Jaíne Mackievicz Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond. Today's interview was recorded at Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City, but I am recording this intro in Hawaii. I'm actually hiding out in the closet right now, recording this. I am here for a friend's wedding and I feel very lucky and grateful to be somewhere so beautiful.
Anyway, as you know, each week on Radio Cherry Bombe, we talk to the coolest culinary personalities around, the folks shaping and shaking up the food scene. Today's guest is Jaíne Mackievicz, the winner of the debut season of The Julia Child Challenge from the Food Network. Jaíne grew up in the Amazon and made her way to Massachusetts with, believe it or not, Julia Child as the North Star that was guiding her. It's a remarkable story, and Jaíne is here to tell us more.
Jaíne is also a food writer and contributor to Cherry Bombe Magazine. She wrote beautiful essays that you can find in Issues 16 and 17. Stay tuned for my chat with Jaíne. She is such a wonderful, optimistic human. I think you will all love her as much as I do.
Today's episode is sponsored by Helbraun Levey, the country's premier full service law firm, focused on the legal and licensing needs of the hospitality and cannabis industries. I didn't know this when I was starting out as an entrepreneur. There is a lot I didn't know when I was starting out, but a good lawyer is as essential as a good business idea. A decade ago, I would've told you that you need great social media, a great website, a great mission statement, and all of those things are true, but what you need first is a solid foundation, and that starts with caring, informed and savvy legal counsel. The team at Helbraun Levey represents Cherry Bombe, yes, they do, and many of the top names in hospitality. They've helped us a lot over the years with solid advice and wise counsel, and they are always there for us to help us navigate the wild world of business.
Whether you're an entrepreneur just starting out, an aspiring business owner or you think it's time for serious representation, consider working with Helbraun Levey. For a free consultation, visit helbraunlevey.com. Also, a little bonus. Helbraun Levey has a great hospitality industry newsletter, which was a lifesaver to me and the entire industry during the pandemic. And it continues to be a solid, informative read, whether you work in restaurants, do events or just love all things hospitality. You can sign up for free at Helbraun Levey's website and check out their past newsletters while you're there.
What else? We're doing a giveaway with our friends at Honey Mama's. Check out our Instagram and learn how you can win a pack of Honey Mama's cherry hazelnut cocos truffle bars. The giveaway ends today, April 25th, so do not delay. If you haven't tried Honey Mama's yet, it's good stuff. And for folks like me with wicked sweet tooth, it's a more wholesome way to indulge. Look for Honey Mama's at your local Whole Foods or visit honeymamas.com.
Okay. Who out there is watching Julia on HBO Max? If you're enjoying the show then you need to check out the official companion podcast. Why, you ask? Because I'm the host and it's a really special show. Each week, I talk to great industry guests like Ina Garten, plus amazing cast members and creatives from Julia. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoy working on this podcast. Listen wherever you get your podcasts and leave a rating and a review. I would appreciate that very much. Now let's check in with today's guest.
Jaíne, welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Thank you. Thank you for having me, Kerry.
Kerry Diamond:
First off, I want to congratulate you on winning The Julia Child Challenge. Amazing, Jaíne.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Oh, Kerry, thank you so much. The show, it's been hard for me to talk about it without getting emotional.
Kerry Diamond:
So we are talking to Jaíne right after her win. She just won last night. Did you have a strategy for winning or were you in it for the fun?
Jaíne Mackievicz:
I think, Kerry, it was half and half. I think at the beginning, of course, I was just so nervous. And not that I thought about winning at any point. I really was just thinking about going through each week. I had a strategy at the beginning. I wanted to cook more sophisticated dishes, trying to be more creative, but with my first dish, my sole meunière, it didn't work out the way I was planning, so I changed the strategy and just thought it would be more smart of me to just cook the food I know how to cook by heart, the food I love eating. And that's what I did. And that's why I baked a cake right after.
Kerry Diamond:
I know you well enough to know that you're not a super cutthroat competitor. So I was curious how you would approach the show. You wouldn't be in there trying to undercut your rivals. I'm sure you don't even think about people as your rivals.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Exactly. You're right. I am the least competitive person. I don't like competing, and I don't see people as my rivals, and I actually was very confused about going to the show in the first place. It was not like I really wanted to go. I was not prepared in my mind to go through competing with people that probably cooked way better than I did. Doug, my husband said, "You should give this a try. It's for Julia." And I said, "Well, if there's someone I would do this for, it's Julia." I just had to try and learn how to be a little bit more competitive, not really competitive, just more in the game, I think. Understanding the time I think was the hardest thing. Cooking in a determined amount of time, I've never done this before, so that was the biggest challenge for me actually.
Kerry Diamond:
Also, the way they structured the show, it obviously was a competition, but it was built for home cooks and Julia Child super fans, and you ticked both of those boxes. So it wasn't set out to be super cutthroat, but I would love to know, what was your prize for winning?
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Let me take a breath. My prize is going to Paris for three months, all expense paid, to Le Cordon Bleu, to do the same program that Julia did back in the day. And there's no better prize, now that I'm thinking about it. It doesn't sound real to me, Kerry, still. I had to wake up this morning thinking, oh my God, did this really happen?
Kerry Diamond:
Oh my, God, what a dream come true, Jaíne. Is Doug, your husband, going to come with you?
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Oh, no, he's not going to come with me. He has to be here in the states, but I'm going by myself, but I'm going to be fully immersed in this experience for sure.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, you're going to love it so much. Well, I'm so happy for you.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Thank you, Kerry.
Kerry Diamond:
We're going to come back to The Julia Child Challenge in a little bit. I'd love to start with your childhood so people can get to know you a little bit. Tell us where you grew up.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
So I grew up in a small village in the Amazon. It's called Costa Marques. It's in the border with Bolivia, and it's very remote. We didn't have stores. We had at one store, one restaurant. It was just very little people living there. My parents, they both immigrated from the south part of Brazil, and my dad's family is from Poland and Ukraine, so it's a mix. And somehow they ended up in the Amazon and I was born there. My mom used to subscribe to a magazine when I was a kid, a cooking magazine, and I remember seeing an advertisement for Le Cordon Bleu when I was a kid in the cover of the magazine. And then I asked her like, "What is this?" And she said, "Oh, this is a very famous cooking school in Paris." And I said, "You know what? Maybe someday day I'll be there." Since I can remember being a human being, I can't think of me wanting to cook. This is the only thing I ever wanted to do.
Kerry Diamond:
I know your mom had a small baking business. Right? Tell us about that.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
It was like a home kind of bakery because she one day got upset because we didn't have a bakery and she wanted to buy a cake for a birthday, and she's like, "You know what? I might bake my own cakes." And then people started ordering from her. I think I was five or six so I couldn't help a lot, but I was always licking the bowl of a ganache or a meringue. I was always around.
Kerry Diamond:
Did both of your parents cook?
Jaíne Mackievicz:
No. My mom dislikes cooking very much. She bakes, but she doesn't bake a lot of things. It's mostly cakes. And my dad loved cooking. He was a great cook. He was very intuitive. What I think now is that he loved eating, and that's a good beginning for any cook. If you love eating, you're probably going to get your way in cooking so you can eat good things. Right?
Kerry Diamond:
What were some of the things your dad made?
Jaíne Mackievicz:
His signature dish was coconut fish stew that I did on the show actually because everywhere he went, because we have an abundance of fish, so I only ate other kind of meats when I was 15 already. I just ate fish when I was a kid. So he would make it for me because I loved fish. Wherever he went, he always had this huge pot like a stock pot and he would just cook it with no recipe at all. It was just feeling it and tasting it as he went. And then I think I learned this with him, from him, but just by watching the way he moved around the kitchen and then I got a lot of this from him.
Kerry Diamond:
Now, I want you to tell me the story of how you first learned about Julia Child. And people aren't going to believe the story. They're going to think you made this up just to be on the show, but you told us this story a while ago before The Julia Child Challenge even existed. So tell us how you first learned about Julia Child.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
My afternoon treat was to watch cooking shows with my mom on TV. We would sit there, and she would take a little notebook and write the recipes down so she could test it. There was a clip from Mr. Rogers, and he was cooking with Julia, and they were making spaghetti Marco Polo. And I remember when I saw Julia, that caught my attention because she was moving the spaghetti, she was getting it up and mixing with the other ingredients. And then I just paid fully attention to that. And it was a very short clip like five minutes. And then I told my mom like, "Wow. Look how tall she is." Because I was very bullied when I was a kid because I was super, super tall. I was very different from the people in the village I grew up.
So for me, that was a challenge, to find a way of being comfortable with myself in that place. And I saw Julia, and she was very tall and she was vivid. She had that sparkly personality. And actually, she reminded me a lot of my dad because my dad had that sparkly personality, and I think I connected the two of them and I just fell in love with Julia right away. And I said, "You know what? Maybe one day I can do what she's doing. I can teach people how to cook on TV because it doesn't matter how I look. It's just what I have to offer." And that was the beginning of my love story with Julia.
Kerry Diamond:
So what did you go on to study?
Jaíne Mackievicz:
So life went on, and I wanted to go to culinary school in the south part of Brazil where my parents are from, and we had this debate when I left high school, I want to go to culinary school, but they were very concerned about my future, being in that village or the city that we moved later because they was not a lot of opportunities. So they just told me no, no, no, you have to do something else to get you settled and then you go for your adventures. Because for them, that was just an adventure. It was not something that could become a career.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. They're your parents. They want to make sure you're taken care of.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Exactly. And I didn't understand at the time. We had this thing, but I said, you know what? They might be right. They want the best for me and I'll go for it. So I went to law school for six years, and I did well because I liked it up to some point. You know you're going to law school as soon as you get in. It's a little different than here. It's six years studying law specifically.
Kerry Diamond:
It's a long time.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
It's a long time. I was with Douglas, my husband. At the time, he was my boyfriend. And I would bake cakes, and he would sell cakes in the college like the snack time cakes because it was like, this is so good. You got to make money out of this. But for me, it was just fun.
Kerry Diamond:
So sadly, you lost your dad. That was a big moment in your life as one can imagine. You really loved your dad.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
He had this, again, this personality and people just wanted to be around him. What changed for me when he passed away, knowing that he loved the life he lived, that was just my main goal. I think that was when things changed for me in a way that I realized that life was really short. And there's no point in just spending it with something that doesn't make you fully happy. And I know it sounds cheesy saying like that, but I was really, really decided on going on the direction of whatever made me happy and really ready to pay the price for it because it's not easy. It's never easy to move, to change, to decide to live in another way.
Kerry Diamond:
I laugh when you said it might sound cheesy. It might sound cheesy to some people, but you really followed through on this. You changed your life completely. Tell people what you did.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
So that was when I realized this and then I started coming up with a plan, and Julia was always in my mind because at this point, I had bought the Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I had watched Julie & Julia. I felt like I knew Julia A little bit more than from our first encounter when I was a kid. I decided that I wanted to go to Boston and apply to the Gastronomy Masters at Boston University, which is the program that Julia founded with Chef Jacques Pépin. And I didn't know any English by then so that would be a problem. And I didn't know anyone that could help me. I didn't have a lot of money. I invited Douglas, and he said, "I'll go with you. If you want to do this, I know how much you love it and we'll go and we'll see where this is going to lead us."
And then we came here with tourist visas at the time because I was not really sure if we want to be here or if we would go to Paris because Paris was always an option. And then we arrived in Boston and I couldn't order a coffee because I didn't have any English. And then I was like, "Oh my, gosh. What I've done, what I've done? This doesn't make any sense." I eventually applied for a student visa and became a student in an English as a second language program. And then this actually changed things because finally, I could understand everything. And, Kerry, this is insane. Now that I look back, now that I'm a little bit older and I look back, I'm like, how I was thinking I would get an apartment, buy a car and that type of thing? How things sorted them out? I don't know.
Kerry Diamond:
Let me stop you right there because I just want people to be able to take this in. So you're growing up in the Amazon. You go off to law school. You have this idea on your head. You come Boston. You don't speak English. With a lot of hard work, you get into this program that you have dreamed of getting into that Julia and Jacques started.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Yes. So the program actually, there's another layer to the story. So I got to the English program-
Kerry Diamond:
No doubt.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
And then after two or three years, I knew English enough to adventure in something else. So I said now it's time for me to go for the master's program I want. And then I went there. I had an interview with them, and we talked about prizes and, obviously, I could not afford the program nor I could apply for a scholarship or anything because of my legal status. And they said, "We have weekend classes that maybe you could take. They're like a culinary lab, and it's just Sunday and Saturday and you come. There's no credit. You don't get a diploma, you don't get a certificate, but maybe you learn a thing or two." I said, "Well, maybe that will do. I'll see." And then I went for a weekend, and I could not understand a word because I was so nervous. I was so nervous. And I remember just talking about velouté sauce and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, "Jesus."
Kerry Diamond:
What have I gotten myself into?
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Exactly. And there was a photo, there's a beautiful photo of Julia in the auditorium of Boston University. And I just remembered looking at Julia and asking her, "Please, please, please, let me understand something. I want to do something with it." And then I went back home right after the class and just opened cookbooks and opened books and researched and tried to recap everything on my own so I could make sure I understood everything. But I was just exhausted, just, oh my gosh, I can't do this. It's just too much.
Kerry Diamond:
Jaíne, you are remarkable, but you did it.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Somehow, Kerry, I did it.
Kerry Diamond:
You did it.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
I finished the culinary lab, and it was really very basic, but it was fun to me to see another perspective on culinary because I never heard about mother sauces or how to spatchcock a chicken before or any of those things. I just knew the food from my home.
Kerry Diamond:
And you eventually started working in restaurants, right?
Jaíne Mackievicz:
No.
Kerry Diamond:
This is the part I don't know that well. What did you do for a living?
Jaíne Mackievicz:
I wanted to work in a bakery. I wanted to be a pastry chef, but then the pandemic hit and the restaurant I was talking with, the owner, she would give me a job, but then they closed. And then she said, "Unfortunately, we cannot hire you now. I'm so sorry. When things get back to normal, we will hire you."
Kerry Diamond:
Whatever that means.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
It turns out that it actually helped me a lot because when the show came up, it was for home cooks, not for professional chefs or anything, and I never really cooked professionally.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, okay.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
So that was a good thing actually. We never know what's going to come.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. So you're in Massachusetts. It's so cold.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
It's cold.
Kerry Diamond:
You must have just been like, what have I done to myself and to Doug?
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Exactly. It's so cold. We were working like crazy. We were just trying to make ends meet the best way we could. So it was always so cold, so sad. We were always so lonely. And the only thing I actually had was food. That was the only thing that would bring us some comfort when we were back home. We could cook rice and beans and feel like we were close to home somehow. And that's why I think now that I got so more connected to food, not that I wasn't before. I always loved it, but in the way that things unveiled themselves here, it's just food was my refuge. It was everything I had. So that's why it's who I am. I'm a cook, and this is because I'm also an immigrant and things just connect that way in my life.
Kerry Diamond:
Were you doing a lot of different part-time jobs just trying to make ends meet?
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Oh yeah. And school was heavy. The work I had to do in school was really heavy. And at some point, I had to take other classes. I did a photography class, a water collar illustration class. I did all of that. This also led me to fall in love with cookbooks because at some point, I was so involved in learning English and cookbooks really were very helpful for me to learn English because it was something I could not stop reading. Maybe I'll write a book someday. That was a good goal for me to have because then I had a reason to keep improving my English skills.
For me to be here today, it's so crazy because two years ago, I remember listening to the podcast because I wanted to learn English and, of course, it's my favorite podcast. And one day, I told Douglas, "Maybe someday I'll end up in a podcast like this." We just laughed because it was so silly at the time. And now, as we were driving here, we're just like, "Look how life works."
Kerry Diamond:
We decided that we were going to do a special Julia Child issue. Now, part of my interest in doing that issue, an issue of Cherry Bombe magazine, was that I didn't grow up with Julia Child. I didn't watch her. Even though I watched a ton of PBS, I watched Sesame Street, I watched Electric Company, I watched 3-2-1 Contact. Anybody who grew up on PBS knows all those shows, but for some reason, not Julia, and we didn't own a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. My mother did make recipes that were clearly influenced by Julia, but I think that was very much the culture and the food culture at the time.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Oh, okay.
Kerry Diamond:
She would make quiche. She would make beef bourguignon. She would make cream puffs. And those weren't family recipes so they were things that just must have been popular in the early and throughout the '70s because of Julia. So I wanted to get to the bottom personally of why I didn't grow up with Julia and what's so special about her and why she means so much to so many people, which I've learned she means a lot to so many people.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
She does.
Kerry Diamond:
So we decided we're going to do this issue. We reached out to the Julia Child Foundation. They were into the idea and we're very gracious and were fantastic partners. And we just started talking about it internally, and we decided that we would do something that we had never done before, and that was an open call for submissions. So we put on Instagram that if you had a story to tell about Julia Child or yourself or whatever that connected back to Julia, we had this open call. Here's the deadline. Send us an email. I think the email was like Julia Cherry Bombe or something.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
It was, yes.
Kerry Diamond:
We got a lot of emails, I think at least 80 or 90. I'm trying to remember right now.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Wow.
Kerry Diamond:
And one of them was from you. And we read every single email, and we kept going back to yours and we were like, "We could publish this email as the story." Your email was so beautiful, Jaíne.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Oh.
Kerry Diamond:
It's rare that you get a pitch that sometimes people will send you the article, even though you don't want it in advance, but your pitch was so beautiful. It literally could have just been picked up and dropped in the magazine. I know English is not your first language, but you have such a flair with the language. You are a gifted writer. I just thought it was so beautiful, and I think we might have cried when we read it.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Oh, my.
Kerry Diamond:
So we got in touch with you, and you wrote a beautiful essay for us, and you let us publish so many gorgeous family photos. Jaíne, we fell in love with you completely even before we met you. And we were so honored to publish that piece, that was your first published piece. And I don't know this for a fact, but I'm guessing the Julia Child people saw that article. When they were casting the show, they saw that article. Somebody saw that article and suggested you. I don't know.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you know the backstory of how they found you?
Jaíne Mackievicz:
When I think about that article, and I wrote that with my heart completely, I just wanted to tell a story, and you gave me an opportunity. And for me, that's priceless. I will always thank you for that. And that issue is just something else.
Kerry Diamond:
It's such a special issue.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
It is. It touches people hearts in so many ways. It's just amazing for me up to this day to open the magazine and see all the beautiful stories in there.
Kerry Diamond:
I have to thank you for trusting us. That was a very personal story that you told, and I really appreciate that you trusted us with that story.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Oh, I would only trust Cherry Bombe with that story actually because the work Cherry Bombe does for this industry. And being a woman, an immigrant, it's overwhelming to think that I got ... You guys published a story that I wrote in a language that's not mine.
Kerry Diamond:
Then we did the Julia Jubilee. So it was still the pandemic. We couldn't do our in-person Jubilee conference, so we decided to do a week-long celebration of Julia. And I'm sure some of you who are listening tuned in. It was so much fun. We did a real deep dive into Julia.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
It was.
Kerry Diamond:
And, Jaíne, you introduced the final panel, and it was so much fun because we all got to see this space in your house that was like an altar to Julia Child and Jacques Pépin and Dorie Greenspan. It was so much fun to have you open that panel and introduce everybody. So thank you for doing that also.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Thank you for inviting me. I have to say that I almost dropped dead when they read that I would be introducing a panel with Dorie Greenspan, Alex Prud'homme, Sara Moulton and so many other people I've admired so much. And for a minute, I forgot how to speak English. It always happens, Kerry. I was so nervous, but it was lovely. And I got great, great, great friends from that experience, people that connects with Julia just the same way I do. So I'm thankful for that.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
And coming back to the show, yes, it was because of the article. It was because of Cherry Bombe that they got in touch with me and thought I would be a good fit for the show.
Kerry Diamond:
Did you think you were being punked? I can't imagine you getting this email from the casting directors. You must have been like, "What?"
Jaíne Mackievicz:
And you know what's fun? A friend of mine actually sent me the link for the submissions, and then I did an application for the show because I did it and immediately, I regretted it because they called me five minutes after I sent the application. And then they said, "Jaíne, we have to talk more. We loved your video." I'm going to show you the video I sent. And then I was like, "You know what? I'm not sure. Let's see how it goes." And then I suddenly got scared, just like, no, no, no, this is not for me. And then two hours later, someone else got in touch with me, and then they said, "We've been looking for you. For a long time, we couldn't reach you. We were trying to find you." And I said, "My goodness. Maybe that's a sign that I should go with it."
Kerry Diamond:
Wait. Why did you regret that you had filled out the application?
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Because I got scared, first, because of language. Because one thing is speaking with people that you feel comfortable and everything. Another thing is cooking under pressure, being around cameras. I was not sure. I was not confident I could pull that off. So English was the first, and then cooking under pressure because I'm a home cook. I like to turn on some music, drink wine as I cook. And then just fear of failure that eventually I learned it's not something I should have. Julia-
Kerry Diamond:
Julia, isn't that her biggest message?
Jaíne Mackievicz:
It is. It Julia's biggest message. And once you soak that in and really realize that opportunities might be great if you just go above that fear, it's just pure magic. And Julia taught me that.
Kerry Diamond:
You did get to move somewhere warm to do the TV show. There was that.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
There's more in the story. So the whole casting process was long and everything. And then Doug-
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, right. I guess it's not a done deal.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
No.
Kerry Diamond:
You might have applied and they might have been thrilled to have finally found you, but I guess, right, there's still a whole audition.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Yes. It's not like come to the show. It took months. It's just-
Kerry Diamond:
I'm assuming the whole time that they're like, "Oh my God, we have to have her." Okay.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
I cannot imagine how many people applied to be on the show actually. I think it was a difficult selection for them to find all of us. In the middle of this, casting, interviews and everything, Doug and I were moving to California. So I had no furniture in the house. We're just eating out all the time. I was super stressed, dealing with everything, selling everything because we just came with our car and some books in the car. I was just like, "I cannot do this. I cannot do this." I was coming up with excuses. Now I see that because I just didn't want to do this. I was afraid. If I can make it to the eight Julia super fan, this collection of great home cooks, this is a lot already. Even if I cooked terrible sole meunière, the first challenge, and they leave, I did a lot already and I should be proud of it. And then I think that way of thinking just got me a little bit more excited about how things could go if I just opened myself up to that opportunity.
Kerry Diamond:
So explain the concept of the show a little bit because Julia does appear in the show.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
She does. She's there all the time. So the set is very much like Julia's kitchen. So we get to cook in Julia's kitchen. And I visited Julia's kitchen at the Smithsonian, so it really is that feeling. Each week, we have two challenges. The first one is more technical. The second one is more creative. And Julia is cooking alongside us. So for example, for the first challenge, she teaches us a specific technique and we should replicate or use a specific ingredient. All the challenges are based on Julia's life story. It was just delicious to be there and watch her in that huge television screen, talking to us, teaching us, being funny. It was just so warming and comforting to walk in the kitchen and see that she was there personally. And I think for all the other contestants, but it was just that boost that we needed. We can do this. She's here with us somehow.
Kerry Diamond:
And there were some great judges too, some people who I know you are big fans of. Tell us.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Yeah. So there was ... Dropping that again. Every time the judges walk in the kitchen, because it was a rotating panel of judges, and we had the host, Chef Antonia Lofaso, which is amazing. And the judges, not all of them were chefs. We had food writers. We had people from the editorial world. It was just a really good mix of people that had somehow connected to Julia and had this different point of view that I haven't seen in many cooking competitions. So that was also something that got me really excited.
Kerry Diamond:
Francis Lam, right?
Jaíne Mackievicz:
He and Chef Michael Voltaggio were the judges of the first week. And, oh my goodness, I cannot even talk-
Kerry Diamond:
Tell everybody who you got to meet, who I know you love to pieces.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
I got to meet Dorie Greenspan, and I got to talk with Chef Jacques Pépin. This is the highlight of my life, I think, because I had to really breathe and try to get calm and just so I could go through this. So, Kerry, what's the most fascinating thing for me about cooking competitions is that if you think about all their cooking competitions, they're more cutthroat, more aggressive, and people actually get to meet the judges as well. How do you manage cooking for someone that you admire so much and you love and you want to impress them and you want to make them happy? This is another layer of pressure that I just had to learn how to deal with. I just want to cook the most delicious thing for Dorie, and it was hard.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell us about your winning dish.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
The finale, I think it was the beef bourguignon. I think it was the best. I was hoping I could do a really good dessert, but time just got me. And I was glad actually that I was able to put something on the table because I thought I could not. But the beef bourguignon I think was something that I cooked with a lot of my intuition, and I mixed it with the flavors I grew up eating because I also served rice and beans, which are staples in Brazil. So that was something so manageable for me to cook there. It was just the only way I could do that, and I'm glad it worked because I actually burnt the bottom of the pressure cooker. Now, if I tell you all the mistakes I did, oh Jesus, Julia would laugh.
Kerry Diamond:
She would laugh. I'm sure she would laugh, but I'm sure she's smiling at you. And I love that you wore your pearl necklace for the finale, and I love that you're wearing it today. Tell us the significance of that necklace. I'm sorry to our listeners. You can't see it but it's beautiful.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
They're very much Julia. The way that she presented herself in the kitchen is also another thing that I love about Julia. She was herself, and she was elegant. She was full of life, and she was like this in the kitchen as well. And for me, it's important to be like this in the kitchen as well. This is who I am. I'm fully Jaíne when I'm in the kitchen. And why not wear pearls or beautiful jewelry or take care of your hair when you're doing something? That's the way I think, and it's fun. And the pearls, I saved them for the finale, hoping that I would get to the finale because I brought them home in a little bag. I was like, "I hope I get to the finale so I can wear my pearls."
Jaíne Mackievicz:
And then when I got back home, Doug was waiting for me with another beautiful one. Those were real ones because the ones that were in the show were not real, but it's pretty much like Julie & Julia moment too.
Kerry Diamond:
In the middle of all of this, you ran off and got married.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
I was looking on Instagram and I'm like, "Gang, Jaíne just got married."
Jaíne Mackievicz:
I know. This is very me to do impromptu wedding. It was really because we had to deal with the immigration situation and we had to get married for it. And I was actually-
Kerry Diamond:
But you are in love. Let's ...
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Oh no, yes. Doug and I, we've been together for nine years already. We're just not officially married, but this is like marriage for me since day one.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
And I was actually filming the show in the week that we were supposed to get married. I think I actually talked about this on the show. And then I was like, "Doug, we can't get married now. No, I have to go for this." And he's like, "No, no, no. It's okay." So as soon as I got back home, we drove to Vegas and just got married in the most fun way, got drunk, and then just the two of us. It was really, really fun. I wouldn't change a thing.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, well, congratulations. I know everyone would love to follow your Le Cordon Bleu adventures.
Jaíne Mackievicz:
Oh, thank you, Kerry. I could talk with you all day, but I talk a lot. You have to cut me.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, that's okay. I like people who talk a lot.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Thank you so much to Jaíne Mackievicz for joining me today. Congratulations on winning The Julia Child Challenge on the Food Network. And, Jaíne, we can't wait to hear more about your adventures at Le Cordon Bleu.
If you need more Jaíne in your life, pick up our special Julia Child issue or our Cooks & Books issue to read Jaíne's essays. Visit cherrybombe.com. Just snag a copy.
Thank you to Helbraun Levey for supporting today's show. For a free consultation or to sign up for their newsletter, visit helbraunlevey.com.
Radio Cherry Bombe is a production of Cherry Bombe Magazine. Our theme song is by the band, Tra La La. Thank you to Joseph Hazan, studio engineer for Newsstand Studios. And thank you to our assistant producer, Jenna Sadhu. And thanks to you for listening. You're the bombe.