Lessons from the Sage
A conversation with Jacques Pépin
Josh Tyson
As an author, chef, television personality, and teacher, Jacques Pépin is nothing short of legendary. Born in France in 1935, Pépin was a personal chef to Charles de Gaulle before immigrating to the U.S. and taking a position with the Howard Johnson hotel chain. His books La Technique, La Methode, and The Art of Cooking remain popular resources for professional chefs seeking technical instruction, but his television work with Julia Child (Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home) and his series Fast Food My Way—along with their companion cookbooks—have endeared him to eager home chefs the world over. DiningOut recently caught up with Pépin at home in Madison, Conn.
I recently watched some old episodes of Julia and Jacques, and it seems so much more thoughtful compared to a lot of the flashy food media people watch today. Do you agree?
To an extent I agree with that. That was the only show I did where we didn’t have a recipe. We had an idea—we said, “tomorrow we’ll do stew,” or whatever—but we didn’t actually have recipes. We cooked like you cook with a friend or a spouse. We put scallions in because they happened to be sitting on the table. At the end of the show Julia would always say, “What did we learn today?” She was a teacher and I am a teacher, and t hat was important to us. Sometimes that’s not important to other people. I’m not blaming them. Some people watch cooking shows and never cook, and look at them for entertainment value or to learn things about the food world.
When you look at the evolution of food media, do particular things stick out as being either really good or really bad?
I don’t think there’s really anything bad. If you look at it in a larger scope, the cook was certainly at the bottom of the social scale 30 or 40 years ago. There was no difference between the cook and the dishwasher. Certainly a good mother at that time would want her child to get married to a doctor, a lawyer, or an architect—but certainly not a cook. But look at us now. We are geniuses [laughs]. On the whole it’s been very, very good for the trade. For me when I look at food television, there are things I see that I wouldn’t do, and that’s fine.
PBS seems to have a better track record as far as legitimate cooking shows go. I wonder if that’s because watching your shows, it feels like we’re right there in the kitchen cooking with you.
I hope a lot of people are interested in being in the kitchen, learning about food, and duplicating the recipes that I prepare. That’s why Julia was with PBS and why I am on PBS. I don’t have to kowtow to the sponsors. I can do whatever I want, and I like that.
Has being on television over the years changed your approach cooking?
Certainly. I don’t cook the same way I did 35 years ago, but the technique has remained the same. The way you bone-out a fish, shuck an oyster, or do a caramel cage or an omelet remains the same. This is what I try to teach when I am at the French Culinary Institute in New York or at Boston University. This is to a certain extent what I’ve done on the air. I am professional chef by trade. I’ve been in the kitchen for 60 years and teaching cooking has always been important. I used to give classes 35 weeks out of the year and I’d have 25 people in the morning and 25 at night. With television, I can teach millions of people. I also wouldn’t have sold a tenth of the books I’ve sold were it not for television.
Which do you think is the more effective way to reach an audience, through books or on television?
That’s a good question. I would think through television. In the ‘70s, ‘80s, and into ‘90s there was no Food Network, so people would watch PBS mostly. Now, from Lifetime to Oxygen to the Food Network, of course, there is such an enormous menu of people cooking that, in a sense, it’s diluted. Before, it was strictly on PBS.
It parallels journalism in the sense that 40 years ago, journalism was a trade that you learned, like plumbing, and there wasn’t any glamour to it. Now there’s a cult of personality built around it and some of the important aspect of the trade have been lost.
Well, even though Walter Cronkite isn’t here anymore, there are still people dedicated to reporting who want to do it the right way. But yes, with a lot of news channels now, you just get the opinion of the anchor, who might be yelling. You have to be flashy and different—it’s the same thing in cooking. If you do a cooking show and only cook, people might think it’s boring. People are taking it to a point where there’s almost no more cooking. But to a certain extent you cannot escape yourself. You are who you are and I do what I do. Some people love it, some don’t care one way or another, and some don’t like it at all.
How did you make the shift from a show like La Technique that was focused specifically on the technical aspects of cooking to something like Fast Food My Way?
To a certain extent, you teach technique to professionals but technique by itself doesn’t mean much. You don’t beat an egg white and throw it in the garbage. You beat an egg white to show how to make a soufflé. When I did La Technique, La Methode, and The Art of Cooking, I focused on technique. I went fishing in my pond to get frogs to show you how to take the skin off of them. I went fishing in Long Island sound to get skate to show you how to get the wing out of them. It was geared toward teaching cooking on a professional level. On the other hand, I did a book in the ‘90s called The Shortcut Cook, and I had a column in the New York Times for years called “The Purposeful Cook” which was about cooking for a minimal amount of money. In a sense, when I did Fast Food My Way, I wanted to help people to prepare meals using the super market as a prep cook rather than going to a fast food restaurant. I can go to the supermarket now and get pre-washed spinach and boneless, skinless breasts of chicken, and with a minimal amount of effort I can make a dish with fresh foods very nicely in a few minutes.
Are you able to spend a lot of time cooking and eating with your family?
Oh, all the time. That’s how I do recipes. I cooked two recipes last night for my wife and I. We’ve been married 43 years, and I can’t remember a day when we didn’t sit at the table and share a bottle of wine with dinner.
Is she your toughest critic?
If she likes something she likes it and if she doesn’t she has no trouble telling me. After 43 years, it’s not like she’s impressed by what I’m doing. My granddaughter is even better. It’s good or it’s no good, period.
Have you had any experiences cooking with your granddaughter or you daughter that changed the way you thought about cooking?
I remember one time Claudine [Pépin’s daughter; a chef and television host living in Denver, Colo.] and I did an article for House Beautiful, when she was maybe 12 years old. We decided to cook escargot and a leg of lamb with creamed spinach. I took the spinach and was going to blanch it in water, as we usually did, and add it to a white sauce. She said, “What are you doing that for?” I said, “Usually we cook the spinach in water,” and she said, “Why? Let’s just cook it directly in the sauce.” I tried it, and now that’s how I do it.
Do you have a food memory that stands out as your first?
All my happy memories are usually from the kitchen, or the dining room, which, for me, is a continuation of the kitchen. I can’t think of a happy moment in my life that wasn’t celebrated with some type of food. I do remember when I was five or six years old and my mother sent me to a farm during the war. The farmer put my hands around the teats of the cow and milked her. I remember that milk—it was kind of tepid and very foamy and buttery. That’s probably my first food memory.