Be Ready When the Luck Happens: A Memoir

Julia Child (1912-2004) was an iconic American chef, author, and television personality best known for her groundbreaking two-volume cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961). Along with her cookbooks, her Emmy-winning television series The French Chef introduced American audiences to French cooking techniques and classic French dishes. Child appears as a recurring motif throughout the memoir, acting as a manifestation of Garten’s goals for and impact on the American food industry. Although Garten initially idolizes Child, she later develops a cooking philosophy that prizes simplicity, starkly contrasting with the more formal, elaborate food that made Child famous.

After Garten returns from her transformative trip to France, she relies heavily on Julia Child as she attempts to teach herself to cook. She imagines them as a pair: “Ina and Julia—me and my copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking” (100) pushing against the world of processed American food. She describes her experience with these recipes as “an adventure—a chance to meet new ingredients, learn a technique, or solve a problem” (100). These passages establish Child as an essential influence for Garten and suggest a continuity between the two women. As she grows as a chef, however, she comes to view Child’s recipes as overly complicated, a term she uses multiple times (100, 108, 145, 232).