How We Cook Now: A Conversation with Jacques Pépin

To say I was surprised to be on the phone with the revered Jacques Pépin would be an understatement. He’s an icon. Through his career he has cooked for Charles de Gaulle and with Julia Child, run award-winning restaurants, penned a New York Times column and earned three Michelin stars … and those are a mere few among his many accomplishments. As it happened, I had caught him on a morning show last summer. He was bringing forth his 31st cookbook, Quick & Simple. Cooking while holding a conversation on live TV via Zoom, it was clear that Chef Pépin had not lost a step.

He’s been busy in quarantine. In addition to the book launch, he’s been working with his daughter Claudine (you may recognize her from previous Pépin TV cooking shows) to create YouTube and Facebook Live cooking demonstrations; more than 150 since April 2020. He is enjoying showing people – many who have never picked up a spatula – how to make fabulous food at home, quickly and on a budget. My first thought: “Oh, I’d love to interview him!” followed by a deep sigh and a second thought, “He’d never speak to an unknown writer for a smaller, regional outlet.” So, I let it go.

Serendipity. Two weeks later, his book publisher sent an opportunity to the Edible team and I jumped for it, which is how I came to be on the phone with “please call me Jacques” and typing as fast as possible. Pépin told me that , COVID-19 notwithstanding, the book had been in the works for more than a year. He had conceived it as a follow-up to his ‘90s (bestselling) book Short Cut Cook. Things have changed quite a bit since the ‘90s. “I’m turning 85,” he told me. “Now, most people now want to cook relatively inexpensively except for special occasions.”

Really - could a book have ever been better timed? I told him that I had read his memoir, The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen and asked him how growing up during and after World War II had impacted his approach to food. He told me “you had to be a very miserly cook. During the war we did not have a lot to eat, but I had a very formidable mother, aunts and cousins.” He said they used everything they could find and forage. During the war, a young Jacques and his older brother spent summers on farms with other families, helping with chores in exchange for fresh food and open air.

“You know,” he said with a little chuckle, “They (his family) are not very impressed with my fancy cuisine. They made do with what they had” and that was enough.

Pépin said that his approach to simple food evolved over time. “I came to believe that it is a mistake to view French cooking only through the eyes of Michelin stars. There are only 23 stars in all of France – but thousands upon thousands of really good, excellent even, restaurants. In my family alone, in France, we have had 12 restaurants, and all that cooking is very simple.”

His book, he writes in the introduction, “is intended to make your life easier.” It teaches streamlined cooking techniques and makes use of good quality convenience foods. He included an invaluable supply list for a well-stocked pantry, freezer, and cooking equipment. The photographs by Tom Hopkins are both helpful and lovely, and Pépin’s own whimsical painting – a hobby he took up “for fun” - decorate the book beautifully. It is a very easy-to-read book with excellent tips. It seemed that every time I had a question the answer was in the recipe or in his accompanying notes.

Stocking the kitchen seemed a timely topic when talking about how we cook today. I asked him what pantry ingredients he would never want to be without. “Tomatoes, beans, pasta, rice, sardines, anchovies, tuna, and…” he said with a smile in his voice, “chocolate.” The start of the pandemic, he said, was particularly challenging. “For the first three months I did not go to market; people went for me. That was hard, to not touch, smell and look at food; it is such a part of my tradition.”

But if you watch even one cooking show or segment, you can tell that Pépin is “a total optimist and a happy man.” He related, “Everything (can be) celebrated through food, especially when you teach people to cook. Claudine was two years old when I taught her to stir the pot and she ate it because she made it. I did this with my granddaughter too. She came into garden at age five or six. I gave her a bowl and spoon, sent her to dig in the garden, brought her to market,” sharing that cooking is a joy anyone can learn. He told me he still does most things by hand rather than use fancy equipment. “Especially for just two people – me and my wife – and I don’t have to clean up after!” In the book he has a very short list of recommended equipment that surprisingly includes a toaster oven and a salad spinner, among others.

I realized how especially gracious Pépin was to take the interview when I heard just weeks later that his beloved wife of nearly 55 years, Gloria, had passed away. She must have been ill when we spoke, which made his choosing to speak with me even more generous.

In addition to cooking and his artwork, Pépin was and is the inspiration for the Jacques Pépin Foundation (www.jp.foundation), established by Claudine and her husband, Chef Rollie Wesen. The Foundation provides free culinary and life skills training through community-based organizations. Pépin is focused on helping “people who have had a hard time in life: jail, drugs, homeless, veterans … so they can work in (food service) and maybe open a little business that can be successful and rewarding.” The Foundation has made grants far and wide, including to Telamon on the Maryland Eastern Shore.

And with that our call was over. I sat back exhausted – we’d covered so much ground, yet I knew that for every question I had asked there were two more I’d not had time for. Mostly, though, I was giddy. I had just spoken with one of my heroes. Just as with his cooking, it was quick, simple and enough.

Questions My Friends Made Me Ask
When I asked my friends on Facebook what they would ask Jacques Pépin, I was flooded with ideas. Some are reflected in the main piece, and here are a few more:

What is your favorite comfort food?
Soup, especially as I get older, in both summer and winter. It’s a way to clean out the refrigerator! My wife calls this “Fridge Soup” and I like (soups with) vegetables, pasta or couscous.

Do you eat fast food?
When I was a kid working in restaurants everything was mise en place (“setting up”) because I was a prep cook. Now I go to the stove and make the food right there. I use the supermarket as the prep cook. That is my idea of “fast food” just like in my 30-minute show “Fast Food My Way” when we cook four recipes in a half hour. It can be done!

How do you recommend adapting recipes?
The more you cook the better you get with ingredients. A recipe is complete freedom until I write it down. Before that, it’s an idea in my head. (The recipe user should) reverse the process. Make the recipe exactly the way it is the first time (so you can see how it comes out.) Improve upon it little by little until you work with it a few times. Then it becomes your recipe.

What’s the newest ingredient trend?
I am using a lot of ginger right now.

When did you start to paint?
I was in my early 60s. I needed a hobby! I still paint today.