Julia Child

AT THE TOP

she’d never cook any way but French, but now she too has succumbed to the new passion for American cuisine. Next month Julia Child’s plummy voice will be back in our living rooms, along with casserole, frying pan, and butcher knife. In a new thirteen-part cooking series, the klutzy, rough-edged heroine of The French Chef and the coauthor of Mastering the Art of French Cooking turns to such esoteric dishes as Laid-Back Turkey, Designer Duck and Pork Wellington.

It was the spontaneous, unrehearsed quality of her programs that so endeared Julia to the public—a "gourmet cook” who dropped eggs on the kitchen floor, used her own body to explain different cuts of meat, and sawed away at a recalcitrant suckling pig. And she pressed on with a conspiratorial wink: "Remember, you’re alone in the kitchen."

It's not hard to imagine Julia stamping through an Arctic blizzard in search of a special fish or tramping across field and hedgerow on the trail of pokeweed. Indeed, in her new series we’ll see her in an artichoke field and a chocolate factory, crab fishing and peering into a chicken coop to exchange glances with that evening’s pièce de resistance.

Dinner at Julia's takes place in a Santa Barbara mansion, where she chats with wine experts and, together with guest chefs, prepares dinner for ten. As her guests tuck into poached Alaska salmon or a saddle of veal, the audience will surely salivate—before heading-into their own kitchens to thaw out their TV dinners.

MORIA HODGSON