Sepia Saturday: Julia's Kitchen

This week's prompt suggests kitchens, pies, colour slides. Pardon the Canadian spelling.

I thought about this photo of Julia Child in her kitchen in "La Pitchoune", her house in France in Provence, not far from Grasse. The room as described in Travel and Leisure: "The walls are covered with Peg-Board, upon which hangs an armory of cooking equipment: saucepans and frying pans of all sizes, ladles, spoons, sieves, and springform cake pans, whisks, mallets, can openers, corkscrews, and measuring cups, knives, scissors, colanders, potato ricers, and a hand-cranked meat grinder. Each object is outlined in black, so when you take something down, you know exactly where to put it back."

La Pitchoune - you can rent it!

And here's my nephew last year in the very same Julia's kitchen in the south of France. The family rented the house next door to "La Pitchoune" for a summer vacation. Little could have pleased my nephew more than wandering around this hallowed ground for cooks. Things have changed from the days when a self-respecting man wouldn't set foot in the kitchen.

Ah....the good old days.

What a great guy!

And finally, here's my nephew's mother and me at a cooking school in Bali earlier this year. Zuzu has an enormous repertoire of chicken recipes she perfected when her kids were growing up. Now she cooks mostly for pleasure or when it's a novelty, or a cultural experience as it is in Bali. Or when the recipes involve plenty of wine and the conviviality of chopping away with your good friends and people you love.  

Debra taking the second chopping shift.

After our delicious Balinese lunch, we escaped with no dish washing duty. I shudder to think of how the kitchen might have looked after preparing meals in 1896 when this dishwasher was offered for sale. 

And an added bonus - the modern woman's guide to roasting chicken, 

Roast Chicken with Garlic, Shallots, and Potatoes

6 servings

Drive to Costco. Park and enter store, showing membership card at door. Walk to deli department and purchase perfectly roasted chicken for $4.99. Drive home and portion onto paper plates. If possible select a modern craft beer to serve with the chicken. Perhaps a pleasant feminine brew like My Asis. 

• 1 3½ to 4 pound chicken
• salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1 bunch fresh thyme or rosemary
• 1 bay leaf
• olive oil
• 1½ pounds small red potatoes, washed
• 2 heads garlic, cut in half, crosswise
• 6 large shallots, root ends trimmed
• 1 cup chicken stock

Preheat oven to 350°F.  Season the inside cavity of the chicken and tuck in a few sprigs or thyme or rosemary and a bay leaf. Rub the outside with olive oil and season with more salt and pepper. Transfer to a roasting pan, large enough to hold the chicken, potatoes, garlic and shallots.

Scatter the potatoes, shallots, garlic and a few sprigs of fresh herbs, around the chicken, season with salt and pepper. Drizzle the chicken broth and about 1/4 cup olive oil over the vegetables. Bake for about 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 hours, turning the vegetables half way through the cooking time. Bake until the juices in the thigh run yellow when tested with the tip of a knife.