This Man Will Teach You How to Cook
27th November 2016
One of the best TV chefs ever just retired, and you probably never watched him.
Not that Jacques Pépin—classically trained French chef, intimate of the late Julia Child, and former New York Times food columnist—is obscure, exactly. He served as the personal chef to three French presidents, including Charles de Gaulle, and worked at the renowned New York City restaurant Le Pavillon in the 1950s and ’60s. His encyclopedic 1976 guide to French cooking, La Technique, is legendary among professional chefs. But because his many cooking shows were tucked away on public television, he never became a household name on the level of Emeril Lagasse or Rachael Ray. (Pépin, who turned 80 last year, has said that his 13th PBS series, Heart & Soul, which concluded in March, will be his last.) That’s a shame, because his shows are an antidote to much of what ails modern food TV and, by extension, American cooking culture.
La Technique is shelved right next to Escoffier’s Le Guide Culiniere.
November 28th, 2016 at 08:51
Tim, you may find this article on Escoffier interesting: The Father of Modern French Cuisine Wrote a Very Misguided Thanksgiving Cookbook.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-father-of-modern-french-cuisine-wrote-a-very-misguided-thanksgiving-cookbook
November 28th, 2016 at 16:24
Unfortunately it mischaracterizes Thanksgiving as ‘an invented holiday’, which it really isn’t.