PBS chef and cookbook author Christy Rost isn’t a French cook per se – she tends to focus on simple, wholesome foods you can get on the table without too much fuss – but she still readily admits to being influenced by the cooking of France.

Little surprise, then, that she’s also a devotee of Julia Child, whose two-volume “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” introduced most of America to the joys of Boeuf Bourguignon and Coq au Vin in the 1960s.

“Julia was so down to earth,” says Rost, who first met the cooking legend in the mid-1990s during a culinary professional’s conference in Oregon. “The way she came across to people on TV and certainly to the people who met her – she was a real woman, and a real cook.”

In celebration of what would have been Child’s 100th birthday on Aug. 15, Rost is focusing on three of her mentor’s classic French recipes: French onion soup, authentic French puff pastry and Apple Pithivier, a buttery, flaky pastry typically served for dessert (but equally delicious with your morning coffee) in appearances this month.

“Everyone loves to end with something sweet,” notes Rost, who splits her time between homes in Dallas and Colorado.

Sweeter still is the collection of Child’s personal kitchen gadgets she’s amassed. Purchased at an auction before her death at age 92 in 2004, they include metal icing cones the French cook used on some of her cakes, a well-used wooden spoon that has an unusual shape and two pastry brushes Rost had to go “tooth and nail” against another bidder to win.

Rost’s newest cookbook is “Celebrating Home: A Handbook for Gracious Living” (Big Sky Press, available Sept. 1), so the fact that she’s celebrating Child’s success in the kitchen instead of her own is a bit of a (happy) departure.

“I never cook other people’s recipes when I’m doing a class,” she admits.

But for Child?

“I’d do anything,” she says.