Child Series,” a three-session baking class to be taught by Charlyn Fargo Ware. Ware, a registered dietician, adjunct LLCC culinary instructor, and former SJ-R staffer, met Child years ago at a food writers’ conference. Ware states: “I asked Julia about her fondness for butter. Her philosophy was to use the best ingredients, rather than substitutes, [but to eat small portions].”

In other words, as Child relates in her autobiographical My Life in France (the book upon which the Julia portion of the Julie and Julia movie was based), “…the best diet tip of all was [her husband] Paul’s fully patented Belly Control System: ‘Just don’t eat so damned much!”’ Ware will be basing the classes on the book Baking with Julia, which is the companion cookbook to the 1996 PBS show of the same name. It’s an outstanding work, one I’ve used extensively; in fact, my copy is badly stained and falling apart. The recipes and techniques range from incredibly lengthy and complicated (pecan sticky buns that take three

days to make and are unbelievably delicious — they’ve become an essential part of my family’s Easter breakfast) to simpler breads and cookies.

They are not, however, Child’s recipes.

Child had a healthy sense of self without being the least egotistical, never hesitating to share the limelight with others. In her later years, she hosted three PBS cooking series in her own kitchen in Cambridge, Mass. She was literally the host; in each episode, a different renowned chef or baker was featured. Child helped with the prep and conversed with each, but made sure the visiting chef was the focus.

This was even more so in Baking with Julia, the last of the series. In fact, as Child’s assistant, Nancy Barr, says in her book, Backstage with Julia, Child’s sister, Dort, asked Barr whether or not she should even do the series: “Julia made me promise to tell her when she should stop…when she was too old to do it anymore. She didn’t want to appear a fool.” Fortunately, Dort and Barr didn’t dissuade Child, but Barr says that, unlike the previous master chef series, “…neither of us [Child or Barr] had to write the book. Dorie Greenspan, author of a number of superb baking cookbooks and a master baker if ever there was one, wrote the beautiful book that accompanied the show.”

Child herself says in the foreword, “My role…was to be with the bakers on the set, in order to move things along if necessary, but principally to assume the function of pupil as well as member of the audience.” Child would appear in one more PBS series with her great friend, Jacques Pepin, Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home, and a two-hour special, both of which were filmed on sets.

In the food world, chefs and bakers occupy two distinct categories. Desserts in celebrity chefs’ cookbooks are almost always contributions by their pastry chefs.

Child would unquestionably have put herself in the chef column. In fact, her landmark Mastering the Art of French Cooking contained no recipes for bread, and, as she said in My Life in France, “Simca [her French collaborator, Simone Beck] wrote the entire dessert chapter.”

Child might not have been a baker, but she’d made it her life’s mission to bring authentic French food to America. And what’s more French than French bread — which in those days was virtually unknown here?

When MtAoFC editor Judith Jones suggested that a recipe for French Bread be included in the second MtAoFC volume, it started Child on a quest that took multiple visits to French boulangeries [bread bakeries], “two years and something like 284 pounds of flour.” The biggest stumbling blocks were the differences between American and French flours [American typically has a higher gluten content] and replicating the conditions of traditional bread ovens in home kitchens.

The result took up 19 pages of MtAoFC II, complete with tips for dealing with weather variations, machine vs. hand-mixing, different ways to shape the dough, and “Self-criticism — or how to improve the product.” Then there was the recommendation to bake the bread on preheated asbestos tiles. It wasn’t until shortly after publication that the dangers of asbestos were discovered; Child found that unglazed quarry tiles worked just as well. She wrote, “French bread was the recipe I worked hardest on.”

Ware says she’ll be using recipes from other Child books as well.

Cost for the series is $99. To register, contact LLCC’s Registration Services at 217-786- 2292, or 1-800-727-4161, ext. 62292 You can find a recipe for my favorite brownies, based on one from Baking with Julia online at www.illinoistimes.com.

Contact Julianne Glatz at [email protected].

Find more RealCuisine Recipes online at www.illinoistimes.com.