February 6, 2024 • 38 mins
He’s worked as the personal chef for French President Charles de Gaulle, co-hosted a television series with Julia Child and has authored over 30 cookbooks. There’s simply no one in the world like French chef – and culinary icon – Jacques Pépin. The Emmy- and James Beard Foundation Award winner worked in more than 100 restaurants before becoming the Director of Research and Development for Howard Johnson’s. He then transitioned to educating the public in proper French cooking methods through his groundbreaking cookbooks like “La Technique” and his latest, “Jacques Pépin Cooking My Way: Recipes and Techniques for Economical Cooking;” as well as through his numerous television series like “Today’s Gourmet” and “Every Day Cooking.” He is also the co-founder of the culinary certificate program at Boston University and founder of The Jacques Pépin Foundation, which teaches underserved populations a path to employment through cooking. Alec speaks with Chef Pépin about how his family’s work in restaurants influenced his path, why he’s made the pivots he has throughout his career, and what a revered chef likes to eat in his downtime.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from iHeart Radio. My guest today has worked in
the best restaurants in the world, taught thousands of hours
of culinary technique, authored over thirty cookbooks, and at the
age of eighty eight, shows no signs of slowing down.
(00:23):
Legendary French chef Jacques Pepin Chef Pepin has enjoyed, by
all accounts, a most extraordinary life and career. By twenty two,
he was the personal chef for French President Chaules de gaul.
In nineteen fifty nine, he immigrated to America and worked
at Le Pavillon, the best French restaurant in New York City,
(00:45):
before moving to Howard Johnson's. His next frontier was the
American home, instructing audiences on proper French cooking methods. This
began with his cookbooks, including the groundbreaking La Techiechnique, and
then through multiple PBS series like Today's Gourmet and Cooking
(01:05):
at Home. Here, Chef Papin taught the home chef both
the basics for everyday meals and experimentation with gourmet flourishes.
His most recent cookbook is called Jacques Papine cooking my
way recipes and techniques for economical cooking. I wanted to
(01:25):
know how growing up in a small town in France
with his mother working in restaurants put him on the
path to where he is today.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Where we were in the film country, we had a
little restaurant just outside of Lyons. The life was quite different.
I mean, I tell Nady eight yesterday, so I'm thinking
about over eighty years ago. Life was relatively easy. My
father with a cabinet maker, my mother with a cook.
So my choice in life was I'm a cavenet maker,
(01:56):
I'm a cook, within the telephone, within the radio revision
of course, any of this. So life was probably much
easier for kid than he is now. And we took
the dog, my brother and I go into the forest
and all that on all day off and the parents
never you know, we came back at night and no one.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Worried about where you were. It was. It was quite
different than now.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Did your father take his cabinet making practice out into
the country with you just outside of the or did
he stay in the city and makers products.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
No, he did that in the country, but after he
gave up anyway at some point to work in the
restaurant with my mother. But my father was a cabinet maker.
His father was his brother was what we could in
France ebonist from the world ebony. So it's fancy cabinet maker.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
You know.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
He used noble wood like cherries, oak and so forth.
Never use any nail. It's alas you know, curt and
joint and glue and a sculpture on the wood to
that type of work. And the wely the sixteen with
seventeen kind of furniture. I should have a couple of
peace from him actually in my house.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Now, your mother got into the restaurant business when you
were how old?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Well after I was born, because I have exactly twenty
years different with my mother. I mean she got married
I think she was seventeen and a half. Then at
my brother with a year and a half older than
me than me and another one. So she got into
the restaurant business before the war. Slightly before the war.
She was a waddressed working different restaurants self, helping in
(03:35):
the kitchen. It was pretty common in France, I mean
in the family. In France, I come twelve restaurant, twelve
of them run by women. My two aunts and sister
in law, cousin, a niece, a mother, they all had.
I was actually the first male to go into that business.
And those kind of a formidable women who were not
(03:56):
very empressed by me. I remember when I was the
chef to the president in France. Go back down to
Leon Goo to my aunt at a little restaurant. I
get into the kitchen. She drove me out. She said,
you used too much. Better get out of here. They
were not very unpressed by me.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
And who's managing all this enterprise? Your mother?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Oh, they didn't have twelve restaurants at the time. I'm
calling you general. And my aunt at a restaurant in book,
another aunt at a restaurant somewhere else, my mother at
three four restaurants actually at some point.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
And what was it about? I mean, so, I'm assuming
you feel like you were born to this. There's no
way you could escape. And you said cabin making or cooking, right,
But you found the kitchen more seductive.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Correct, absolutely more exciting or seductive, And so I went
into this. I mean now, I said, the choice was
relatively easy for kid at that point. And first we
were supposed to go to school in teenage fourteen, which
I did at thirteen, and I took all the exam
you know at the end of primary school, the front exam.
(05:01):
So I took all of those and I finished when
I was early thirteen. So I say that's it. I'm
going into a frightdiceship. My older brother became an engineer,
so it worked, you know, so it was not a
question of me that I had to go to work.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
That's what I wanted to do, so and I went
to school later.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
So do you think that people, I mean, there's next
to no association between what I do for a living
and what you do for a living. But in the
world of acting in theater and so forth, people will
often say, I can't make you a good actor, but
I can make you a better actor than you were
when you walked in the door. But there needs to
be some inherent inspiration. That is that thing true about
(05:41):
food and cooking? Do people have to have an inherent
gift for that kind of thing?
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yes, certainly.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
I mean for me, I'm talking about professionalism, professional chef
and on a professional chef. I did those book called
a Technique, which is an illustrated manut of cooking technique
to know to bon out. You can to poach an
egg and it's not a question of knowing how to
do it. It's eleven o'clock and you have one hundred
people sitting down for lunch.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
You really have to move. So this is the difference
between a professional chef and a home cook.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
You know, the speed and all that too. So you
have to be a good technician to be a chef first.
But I know a fair amount of a chef who
a good technician, run a good kitchen and are relatively
lousy cook. The food is all right. But conversely, I
know people who cook at home who wouldn't be able
to run a restaurant speed and all that, but food
(06:33):
is fantastic, great, you know. So to be a great
chef like Tomas Keller or Daniel Buru, well you have
to be a technician first, but then you have to
have other things after. You know, you have to have
imagination talent to bring it to another level.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
You know. I think eventually you moved to Paris, yes,
and I don't want to quote the number here because
I find this fantastic. You work in many, many, many
restaurants during that period, correct.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Close to one hundred how is that possible?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Its possible because I work at the Plaza and in
Paris for like seven years, put my day off.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Each day off, I work at.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
A different restaurant most of the time, and that two
days off a week. There is an organization called associated
the Quasi Society of the Chef of Paris, which I
will a member. In fact, I don't know why we
don't have that in New York. But you go in
the morning or someone your cook doesn't come or whatever
doesn't come, they call they say I need one cook
for the day. So you know I will end up
(07:30):
like at Messi, you know, Galley la Fayette to and
do like three thousand plates with a slice, a piece
of salad in between an egg, you know. And the
next time I end up in a two star restaurant
and next so you never know where the society is
going to sign you. But that was great experience, you know,
of working because in case like this, it's not like
(07:51):
you have to wait for the day to learn the
habit of the house. I mean, within fifteen minutes you're there,
the chef say you got to work.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
So it's great training.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
So you have a job in one where you were
at tattanay. Oh, yes, and you have a job. But
it sounds you sound like we've had guests on the
show who were some of the most legendary sessions musicians
in history, right, and it sounds like you have the
same kind of thing you're you're going to go in
for a day and and is the culture there, I
don't want to say uniform, but approachable where you can
(08:22):
walk in and you're just accepted you walk in there
or do you see the other conflicts with the way
things are done?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Sometimes No, No, if you work on a job to
stay for a couple of years, you may get involving
into that type of thing. But when you work for
the day two days, no, And remember that at the time,
the cook was really at the bottom of the social scale.
Any good mother, I wanted a child to marry the lawyer,
you know, a doctor, certainly not a cook. So now
(08:50):
we are genius. I don't know what happened at that time.
It wasn't okay. So when you went into a restaurant,
it was to conform exactly to the habit of that reason.
It was not to create or do something on your own.
In fact, I don't think I ever used a recipe
before I came to America. So you work in that place,
you learn the taste of that, and those dishes in
(09:12):
a sense become very visceral, very powerful. I mean the
dishes my mother did as a kid. You know, those
states will stay with you the rest of your life.
And I'll go the pleasure. And in Paris, for example,
we did the lobster soufle. We were a forty eight
chef in the kitchen there, and the forty eight of
us could have done it, you would never have known
(09:33):
who has done it.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
That's was the way it was.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Until Nouvelle Cuisine in the mid eighteen ninety when the
chef started creating and doing that type of thing, which different.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Now now you're a hired chef for the president of France,
right and you work with the gall and some other
heads of state. How long were you doing that job?
Speaker 2 (09:53):
From fifty six and fifty six to fifty eight and
the fifty eight I came here at the end of
fifty nine, you know, so you have to realize that
at the time. Again, as I said, the cook, I
serve people like either know where Nehru Tito mcmilland over
the head of state. Not anyone ever would call you
to get kuru in the dining room.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Are you kidding? The cook was in the kitchen. That
was it.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
If anyone came into the kitchen because something was wrong
towards two complaints. So I had never had an antio.
Television barely existed, but with radio or magazzine newspaper that
didn't exist.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
So it was a different world.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
So you're at what is certainly one of the summits
of cooking in France. If you're cooking for the head
of state. There you have this amazing job, and then
when you're done in fifty eight, you moved to the
United States.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Correct, Right, at the end of nineteen fifteen, I moved.
I wasn't married.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
At a great job in France, my brother at a restaurant,
but I wanted to come to America.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
America.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
I was she leaves the Golden fleeceh. So I said,
I want to go there for a year, two years,
maybe learn the language a little bit, see what's going on.
I was unattached to So I came here at the
end of fifty nine and I'm still here.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
But you what you see up till then, before you
settle in the United States, it's it's safe to say
you have a very restless nature.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yes, has an extent, but that's what the world of
food was in a center, restless, moving from one place
to the other to learn because if you keep your
eye open, I mean, I can't work with anyone now.
And you learn something, you know you will never have
sort of doing it this way too. Sometimes you learn
what not to do, but you learn something. But yeah,
(11:38):
so in that sense, coming to America was different. It
was the first time I work at the Pavio in
New York, was considered, you know, the best restaurant here.
And it was the first time that I did my
day in one in one shift. In France, we still
did two shift. I start nine o'clock in the morning
until two o'clock in the afternoon. You're from from two
(11:58):
to five, go sit down, sod where and at five
you start five to nine or ten. But was standard,
you know, so here I started doing it was one shift.
I saw it was like half a day of working.
That's where I started going to school and did other things.
I had plenty of time and the people, I have
to say, at the time were very, very welcoming. I
(12:19):
mean they say, oh, you come from a great country.
We have so much culture, you know. So I said, wow.
I talked to the people in France I left. They said,
what are you doing? They don't even have bread. There
would have wine free, you know at the time. But yeah,
people were extremely welcoming here. So I loved this. Things
went on, one thing after another, and I'm still here.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
But the thing is, you come here and you have
pavion for how long.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
I w a the paveo not too long, from September
until next April six seven months. At that time there
was a problem with Suley, the owner, and all kind
of problem with them. Pierre Frede who was the executive
chef and the outcome with Suley in nineteen thirty nine
for the Worldfare at a Young Coming and he stayed there.
(13:07):
Eventually he was the executive chef when I was there,
a problem with Soule and he decided to leave. And coincidentally,
at that time, Howard Johnson, Howard D. Johnson, who created
Howard Johnson whether regular patron of the Pavilon. So he
I ad Pierre and Pierre told me you want to
come with me? And I said Okay, great ideas. So
that's that's what happens.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Okay, let's stop there because this is the term that
this is so amazing to me. So you hit the
summit in France, you're cooking for the heads of state.
You come to New York, you're a Pavinon in New York,
and the Howard Johnson, the namesake of the business, comes
to Pavinon. Is he a regular? Yes?
Speaker 3 (13:44):
Regular?
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Okay, so he's a regular there and he gets you
to come and cook for the Howard Johnson's restaurant chain. Correct, Yes, absolutely,
How the hell did he do that? How did he
get you to come?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
No, he actually asked Pierre to come, and Pierre decided
to go, and Pierre told me, you want to come
with me to assist me and do and that's how
I did. But the point is that, as I said,
the cook was quite different than now, because on that
spring of nineteen sixty, I actually I would have felt
the job at the White House for Kennedy and then
(14:17):
but I had done that, as I said, in France,
I had never been on a magazine newspaper, so I
had no idea of the potential for publicity too, because
it really did not exist. In fact, the one who
went to the White House with a front of mine
who was the sou chef at the six House in
New York, and I called him, put them in touch,
eventually got the job, and a year later he sent
(14:39):
me a picture of him with President Kennedy or missus
carry as Wow. I never had a picture with the
goal of So it was already changing a different world.
But prior to him, who was a chef at the
White House?
Speaker 3 (14:52):
I asked?
Speaker 2 (14:52):
And it ended up knowing that it was a black
lady from the South somewhere. No one would have known
her name, no more than the my name or whatever.
So it was a different world. We have to look
at it in that context. And Haward Johnson, what another
world for me? American eating, American habit.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Well, that's what I want to ask you, which is
when you come here, yeah again, Head of State France Pavillon,
you get offer the White House job. What's the first
thing you're in New York? Correct? You settled in New York. First,
what's the first thing that strikes you about the way
Americans eat in American restaurants?
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Well, I live on fiftieth between first and second avenue
on top of a little restaurant called Lettock Blanche near
a certain.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Place for a very nice area. So they are a
superhil market, which happened my first SUPERI market. I thought
it was great. I didn't have to go to the.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Fish guide, the vegetable guide and so forth. But then
there was a lot of package package package. Then there
was some good meat, beef, lamb lobster, but there was
only one salad that was iceberg. There was no leak,
no shallow, no intel visible. I remember saying, what are
the mercioms. Let's say Aisle five that was ken mushroom
(16:02):
there you didn't have any. So it was undo the world,
you know, in terms of course had the pavillon. We
had great supplier even from Europe, from different parts or
the fish and all that too.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
But yes, it certainly it was different.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
So in France it's very compartmentalized. You go to the
fish market, you go to the butcher, you go to
the vegetable. It's all separate, the bakery, everything is separate. Now,
I mean, I can only say this because it's true,
and that is that for me, Howard Johnson's occupied a
very specific place because as a Catholic in the sixties.
As a child, we couldn't eat meat on Friday, so
(16:38):
the Howard Johnson's fish fry on Fridays was a staple
in my house. Going to have the cost law and
the hush puppies and the corn or whatever it was,
and you know, fried clams. But Howard Johnson's for the
guy that's a restless guy, for the guy that's moving
around and trying things. You stayed with Howard Johnson's for
ten years, is that correct?
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Why?
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Well, to start with how Old Johnson, the father came
to my wedding, He came to the christening of my daughter.
So they were used to come to the commissary and
Pierre fred and he said, okay, you guys do whatever
you want to. We start changing butter instead of margarine
fresh and uness and the hydrated onion. We start changing
(17:22):
all the recipe and start working in the kitchen with
four four chicken to do a chicken pot pie, and
we end up with three thousand pound of chicken at
the time. You know, I move on on the in
thousand gallon kettles. So it was the last production, you know,
when I finished Howard Johnson I opened a restaurant on
Fifth Avenue, cool a potagerie in New York. We sell
(17:44):
only soup, and I were a consult time for the
World Trade Center for Joe Baum. We saved one hundred
thirty thousand people a day about a consultant at the
Russian teeroom. I'm saying only that because other French chefs,
I would never have been able to do any of
those jobs. I didn't do anything about production, marketing, chemistory
of food. So Howard Johnson was a good experience for me.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
I learned a lot.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
The book is the technique. So the technique is as
important to you as the artistry preparing food in a
certain way. Because you've mentioned repeatedly in interviews programs of
yours and then your writing about your mindfulness about economics
in cooking. Yeah, don't waste anything.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Yeah, economic of motion as well as economic of food
and so forth.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
And the technique. I publish that technique. I think it's
seventy four or five. It's still in print. I don't
cook the same way that I cook fifty years ago
or two, but the way you shop on a knife,
you know. Peter n Asparagoz Porch and egg is the
same way. So those books of technique kind of remain
because of that.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Chef Jacques Pepin. If you enjoy in depth culinary conversations,
check out my episode with Chef Eric Repair of the
legendary Le Bernadelle.
Speaker 5 (19:05):
What I like about Europe is the quality of the products.
When they serve vegetables, they test like what you're supposed
to taste. Here's a bit of a challenge because we
do not cultivate the same way.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
You know, like the soil is maybe not the same.
Speaker 5 (19:20):
I don't know, Like an artichock in a Mediterranean is
not the same artichock that we eat here.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
And you know, it's like those.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
Gigantic farms, and they have ways of cultivating and maximizing
the land and factory its factories the artichoks are grown.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
To hear more of my conversation with Eric Repair, go
to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Jacques
Pepette tells us where a world famous chef dines in
his downtime. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
(20:03):
the Thing Jacques Pepin's culinary techniques every day cooking and
heart and soul in the kitchen. These are just a
few of the many television programs Papin has created to
instruct the home chef. But of all his work as
a television icon, one series he is most well known
(20:24):
for is his Emmy winning show with Julia Child Julia
and Jacques Cooking at Home.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
When I did a theory with Julia Child, you know
we did. I knew her fifty years. You know, I'm
married in nineteen sixty, so we did the theory together.
We had no recipe. She said, what do you want
to do? Just right down one hundred things of you
want to do with the twenty six show, and she
did the same way, and I think three of mine
made it in the In the show. You know, we
(20:52):
cook together without recipes, so it was harder for the cameraman.
Of course they don't know whether we're going to left
right or whatever. But for me, I have a scallion
in that dish because they happened to be on the table,
so I throw them in much ideo to work without recipe,
just testing, adjusting this. And the second thing when we
did our show, of course on PBS, you have a
(21:14):
time frame the show thirty minute all the time. It's
too expensive but Julia said, we'll cook and when it finished,
will tell you some of the show.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
For eighty minutes nineteen minute.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
I mean, it was amazing. And then so we had wine.
We had good wine, we had no recipe, and we
had as much time as we wanted.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
So it was fun cooking.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
I watched that documentary about her, and I was enthralled
by that film. It really was a magical an opportunity
to really get to know somebody you thought you knew. Yes,
a woman who everybody in this country knew who she was,
I mean at least of my generation, but you really
didn't know her when you got to know her. It
was really really a wonderful film.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
But she was exactly the same way in person that
she was on television.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Now, so when you're in the United States, when you
come here and before you go to Pavion and the
speaks to also just your patterns throughout your life, whether
you're in Europe or what have you. Do you like
to go to restaurants? Do you enjoy eating out or
do you much more prefer to just cook at home.
Do you dine out with any regularity or you prefer
not to both?
Speaker 2 (22:18):
I mean, I love to cook at home with Fran
occasionally we did last night, but otherwise I love to
go to restaurant. Of course, I mean usually pretty straightforward restaurant.
For example, for America and in the psyche of American
I believe a lot French cooking is understood in the
context of Michelin Star. You know, well, there is twelve
(22:40):
I think twelve or fourteen three star Michline in France,
with about seventy eighty two star at about four hundred
one star, the whole star system of the Mischtin at
about six hundred restaurant, where there is one hundred and
sixty eight thousand restaurants in France. All the restaurant that
I was thinking about my mother to any of them,
mud never be in a three star restaurant in the
(23:02):
Meshline guide. I'm saying that because in the psyche of
the American people often they look at French cooking in
the context of michelan very elegant and famous high stakes timing,
which is not really it's part of it, but a
small part to a certain extent.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Now, for you, when you dine out, what's the first
thing that you look for in a restaurant? That you
find attractive well to.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
A certain extent, the service. I mean, you know, you
get into a restaurant, or you're on the road, you
get into a restaurant, you go in just looking at
the bottom of the chair or the table, whether they
are clean or not, the smell of the restaurants and
all that. I said, I'm staying or I'm not saying here,
I'm not talking about famous restaurants. So there is that
first impression which is very important, and the way you
(23:46):
received the service to Yeah, those first impressions are very important,
I think in the restaurant. I mean I used to
review a fair amount of restaurant with Craig label on
the New York Times because I knew Craig again when
I came to this country, I mean through the pavilion again,
so very often to touch job that I would not,
(24:08):
in fact, I was broke with the job after he
left and died. I mean that they would you be interested.
I couldn't do that. I mean, it's very easy. I
can't tell you fifteen things wrong anywhere that you go,
but this is not my type of things. And after
I know I would have been pretty bored and frustrated.
(24:28):
After you know, a couple of weeks on the job.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Well, for me, my wife and I we go out
to dinner probably you know, four nights a week because
it's the only time I have my wife to myself, right,
we have to put all the kids to bed and
I go to dinner with my wife. And my feeling
about restaurants is, you know, we basically try new things
every now and then someone will say, oh, you must
go here, but we go to the same four places
over and over again. I'm want reliability. I walk in
(24:54):
that restaurant, I know exactly what I'm going to get.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Right, me too, if I played with it to a
fantastic roast ch I want to go back there. And
if I go back there and they say, we don't
do it anyway, So what's going on?
Speaker 3 (25:06):
I mean?
Speaker 2 (25:06):
You know, I add, you know, so many twenty three,
twenty four thousand restaurants in New York, the amount of
ethnicity and the choices unmatched anywhere in the world. When
you find six or eight restaurant that you can rely
on if you want Chinese, all this and that, yeah,
of course you go back there.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
That's what you want, and you want the same food.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Now are there things you won't eat or did your
training put you in a place where you eat anything?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Yes, I'm a glutton basically. Yeah, I eat anything you
put in front of me. Really, yes, I mean I
don't really think of anything that I don't like. It changed,
I mean your metabolism change.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
At my age, I used to love a large stake.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Now if I have a stick, if I have two
or three answers a piece of that, that's more than enough. So,
you know, things change. I eat probably more soup than
I ever did, and other things like that. The way
you cook when you're young, chef of and you add
to the plate, You add to the plate. You add
to the plate too, presentation too. And when you get
(26:07):
to be a certain age, if I have a great
tomato out of my gardener, the right temperature, you know,
a bit of salt, it's ripe, A bit of salt,
bit of a river on top, I don't need more
embellishment on the plate. So I take away, take away
from the plate to be left with something more essential.
Not my age, but it's a normal progression with age
(26:30):
and so forth.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
I mean beyond. I want to say this carefully because
I don't want to get this say the wrong thing here.
But it's like, beyond drugs and alcohol and things that
have a grip on people in this very very powerful way,
beyond that, there's nothing that has a control of people
more than food. Oh yeah, food is the most powerful
reality in our lives.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
There is nothing also we bring people together like food.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
You know, you sit down at the table with people
you don't know to all of a sudden, you know,
you started in conversation and all that. You may be
sitting next to the governor on one side and maybe
the dishwasher of the restaurant on the other side. But
if really it doesn't matter. I remember traveling in the
northern of Europe, Yugoslavia and so forth. In little village
(27:16):
many many years ago, people look behind the curtain foreigners,
you know, I mean, you're dangerous. You see it at
the bistro and you're there by hand.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
If you don't know the language.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
You get the bottle of wine there and whatever bred
to and all of a sudden people sit around you.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
You know, they look at you.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
You send them a bottle of wine, and an hour
later you're speaking unknown language with those people. Because you'll
quote normal you know, you eat like them or so forth.
So food is very important. One of the most important
thing for me is probably to follow the season.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
You know, I mean the.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Supo markets seem to be greater and more beautiful they
have ever been. You have through very year round, but
when you test it, and when you go to a
farm by a basket of srowary in full season, you
can the difference. So it seemed to be very plentiful
in some ways, but it's not. I mean, following the
season the best thing you can do. That's when a
tomato really tastes good full season, that's when it's really
(28:12):
cheap too, and when when nutritionally that's when it the
best for you. So you know, you go to those
places from the south of France to Sicily or Sardinia
where people live over one hundred years old, they eat
very simply, but they follow the season simply, have a
glass of wine and eat you know what's in seasons simply,
and that's great.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
We had Eric Repair obviously from the Bernadette here on
the show about a year ago, and when he described
what it was like when he was young and he
was in the kitchen, it's a lot of work, boy,
it sounds like it was really, really, really a lot
of work.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
It was, but we didn't know it was work, you know.
And as I said at that time, no recipe. The
chef that you do this, and if you say why,
you would have said because I just told you, right.
So I work for a year in apprenticeship cleaning the floor,
and then started scaling fish, killing chicken at the time
we killed chicken, plog chicken rabbits, scaling fish too, without
(29:08):
just by looking and doing it. And then when the
earlier the chef told me you started the stove tomorrow
started the stove.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
They only close to the stuff to.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Put wood and calling it at that when it was
now and I work at the stove and I knew
how to do it through osmosis, you know, at that time,
the repeat and so forth.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
So that was a different way of learning as we
do now.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
You know, I've been dinner at the French Culinarian Stitute
in New York for twenty five years. That I teach
at BU for forty three years, I think, So now
you teach totally differently. The key first are usually coming
from not only our school but offan college, so they
want to know more totally different than the way I
was told when I was thirteen fourteen, do this, do
(29:51):
that that said?
Speaker 1 (29:52):
You know, going back to when you were talking about
a great tomato. What you see is I live on
Long Island in the summer. We're out there for the summer,
my family, and these farmers' markets where it seems like
people will pay just about anything to have a basket
of something of the season. We have a garden in
our house. We have a woman who comes. She prepares
the garden, and then she texts me and says, here's
what's ready to pick. The Japanese egg plant is ready
(30:14):
to pick, the flowers are ready to pick. We're going
a decent sized garden. And my family I got, like
I said, I got seven kids, my wife, and I
of some people who help us. We can't eat everything
that comes out of that garden.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
I did two soup this summer with cucumber. It's almost
I put it, took the seat out of it, put
it in the food processor and rucifi it salt paper
and I mixed that with a bloody marry mix there
is I had a guess patio right there, and I
did another one the same way, but then mix it
with the with yogurt and mint to do yogot soup
(30:46):
during the summer. So often the recipe come from that
overabundance of the things that you have.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Chef Jacques Papa, if you're enjoying this conversation, tell a
friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on
the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
When we come back, Jacques papass shares how a near
fatal car accident changed the course of his life. I'm
(31:25):
Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Chef
Jacques Papa's career boasts a seemingly endless list of accomplishments,
from cooking for multiple heads of state to creating the
culinary certificate program at Boston University. That's why I wanted
to know why he chose to go back to school,
(31:45):
earning his bachelor's and master's degrees from Columbia University in
his adulthood.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Where to start with?
Speaker 2 (31:54):
At skurlun I was thirteen years old, so there was
always often in the kitchen that complex about not having
an education, you know, and all that. So I saw
that even as I said, when I was at Howard
john for example, I was with Pia Fredde. Pierre Frede
was a fantastic chef, great guy. He started working like
I did. But he never went back to college after
(32:16):
he was here. And I remember mister Johnson junior there,
who was at Cornell. He used to come with his
other kid, the sandwiched two twenty three, they come out
of college, and I know that Pierre was ampressed. He
didn't know what to do, when in fact they knew
nothing about cooking or anything.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
At that time.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
I was already in the graduate school at Columbia, so
at one time pressed by them. So it changed your montality,
you know. As I said, one time, I gave the
commandment address at Columbia. Actually, and I said a quote
I think from Somerset Mohan, which the education is very important.
Without an education, you're likely to fall in the deadly
(32:53):
danger of taking educated people seriously.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
So it's true to a certain next tent.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
You know, I would never have been able to do
everything that I've done without the education I get at Columbia.
And I went to Columbia from nineteen fifty nine to
nineteen seventy three. Seventy three appropoed a doctoral dissertation on
a history of food in the context civil edition literature,
and at that time on me, are you crazy?
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Food? Now we cannot accept that, so I left.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
That's crazy. Actually I want to be you and you
got your doctorate there.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Yeah, Columbia still gave me a PHG letter. I think
it's another world, the world of food now, I mean
the way we get respect and all that. And I
have to say that American chefs start later than what
it used to be thirteen years old in Europe and
so forth, so they usually go to school today, are
more educated too, so it's a different business.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
They get much more into business now.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
So many chefs that I know from Daniel Bulha six
seven eight restaurants, I never did that type of thing.
I don't think that I would have been very good
at that. I'm not very good at business in general.
So but the chef now is that much more larger
person than it.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Used to be.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
So a couple of quick things that I want to
touch on. So you were in a very serious car accident, yes,
and this was back in.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
What year, nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
You know, I tried to avoid idea of falling arriving tree,
and I had twelve fourteen fractureing and so I broke
my back in three places, my two hip leg arm.
They thought that I would live, They thought that I
would walk again. And in fact, one of the first
things my wife signed removal of the left town. The
left town there was only this is a good thing.
(34:38):
They didn't cut it off. So yeah, that kind of
changed my life too. It pushed me in the direction
of writing about food. You know I did for the
New York Times.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
You couldn't stand in the kitchen for very long.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Obviously, Well I can, but you know, not like back then,
all the time, every day, six hours.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
It's pretty taxing, you know, So of course, yeah, so
that changed.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Changed your life in an important way. I want you
to mention two things. Your new cookbook is called.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
What Cooking by Way?
Speaker 1 (35:04):
I think you know.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
I did thirteenth SERI of PBS show, and each time
there is a theme. So each time you have a
book with a different theme. And that's what I have
so many books. I even did a book for the
Cleveland Clinic for caliac vasion wet loss. So you put
your knowledge of food to a very specific area in
the New York Time for eight ten years that I
had a column called The Purposeful Cook, which was to
(35:29):
cook for a family of six from a minimum amount
of money. So there the idea was economy in the kitchen.
So this is a bit of the same theme that
I took back here. But I've been very lucky with
all of the books that I've done, and with PBS
and so forth.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
So you had an amazingly broad career. It's incredible.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
I'm very lucky.
Speaker 4 (35:51):
Which brings me to you said, you just turned eighty eight. Yeah, yesterday,
So yesterday was your birthday, your eighty eight. Which I
have many friends, many friends who are older than I am.
I'm sixty five, and my friends who were in their
late seventies around in the corner toward eighty, who have
great careers.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
They're like, they're never going to retire. They're like, well,
this is who I am, this is what I do.
Retirement it's death.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
If you love what you're doing, you never have to
go to work.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Fantastic, fantastic. Now, one more thing. Your foundation. Describe to
us when you started that what the mission of the
foundation is.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Yeah, it was actually my son in law, my daughter
does Facebook for me. My son in law does instide
gramble of though it a professor Johnson and weel it's
actually a professional chef forty years but then he went
back to Johnson and Weell to teach and get his
master and get a PhD. So at some point that
was five six years ago, he told me, you know,
you've been teaching all your life.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
Who do you think you would like to teach now?
So we talked about it.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
I say, you know people who have been a bit
these enfranchised by life. You know, people who come out
of jail, you know, homeless people form a drug addict,
even veteran. So I feel that in six weeks, with
the video that we are teaching and all that, in
six weeks, I could teach someone in the kitchen, if
they're interested, how to pier on your properly, or to
(37:08):
pilas Viargus how to.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
Push on egg.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
And then you know the basic and if you like
it and keep at it, Fabio, there may be other
chef there. You know, you're in charge now at the kitchen,
and you make good money and it kind of redo
your life. So they are not necessarily young people in
the organization. You know, a lot of forty fifty people.
But we work through community kitchen a bit all over
(37:32):
the country and it's been quite rewarding and we need.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
People like that in the kitchen, you know, to work.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah. Yeah, Well, I must say what a great honor
it is for me to meet you. It is an honor.
I'm a great admirer of yours.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
A great honor for me. I wanted to tell you.
I have to say. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
My daughter and my son in law and my granddaughter,
they love you. Thank you, sir, thank you, happy cooking.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
My thanks to Jacques Papin. More information about the Jacques
Bepin Foundation can be found at jp dot Foundation. This
episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City.
We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Maureen Hobin.
Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is
(38:22):
Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought
to you by iHeart Radio.
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from iHeart Radio. My guest today has worked in
the best restaurants in the world, taught thousands of hours
of culinary technique, authored over thirty cookbooks, and at the
age of eighty eight, shows no signs of slowing down.
(00:23):
Legendary French chef Jacques Pepin Chef Pepin has enjoyed, by
all accounts, a most extraordinary life and career. By twenty two,
he was the personal chef for French President Chaules de gaul.
In nineteen fifty nine, he immigrated to America and worked
at Le Pavillon, the best French restaurant in New York City,
(00:45):
before moving to Howard Johnson's. His next frontier was the
American home, instructing audiences on proper French cooking methods. This
began with his cookbooks, including the groundbreaking La Techiechnique, and
then through multiple PBS series like Today's Gourmet and Cooking
(01:05):
at Home. Here, Chef Papin taught the home chef both
the basics for everyday meals and experimentation with gourmet flourishes.
His most recent cookbook is called Jacques Papine cooking my
way recipes and techniques for economical cooking. I wanted to
(01:25):
know how growing up in a small town in France
with his mother working in restaurants put him on the
path to where he is today.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Where we were in the film country, we had a
little restaurant just outside of Lyons. The life was quite different.
I mean, I tell Nady eight yesterday, so I'm thinking
about over eighty years ago. Life was relatively easy. My
father with a cabinet maker, my mother with a cook.
So my choice in life was I'm a cavenet maker,
(01:56):
I'm a cook, within the telephone, within the radio revision
of course, any of this. So life was probably much
easier for kid than he is now. And we took
the dog, my brother and I go into the forest
and all that on all day off and the parents
never you know, we came back at night and no one.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Worried about where you were. It was. It was quite
different than now.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Did your father take his cabinet making practice out into
the country with you just outside of the or did
he stay in the city and makers products.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
No, he did that in the country, but after he
gave up anyway at some point to work in the
restaurant with my mother. But my father was a cabinet maker.
His father was his brother was what we could in
France ebonist from the world ebony. So it's fancy cabinet maker.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
You know.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
He used noble wood like cherries, oak and so forth.
Never use any nail. It's alas you know, curt and
joint and glue and a sculpture on the wood to
that type of work. And the wely the sixteen with
seventeen kind of furniture. I should have a couple of
peace from him actually in my house.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Now, your mother got into the restaurant business when you
were how old?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Well after I was born, because I have exactly twenty
years different with my mother. I mean she got married
I think she was seventeen and a half. Then at
my brother with a year and a half older than
me than me and another one. So she got into
the restaurant business before the war. Slightly before the war.
She was a waddressed working different restaurants self, helping in
(03:35):
the kitchen. It was pretty common in France, I mean
in the family. In France, I come twelve restaurant, twelve
of them run by women. My two aunts and sister
in law, cousin, a niece, a mother, they all had.
I was actually the first male to go into that business.
And those kind of a formidable women who were not
(03:56):
very empressed by me. I remember when I was the
chef to the president in France. Go back down to
Leon Goo to my aunt at a little restaurant. I
get into the kitchen. She drove me out. She said,
you used too much. Better get out of here. They
were not very unpressed by me.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
And who's managing all this enterprise? Your mother?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Oh, they didn't have twelve restaurants at the time. I'm
calling you general. And my aunt at a restaurant in book,
another aunt at a restaurant somewhere else, my mother at
three four restaurants actually at some point.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
And what was it about? I mean, so, I'm assuming
you feel like you were born to this. There's no
way you could escape. And you said cabin making or cooking, right,
But you found the kitchen more seductive.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Correct, absolutely more exciting or seductive, And so I went
into this. I mean now, I said, the choice was
relatively easy for kid at that point. And first we
were supposed to go to school in teenage fourteen, which
I did at thirteen, and I took all the exam
you know at the end of primary school, the front exam.
(05:01):
So I took all of those and I finished when
I was early thirteen. So I say that's it. I'm
going into a frightdiceship. My older brother became an engineer,
so it worked, you know, so it was not a
question of me that I had to go to work.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
That's what I wanted to do, so and I went
to school later.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
So do you think that people, I mean, there's next
to no association between what I do for a living
and what you do for a living. But in the
world of acting in theater and so forth, people will
often say, I can't make you a good actor, but
I can make you a better actor than you were
when you walked in the door. But there needs to
be some inherent inspiration. That is that thing true about
(05:41):
food and cooking? Do people have to have an inherent
gift for that kind of thing?
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yes, certainly.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
I mean for me, I'm talking about professionalism, professional chef
and on a professional chef. I did those book called
a Technique, which is an illustrated manut of cooking technique
to know to bon out. You can to poach an
egg and it's not a question of knowing how to
do it. It's eleven o'clock and you have one hundred
people sitting down for lunch.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
You really have to move. So this is the difference
between a professional chef and a home cook.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
You know, the speed and all that too. So you
have to be a good technician to be a chef first.
But I know a fair amount of a chef who
a good technician, run a good kitchen and are relatively
lousy cook. The food is all right. But conversely, I
know people who cook at home who wouldn't be able
to run a restaurant speed and all that, but food
(06:33):
is fantastic, great, you know. So to be a great
chef like Tomas Keller or Daniel Buru, well you have
to be a technician first, but then you have to
have other things after. You know, you have to have
imagination talent to bring it to another level.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
You know. I think eventually you moved to Paris, yes,
and I don't want to quote the number here because
I find this fantastic. You work in many, many, many
restaurants during that period, correct.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Close to one hundred how is that possible?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Its possible because I work at the Plaza and in
Paris for like seven years, put my day off.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Each day off, I work at.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
A different restaurant most of the time, and that two
days off a week. There is an organization called associated
the Quasi Society of the Chef of Paris, which I
will a member. In fact, I don't know why we
don't have that in New York. But you go in
the morning or someone your cook doesn't come or whatever
doesn't come, they call they say I need one cook
for the day. So you know I will end up
(07:30):
like at Messi, you know, Galley la Fayette to and
do like three thousand plates with a slice, a piece
of salad in between an egg, you know. And the
next time I end up in a two star restaurant
and next so you never know where the society is
going to sign you. But that was great experience, you know,
of working because in case like this, it's not like
(07:51):
you have to wait for the day to learn the
habit of the house. I mean, within fifteen minutes you're there,
the chef say you got to work.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
So it's great training.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
So you have a job in one where you were
at tattanay. Oh, yes, and you have a job. But
it sounds you sound like we've had guests on the
show who were some of the most legendary sessions musicians
in history, right, and it sounds like you have the
same kind of thing you're you're going to go in
for a day and and is the culture there, I
don't want to say uniform, but approachable where you can
(08:22):
walk in and you're just accepted you walk in there
or do you see the other conflicts with the way
things are done?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Sometimes No, No, if you work on a job to
stay for a couple of years, you may get involving
into that type of thing. But when you work for
the day two days, no, And remember that at the time,
the cook was really at the bottom of the social scale.
Any good mother, I wanted a child to marry the lawyer,
you know, a doctor, certainly not a cook. So now
(08:50):
we are genius. I don't know what happened at that time.
It wasn't okay. So when you went into a restaurant,
it was to conform exactly to the habit of that reason.
It was not to create or do something on your own.
In fact, I don't think I ever used a recipe
before I came to America. So you work in that place,
you learn the taste of that, and those dishes in
(09:12):
a sense become very visceral, very powerful. I mean the
dishes my mother did as a kid. You know, those
states will stay with you the rest of your life.
And I'll go the pleasure. And in Paris, for example,
we did the lobster soufle. We were a forty eight
chef in the kitchen there, and the forty eight of
us could have done it, you would never have known
(09:33):
who has done it.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
That's was the way it was.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Until Nouvelle Cuisine in the mid eighteen ninety when the
chef started creating and doing that type of thing, which different.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Now now you're a hired chef for the president of France,
right and you work with the gall and some other
heads of state. How long were you doing that job?
Speaker 2 (09:53):
From fifty six and fifty six to fifty eight and
the fifty eight I came here at the end of
fifty nine, you know, so you have to realize that
at the time. Again, as I said, the cook, I
serve people like either know where Nehru Tito mcmilland over
the head of state. Not anyone ever would call you
to get kuru in the dining room.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Are you kidding? The cook was in the kitchen. That
was it.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
If anyone came into the kitchen because something was wrong
towards two complaints. So I had never had an antio.
Television barely existed, but with radio or magazzine newspaper that
didn't exist.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
So it was a different world.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
So you're at what is certainly one of the summits
of cooking in France. If you're cooking for the head
of state. There you have this amazing job, and then
when you're done in fifty eight, you moved to the
United States.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Correct, Right, at the end of nineteen fifteen, I moved.
I wasn't married.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
At a great job in France, my brother at a restaurant,
but I wanted to come to America.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
America.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
I was she leaves the Golden fleeceh. So I said,
I want to go there for a year, two years,
maybe learn the language a little bit, see what's going on.
I was unattached to So I came here at the
end of fifty nine and I'm still here.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
But you what you see up till then, before you
settle in the United States, it's it's safe to say
you have a very restless nature.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yes, has an extent, but that's what the world of
food was in a center, restless, moving from one place
to the other to learn because if you keep your
eye open, I mean, I can't work with anyone now.
And you learn something, you know you will never have
sort of doing it this way too. Sometimes you learn
what not to do, but you learn something. But yeah,
(11:38):
so in that sense, coming to America was different. It
was the first time I work at the Pavio in
New York, was considered, you know, the best restaurant here.
And it was the first time that I did my
day in one in one shift. In France, we still
did two shift. I start nine o'clock in the morning
until two o'clock in the afternoon. You're from from two
(11:58):
to five, go sit down, sod where and at five
you start five to nine or ten. But was standard,
you know, so here I started doing it was one shift.
I saw it was like half a day of working.
That's where I started going to school and did other things.
I had plenty of time and the people, I have
to say, at the time were very, very welcoming. I
(12:19):
mean they say, oh, you come from a great country.
We have so much culture, you know. So I said, wow.
I talked to the people in France I left. They said,
what are you doing? They don't even have bread. There
would have wine free, you know at the time. But yeah,
people were extremely welcoming here. So I loved this. Things
went on, one thing after another, and I'm still here.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
But the thing is, you come here and you have
pavion for how long.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
I w a the paveo not too long, from September
until next April six seven months. At that time there
was a problem with Suley, the owner, and all kind
of problem with them. Pierre Frede who was the executive
chef and the outcome with Suley in nineteen thirty nine
for the Worldfare at a Young Coming and he stayed there.
(13:07):
Eventually he was the executive chef when I was there,
a problem with Soule and he decided to leave. And coincidentally,
at that time, Howard Johnson, Howard D. Johnson, who created
Howard Johnson whether regular patron of the Pavilon. So he
I ad Pierre and Pierre told me you want to
come with me? And I said Okay, great ideas. So
that's that's what happens.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Okay, let's stop there because this is the term that
this is so amazing to me. So you hit the
summit in France, you're cooking for the heads of state.
You come to New York, you're a Pavinon in New York,
and the Howard Johnson, the namesake of the business, comes
to Pavinon. Is he a regular? Yes?
Speaker 3 (13:44):
Regular?
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Okay, so he's a regular there and he gets you
to come and cook for the Howard Johnson's restaurant chain. Correct, Yes, absolutely,
How the hell did he do that? How did he
get you to come?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
No, he actually asked Pierre to come, and Pierre decided
to go, and Pierre told me, you want to come
with me to assist me and do and that's how
I did. But the point is that, as I said,
the cook was quite different than now, because on that
spring of nineteen sixty, I actually I would have felt
the job at the White House for Kennedy and then
(14:17):
but I had done that, as I said, in France,
I had never been on a magazine newspaper, so I
had no idea of the potential for publicity too, because
it really did not exist. In fact, the one who
went to the White House with a front of mine
who was the sou chef at the six House in
New York, and I called him, put them in touch,
eventually got the job, and a year later he sent
(14:39):
me a picture of him with President Kennedy or missus
carry as Wow. I never had a picture with the
goal of So it was already changing a different world.
But prior to him, who was a chef at the
White House?
Speaker 3 (14:52):
I asked?
Speaker 2 (14:52):
And it ended up knowing that it was a black
lady from the South somewhere. No one would have known
her name, no more than the my name or whatever.
So it was a different world. We have to look
at it in that context. And Haward Johnson, what another
world for me? American eating, American habit.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Well, that's what I want to ask you, which is
when you come here, yeah again, Head of State France Pavillon,
you get offer the White House job. What's the first
thing you're in New York? Correct? You settled in New York. First,
what's the first thing that strikes you about the way
Americans eat in American restaurants?
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Well, I live on fiftieth between first and second avenue
on top of a little restaurant called Lettock Blanche near
a certain.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Place for a very nice area. So they are a
superhil market, which happened my first SUPERI market. I thought
it was great. I didn't have to go to the.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Fish guide, the vegetable guide and so forth. But then
there was a lot of package package package. Then there
was some good meat, beef, lamb lobster, but there was
only one salad that was iceberg. There was no leak,
no shallow, no intel visible. I remember saying, what are
the mercioms. Let's say Aisle five that was ken mushroom
(16:02):
there you didn't have any. So it was undo the world,
you know, in terms of course had the pavillon. We
had great supplier even from Europe, from different parts or
the fish and all that too.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
But yes, it certainly it was different.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
So in France it's very compartmentalized. You go to the
fish market, you go to the butcher, you go to
the vegetable. It's all separate, the bakery, everything is separate. Now,
I mean, I can only say this because it's true,
and that is that for me, Howard Johnson's occupied a
very specific place because as a Catholic in the sixties.
As a child, we couldn't eat meat on Friday, so
(16:38):
the Howard Johnson's fish fry on Fridays was a staple
in my house. Going to have the cost law and
the hush puppies and the corn or whatever it was,
and you know, fried clams. But Howard Johnson's for the
guy that's a restless guy, for the guy that's moving
around and trying things. You stayed with Howard Johnson's for
ten years, is that correct?
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Why?
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Well, to start with how Old Johnson, the father came
to my wedding, He came to the christening of my daughter.
So they were used to come to the commissary and
Pierre fred and he said, okay, you guys do whatever
you want to. We start changing butter instead of margarine
fresh and uness and the hydrated onion. We start changing
(17:22):
all the recipe and start working in the kitchen with
four four chicken to do a chicken pot pie, and
we end up with three thousand pound of chicken at
the time. You know, I move on on the in
thousand gallon kettles. So it was the last production, you know,
when I finished Howard Johnson I opened a restaurant on
Fifth Avenue, cool a potagerie in New York. We sell
(17:44):
only soup, and I were a consult time for the
World Trade Center for Joe Baum. We saved one hundred
thirty thousand people a day about a consultant at the
Russian teeroom. I'm saying only that because other French chefs,
I would never have been able to do any of
those jobs. I didn't do anything about production, marketing, chemistory
of food. So Howard Johnson was a good experience for me.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
I learned a lot.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
The book is the technique. So the technique is as
important to you as the artistry preparing food in a
certain way. Because you've mentioned repeatedly in interviews programs of
yours and then your writing about your mindfulness about economics
in cooking. Yeah, don't waste anything.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Yeah, economic of motion as well as economic of food
and so forth.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
And the technique. I publish that technique. I think it's
seventy four or five. It's still in print. I don't
cook the same way that I cook fifty years ago
or two, but the way you shop on a knife,
you know. Peter n Asparagoz Porch and egg is the
same way. So those books of technique kind of remain
because of that.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Chef Jacques Pepin. If you enjoy in depth culinary conversations,
check out my episode with Chef Eric Repair of the
legendary Le Bernadelle.
Speaker 5 (19:05):
What I like about Europe is the quality of the products.
When they serve vegetables, they test like what you're supposed
to taste. Here's a bit of a challenge because we
do not cultivate the same way.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
You know, like the soil is maybe not the same.
Speaker 5 (19:20):
I don't know, Like an artichock in a Mediterranean is
not the same artichock that we eat here.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
And you know, it's like those.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
Gigantic farms, and they have ways of cultivating and maximizing
the land and factory its factories the artichoks are grown.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
To hear more of my conversation with Eric Repair, go
to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Jacques
Pepette tells us where a world famous chef dines in
his downtime. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
(20:03):
the Thing Jacques Pepin's culinary techniques every day cooking and
heart and soul in the kitchen. These are just a
few of the many television programs Papin has created to
instruct the home chef. But of all his work as
a television icon, one series he is most well known
(20:24):
for is his Emmy winning show with Julia Child Julia
and Jacques Cooking at Home.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
When I did a theory with Julia Child, you know
we did. I knew her fifty years. You know, I'm
married in nineteen sixty, so we did the theory together.
We had no recipe. She said, what do you want
to do? Just right down one hundred things of you
want to do with the twenty six show, and she
did the same way, and I think three of mine
made it in the In the show. You know, we
(20:52):
cook together without recipes, so it was harder for the cameraman.
Of course they don't know whether we're going to left
right or whatever. But for me, I have a scallion
in that dish because they happened to be on the table,
so I throw them in much ideo to work without recipe,
just testing, adjusting this. And the second thing when we
did our show, of course on PBS, you have a
(21:14):
time frame the show thirty minute all the time. It's
too expensive but Julia said, we'll cook and when it finished,
will tell you some of the show.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
For eighty minutes nineteen minute.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
I mean, it was amazing. And then so we had wine.
We had good wine, we had no recipe, and we
had as much time as we wanted.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
So it was fun cooking.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
I watched that documentary about her, and I was enthralled
by that film. It really was a magical an opportunity
to really get to know somebody you thought you knew. Yes,
a woman who everybody in this country knew who she was,
I mean at least of my generation, but you really
didn't know her when you got to know her. It
was really really a wonderful film.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
But she was exactly the same way in person that
she was on television.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Now, so when you're in the United States, when you
come here and before you go to Pavion and the
speaks to also just your patterns throughout your life, whether
you're in Europe or what have you. Do you like
to go to restaurants? Do you enjoy eating out or
do you much more prefer to just cook at home.
Do you dine out with any regularity or you prefer
not to both?
Speaker 2 (22:18):
I mean, I love to cook at home with Fran
occasionally we did last night, but otherwise I love to
go to restaurant. Of course, I mean usually pretty straightforward restaurant.
For example, for America and in the psyche of American
I believe a lot French cooking is understood in the
context of Michelin Star. You know, well, there is twelve
(22:40):
I think twelve or fourteen three star Michline in France,
with about seventy eighty two star at about four hundred
one star, the whole star system of the Mischtin at
about six hundred restaurant, where there is one hundred and
sixty eight thousand restaurants in France. All the restaurant that
I was thinking about my mother to any of them,
mud never be in a three star restaurant in the
(23:02):
Meshline guide. I'm saying that because in the psyche of
the American people often they look at French cooking in
the context of michelan very elegant and famous high stakes timing,
which is not really it's part of it, but a
small part to a certain extent.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Now, for you, when you dine out, what's the first
thing that you look for in a restaurant? That you
find attractive well to.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
A certain extent, the service. I mean, you know, you
get into a restaurant, or you're on the road, you
get into a restaurant, you go in just looking at
the bottom of the chair or the table, whether they
are clean or not, the smell of the restaurants and
all that. I said, I'm staying or I'm not saying here,
I'm not talking about famous restaurants. So there is that
first impression which is very important, and the way you
(23:46):
received the service to Yeah, those first impressions are very important,
I think in the restaurant. I mean I used to
review a fair amount of restaurant with Craig label on
the New York Times because I knew Craig again when
I came to this country, I mean through the pavilion again,
so very often to touch job that I would not,
(24:08):
in fact, I was broke with the job after he
left and died. I mean that they would you be interested.
I couldn't do that. I mean, it's very easy. I
can't tell you fifteen things wrong anywhere that you go,
but this is not my type of things. And after
I know I would have been pretty bored and frustrated.
(24:28):
After you know, a couple of weeks on the job.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Well, for me, my wife and I we go out
to dinner probably you know, four nights a week because
it's the only time I have my wife to myself, right,
we have to put all the kids to bed and
I go to dinner with my wife. And my feeling
about restaurants is, you know, we basically try new things
every now and then someone will say, oh, you must
go here, but we go to the same four places
over and over again. I'm want reliability. I walk in
(24:54):
that restaurant, I know exactly what I'm going to get.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Right, me too, if I played with it to a
fantastic roast ch I want to go back there. And
if I go back there and they say, we don't
do it anyway, So what's going on?
Speaker 3 (25:06):
I mean?
Speaker 2 (25:06):
You know, I add, you know, so many twenty three,
twenty four thousand restaurants in New York, the amount of
ethnicity and the choices unmatched anywhere in the world. When
you find six or eight restaurant that you can rely
on if you want Chinese, all this and that, yeah,
of course you go back there.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
That's what you want, and you want the same food.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Now are there things you won't eat or did your
training put you in a place where you eat anything?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Yes, I'm a glutton basically. Yeah, I eat anything you
put in front of me. Really, yes, I mean I
don't really think of anything that I don't like. It changed,
I mean your metabolism change.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
At my age, I used to love a large stake.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Now if I have a stick, if I have two
or three answers a piece of that, that's more than enough. So,
you know, things change. I eat probably more soup than
I ever did, and other things like that. The way
you cook when you're young, chef of and you add
to the plate, You add to the plate. You add
to the plate too, presentation too. And when you get
(26:07):
to be a certain age, if I have a great
tomato out of my gardener, the right temperature, you know,
a bit of salt, it's ripe, A bit of salt,
bit of a river on top, I don't need more
embellishment on the plate. So I take away, take away
from the plate to be left with something more essential.
Not my age, but it's a normal progression with age
(26:30):
and so forth.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
I mean beyond. I want to say this carefully because
I don't want to get this say the wrong thing here.
But it's like, beyond drugs and alcohol and things that
have a grip on people in this very very powerful way,
beyond that, there's nothing that has a control of people
more than food. Oh yeah, food is the most powerful
reality in our lives.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
There is nothing also we bring people together like food.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
You know, you sit down at the table with people
you don't know to all of a sudden, you know,
you started in conversation and all that. You may be
sitting next to the governor on one side and maybe
the dishwasher of the restaurant on the other side. But
if really it doesn't matter. I remember traveling in the
northern of Europe, Yugoslavia and so forth. In little village
(27:16):
many many years ago, people look behind the curtain foreigners,
you know, I mean, you're dangerous. You see it at
the bistro and you're there by hand.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
If you don't know the language.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
You get the bottle of wine there and whatever bred
to and all of a sudden people sit around you.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
You know, they look at you.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
You send them a bottle of wine, and an hour
later you're speaking unknown language with those people. Because you'll
quote normal you know, you eat like them or so forth.
So food is very important. One of the most important
thing for me is probably to follow the season.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
You know, I mean the.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Supo markets seem to be greater and more beautiful they
have ever been. You have through very year round, but
when you test it, and when you go to a
farm by a basket of srowary in full season, you
can the difference. So it seemed to be very plentiful
in some ways, but it's not. I mean, following the
season the best thing you can do. That's when a
tomato really tastes good full season, that's when it's really
(28:12):
cheap too, and when when nutritionally that's when it the
best for you. So you know, you go to those
places from the south of France to Sicily or Sardinia
where people live over one hundred years old, they eat
very simply, but they follow the season simply, have a
glass of wine and eat you know what's in seasons simply,
and that's great.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
We had Eric Repair obviously from the Bernadette here on
the show about a year ago, and when he described
what it was like when he was young and he
was in the kitchen, it's a lot of work, boy,
it sounds like it was really, really, really a lot
of work.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
It was, but we didn't know it was work, you know.
And as I said at that time, no recipe. The
chef that you do this, and if you say why,
you would have said because I just told you, right.
So I work for a year in apprenticeship cleaning the floor,
and then started scaling fish, killing chicken at the time
we killed chicken, plog chicken rabbits, scaling fish too, without
(29:08):
just by looking and doing it. And then when the
earlier the chef told me you started the stove tomorrow
started the stove.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
They only close to the stuff to.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Put wood and calling it at that when it was
now and I work at the stove and I knew
how to do it through osmosis, you know, at that time,
the repeat and so forth.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
So that was a different way of learning as we
do now.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
You know, I've been dinner at the French Culinarian Stitute
in New York for twenty five years. That I teach
at BU for forty three years, I think, So now
you teach totally differently. The key first are usually coming
from not only our school but offan college, so they
want to know more totally different than the way I
was told when I was thirteen fourteen, do this, do
(29:51):
that that said?
Speaker 1 (29:52):
You know, going back to when you were talking about
a great tomato. What you see is I live on
Long Island in the summer. We're out there for the summer,
my family, and these farmers' markets where it seems like
people will pay just about anything to have a basket
of something of the season. We have a garden in
our house. We have a woman who comes. She prepares
the garden, and then she texts me and says, here's
what's ready to pick. The Japanese egg plant is ready
(30:14):
to pick, the flowers are ready to pick. We're going
a decent sized garden. And my family I got, like
I said, I got seven kids, my wife, and I
of some people who help us. We can't eat everything
that comes out of that garden.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
I did two soup this summer with cucumber. It's almost
I put it, took the seat out of it, put
it in the food processor and rucifi it salt paper
and I mixed that with a bloody marry mix there
is I had a guess patio right there, and I
did another one the same way, but then mix it
with the with yogurt and mint to do yogot soup
(30:46):
during the summer. So often the recipe come from that
overabundance of the things that you have.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Chef Jacques Papa, if you're enjoying this conversation, tell a
friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on
the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
When we come back, Jacques papass shares how a near
fatal car accident changed the course of his life. I'm
(31:25):
Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Chef
Jacques Papa's career boasts a seemingly endless list of accomplishments,
from cooking for multiple heads of state to creating the
culinary certificate program at Boston University. That's why I wanted
to know why he chose to go back to school,
(31:45):
earning his bachelor's and master's degrees from Columbia University in
his adulthood.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Where to start with?
Speaker 2 (31:54):
At skurlun I was thirteen years old, so there was
always often in the kitchen that complex about not having
an education, you know, and all that. So I saw
that even as I said, when I was at Howard
john for example, I was with Pia Fredde. Pierre Frede
was a fantastic chef, great guy. He started working like
I did. But he never went back to college after
(32:16):
he was here. And I remember mister Johnson junior there,
who was at Cornell. He used to come with his
other kid, the sandwiched two twenty three, they come out
of college, and I know that Pierre was ampressed. He
didn't know what to do, when in fact they knew
nothing about cooking or anything.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
At that time.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
I was already in the graduate school at Columbia, so
at one time pressed by them. So it changed your montality,
you know. As I said, one time, I gave the
commandment address at Columbia. Actually, and I said a quote
I think from Somerset Mohan, which the education is very important.
Without an education, you're likely to fall in the deadly
(32:53):
danger of taking educated people seriously.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
So it's true to a certain next tent.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
You know, I would never have been able to do
everything that I've done without the education I get at Columbia.
And I went to Columbia from nineteen fifty nine to
nineteen seventy three. Seventy three appropoed a doctoral dissertation on
a history of food in the context civil edition literature,
and at that time on me, are you crazy?
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Food? Now we cannot accept that, so I left.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
That's crazy. Actually I want to be you and you
got your doctorate there.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Yeah, Columbia still gave me a PHG letter. I think
it's another world, the world of food now, I mean
the way we get respect and all that. And I
have to say that American chefs start later than what
it used to be thirteen years old in Europe and
so forth, so they usually go to school today, are
more educated too, so it's a different business.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
They get much more into business now.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
So many chefs that I know from Daniel Bulha six
seven eight restaurants, I never did that type of thing.
I don't think that I would have been very good
at that. I'm not very good at business in general.
So but the chef now is that much more larger
person than it.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Used to be.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
So a couple of quick things that I want to
touch on. So you were in a very serious car accident, yes,
and this was back in.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
What year, nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
You know, I tried to avoid idea of falling arriving tree,
and I had twelve fourteen fractureing and so I broke
my back in three places, my two hip leg arm.
They thought that I would live, They thought that I
would walk again. And in fact, one of the first
things my wife signed removal of the left town. The
left town there was only this is a good thing.
(34:38):
They didn't cut it off. So yeah, that kind of
changed my life too. It pushed me in the direction
of writing about food. You know I did for the
New York Times.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
You couldn't stand in the kitchen for very long.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Obviously, Well I can, but you know, not like back then,
all the time, every day, six hours.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
It's pretty taxing, you know, So of course, yeah, so
that changed.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Changed your life in an important way. I want you
to mention two things. Your new cookbook is called.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
What Cooking by Way?
Speaker 1 (35:04):
I think you know.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
I did thirteenth SERI of PBS show, and each time
there is a theme. So each time you have a
book with a different theme. And that's what I have
so many books. I even did a book for the
Cleveland Clinic for caliac vasion wet loss. So you put
your knowledge of food to a very specific area in
the New York Time for eight ten years that I
had a column called The Purposeful Cook, which was to
(35:29):
cook for a family of six from a minimum amount
of money. So there the idea was economy in the kitchen.
So this is a bit of the same theme that
I took back here. But I've been very lucky with
all of the books that I've done, and with PBS
and so forth.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
So you had an amazingly broad career. It's incredible.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
I'm very lucky.
Speaker 4 (35:51):
Which brings me to you said, you just turned eighty eight. Yeah, yesterday,
So yesterday was your birthday, your eighty eight. Which I
have many friends, many friends who are older than I am.
I'm sixty five, and my friends who were in their
late seventies around in the corner toward eighty, who have
great careers.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
They're like, they're never going to retire. They're like, well,
this is who I am, this is what I do.
Retirement it's death.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
If you love what you're doing, you never have to
go to work.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Fantastic, fantastic. Now, one more thing. Your foundation. Describe to
us when you started that what the mission of the
foundation is.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Yeah, it was actually my son in law, my daughter
does Facebook for me. My son in law does instide
gramble of though it a professor Johnson and weel it's
actually a professional chef forty years but then he went
back to Johnson and Weell to teach and get his
master and get a PhD. So at some point that
was five six years ago, he told me, you know,
you've been teaching all your life.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
Who do you think you would like to teach now?
So we talked about it.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
I say, you know people who have been a bit
these enfranchised by life. You know, people who come out
of jail, you know, homeless people form a drug addict,
even veteran. So I feel that in six weeks, with
the video that we are teaching and all that, in
six weeks, I could teach someone in the kitchen, if
they're interested, how to pier on your properly, or to
(37:08):
pilas Viargus how to.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
Push on egg.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
And then you know the basic and if you like
it and keep at it, Fabio, there may be other
chef there. You know, you're in charge now at the kitchen,
and you make good money and it kind of redo
your life. So they are not necessarily young people in
the organization. You know, a lot of forty fifty people.
But we work through community kitchen a bit all over
(37:32):
the country and it's been quite rewarding and we need.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
People like that in the kitchen, you know, to work.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah. Yeah, Well, I must say what a great honor
it is for me to meet you. It is an honor.
I'm a great admirer of yours.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
A great honor for me. I wanted to tell you.
I have to say. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
My daughter and my son in law and my granddaughter,
they love you. Thank you, sir, thank you, happy cooking.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
My thanks to Jacques Papin. More information about the Jacques
Bepin Foundation can be found at jp dot Foundation. This
episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City.
We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Maureen Hobin.
Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is
(38:22):
Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought
to you by iHeart Radio.
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