Mastering the Art of French Cooking at Borzoi Hill

A Raison d'être for Cooking

Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1 by Julia Child, Louise Bertholle and Simone Beck was the first infallible sourcebook of classic gourmet cooking I owned. Two decades ago, writing about my admiration for Julia Child's practicality and touting the cookbook in my London Free Press column, Flash in the Pan, seemed reasonable in print and, for that matter, in general conversation. Later it took on la-di-da connotations.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking was written for the North American market and published originally by Knopf/Borzoi Books in 1961 (Volume 1) and 1970 (Volume 2).

Twenty-five years ago, I co-owned Murano, a busy Northern Italian-inspired restaurant with Slow Food ideals. We received an unheard-of five-star review in London Free Press, the publisher of my column. The stars upped expectations considerably and put us under a microscope. After a bone-tiring workday behind a hot stove, the most challenging part of writing a weekly column was coming up with fresh ideas. Daunting and laborious, and, at the same time, it was oddly exhilarating and liberating. Late at night, I wrote and rewrote my columns longhand.

But that was a decade before Nora Ephron (a favoured writer, who I became aware of when she published a series of essays in the 1970s) wrote and directed Julie and Julia and set the stage for Mastering the Art of French Cooking to make a comeback. The cookbook quickly climbed to the New York Times best-seller list. Suddenly it was everyone's bible and a raison d'être for cooking. Book sales soared, and owning a copy became a point of pride.

 Nora Ephron said, "In 1962 or so, when I first moved to New York, everybody was buying a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking – it was a way of saying you were intelligent, and therefore you were going to cook in a way that a smart person was going to cook." 

My introduction to  Mastering the Art of French Cooking was by Gary Rowsell, shortly after we were introduced by his sister, Donna, at a soiree he was hosting at Borzoi Hill. We made an instant connection that night. Not long after our meeting, I felt the excitement, youthful optimism, and anticipation of wanting to spend time with this charismatic and engaging raconteur. Now from a greater perspective, I was smitten and in love with being in love. Meeting someone as striking and charming as Gary was a mighty rush. And, of course, Gary could cook, and he liked to cook and entertain. He was witty, book-smart, creative and a dog lover. At the time, our meeting seemed predestined.

Not long after we met, I left on a planned European trip with my friend Bonnie (you may remember the Chili Chowder Chow Chow incident). Gary and I planned to reconnect at L'hôtel Marignan Champs-Elysées in Paris for Christmas. Bonnie would be meeting up with her parents in Edinburgh, Scotland. Subsequently, Gary fractured his kneecap, and our plans to meet in Paris were suddenly vanquished when he was hospitalized and had a forced recovery.

When I returned to London, Ontario, I moved in with Gary. He was living on the second floor of a deteriorating hilltop mansion situated just before the curve on Richmond Street, north of Windermere Road. In the late 1950s, the property was known as the Rundle Estate and noted for horses, a distinguished hunting pack of borzoi and the annual Marlbrook Fox Hunt. The property was known as Borzoi Hill when I came to live there.

The antebellum-inspired mansion, with an imposing entrance supported by two Doric columns and a pyramidal façade, was raised to make way for a subdivision long ago. A few blurry black-and-white photos I took decades ago still exist. A copy of a drawing of the house festooned with trailing wisteria sketched in the early 1970s is the only memento I still possess. (I am an archivist by nature.)

Recently, I discovered a photograph of an aerial view of Richmond Street widening in 1962 in the Western archives. The picture is looking northwest past the intersection of Richmond and Windermere Rd. Visible in the distance on the right is the Rundle Estate.

Even in decline and later in its crumbling dotage, the stately edifice impressed. The property is now a subdivision of too-close-for-comfort, garage-dominated houses that rarely deviate from the developer's cookie-cutter vision. Borzoi Hill was close to where we live today. When we drive by, which is frequently, I often try to pinpoint where the house was situated by looking for a grove of elusive mature trees on what remains of the once majestic hill. 

The first time I saw the house's interior, I was fascinated by the lavish art deco blue-grey bathroom pedestal sinks and the luxurious sunken bathtub made with black Carrara marble off the main bedroom on the second floor. A large, faded Grecian-inspired fresco of a trio of deities adorned the main bedroom bathroom. Living there, I liked the feeling of isolation. The property had extensive treed grounds, trailing wisteria and a deteriorating ornate Victorian greenhouse with broken and missing windows.

Gary recently informed me that there was a handsome pine, tongue and groove tack house in the barn behind the house that I do not recall. The original occupants could boast of having the first in-ground, outdoor swimming pool in London, Ontario. 

Owned by Don and Joan Smith of Ellis Don construction, the property and surrounding land were slated to be a subdivision. The Smith's long-time housekeeper Jean and her husband, Jack, were borzoi breeders and fanciers. They lived on the main floor with their three borzois, Piotr, Yuszek, Katinka, and their saluki, Jamila. They renamed the property Borzoi Hill after their kennel, Bordonski Borzoi. Gary was a borzoi owner and enthusiast and helped Jean with the demanding daily chores of caring for large hounds and their kennel. In return, we lived at Borzoi Hill with an arrangement for reduced rent. 

Recently, I asked Gary how he came to own his first copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. We both grew up watching Julia Child's cooking show on television. He does not remember, but it might have something to do with the Knopf/Borzoi colophon/logo. I remember reading about the many borzois created throughout the one hundred and six years of Alfred A. Knopf's existence. The original borzoi colophon, inspired by the actual breed of Russian wolfhound, was designed by co-founder Blanche Knopf in 1915. There are more than 150 variations of what has become Knopf's hallmark calling card, their way of telling the reader that Alfred A. Knopf Books published the book you're holding and all that entails.  

The stark, utilitarian kitchen on the second floor of Borzoi Hill had a narrow back staircase. Jean would stand at the bottom and call up to get Gary's attention when she needed help with the dogs. The kitchen, previously a sunroom and adjacent walk-in pantry, had been turned into a darkroom for Gary's sister Pauline who worked downtown at McKittrick's photoshop.

At our kitchen table at Borzoi Hill, I first tasted Julia Child's recipe for paupiettes de boeuf and a series of chicken and turkey ballottines, galantines, and gratin dauphinoise. 

Gary is an excellent cook and mastered many of the cookbook's recipes but gravitates more to the art and science of baking. He recently confessed his legendary sweet potato and bacon fritters came from The Silver Palate Cookbook. We are both devotees of the book's recipe for Chicken Marbella.  

We both use Mastering the Art of French Cooking as a reference to this day, although Gary also has a penchant for the seminal books, 'La Technique' and 'La Methode' by Jacques Pepin, which were published in 1976 and 1979, respectively. In the preceding decades, I have always referenced Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volumes 1 and 2.

 "Cooking is not a particularly difficult art, and the more you cook and the more you learn about cooking, the more sense it makes," said the authors in the foreword to Volume 1. "But like any art, it requires practice, and the most important ingredient you can bring to it is the love of cooking."

These volumes aim to provide the reader with a well-rounded discourse and proficiency in the fundamentals and classic techniques of French cooking. The recipes are invaluable as a reference point, although the authors say the goal is to divorce you from dependence on recipes. Serious cooks generally wean themselves from a reliance on recipes, referring only to them as guidelines, which allows you to trust your instincts and develop self-expression and characteristic style. -BL