Cooking vicariously in front of the television

I cook like a cauldron. I’m wasting food – hello bag of moldy baby spinach at the bottom of the crisper drawer. I throw away the cabbage, Jean-Luc Boulay would be close to syncope, I pay rapper Loud’s salary in Uber Eats and my oven has never been super stained or super sticky. yeah for me !

On the other hand, drop in front of me a cake competition on Netflix (Nailed It!) or a reality show like The Chiefs ! and I devour everything until I lick the bottom of the plate like an Ostrogoth. To paraphrase Jean-Jacques Goldman, I cook by proxy in front of my television set, even if I don’t put old bread on my balcony anyway.

I love food shows, prepared in all ways: competition, fiction or marathon. Last on the menu? The period miniseries Julia from HBO offered by the Crave platform, in French and in English. It’s absolutely charming and cute. It’s comfort TV food as we like it: warm, generous and zero pretentious.

With a few touches of madmen, Julia looks at the television debut of the most European of American chefs, Julia Child, played by the excellent British actress Sarah Lancashire, better than Meryl Streep in the film Julie & Juliareleased in 2009.

The first of eight episodes of Julia began in 1962, in Cambridge, a suburb of Boston. Wife of a diplomat who has been deployed all over Europe, bon vivant Julia Child has published her first cookbook Master the art of French cuisinea classic for food lovers.

Julia Child’s relative stardom in Boston piques the interest of the hot young producer of a snobby literary show on the local public broadcaster, which no one watches.

Julia Child is suspicious. What will she talk about with the host who usually receives obscure authors who smoke a pipe?

At the last minute, Julia stuffs eggs, butter and a whisk into her bag. On the set, she asks for an electric frying pan and prepares, live, a creamy omelette in front of the dumbfounded team. The jovial Julia Child shines in front of the cameras. She is funny, witty and natural, which clashes in this rigid and austere environment.

Despite letters from viewers calling for her return, station bosses despise Julia Child. At 6’2″, she’s too tall for TV. At 50, she is too old to do TV. She laughs too hard, speaks with a voice that is too high pitched and does not master the codes of this new medium.

And also, Julia is a woman who does business as a “good woman” on TV, which does not interest her superiors, all men whose wives pay for the meals, it goes without saying.

Cunning and tenacious, Julia Child won’t put her pans away so easily. A refusal, two rebuffs, Julia hangs on, finances her own pilot who is called The French Chef and landed a very cheap first contract, which forced her to pay (out of pocket) the technicians.

With two of her friends and her grumpy husband, pioneer Julia Child concocted the original recipe herself, which would serve as the canvas for a host of other cooking shows in the 60 years that followed.

Not only does Julia Child cook divinely well, but she also clearly teaches how to make a coq au vin or a good beef bourguignon. She never tries to impress viewers with overly complicated techniques. Julia bets on simplicity and makes sure that the ingredients she uses can be found in a supermarket.

No, but what a wonderful, flamboyant and endearing woman. Big crush for Julia Child, who quickly understood a golden rule in TV: you have to be interested in the public, respect it and listen to it. With that, it is impossible for the soufflé not to rise.

Elisabeth Crête will replace Paul Houde

Changing of the guard on 98.5 FM. Host Elisabeth Crête will replace Paul Houde next fall in the weekend slot.

You can currently hear Elisabeth Crête on the show Since you have to get up by Paul Arcand, where she chronicles social networks. It was not possible to speak to him on Monday. Elisabeth Crête, who worked for a long time at FM 93 in Quebec, is the daughter of sports commentator Alain Crête, a faithful accomplice of Paul Arcand for several years.

Paul Houde, 67, has been at the microphone on Saturday and Sunday mornings at 98.5 FM since September 2019. He will turn off his microphone on Sunday June 19. The Cogeco-owned station decided not to renew its contract.