Hungry in Winter: The Literary Julia Child

Piece Description

The British actress, Liz Marks, reads of 8-year-old Jane Eyre’s hunger at the orphanage, where she’s fed burnt porridge -- inedible. Julia Child talks about grains, one of the first things the human being cooked: “Just add water and stir.” The trick is, not to burn. Annie Somerville, executive chef at Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, shows how to cook a delicious dinner dish of grains—a farro risotto with leeks, chard, and mushrooms. Mary Risley, of the Tante Marie Cooking School, presents a simple dessert that would have been  a treat for the girls in the orphanage.

Michael Belitsos reads from “Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant,” by Anne Tyler – a book written almost 30 years before words like organic, locovore or slow cooking were invented, before farmers markets or "locally grown." Ezra starts a restaurant serving the foods people are homesick for. It turns out he’s homesick for what he never had. Annie Somerville, of Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, talks about herbs and gives a simple but fantastic recipe for Herbed Potatoes in Parchment Packages. The beginning of a love story weaves between the recipes and the novel excerpts, proving Julia's conviction that “Cooking is almost always about more than food.”