JULIA CHILD DISCOVERS DOVER SOLE

"the most exciting meal of my life"

JULIA CHILD AND DOVER SOLE

We have written about this "best fish story of them all" earlier this year. Apparently Julia Child discovered Dover Sole meuniere long before we did and her reaction is recorded in a mouth-watering scene in the new Nora Ephron movie, "Julie & Julia"

"Julia Child’s first lunch in France centered on Dover sole sputtering in butter sauce. It was, she wrote in her memoir, “the most exciting meal of my life.”

For that scene, Ms. Ephron — an accomplished cook who wrote the screenplay, directed the film and personally tested every recipe in the movie except the aspic — would accept nothing short of perfection.

“I wanted that sole to look to the audience the way it had looked to Julia when it caused her famous epiphany,” she said.

But hey, no pressure.

Susan Spungen, the movie’s food stylist, had spent a dozen years as Martha Stewart’s food editor. She had been a caterer before that. She understood pressure. But she knew she was in the weeds the moment she arrived at a Manhattan restaurant to shoot the scene.

For starters, the chef that Ms. Ephron had recruited to cook the sole was instead pressed into service as the scene’s waiter. That left Ms. Spungen uncharacteristically unprepared. The restaurant didn’t have a nonstick pan, and the chef forgot to tell her that the secret to the dish was a light coat of Wondra flour.

Worse, she had only about 10 of the expensive fillets to work with. That wouldn’t allow for many mistakes. And even if she cooked one perfectly, how was she going to make sure the big fillet sizzled enough so the camera would pick it up?"