Jacques PépinReseñas

Interesting book with a variety of recipes.

This is a lovely, fun memoir, with lots of interesting information about rural life in France, the melding of French and American cooking in the 60's and 70's in the U.S., and even a back story about Howard Johnson's.

As others have said in their review, part professional memoir, part art book, and part foodie fodder, this memoir is charming and very engaging. Pepin's artwork is both endearingly of chickens and very droll. The anecdotes are an interesting peep at his life and his cooking journey. Recipes span the breadth of menu categories and in our house, his French toast was such a success: both revolutionary and decadent.

What a treat this was! Part professional memoir, part art book, and part foodie fodder in a handsome volume that will stay in my permanent collection. I have always enjoyed watching Jacques Pepin cook, but I never realized that for several years during my childhood, I was the beneficiary of his craftsmanship in the kitchen. For most of the 1960s, shortly after coming to the US, he was assistant to another French chef, Pierre Franey, working in the industrial kitchen of Howard Johnson's, developing the recipes that would be used in HoJo's restaurants around the country. Whenever my family traveled on vacation, we stayed and ate at Howard Johnson's motels and restaurants a LOT. I fondly remember the fried clams, Southern fried chicken, and chicken pot pies...well, thank you Jacques and Pierre, because their skill and talent perfected those items and more, making HoJo's consistently, reliably, palatable fare for ordinary folks like us. Incidentally, Pepin turned down an opportunity to cook for the Kennedy White House to take that job--having already served as chef for General and Madame DeGaulle, he felt he'd done the "presidential routine", and wanted a new challenge! Along with the fascinating stories of his professional cooking adventures, Pepin gives us general descriptions of innumerable ways to prepare chicken (including ALL its parts) and eggs, but no actual recipes. He maintains that for much of his career (industrial kitchen duties excepted) and most of his home based food preparations, he did not use them...hence one definition of the "art". The other aspect of the art of the chicken is...well, real Art. That is, painting. Pepin's chicken portraits are simply delightful, and this book is full of color plates of his imaginative renderings, from the fairly representational to the abstract to the downright whimsical.
As I said, the whole thing is a treat.

My family doctor saw me reading _Yes, Chef_, and she suggested this book to me. I enjoyed the stories of Pepin's early years. It was also interesting to see how his path differed from that of Samuelsson, the subject of _Yes, Chef_. What was similar was the influence of many different cuisines to the two chefs' styles and the importance of food in tradition and binding people together.

Wonderful book. It's mostly biographical with some recipes/tips for chicken. The illustrations are bright and vivid. The chapter "Cooking with Julia" is a real treat.

A wonderful book that has taught me much. I still refer to it often whenever doing something new or for a refresher on a seldom used technique (such as rolling croissant). I also like the accompanying video series which was made about 10 years later.

It is an amazing work considering the time it was made before the age of digital cameras and the number of photographs it includes.

It's an excellent selection of recipes in the Jacques Pepin-style. Many of them are simple to prepare; I found a couple of dozen to try. There are many helpful tips throughout, e.g. a common mistake is to overcook fish, chicken and so on. Scattered throughout are wonder examples of his art too. It's worth the price to buy a copy.

I borrowed this through Prime Reads.

Jacques Pepin has published tons of cookbooks over the years. In this one, he says he wanted to collect the recipes that he likes to make. The emphasis here is on foods for entertaining and savory meals. There are very few recipes for breads or desserts, and many of those are shortcut-style recipes (use existing brioche or madelines, that kind of thing) rather than making them from scratch.

Many of the recipes do look good. However, they also heavily reflect his level of prestige and the area where he now resides in New England. I live in Arizona. So many involve ingredients that I cannot get at all, or if I did, they would be terribly expensive. I look at a lot of recipes and thought, "Well, I might order that in a fancy restaurant" but I'd never make it myself at home--my husband sure wouldn't eat it.

I prefer cookbooks that have pictures of the finished results, too. There were few photographs. I did, however, enjoy Pepin's frequent paintings. That personal touch added to the pleasantness of his voice throughout the text.

In the end, I only found a couple recipes I might be willing to try, but nothing I want to rush out and make right away. This would be a fine cookbook for someone in the northeast US or with a willingness to spend extra on kitchen experimentation, but not for me.

Fun, full of information and delicious!

I like the comments that Julia and Jacques leave on each recipe, explaining their cooking techniques and why they prefer them.

Ah, this is a keeper! A memoir full of interesting bits of history (it begins with his childhood during WWII in France), lots of food stories and insights into the people who played a role in his life and career. Reading this felt like sitting around a table after dinner with a glass of wine and reminiscing with an old friend. He was not shy of telling some unflattering tales, but also not focused on them. Learning about what it took to become a chef, and how it has changed, along with how cooking has changed, was absorbing. In addition to all of that, he includes a recipe at the end of each chapter, his charming sepia ink drawings, and some great photos.½

This book has the single most amazing DVD includid. I've watched it TWICE and learned so much

It's a nice book. Pepin talks about his life and how it has revolved around food. I learned a lot about how food was developed for chain restaurants and the recipes were pretty good.

It's a nice book. Pepin talks about his life and how it has revolved around food. I learned a lot about how food was developed for chain restaurants and the recipes were pretty good.

It's a nice book. Pepin talks about his life and how it has revolved around food. I learned a lot about how food was developed for chain restaurants and the recipes were pretty good.

It's a nice book. Pepin talks about his life and how it has revolved around food. I learned a lot about how food was developed for chain restaurants and the recipes were pretty good.

Well-written, fascinating auto-biography, even if you're not into cooking.

Recommended and not just for foodies.

This is a comprehensive and straight-forward guide to cooking in the "classic" method. Photographs with each step make it very clear. I bought it thinking it would help me improve my knife technique, but it really didn't show me anything I don't know, I simply can't seem to make my fingers of my hand bend/work like that. Oh well, I don't really need to be a whiz bang speed demon with a knife. I loved the chapter on seafood and how to prepare it from shelling bivalves to filleting a fish, I just wish I had access to fresh seafood so I could practice them. The chapters on preparing and carving meat are also useful, and the one on desserts is fun to read, whether I will ever do it or not. There are many techniques I'm afraid I won't ever use. Aspic and any of its cousins are not my friends. I don't eat or cook in the classic manner, however, I found it very interesting to read about how it is all done.½

This is one of the most engaging memoirs I have read in a long time. I didn’t know anything about Jacques Pepin’s personal life, his childhood or training in the culinary industry. After reading this book I know so much about him and enjoyed each and every chapter. The funniest story, ok it was a little gross too, was about the calf’s heads. Actually there were many amusing stories in this book so it’s hard to pick just one.

Sometimes memoirs can be dry, a bit on the boring side. Not this one. I found myself reading some passages aloud to my husband.

As a child he worked in his mother’s restaurants and loved the hectic pace. His younger brother Bichon was the same way while older brother Roland felt it was slavery. As Jacques moved to an apprentice position in his first real job you learned how the new kid was “initiated” by running a fool’s errand for the chef.

He was sent off to a neighboring restaurant to get a heavy kitchen appliance where it had supposedly been loaned. Oh no, they had loaned it to another restaurant and so, off he ran. He was sent on to other places until he secured the item, making his way back across the village with a heavy load strapped to his back. It was just a load of bricks but it showed the drive and initiative of the young apprentice.

As he gained more experience he moved to larger restaurants and more responsibility. Learning to cook by observing and making a dish over and over and over was the teaching method. No recipes, no measurements.

The most surprising thing to me was he was in on the ground floor of Howard Johnson’s restaurants learning to reproduce good quality food that would be consistent in any of the HJ restaurants. He turned down a chance to work as a white house chef under the Kennedy administration to pursue his initial (American) career at HoJos. The standards were higher back then and you didn’t get sub-quality foods. That changed over the years, particularly after Howard Deering Johnson died. Subsequent owners concerned themselves with cutting costs at the expensive of good dining.

Reading about the differences in French and American cultures as seen through young Pepin’s eyes was interesting. Can you imagine being mocked for asking a question in a college class?

That was another good chapter where Pepin saw a startling difference between the two nations. Showing up for a dinner and patiently awaiting the bread and wine to arrive, only to realize the American hosts were tucking into their roast beef, potatoes and carrots without a thought of wine. Many more examples are detailed and I don’t want to ruin some of these stories for anyone who has not read the book.

You’ll meet Pierre Franey, Craig Claiborne and Julia Child in this book and hear of their good times and business involvements. You’ll learn about hunting wild mushrooms, his military service, working for de Gaulle and his first experiences arriving in America.

Recipes follow each chapter so there are many to select and drool over. French cooking doesn’t have to be complicated. Any of the French cookbooks I own call for absolute simplicity and this is what Pepin delivers.

Semi-Dry Tomatoes and Mozzarella Salad

1 ½ pounds plum tomatoes (about 6) cut lengthwise into halves
¾ teaspoon salt
10 ounces mozzarella cheese, cut into ½ inch slices
2 tablespoons drained capers
½ teaspoon ground pepper
1 teaspoon chopped garlic
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
½ teaspoon grated lemon rind
About 1 cup loose basil leaves

Method

Preheat oven to 250 F. Line a cookie sheet with foil. Arrange tomato halves cut side up on the sheet and sprinkle ½ teaspoon of the salt on top. Bake 4 hours. For a shortcut you can heat the oven up to 400 F and put the tomatoes in then turn off the oven. I do this as an overnight method sometimes.

Now remove tomatoes from the oven and place in a serving bowl. Let them cool then add mozzarella, capers, remaining salt, pepper, garlic, olive oil and lemon rind. Mix gently to combine.

Drop basil leaves into boiling water and cook about 10 seconds. Drain and cool under cold running water. Press basil between your palms to remove most of the water, then chop finely. Add to salad and toss well.

Let’s have a toast to Jacques Pepin!

This wonderfully unpretentious Franco-American chef is one of my favorites....I love his 'Fast Food My Way' videos, watch them over and over....great memoir....G.

Disclaimer: I am veg(etari)an and so cannot speak to the quality or interestingness of the recipes in the chapters involving animals. I can only report seeing a few recipes with names like "Turkey Carcass with..." or "Calf Brains and..." before quickly looking away in horror.

I'm not sure I understand this as a cookbook (even less do I understand the plethora of 5-star reviews here on goodreads). For instance, in the vegetables section, each vegetable has a recipe that goes like this: steam or boil vegetable, add butter and salt. Some recipes have names which make them sound more interesting than that, like "Asparagus Ragout", but others just come out and say it: "Broccoli with Butter". Sometimes butter with salt is even called a "sauce", but seriously, these recipes could all say "Heat your vegetable by your preferred method and throw some butter and salt on it like you always do." Heck, you can make life even simpler than that if you buy it prepackaged and frozen and throw it in the nuke. Voila! Ameri-French cooking.

There are a lot of recipes in the fruit desserts chapter, the names of which sounded promising, but on closer inspection proved to be just as silly as the above. "Make a pile of blueberries, drop some yogurt in the middle, sprinkle with sugar. Variation: Use strawberries." If you really want to mix up your repertoire, you can try the ones which simply reverse that process: Drop a blob of yogurt in a bowl, make a crater in the middle, add blackberries and sprinkle with sugar. Go on! Feel the inspiration! Get crazy and try something new! Variation? "Use raspberries." This isn't cooking, this is assembling-- and it's assembling things you can probably think up on your own.

The breads chapter is pathetic. There are only a very few recipes, all of which are considered the "starter" to the hundreds of possibilities you would get out of The Joy of Cooking ("Or as we call it in our house, The Bible", as my recently departed friend Tom Taylor used to say-- and I agree).

I haven't yet watched the included dvd (described in the book's introduction as 3 hours of technique demonstration), but even if it's highly entertaining and/or informative, I'd recommend previewing this book from the library before indulging any impulse to buy it. This seems suitable only for someone who meets ALL of the following criteria: is broke; has nothing more in their spice rack than salt, pepper and garlic powder; has absolutely no kitchen and cooking experience whatsoever; and is in need of ideas as to how to feed themselves something that isn't out of a box. If you've got a microwave-raised kid you're packing off to go live on their own, for example, this might be a better book to give them than many of those awful cookbooks marketed directly at college students-- but please do also include The Joy of Cooking for those who come to feel throwing frozen peas on pasta isn't exactly cooking so much as it is re-heating, and who may someday want to advance a mite beyond opening a jar of Dijon and calling it ~^*^~ Asparagus with Mustard Sauce ~^*^~.

Jacques Pepin, Julia Child, Alton Brown, Tyler Florence and the America's Test Kitchen crew have all provided great assistance to me in learning cooking technique through their TV shows. Technique and the ability to improvise with what is in the fridge are really important, and Pepin is a wonderful teacher. Even though this cookbook is wonderfully illustrated, it's not nearly as effective as watching Pepin on TV. And, to be honest, his recipes have never been the strong point. Oh, I'd gladly eat any meal he prepares, but my own tastes are a bit more spicy and eclectic than the recipes he has here.

Master chef Jacques Pepin offers an extensive collection of techniques and accompanying recipes in this new cookbook. The techniques in question range from the expected, or at least common, such as how to carve a turkey, to what many home cooks might consider extreme: how to make rolled head cheese or stuffed pig's feet. Each entry has step-by-step instructions and photos.
The photos are always helpful, but perhaps especially so in the chapter on breads. Given the complex results that can be had from the simple ingredients required, the words alone can't do justice to the artwork one can create using Pepin's techniques.
This title may not appeal to every home cook, but it is an essential volume to those who view themselves as amateur chefs or, at a minimum, GOOD home cooks who take pride in what comes out of their kitchen.

In April 2011, I attended the Buffalo Gap Food and Wine Festival, at which I met Jacques Pepin, his daughter Claudine and his buddy Jean-Claude Szurdak. I had the opportunity to chat with them, eat with them, drink with them, watch them conduct food demonstrations, and have them sign this book for me. I started to read it the very next day on my way back east, but then, for some reason, set it aside to read other things and do a bit of cooking and gardening of my own. Yesterday I picked this book back up and finished devouring it in just a couple hours, sitting in the over stuffed chair in my front room with the windows open enjoying the unseasonably warm March weather. The joy of reading the last several chapters of Jacques' memoir reminded me of the warm, kind, gregarious man I met last year. I have been a fan of his for years, but after reading his book and learning about how he got to where he is - and meeting him and discovering that he has remained the down-to-earth, unpretentious boy from France with a big heart and open mind after all these years - has made me an even bigger fan. Thank you Jacques for a wonderful book, your delicious food and your inspiration to always follow your dreams!