Anne Willan:
Poor mummy, she had to have a glass of whiskey before she could face making supper for my father.
Kerry Diamond:
Hey, Bombesqaud. You're listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, the show that's all about women and food. I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from Brooklyn, New York.
Kerry Diamond:
Today's guest is a living legend. It's Anne Willan. Anne is a cookbook author and historian, but some of you might know her better as the doyenne of La Varenne, the culinary school in Paris and Burgundy that counted folks such as Tanya Holland and Mashama Bailey as students.
Kerry Diamond:
Anne has authored more than 30 books, including La Varenne Pratique, and her most recent, Women in the Kitchen. Twelve Essential Cookbook Writers who defined the way we eat from 1661, that's a long time ago, to today. Anne and I also talk about her good friend, Julia Child. Julia was actually an investor in La Varenne and visited the school from time to time.
Kerry Diamond:
Speaking of Julia, I'd like to thank all of you who attended the Julia Jubilee, Cherry Bombe's virtual celebration of the life and legacy of Julia Child. It was an amazing week with so many great folks taking part, including Ina Garten, Stanley Tucci and all the women who won Top Chef. I'm very sad that it's all over.
Kerry Diamond:
A lot of you have been asking when the Zoom events will be available for viewing, and the answer is, soon. We're busy working on them right now. We'll share in our newsletter as soon as the videos are online. If you're not signed up for our newsletter, head on over to cherrybombe.com and sign up. While you're there, you can catch up on past Radio Cherry Bombe episodes, our open book cookbook column and more.
Kerry Diamond:
I would also like to thank the sponsors of the Julia Jubilee for making the event possible, Kerrygold, Crate&Barrel, Whole Foods Market, Le Creuset, San Pellegrino, and Kobrand Fine Wine and Spirits. Such a great group. Thank you so much.
Kerry Diamond:
Now, here's my conversation with Anne Willan: I'm so curious, Anne, how did you go from Cambridge to a culinary career.
Anne Willan:
It was prompted by a counselor who was supposed to be helpful to graduates who were thinking about careers. I read economics at Cambridge and got scraped a third-class degree, which is exactly what it sounds like. Particularly, this is a long time ago. It's in the late 1950s, for a woman who is absolutely useless. There were no jobs for women in the economic world anyway, let alone a third-class degree.
Anne Willan:
And she said, "Well, dear, you could always take a secretarial course." And I said to myself, "I'm damned if I'm going to be someone else's secretary." So I pursued my parents to let me have a three-month course at the Cordon Bleu in London to do advanced cooking because that's what I liked best. And perhaps, I could use it for something. And that was how it all began.
Kerry Diamond:
So many women had to be secretaries to get closer to what they wanted to do. Why did you know you didn't want to do that?
Anne Willan:
Well, I knew I'd be no good at it. I wouldn't want to take direct, rather task and instructions from somebody else, and in a subject that almost certainly I would not be interested in. And I have been in the kitchen. I always had ever since a small child. And I thought, surely, I can do something with it.
Kerry Diamond:
Now, did you have any crossover with Julia Child at Le Cordon Bleu?
Anne Willan:
No. Julia was 10 years earlier than me. And I was at the London Cordon Bleu, only later at the Paris Cordon Bleu.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, right. I'm mixing my years up, because you went to La Cordon Bleu about the time that the Mastering the Art of French Cooking came out.
Anne Willan:
Indeed, which I mean, nobody at the London Cordon Bleu was interested in and around an American, who had written a book on French cooking. I really didn't know Julia. I knew off Julia here, but only just. And I was asked to stay on to teach in London. And after two years, I decided I absolutely must go to Paris and France, because that's where it all began, and still is of enormous importance in creating European cooking. Julia, unknown to me, had made exactly the same decision when she was in Paris 10 years earlier than me, that she must go to school to learn to cook.
Anne Willan:
I said to my parents, "Will you run me to a task, two, three months in Paris? And when I got there, I put an advertisement in the Herald Tribune, which was the newspaper of the time, in the classifieds and said, "Cordon Bleu cooks for dinner parties and gives cooking lessons." And I got six replies. One of them being the wife of the curator of the Chateau Versailles. And she wrote me a letter in rather scrawled handwriting with embossed Chateau Versailles.
Anne Willan:
And I really thought it must be a joke. But she said, "My name is Florence Van der Kemp. I'm married to the curator of Versailles. And I want someone to come and teach my Mexican cooks French cooking." And so I did. I learned some Spanish, picked up a bit of Spanish, and started going three times a week. And Florence said, "You must come and live here." So I went to live in the chateau and I took my little MG every sort of day in and out of the main gate. And I had an attic, up 72 steps from the parking. And the attics, where all the maids and the cook lived. And I lived in the Chateau Versailles for a year supervising the cooking for people like the dinners for Charles de Gaulle.
Kerry Diamond:
Man, this sounds like a movie.
Anne Willan:
Yeah, and I mean, it was sort of crazy. My parents, of course, thought I was even crazier because I came from farming country in North Yorkshire. And they couldn't imagine me living in a chateau, which led to another chateau later on, but that's all right.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh my gosh. So you mentioned you did a dinner for Charles De Gaulle. We were actually just talking about that with Jacques Pépin the other day, because he-
Anne Willan:
Oh well, he really cooked for the Elysee. Yes, yes, yes. I mean he knew the ropes far more than I did. French food, cooked by an English woman and an elderly Mexican.
Kerry Diamond:
What were some of the other dinners that you remember doing at Versailles?
Anne Willan:
Oh, there was a funny one with Mapie de Toulouse-Lautrec, who wrote quite a famous cookbook, and it was very aristocratic, and outspoken, and was famous for her hats. And she wore one of these great big hats at lunch. The carrots and the green beans were carefully laid and all the rest of it. And she lifted her launette and she said, "Oh, oui, c'est bien joli, mais je quoi qu'il-y-a” gelatine?" Which is upmost insult. It's very pretty, but I think it has gelatine in it. And indeed, she was dead right, because I mean, I wasn't going to risk the whole thing collapsing for pure sake of purism in warm weather.
Kerry Diamond:
So you were there for a whole year. What happened next?
Anne Willan:
I'd always intended to go to the new world, to America. Because, that was what my generation, at the end of the 50s and the early 60s, wanted to do. You didn't go around the world like nowadays. You went to the states. To the new world. And so, I go an interior cabin, shared cabin, on the Le France, the ship out of Cherbourg, and crossed the Atlantic, and got up at dawn to see the Statue of Liberty as the ship sailed into the harbor. And I arrived in New York with 500 pounds, which in those days, was money, but not great money. But that was it.
Anne Willan:
There was exchange control with England, and so, I had to straight away make enough money to keep myself. Florence van der Kemp, who would be at Versailles, let me have the maid's room in her apartment on 72nd street. And I put another advertisement, this time in the New York Times, saying, "Cordon Bleu cook, cooks for dinner parties, gives whatever." And Florence also gave me an introduction to a friend of hers who is the food editor of Vogue, mentioned my name to friends of hers, one of whom was Jane Montant, who was the editor of Gourmet magazine. And Jane said, "Oh, come 'round for an interview. We need someone to answer the letters." And I got the job. And I got a wonderful office, because they had great offices overlooking Third Avenue on the sort of 15th floor. And office all to myself just opposite the what has become a famous landmark, Little Library of Cookbooks, that was standing at the time.
Anne Willan:
And of course, answering the letters, I using the library all the time. And by then, I had met my future husband when I was in Paris. And while I was at Gourmet Magazine, he has meanwhile moved to Washington, DC, and he sent me a Telegram from San Jose, Costa Rica, saying, "Sweetie, will you marry me? If the answer is oui, oui, oui, come to San Jose in two weeks time for marriage." And he always said he would never marry me. I wasn't that sort of girl. And so, I did.
Kerry Diamond:
Wow, so you said, "Oui, oui, oui."
Anne Willan:
I did say, "Oui, oui, oui." I went down to San Jose. I knew a little bit of Spanish by then, thanks for Bernardino in the kitchen, and we were married in San Jose. And the rest was, thankfully, a happy after. But it was very much a partnership. It was Mark who collected the books and who found me my first job, which was after we were married, when we were lying on the beach in the sun near Washington, and a friend of Mark's said, "Oh, they're looking for a food editor on the Washington Star," which was the major newspaper at the time. I got the job, and from then on, it was always Mark who shaped my life in food and created the adventures that we had all over the place.
Kerry Diamond:
You've had such a remarkable life, and we've barely even gotten into it.
Anne Willan:
I went to in Cambodia when it was really lost, and in the morning, there was only one hotel. Great hotel. It was French. I was leapt out of the bed, because the morning chorus starts like that huge racket all at once. Never heard it. Went duly around the ruins and all of that, ending up in Cairo, where Mark waited for me, saw the pyramids, and under Mark's instructions, and met him back in Nice after seeing kind of 10 wonders of the world.
Kerry Diamond:
We're going to jump ahead in time and geography a little bit and head to Paris. So, you decide you are going to open a culinary school, specializing in French cuisine and culinary techniques. Who did you think the students would be?
Anne Willan:
Well, I thought that we would get some French students as well as American students. This is after I'd been living in the states and I'd been writing for the newspaper, and I knew the American field quite well. I mean, I met dear Julia Child by then. And she rang and met Jim Bread and Simone Beck through them. And all three really supported me when we were opening the school and we had an angel investor who helped us get things going. Craig Claiborne came the first day we were open, and we got off to a very good start.
Kerry Diamond:
So, I want to go back. So you had mentioned these folks who were in your inner circle and they were all supportive of you opening the culinary school in Paris. And some of them even were financial backers of yours.
Anne Willan:
Julia helped. She helped.
Kerry Diamond:
So, how did you become friends with Julia?
Anne Willan:
It goes back. I had edited the American edition of something that was very English. The Cordon Bleu Cookery School. A magazine for the United States. And when it came out in the States, and Julia had seen it, and we were living in Cambridge because Mark went to the Kennedy School of Government for a year, and she said, "I believe congratulations on the work you're doing." It was called Look and Cook. "I'd love to meet you. I gather you may be living in Cambridge. Please be in touch." So, of course, I was. And nine months pregnant, I went to see her. One of her television shows.
Kerry Diamond:
Everyone I've talked to about Julia says what you saw was what you got, that Julia was very real on and off TV.
Anne Willan:
She was the same with everybody. People would come up to the table and say, "Oh, Mrs. Child," and Julia would be just the same as talking to me or you or whoever.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's talk about this fabulous school that you opened. La Varenne was open for more than 30 years. How did the school evolve over the years?
Anne Willan:
Pretty successful, and then, my life developed in other directions. We did what I was particularly proud of, was the trainee program, which no other cooking school was doing. All the teaching was done in French by French chefs and it was French cooking. I insisted. I wrote their recipes down on paper, but you needed a translator. In class. 10 students to the class. And so, over the years, there's been quite a distinguished list of trainees. That's to say, we had trainees who later became well known.
Kerry Diamond:
You mentioned that the school eventually opened in Burgundy as well.
Anne Willan:
Yes. Well, Mark and I have always gone for adventures. And we both had jobs in Paris. Mark worked for the World Bank. And, we wanted a country house that was within cracking distance of Paris, so you could go there in the summer and at weekends. And so, we started a very agreeable search. Nothing was at all what we wanted. And we wanted, it's called a Maison de Maître. A lawyer's house. Our real estate guy said, "I just want to show you something. It's not what you're looking for, but I just want to show it to you." And Château de Faîte has an avenue of plane trees on each side and you go up this avenue and it gradually opens. And there is this splendid 17th-century chateau with the gates and the railings and the wings and the dormer windows and we looked 'round and we were sort of speechless.
Kerry Diamond:
Did you know that you would open a branch of La Varenne there?
Anne Willan:
That was not why we got it. We wanted it as a country house. And then, of course, once we got it, well, to cut a longish story short, we installed six, not all of them teaching kitchens, but six kitchens throughout the property. We invited people to come and pay a modest fee. Delicious food. Take you around the countryside, and live in no wonderful comfort, but I mean, adequate surroundings.
Kerry Diamond:
So, you're going back and forth between Paris and Burgundy to run the school.
Anne Willan:
Yes. It was difficult running the cooking school in Paris. It never made money. And so, we eventually, after losing too much, but hopefully teaching some gifted cooks and people who really enjoyed the experience, we closed Paris in I think it was 1975, and concentrated everything in Burgundy with a different sort of focus.
Kerry Diamond:
We haven't even gotten up to the part about you as a cookbook author. You have written so many books. You've written more than 30 books. When did that part of your life begin?
Anne Willan:
Well, that part, I'm sure the impetus would be Mark. And I did something in the early 70s when La Varenne wasn't even a whisper in our brains. It was something called Entertaining Menus. Only, it was what I was cooking at home when we lived in Washington. We did quite a lot of entertaining, because Washington, particularly at that date, was a very entertainment-oriented time. It was quite successful. But, once I got started on books, then, of course, I wanted to go on. And once we opened the cooking school, we had over 1,000 recipes in writing.
Anne Willan:
Not only that, but I started writing down the principles of braising and roasting and whatever, and how you do a vegetable and all that. I mean, that launched fairly automatically. One of the biggest books. Well, the biggest book I wrote, called La Varenne in America. La Varenne Pratique, which, we came to call The Bible. Because, it's all the basic information you need to be able to cook something.
Kerry Diamond:
So, Anne, I have to ask. You're a mom of two. You're running your own business. You're writing these books. How did you have the time to do all of this?
Anne Willan:
Well, the children both loved food. So that was helpful. They were very much part of the school because they were very small. They were living with us in a small Paris apartment and the school wasn't very far away and so they would come in a couple of times a week and we would be, with luck, it would have been the pastry chef. And they would come and see what the pastry chef has spread out on the table at the end of class.
Kerry Diamond:
Of all these books that you've written, I know this is like asking which of your two children are your favorite, but is there a book that you've written that you love so much?
Anne Willan:
Well, I probably enjoyed Cookbook Library, which is a history of cookbooks. So, I mean, it begins with what was the first cookbook, 1474, and goes on through. And I have a few of them that I couldn't resist keeping. They'll go to the Getty in the end.
Kerry Diamond:
Can you tell us a little bit about that very first cookbook?
Anne Willan:
Its title is of Cooking Deshonesta Tartes et Valetudinem. It's in Latin. It's something about of honest living and hood health. And it is Bartolomeo. He was cook to the Pope, Bartolomeo was his kind of working name. He wasn't cook. He was a librarian to the pope. And he wanted to keep you healthy.
Kerry Diamond:
So are you telling us the very first cookbook was a wellness book?
Anne Willan:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I mean, I can pick up enough Latin to be able to say it is precisely that.
Kerry Diamond:
Remarkable. Now, you and Mark donated your cookbook library to the Getty. You were saying earlier. Can folks access that?
Anne Willan:
Yes. Absolutely. You need to get a reader's card of the library. But you just have, I'm sure, to go online. I haven't tried. But you won't have any difficulty accessing the library. I mean, I can only smile when I think about them. And they're in a happy place.
Kerry Diamond:
Women in the Kitchen is your most recent book. Can you tell us about that book and why you've decided to write it?
Anne Willan:
Well, it was a book that had been I the back of my mind when I was writing about Cookbook Library, which is about cookbooks and who were the people who wrote them. And particularly, in the early days, almost all of them were men. And I wrote a little box about women in the kitchen and who they were and what they were doing and what they wrote. And I kind of earmarked it for this only touches on a wide subject. Published cookbooks, in English, by women. And that means really all cookbooks. Maybe some in German, but I don't read German. But none in Italian. There was a Portuguese in Franta who wrote an early cookbook in Portuguese. Almost without exception, they're in English. And until Amelia Simmons in 1796, there were no American cookbooks written by Americans. The English cookbooks were in circulation in the states.
Anne Willan:
The first one was Hannah Woolley, who was a housewife, and who kept as a household book of household hints and recipes and Mrs. X's soup or her advice on how to cure the whooping cough or whatever. Even my mother who hated to cook kept one of those books. The first person, Hannah Woolley, that was in 1671, just after the restoration and Fire of London, when there must have been a lot of very full of impetus and inspirational feling in the air, wrote a cookbook that explained how to be the ideal housewife. And there's a wonderful picture of her. She has a pushup bra rather low and ringlets and she is really trying just like these girls on the television at the moment. And she was writing for her daughters and she started this chain. It took a while to get going. You sent me a question saying, "Why did you choose this dozen cooks? They are all very different. Very different times." But she was well off. She was not aristocratic, but clearly, the ringlets.
Anne Willan:
And then, we get Hannah Glass, who is very famous and whose books were circulated. Her main book, the Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. It's a beautiful book. It has a thousand recipes. She was from London.
Kerry Diamond:
Can we jump ahead to Fanny Farmer?
Anne Willan:
Now, Fanny Farmer is a very interesting person because until then, most of the well-known cookbook writers had not given detailed instructions. And Fanny Farmer wanted it to be a real textbook on the kind of thing you give to girls who are learning to read so that some of the recipes have a short introduction saying, "Make this in hot weather because," or, "Don't make this," but advice. But she's the first person, really, to list ingredients with quantities and then give exact instructions.
Kerry Diamond:
I hate to say it, but Fanny's kind of been forgotten these days. What was her biggest contribution?
Anne Willan:
The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook. It's very thorough and detailed and boring instructions. She's a bit didactic but she was very famous and enormously honored in her day.
Kerry Diamond:
So, someone who hasn't been forgotten. Well, her book hasn't been forgotten. The Joy of Cooking. Irma Rombauer. Now, that book endures.
Anne Willan:
Indeed it goes. It nearly had a death low. It was about 30 years ago. Because, they tried to upgrade it and revise it. It wasn't a success. She knew just what she wanted. She wanted a book that had, just like Fanny Farmer but in a different way, told you exactly how to do everything when you'd never even set foot in a kitchen. And I had a version. It will be at the Getty now. That would have dated from the 50s, probably. Not from the original edition, was the 30s.
Anne Willan:
And it was meticulous about. The very earliest edition also has the most charming illustrations. If you're interested in this kind of history and what the book looked like as well as what it says and what it actually contained, the earliest version, you can. Always. There's a great publishing company called Prospect Books that publishes a certain number of these early books. Facsimile editions.
Kerry Diamond:
I mean, I was going to say about the Joy of Cooking, it really is the best title. We, at Cherry Bombe, have been talking about Julia nonstop, I feel like for several months now, and especially over the past few weeks. But if you had to sum up what Julia's contribution is, was, to this world, what would it be?
Anne Willan:
Well, my comments come from some, a cook myself, who is a great believer in French principles. I feel that what Julia brought to America were the principles of French cooking, the right way, what's the difference between boiling and simmering and poaching. They're all pretty different and you do different foods for each thing. And it's all only boiling salted water. But it all depends what you do with it. I mean, what speed and all of that.
Anne Willan:
And, the French understand and Julia brought that understanding to the American kitchen. Made it possible for Americans not just to do French cooking, in the way the French would do it, but to apply those principles, the underlying principles, to American cooking.
Kerry Diamond:
Yesterday, we had a conversation about Judith Jones. And, Edna Lewis's niece joined us. Nina Williams-Nbengue. It's a love story. She was 11 and 12 and helped type up Edna's noted for Judith for the cookbook and it was just wonderful hearing her stories about her aunts and Edna is a chapter in your book. Could you tell us about Edna?
Anne Willan:
I never met Edna. But she clearly was a wonderful cook. As gifted in her way as Julia. She also interestingly was six feet something tall, wore kind of almost tribal dresses, and had great presence.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. She had amazing style. There are fabulous photos of her.
Anne Willan:
Yes. Edna has an affinity with the land and with black culture and life in rural Virginia going back, which is very rare. I'm not an expert at all on southern cookbooks. But, she evokes another life and time that are of enormous importance in American culinary heritage.
Kerry Diamond:
I was so happy to see that there was a chapter about her in your book, which is wonderful, and I really encourage everyone to read. And I have to imagine that you are working on yet another book.
Anne Willan:
I'm afraid. Did I tell you that? Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
You didn't tell me that, but I'm guessing, given how many books you've written. What are you up to?
Anne Willan:
I'm always saying, "Writing is not work to me. Cooking is not work to me." It's always just what I like doing best. Yes. It's going to be called Chronicles of Cooking with Grandma. And I have five grandchildren. They all love to cook. They're getting a bit older now. The eldest's 13. So it's a lot of my own recipes. But it's recipes that hopefully children would enjoy, starting with lots of chocolate. The seasonal things. I always make Christmas fruitcake and then we put some almost paste on the top and they decorate it. And we do things like that. And they all seem to really enjoy it. But I mean, cooking isn't for everybody. My mother hated it. Poor mommy. She had to have a glass of whiskey before she could face making supper for my father. She was always in the garden.
Kerry Diamond:
And look at the career you've had. That's remarkable. We didn't talk about cooking at all. I mean, we've talked about all the chapters of your life. What do you love to make for yourself?
Anne Willan:
Oh. Well, what I love best is cheese.
Kerry Diamond:
My kind of girl.
Anne Willan:
We lived in lots of different places and the first shop that I identify is where is the good cheese.
Kerry Diamond:
What's your favorite kind of cheese, Anne?
Anne Willan:
Well, we live near Brie and when once to the main market in the town of Brie and it's quite astonishing. This is just a side because it would be brie or it would be comté, the good Gruyere. And brie, if you live in Brie, comes as this wonderful, runny white rinded, none of those pasty layers in the middle. Everything is just runny but not too far. No yellowing rind on the top. No, no, no. It's just right.
Anne Willan:
But then, also, in Brie, they will store it until it ages. I mean, they won't let it start getting runny. They must keep it colder. And so, there's aged brie which is total different. Different experience. And then, there's fresh brie, which is only two weeks old. So, it's only just started, but is wonderfully fresh, because it's wonderful milk of course, because all of that has to be very high fat, fresh milk. And so, you can explore all sort.
Kerry Diamond:
I think you just gave me something new for my bucket list, Anne. Having brie in Brie.
Anne Willan:
Well, be sure to go the right day for market day.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. I will. Anne, this was so wonderful. I mean, you have such a remarkable mind and you've had such a remarkable life. Thank you for sharing it with us. I could keep talking to you for hours.
Anne Willan:
Well, it's wonderful, because you find friends. If you enjoy cooking and eating, you find friends everywhere.
Kerry Diamond:
Absolutely. And your life has been rich with friends and family and food. So, Anne, thank you so much. I hope this is just the first of many conversations we get to have.
Anne Willan:
It would be a pleasure.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Thank you so much to Anne Willan for joining us and sharing her story and her wisdom. Be sure to check out Anne's latest book, Women in the Kitchen: 12 Essential Cookbook Writers Who Defined the Way We Eat From 1661 to Today.
Kerry Diamond:
As you heard, one of those chapters is devoted to Julia Child. If you'd like to hear more about Julia, be sure to check out last week's episode with Julia's long-time assistant, Stephanie Hersh. Radio Cherry Bombe is produced by Cherry Bombe Media. Today's episode was engineered and edited by Jenna Sadhu. Visit cherrybombe.com to subscribe to our magazine. Sign up for our newsletter and read about some of the most interesting women in food. Thanks for listening, everybody. You're the bombe.
Harry From When Harry Met Sally:
I'll have what she's having.