When I moved into my first "grown-up apartment," a dear friend slipped me a slim bag with a housewarming gift — a prayer candle emblazoned with the luminous face of Julia Child, the patron saint of the kitchen. It was a wink at my Catholic school upbringing and a nod to my lifelong desire to embody the ease and joy with which Child cooked.
That's not to say she never made mistakes in the kitchen — Dan Aykroyd famously caricatured Child in a "Saturday Night Live" sketch, during which he warbles at the audience to use chicken liver as a coagulant after slicing into his hand — but she moved with the kind of laissez-faire confidence that's only possessed by those who are truly comfortable in their level of knowledge. Child was, after all, a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu and took 10 years to research and write her first book, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."
