ABOUT WOMEN
Retro gourmet goddess sends working girl back to kitchen

By Tanya Bricking
Advertiser Staff Writer

Retro cooking is back, as far as I can tell from the trendiness of comfort food.

And that means lots of working women (OK, and men) are in the kitchen way past retro suppertime.

Not that that's a bad thing. There are few things as creative and satisfying as toiling away in the kitchen. Give me a choice between that and relieving my stress on a treadmill, and there's no contest.

Forget body image. Give me food.

That's why I've been fascinated by the blog (Web log, an online diary) of a 30-year-old New York secretary who has given herself a year to make every recipe in Julia Child's 1961 cooking bible "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."

I have to admit I'd be more tempted to tackle Helen Gurley Brown's 1969 classic "Single Girl's Cookbook" (which I got used for $7.50) than French cooking. Brown gives advice that Child leaves out, like: "To cook scrumptiously and make a reputation for yourself (i.e., compete with Pavillon, his wife, ex-wife, mistress and mother), you almost have to cook with cream, butter, whole milk, brandy and even sugar."

Now there's a reason to master French cuisine.

Reading Julie Powell's Julie/Julia Project (http://blogs.salon.com/0001399) really got me hooked. She's funny and foul-mouthed in an engaging sort of way.

Take her entry of June 23: "Last night I was an absolute boil on the butt of the Julie/Julia Project. I couldn't even manage to go out and get some butter so I could make Beurre a l'Ail to throw on some potatoes or something. Instead I ate leftover ham with some mushroom foie gras filling and spinach, and watched the first season of episode two Buffy."

You gotta love a woman who complains about her "government drone" job, then admits she separates egg yolks with her hands because she learned the technique by watching Nigella Lawson, a kitchen goddess as far as I'm concerned. She also has a healthy disrespect for the freakishly neat ways of Martha Stewart.

All that and she works full-time, shops on the way home and cooks. She's my idol.

I thought she'd be so down-to-earth that she'd answer my e-mail. But she's probably too busy cooking to meet next month's deadline of preparing 536 recipes in 365 days.

That kind of pressure would ruin the Zen of cooking for me. A dinner party is about all I can handle. If I can pull off a good one, Helen Gurley Brown says my friends will say, "We don't understand how she can be such a foxy career girl and cook like that."

I'll have to make them wonder.

I'm not sure I'm ready to attempt a souffle. But thinking about it is making me want to go crack some eggs. And, as Julie Powell would say, a little butter never hurt anybody.

Bon appétit!

Reach Tanya Bricking at tbricking@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8026.