Celebrating Julia Child's 100th birthday

Julia Child's longtime publisher, is whooping it with a 100th birthday celebration called JC100

Celebrating Julia: There's still plenty of time for fans to take part as the publisher is urging people to share Julia Child recipes, photos, memories and stories on various social media sites under the JC100 umbrella. (Tribune Co. file photo)

By Bill Daley

June 20, 2012

Julia Child would have been 100 on Aug. 15, and though the beloved star of television's "The French Chef" died in 2004, she is clearly not forgotten. Alfred A. Knopf, Child's longtime publisher, is whooping it up on social media with a centenary celebration called JC100.

The party is a long one, lasting the 100 days leading up to Aug. 15. There's still plenty of time for fans to take part as the publisher is urging people to share Julia Child recipes, photos, memories and stories on various social media sites under the JC100 umbrella.

Knopf also is generating its own material highlighting Child's contributions. One of the more interesting is a list of 100 recipes handpicked from nearly 3,700 of Child's recipes by a jury of food notables, including Judith Jones, Child's editor at Knopf; star chefs Thomas Keller, Danny Meyer and Jacques Pepin; Anne Willan, an author and cooking teacher.

These recipes range from the famous treatise on French bread in "Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. II," to mayonnaise in "From Julia Child's Kitchen," to Julia's croque monsieur from "Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home." There's even calf's brains in brown butter sauce from "Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. I," the 1961 book that launched Child's career in publishing and television.

The JC100 sites will contain video and written tributes to Child from food celebrities, photographs and quotes, and links to special JC100 recipes recreated by more than 100 food bloggers (vichyssoise, courtesy of "BS' In The Kitchen," bsinthekitchen.com, is one of the most recent examples). You can make the recipe at home and post photos of the results on the JC100 site.

Look for the JC100 celebration on Facebook at facebook.com/JuliaChild; on Twitter at @JC100; on Pinterest at pinterest.com/knopfbooks/jc100; and on Tumblr at jc100.tumblr.com.

— Bill Daley, Tribune Newspapers

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