Foodie Faves: Julia’s New App

She makes it look so easy. Julia, that is. In my last post, I mentioned her new app, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” which has just been released by Random House Digital (owner of Knopf, her publisher) in celebration of the 100th anniversary of her birth. And while I’d have paid $2.99 just for the treat of watching Julia in action again, I must tell you that it’s about the best value I’ve gotten for that amount in recent memory. By the way, the brief on this app at the iTunes Store says the $2.99 is a special introductory price through the end of August.

For starters, I love that it’s more about technique than straight-out recipes, although the techniques all relate to at least one recipe from the book (MAFC). There are the 30 video clips starring Julia, as she demonstrates how to poach an egg or make hollandaise sauce or truss a chicken. (I can’t decide if these were from her TV series or if she did them separately for some other commercial purpose – she wears the same clothes in all the ones I’ve watched. Hmmm.) In fact, she makes it look so easy that I’m encouraged to try many of these things myself. A confession: I recently poached my first egg ever. Really. And while the look of it wasn’t perfect, I plan to spend some time watching Julia to see if I can’t improve.

So it’s a fun app, and particularly instructional for those of us who learn better from watching than from reading. You only get 32 recipes, but she gives you variations on many of them that expand the range of possibilities.

Other nice features include a grocery list you can edit and email to yourself; good color photos of the finished dishes; and a remarkable page of “Other Information” that includes a glossary of cooking terms, a discussion of kitchen equipment, an illustrated how-to on knife skills, and an extensive treatise  – with recipes, separate from the featured recipes – on stocks.

You’ll even learn how to pronounce “bouillabaisse.”