Cookbooks, She Wrote
Anne Willan has the look of a PBS British mystery “innocent.” The good one. The one who discovers the body and helps solve the case. How, one wonders, did she ever produce more than a dozen cookbooks; found, operate and teach at La Varenne cooking schools in Burgundy, West Virginia and Paris, and dodge the choking tangles of the dog-eat-dog food world in her climb to the top of her field?
Look at her: Not a lazy muscle in her body. She arrives for her interview uniformed for work--tennis shoes, jeans, crisply starched cotton shirt ready for an apron--balancing a heavy attache case in one hand and a huge, overloaded canvas book bag in another, arm muscles bristling, never letting go.
You can almost see her bounding gracefully (with nothing of Julia Child’s boisterous klutziness) from student to student, demonstrating how to stir a chicken mousse, flip Swiss chard crepes, pat pate brise with aplomb, beat the living daylights out of egg whites until they glisten in a copper bowl. Twinkling eyes and a constant smile. No tantrums like Madeleine Kamman’s. None of the nasty cracks on the knuckles Dionne Lucas used to give. No sharp-tongued diatribe like Craig Claiborne.
Her passion for cooking and writing about it developed after a few false starts, beginning with a “good education” at Cambridge University, where she majored in chemistry, a field in which she never has worked, though she did find use for its disciplines as a newspaper editor and cookbook author.
She came closer to her life’s work during a stint at the Constance Spry Finishing School in London, where she taught sewing and the making of lamp shades and curtains to young women. Constance Spry was affiliated with the Cordon Bleu School of London, and she was sent to Cordon Bleu branches in London and Paris, first as a student, then as a teacher.
“That was it,” she recalls. “There was no question I would do anything else.”
Cooking in France was a revelation. “The French have a different way of thinking about food,” she says. “I was fortunate enough to live with a family who discussed and analyzed every aspect of a meal. They would argue about the size of a fillet, the look and smell.” Her love of France and French cooking found the perfect avenue for indulgence by the mid-’70s.
Shortly after quitting her job with Gourmet Magazine in 1966 to marry her husband, Mark, an economist with the World Bank in Washington, an opening came up at the Washington Star. He urged her to apply. She did and got the job.
“Of course, I knew nothing about being a food editor or layouts,” she says. “But I learned and enjoyed it thoroughly. It was the first time in a long time I felt I was using my good education.”
Then her husband announced that the family would move to Paris.
“Well, you’ll have to find something for me to do,” she told him.
And he did. “Look here,” he said. “The old Cordon Bleu in Paris is for sale. Why don’t we look into it?”
“After looking over the finances,” she says, “we decided to open a school of our own. Why not?”
Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne (named after Francois Pierre de la Varenne, author of the first modern French cookbook in 1651) was founded in Paris in 1975. Training programs have since been offered to professionals and vacationing travelers at the Chateau du Fey in Burgundy, and during winter months, at Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.
Willan loves the idea of splitting her time between France and America, spending eight months in France and four months in America. Currently, she’s working on the ninth of a 24-volume step-by-step cookbook series called “Look & Cook” (Dorling Kindersley Inc.).
She writes in France, using her staff to help produce one of the “Look & Cook” books every two months, each containing 50 recipes and each with step-by-step photographs on proper cooking techniques.
“People are beginning to realize the importance of technique,” she says. “They enjoy cooking more but want also to do it the right way. After all, there is a proper way to chop an onion. You can have an awful mess if you don’t know how.”
And there is a right way, as Willan’s new “Look & Cook” series attests. While one may not be able to count on one hand the number of friends who cook the way Willan says we should, there probably isn’t a cook alive who wouldn’t like to. Few books on cooking technique succeed as well as the “Look & Cook” series, which gives succinct instructions every step of the way.
The books are a treasure trove of techniques: making pastry dough, crushing garlic, making puree, preparing a pumpkin shell for baking, hollowing out onions and other vegetables, using a sieve, beating egg whites, making flowerets, trimming scallions, crushing spices, paring zest, peeling pears, making crumbs, flambeing fruit, making lattice and leaves of dough--and beyond.
Unlike other technique books, there is no skipping of steps here, no second-guessing, no shortage of photographs to keep the cook on track. Each recipe contains photos of equipment and ingredients, a shopping list and a one-two-three order of work. The final photograph shows how the dish should look.
The “Look & Cook” series makes a good starting-out gift for novice cooks. Even if they don’t end up cooking exactly the way Willan does, they’ll do it right.
