There’s little Jacques Pépin hasn’t conquered in the cooking world. The native of Bourg-en-Bresse, France, has served as chef to no fewer than three French heads of state; turned out more than a dozen cookbooks, including the acclaimed La Technique and La Méthode; worked for more than a decade as director of research for new development at the Howard Johnson Company; starred in several television series on PBS, including Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home with Julia Child; and taken home numerous awards from the James Beard Foundation — the food industry’s highest recognition.
So what does such a culinary celeb do next? Pépin, who now lives in Madison, Connecticut, is doing what he’s always done: not sitting still for a moment. His latest cookbook, Jacques Pépin Celebrates: 200 of His Most Cherished Family Recipes for Memorable Meals with Family and Friends (Knopf, 2001), is now available. And its companion television series, Jacques Pépin Celebrates!, airs on PBS beginning October 6.
Q: Why cooking? What started you down this path?
A: Cooking? Oh gosh, it’s hard to think pre-cooking. I’ve been in the kitchen 51, 52 years. When I left home, which was in 1949, to go into apprenticeship, home was a restaurant where my mother was the chef. So, I suppose I don’t want to say it was genetic, but it was certainly influenced by my mother. My father was a cabinetmaker by trade, so it was only the women in the family who were in the business. I was the first male in the family to get into the business.
Q: Were you encouraged to get into the business?
A: No, I think it was natural. I wanted to do that. In fact, we had to go to school in France at that time until age 14, at least to finish primary school, and I think I was in that class when I was 12 — I was ahead, so I had no problem with school. So I asked for a dispensation to take my final exam and all that when I was 13. Then I passed it and I went into apprenticeship; that’s what I wanted to do.
Q: Was there a particular meal that made you say, " This is what I want to do " ?
A: Probably a few hundred. Because we were a family that was very much into food; food was so much an intrinsic part of our life. And the new book, Jacques Pépin Celebrates, it kind of brings back that idea of family and being together and celebrating and food and wine and so forth.
Q: Why cooking on television? How did that come about?
A: I was giving classes throughout the country in the ’70s and ’80s, probably up to 40 weeks out of the year, and I was making a good living out of it, and it was fun. I was teaching in San Francisco at Martin Yan’s cooking school, and Martin was doing a series on television at that time, and he said, " Can you do a show with me? " And I said, " I’d love to. " And then the executive producer called me after a few days and said, " You know, we’d be very interested in doing a show with you, " and I said, " That would be terrific. " So I did the show. And I found out that I like to teach. When I was cooking in those cooking schools throughout the country, it was fun, but I taught for 25 people, morning and night, and class was like four hours, which was a great deal of work, and I touched basically 25 people in the morning and 25 at night. And all of a sudden going on television, then I touched millions of people, so it was more rewarding and also gratifying.
Q: How is cooking on television different from cooking in your own kitchen?
A: Well, there is no difference, to a certain extent, for me, except it has to be more controlled because there’s always the question of time. I never have time to do everything that I want to do. And actually, even when we did the series with Julia, I mean, some of the shows we did two hours of taping to have 26 minutes. So it becomes very difficult to be able to show all of the different steps to the people so they really understand what I’m doing. But otherwise it’s not different.
