ANJALI KUMAR: Please join me
in welcoming to Google New York, Jacques Pepin. JACQUES PEPIN: Thank you. Thank you very much. ANJALI KUMAR: Thank you
so much for coming. It's a thrill to have you. JACQUES PEPIN: Google
not exist when I moved to New York. ANJALI KUMAR: Google didn't
exist when I moved to New York, I think, either. JACQUES PEPIN: None of
you existed when I moved to New York. It was 1959. So I wasn't kidding, you see. ANJALI KUMAR: Well, so now,
this tome that we talked about, which, truly, I think,
does weigh more than my child. JACQUES PEPIN: Yes. ANJALI KUMAR: It was originally
two books. JACQUES PEPIN: That's
not "Cuisine Master." It's very heavy. ANJALI KUMAR: Yes, it is. JACQUES PEPIN: It's
not light cuisine. ANJALI KUMAR: Pardon? JACQUES PEPIN: It's
not light cuisine. It's very heavy. ANJALI KUMAR: No, it's
heavy cuisine. So it was originally two books,
"La Technique" and "La Methode" that you originally
wrote in the late '70s. JACQUES PEPIN: Right. ANJALI KUMAR: So can you tell
us a little bit about the inspiration for the original
two books and then why you decided to combine them? JACQUES PEPIN: Yeah. Actually, I had a friend of
mine who kind of became a surrogate mother. Her name was Helen McCully. She was the food editor of
McCall's "House Beautiful." I lived on 50th and 1st
Avenue at the time. ANJALI KUMAR: We're all going
to show up tomorrow. JACQUES PEPIN: And she-- ANJALI KUMAR: There's
going to be a line. JACQUES PEPIN: And I
started writing. She always pushed me-- do this, do that. Don't put those stupid socks
we have in front. Don't do this don't do that. An then I started doing little
things for "House Beautiful," and I say you know what
would be good? Is to show people
how to do it. So we decided to do pictures. Those were pictures in black and
white about the size of a stamp, so you couldn't
see anything. And so that was the beginning
of that book. And I met a friend of mine,
Craig LaBan, the food editor of the "New York Times." I
went to his house in East Hampton, and there I
met Herb Nagourney. He was the president of the "New
York Times" book company called Quadrangle. And he said, do you want
to do a book with us? I said, yeah, I'd love to. So I started, and I said, well,
you know, maybe I need like 400 pictures. And I called him, and I
said, maybe like 800. He said, OK, go ahead. I said, like 1,200? He said, OK, fine. Like 1,500? He said OK. 1,500, that's enough. So I did a book, about 1,500
pictures, and I did a second one, which we didn't want to
call "La Technique Number Two," so we find a synonym and
called it "La Methode," and that was a continuation
of this. And those books were in print
for many, many years. And about 12 years ago, I
reorganized the material, too, and we did a large
book out of it. And then this year, we, again,
reorganized the material and took a lot of pictures in color
that I have in a book called "The Art of Cooking,
Volume 1 and 2" that I did in the end of the '80s, which
is probably the best book that I've done. We're reorganizing and reusing
those pictures in there. interestingly enough, I have
some book, after like 8, 10 years, people look at it, and
they say, well, we can't really use it. The pictures are obsolete. Technology goes so fast. And it's true that there
is a certain style. Like a few years ago, where you
would kind of focus on the main dish to shoot a picture
and make it very clear, and all the outside kind of
cloudy and in a moody and a romantic way. That was a style of shooting
which can date the picture, pretty much. But that doesn't happen with
this, because those are just a close-up of my hand boning
a chicken, turning a thing, and so forth. So that's why they didn't
get obsolete. And the point is that the
technique, the way you beat an egg white, or peel an asparagus,
bone out an chicken, make an omelette, or
do a caramel cage, it's the same now that it was
50 years ago. I am Dean of Study at the French
Culinary Institute here, and we have what they call
the Competency, like 250, which are like techniques
that we have to cover, like doing eggs. You have to know how to do
scrambled eggs, poached eggs, this, this, and that. With the poached eggs, we do it
now the same way we did 50 years ago, except 50 years ago
without all this sauce and some truffle on top, of a piece
of ham underneath, a bouche, so that was
the Eggs Benedict. And now you may do your eggs
with a little tiny asparagus hedge, or saute in a much more
modern way, but basically the techniques themselves
don't change. ANJALI KUMAR: Right. So why did you feel the
need to combine these into one volume? JACQUES PEPIN: To sell
more and make money. [LAUGHTER] ANJALI KUMAR: That's
very smart of you. JACQUES PEPIN: Well, I have
a series on television now called "Essential Pepin," which
I taped last year, or started last year. And I have a book, and what
makes it in the book is I have a three and half hours DVD of
technique, a great deal of the technique that I
have in there. And, in fact, when they
say, well, we want to redo that book. We want to do something
different too. And at that point, I said it'd
be great if you do that. A DVD going with it? I said, that's great. I just did one for
the other book. So they said, well, can
you do one there? I said no, it would
be redundant. So this is basically what
I have in there, here. And, frankly, I teach at Boston
University for about 30 years and at the
French Culinary Institute here in New York. Those schools, you go, and it's
like $40,000, $45,000 for the program. And basically all of that is
on that three-hours tape. I mean, not all of it, but a
great deal of the technique. ANJALI KUMAR: Shh. Don't tell anyone. JACQUES PEPIN: So it's
just amazing. ANJALI KUMAR: Boston University
is not going to be happy with you right now when
they hear this tape. JACQUES PEPIN: No, no. Oh, well. No, we do some good
classes, there. I was there last week with a
group of like 10 people. I do your participation class
and participation class and demonstration, which I do
demonstration usually. But there, I do like the perfect
meal for me-- a roast chicken, a boiled
potato, a salad. But just with an exactly
one certain way to-- so I can do it, the student
did it, and then they go behind the stove, each one with
a chicken, and then they redo it for the class and
they'll make like five hours. And that's what I tell
them, very often. Don't try to blow my mind
and make something different with it. Cook with your guts. In some way, you cannot escape
yourself anyway. And for the better or
for the worse, you have 15 people here. I am going to have 15
different chickens-- two undercooked, two overcooked,
two burned, one cold, two hot, and so forth. But they will be different,
because you really cannot cook like the person next to you. You are not that person. And so that's important. ANJALI KUMAR: You wear so many
different hats in your life, and have, throughout your
career, everything from being the dean of various schools,
various cooking institutions, to writing all these books
and the television shows. Which has been your favorite
thing to do? JACQUES PEPIN: Well, all
of it, in a sense. I get bored if I have to
do the same thing. I had a column in the "New York
Times" for like 10 years in the '80s. If you only have to do that,
you're always pressured by one thing or another or a
book and so forth. But I go teaching, or
I confuse that at the Russian Tea Room. I opened the World Trade Center
here in the Hilton. So it's a type of work, then
you go back to doing an article for this,
then I teach. That's the beauty of doing all
things related to food, but different things. But to a certain extent,
probably teaching, I like. ANJALI KUMAR: Well, so, you were
on a much loved show with Julia Child, "Julia
and Jacques." JACQUES PEPIN: Yes. ANJALI KUMAR: There seems like
there's stories there. And you guys were really the
pioneers of the sort of television chef and the sort of
celebritization of chefs. Can you tell us a bit
about your favorite memories with Julia? JACQUES PEPIN: Well, there's
so many memories. I met Julia in 1960. And we became friends. And then we cooked together
very occasionally. And when I started teaching at
BU, I would always see her from breakfast, to lunch, to
late-night drink, or whatever, with Julia. And at some point,
I said, maybe we should do a PBS special. And we did at BU what we called
"Cooking in Concert," for that two-hour show that we
taped in the Tsai Auditorium at BU, and which was shown-- that was just prior to the Food
Channel Network, which was widely shown on PBS. And then that led us to do
another two-hour special, and eventually, we did the
series together. Conventionally, when
you do a series-- I have done some with my
daughter, Claudine. I have done 12 series of 26
shows, mostly with KQED, the PBS station in San Francisco. But I remember doing a series
years ago which was on time, so a 30-minute show
with like 28 and a half minutes, whatever. So I have like three dishes
or four dishes to do. And there's a guy going back
with a sign-- nine minutes, six minutes, five, three,
one, 30 seconds, wrap up, and so forth. It can be a bit stressful. You want to look kind of
suave and go and the thing has to be finished. So when I started doing some
with Claudine, my daughter, I say, you know, I'm supposed to
teach the kid how to cook, and if I show her how to make a
pie, and she's rolling the dough and struggling, and the
guy goes back there, three minutes, I push the kid off
and grab the dough. So I said, OK, well, don't
go to too long. Editing is expensive. So we end up showing
35, 38 minutes. They have to do editing
a little bit. Then we did the show
with Julia. And Julia said, you know,
we're going to cook. When it's finished,
we'll tell you. We did some show-- I think the longest one 120
minutes for a 30-minute show. And, of course, it was great. We kept drinking wine. We cooked. OK, it's over. Finished. And I am amazed sometimes at
seeing some of the show, where it's very smooth and all that. It wasn't that smooth at all,
and it was much too long. But that's the beauty of
anything, I suppose. But PBS, Julia loves
to work for PBS. All I do, we don't have
to cow to a sponsor and stuff like that. In fact, we don't even have
the right to work for a sponsor and all that. Not that I'm such
a great pure-- if you pay me enough, I'll
work for anyone. But-- I'm kidding. But the point is Julia
was happy. So one time, I remember we had
Kendall Jackson came, and Jess Jackson and his Barbara Banke
owned Cambria Winery, and he owned Artisans & Estates, which
is like 30 wineries-- Pepe, La Crema, Stonestreet
all of those. So we had a lot of wine. They were very nice people. He told me, you can have
any wine you want. Well, I didn't want to take the
Mondavi wine next to him, but I had French wine,
and Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, whatever. South African. And we started having a glass
of white wine, and we start cooking, too. So they call and say we'd like
to come see a couple of shows taped, and maybe we will take
you out for dinner with Julia. I said, terrific. Because they became
friends with me. And so they came. They were in the room, the
control room, whatever, where you can see the show. And Jeff Drummond, the producer,
said well, Kendall Jackson is there-- I mean, Jess Jackson. What are you going to do? And I said, Jackson? It's not like we don't
drink wine. Fine. We'll drink wine. I don't know which we'll
drink, but we'll drink. So we finished the show, and I
even forget what we did, but I tell Julia, OK that's great. Do you want a little bit of
Cabernet Sauvignon with that or you want a Merlot? She said [HIGH-PITCHED VOICE] I want beer. [LAUGHTER] JACQUES PEPIN: I said what do
you mean you want beer? I said, we don't have beer. [HIGH-PITCHED VOICE] We have beer. She got beer underneath. Well, I told Julia, I mean,
maybe we don't have to cow to the sponsor, but we
don't really have to antagonize them. [LAUGHTER] JACQUES PEPIN: And then she did
the same thing with the president of Land
O'Lakes came. I mean, it's not like we
didn't use butter. She said [HIGH-PITCHED VOICE] more butter, boom. She put another stick of butter,
two sticks of butter. So we did, and so the producer
said, what are you going to do? I said, Jeff, I'm doing a dough,
and I'm going to do a tart with it, a big gullet. And then, with the rest of them,
I'll show them how to cover a dish to do a chicken
pot pie or whatever. And we had no recipes on any
of the shows with Julia. So at the last moment, we'd
change, or whatever. And so Julia said
[HIGH-PITCHED VOICE] I want to do my dough. I said fine. You want to do your dough. OK, fine. So I started. I made the dough, rolled
it, put that. And I said, now, Julia is going
to show you how to do another dough. She said [HIGH-PITCHED VOICE] well, Jacques is going to
do it, which she did. So I said, OK, fine. She said I want you to do
it in a food processor. I say, OK. I take the food processor,
I said all right. A couple of cups of flour, a
dash of sugar, a dash of salt. I said how much butter
she wanted. She said [HIGH-PITCHED VOICE] I want Crisco. You want Crisco? The president of to Land
O'Lakes is there. We have no Crisco. We never use-- she had a can of Crisco
underneath. She grabs it, and we did half
butter, half Crisco oil. That was Julia. ANJALI KUMAR: I was going to ask
you to do an impression of Julia Child, but I feel like-- JACQUES PEPIN: Oh, OK. ANJALI KUMAR: --we've already
been treated to one. You do a very good
Julia Child. JACQUES PEPIN: Not really. Not as good as my daughter. When my daughter was born, I
already knew Julia Child, which is a long time, because
Claudine is going to be 45. Whew! In any case, I talked often on
the telephone with Julia, and Claudine, my daughter, ended
up doing a very good imitation of Julia. I mean, terrific. And she used to do that
all the time. And she went to college at BU. That's why I'm teaching there. So she went to BU, so
she used to call. One time I'm eating dinner
with my wife, and the telephone rang. Gloria picked up
the telephone. She'd say, OK, Claudine,
well, what do you want? Stop fooling around. What do you want? And now she'd say, oh, no, no. I'm sorry, Julia. I'm sorry. I'll call him right away. She thought it was Claudine
doing her imitation of Julia. So she was good. ANJALI KUMAR: Well, I'm going
to do a couple of "finish these sentences" with you,
because there's a lot of people here that I know have
questions that are going to be better than anything
I can come up with. We've already chatted on the way
in, so I want to make sure we leave some time
for everybody. JACQUES PEPIN: All right. ANJALI KUMAR: So those of you
who do have questions, please get ready to go to one of the
mics, because we are recording this for YouTube. So I'll just ask you to finish
the sentence that I'm going to read to you. JACQUES PEPIN: All right. ANJALI KUMAR: The most essential
technique to learn the kitchen is? JACQUES PEPIN: Is how to
drink wine properly. [LAUGHTER] JACQUES PEPIN: You have to-- ANJALI KUMAR: Well, so
now, you were at a wine event this morning. Can you tell us about that? JACQUES PEPIN: This morning
I was introduced at the Companion de Beaujolais. I am from Beaujolais, actually,
in France, and the Beaujolais Nouveau, the new
Beaujolais, start on the 15th of November every year. So they came this morning. We went down Park Avenue with
the guy on the trumpet playing "When the Saint Go Marching
In" and we had a bottle of Beaujolais. So I had some this
morning, too. I feel all right. But Anjali gave me a sandwich
and a banana, a couple of fig. ANJALI KUMAR: I know. We treat our guests well here. JACQUES PEPIN: Yes. ANJALI KUMAR: You didn't
bring me any wine, but we'll talk about-- JACQUES PEPIN: Google
sandwich is amazing. ANJALI KUMAR: It was
good, right? JACQUES PEPIN: Whoo! Incredible. ANJALI KUMAR: A ham sandwich. JACQUES PEPIN: Yes. ANJALI KUMAR: It goes nicely
with the Beaujolais. JACQUES PEPIN: Pam sandwich? That what it was? ANJALI KUMAR: Ham. JACQUES PEPIN: Oh, I thought
you said Pam. OK. ANJALI KUMAR: No. Pam sandwich. What would a Pam sandwich
entail? JACQUES PEPIN: Yeah. ANJALI KUMAR: Pam
like the spray? JACQUES PEPIN: Yeah. [LAUGHTER] JACQUES PEPIN: When you're
broke, you know-- ANJALI KUMAR: It's a tight
budget here, that's true. But not that type. OK. Now finish the sentence. A food trends I hate is? JACQUES PEPIN: Molecular
cooking. Oh, no. I don't-- ANJALI KUMAR: You can say it. JACQUES PEPIN: I like
molecular cooking for some time now. A trend that I hate-- I can't think of any because
I'm a real glutton. So I eat anything you
put in front of me. ANJALI KUMAR: Including
a pam. sandwich. JACQUES PEPIN: Including
pam sandwich, yeah. ANJALI KUMAR: I'll remember
that for next time. My favorite kitchen tool is. JACQUES PEPIN: My finger. I mean, there's nothing to
replace your finger. It squeezes, it crushes, it
strains, it twists, it kills. ANJALI KUMAR: All purpose. The thing I miss most
about France is? JACQUES PEPIN: Well,
my mother. She's still there. ANJALI KUMAR: Somebody's
laughing in the audience. I'm not sure why. JACQUES PEPIN: Yeah. ANJALI KUMAR: I thought
that was sweet. JACQUES PEPIN: She's
98, though, so she's getting there. But I saw her this spring. I am Executive Culinary
Director of Oceana cruise line. So we do a couple of cruises a
year, and I tend to go to Lyon and see her and my cousin
and so forth. And that's always fun. ANJALI KUMAR: That's nice. If I wanted to impress
Julia Child, I would have made blank. JACQUES PEPIN: I would have
given her the best one that I have in my cellar,
to start with and probably a ham sandwich. She loves ham. I do love ham, too. We have that book called "The
Last Meal of My Life," something like that. There are 50 chefs on it, and
they ask you what is the best thing you can eat. And if you have the greatest,
greatest bread that I can think of and the greatest butter
that I can think of, it's very difficult to beat
bread and butter. It's true. That being said, I probably
will have squid with fresh peas and maybe a can of caviar,
probably a hot dog. Ham and egg I love. All that stuff are things
that I like. But be sure that it would
be a very, very, very, very, very long meal. if it were to be the last one. ANJALI KUMAR: Well,
thank you so much. I think we're going to open
it up to questions if anyone has any. JACQUES PEPIN: Preferably
about food and wine. ANJALI KUMAR: But anything. JACQUES PEPIN: Yes. Do they need the mic, no? ANJALI KUMAR: They need
to mic, yes, please. We're recording. JACQUES PEPIN: You're
recording this? ANJALI KUMAR: We are. JACQUES PEPIN: Oh my god. ANJALI KUMAR: I have to have
you sign a release. I have to remember to do that. AUDIENCE: Yeah. So next week-- oh,
is this working? Next week, obviously, we have
Thanksgiving coming up, which is probably the biggest
food holiday. So I was wondering if there are
any particular culinary traditions that you liked
on Thanksgiving. JACQUES PEPIN: Did you see the
"New York Times" yesterday? I had my turkey in the "New
York Times" yesterday. And as I said in the article, I
haven't actually read it, be the truth, so I don't
know what they cut out of what I wrote. But certainly, I had my friend
Susie Heller, the producer of the show for Julia
and so forth. Like 30 years ago, she lived
in Cleveland at the time. And she said, oh, I'm going
to the Thanksgiving. I want you to come. And I said great. She said, I'm going to do
a big saddle of veal. Be different. I said, what? I said, if you don't do
turkey, I'm not going. I mean, Thanksgiving
is turkey. So she got some turkey, and she
even went to a butcher. She had a butcher. She had a fresh turkey. And she said, you have
something special? Could you get some turkey
fried for me? And the butcher-- ANJALI KUMAR: Wait. Can you tell them what
turkey fried is? JACQUES PEPIN: Turkey fried? ANJALI KUMAR: I learned
this earlier. JACQUES PEPIN: Turkey
testicles. They call it turkey fried. So the butcher said, well,
let me call the farm. So she called the farm and said,
yeah, we can get it, but I have to have an inspector
guy, too. She said, oh, wait a minute. How much is that
going to cost? He said, well, $0.80 a pound. All right, fine. Give me three pounds. So I came back and she said,
I got some of you for you. I said, woo hoo, turkey
ball, that's good. So we fried them and
we gave them. All the guests didn't
know what it was. They said, oh, these sausage
are really good. And when we told some of them
what it was, some had to go out to throw up but-- [LAUGHTER] JACQUES PEPIN: And then Susie,
many years later-- she lives in Napa Valley now-- came, and we did the mother of
all Thanksgiving, which again, I mentioned in that article. There was Thomas Keller,
cooking, Cat Cora, Don [INAUDIBLE], I mean, a lot of
great chefs, like eight. And I think we did eight
different type of turkey. There was a split up
and pomegranate glazed grilled turkey. There was a suveed turkey. There was a deep fried turkey. There was a brine turkey. There was a regular
roasted turkey. There was a turkey I did with
Julia, which was bone out, where I bone out the leg and
roast the breast separately. And then the one that I had
in the "New York Times" yesterday, which is steamed
first and then roasted after. What's was your question? About the-- AUDIENCE: Well, it was
what is your favorite Thanksgiving tradition. But I guess I followed-- JACQUES PEPIN: Yeah,
the turkey. AUDIENCE: that with the turkey
balls in New York. JACQUES PEPIN: Right. I say it's amazing that it was
such a Puritan beginning. It became the most probably
dynastic celebration that we have here, and the best, because
there is no political application or religious
application. You don't have any gift
to give to anyone. There's nothing with
a kid, you know? So it's purely the pleasure of
sitting down, overeating and overdrinking. That's great. ANJALI KUMAR: Yes. AUDIENCE: Hi. I wonder if you can provide any
inspiration for working parents who are short on time
but still want to provide a special meal for
their families. JACQUES PEPIN: Well,
very easy. You've got to buy my book. Not that one. Or that one, also,
if you want. But I have two books. Yes, I did. No, it's a good question. I did two series
on television-- not the last one that I have
now-- two series before called "Fast Food My Way." We did about
26 shows, which is about 130 recipes. So I have "Fast Food My Way" and
"More Fast Food My Way." We did two series. And the premises was
that probably the antiquity of this one. The premise was that when you
work in the restaurant, you have the prep cook who comes in
the morning, and he bones out the chicken, bones out the
fish, slices the mushrooms, washes the spinach,
chops the shallot. You have everything ready. Nothing is cooked, but
it's ready, fresh. So I get behind the stove. The first order is a filet
of sole or whatever. I grab it. It's done. I put a bit of shallots on top,
some sliced mushroom, a dash of white wine, bring
it to a boil. Finish it with a piece of
butter, and I do that dish in five, six minutes because I have
the prep ready for me. So I did do those books
with the same idea. I used the supermarket
as the prep cook, and we can do that now. So I had two boneless, skinless
breasts of chicken. I had prewashed spinach. I have a no-stick pan. I mean, when I did those shows
of 30 minute, which are like 28 and a half, I did
four dishes, and I had nothing prepared. I usually did them on time
there, you know? You go to the supermarket. Now I go to the deli. And I take a container. It's all the same
price, anyway. So I take some black olives,
some Kalamata olives, some green ones, some [INAUDIBLE],
a little bowl of mozzarella, some dried tomato, too, and
I'm making a salad. I get home to put a bit more
olive oil on top of that, some fresh basil. I buy a package of ham. I take a Martini glass, a nice,
honey-cured ham, put a big slice of ham hanging
on the side, fill it up with my salad. First course-- fine. Using this supermarket
in those ways-- it's true-- with a minimal amount
of effort and still have fresh good food. Because it's very important to
have the kid partake of what you do, to involve the kid, and
all that, and not to give the kid the idea that your house
is a restaurant and the kid is going to eat
a la carte. I don't like this, I
don't like that. That didn't exist with
my daughter. That's what we served tonight. That was it. That was dinner. And when Claudine was five years
old, asked her mother, my wife, Mom, what's
for dinner? My wife would say food. And it's still food now. That's what we have
for dinner. We never specify the
type of food. No, but try that
type of thing. It's good, yeah. Thank you. AUDIENCE: Hi. Thank you for coming here. JACQUES PEPIN: Thank you. Your voice is very familiar
because I grew up while my mom was watching you 24/7. JACQUES PEPIN: Oh, thank you. AUDIENCE: So a lot of memories
coming back. So I know this is about cooking,
and your book is about cooking, and you're all
about cooking, but for us lazy New Yorkers, what's your
favorite restaurant in New York, and what would
you order there? JACQUES PEPIN: Well, it's
a leading question. Two days ago, I was in Chinatown
in Flushing. And at lunch for $8 or $10,
whatever we spent per person in a Shanghai restaurant. So there's many, many places
like this that you can eat. I have to say, in New York, in
Manhattan, the French Culinary Institute, where I am a dean
of the school there occasionally, it's one of the
best dinners in New York. The food has to be super fresh,
morning, and again night, because the students at
night start by peeling their carrots and stuff, can't even
use the stock, whatever, from the morning. And we do a lunch-- I think $30. And the five-course dinner
is $41, I think. So it's really cheap for New
York, and the food is quite fresh and good. AUDIENCE: Where would
you go tonight? JACQUES PEPIN: Tonight. I don't know. Anjali didn't tell me where
she's taking me, so-- [LAUGHTER] ANJALI KUMAR: Ham sandwiches
at Google. JACQUES PEPIN: Yeah. I don't know. I have to do a book signing
tonight, and I may go back to the school, actually,
to have dinner. We have very good wine, too. Good price. I mean, there's many, many-- you can look even in the Zagat
and other on the internet. I mean, there is 24,000
restaurants in New York. It's just amazing. Some very expensive ones,
some good ones. I mean, you can spend $1,000
easy, if you want to go to Per Se, too. It depends on the wine you buy,
or if you get into caviar or stuff like this. But you know what? I think it's even more expensive
in Europe now, those types of restaurants. Anyway, I didn't answer
your question, right? No. OK. ANJALI KUMAR: He has
a very diplomatic way of skirting around. You could be a lawyer
at Google. JACQUES PEPIN: Yes, thank you. ANJALI KUMAR: That was
very impressive. JACQUES PEPIN: That's
a compliment or-- ANJALI KUMAR: Yes, seriously. Watch as I dance around. It was very much a compliment. JACQUES PEPIN: Either way
it's a compliment, yeah. ANJALI KUMAR: It's the highest
compliment, some might say. Very few people, but
somebody might say. Those people laughing, those
people would say it. Yeah. AUDIENCE: So in the US, there's
been a long campaign of eliminating fat from food. Everything is low
fat and no fat. And as a result, a lot of the
food has gotten sweeter to compensate for the
lack of flavor. I read that maybe 80% of the
food in the supermarket now is artificially sweetened. What do you think
of that trend? JACQUES PEPIN: You
can go to 90%. There were 2,300 cookbooks
published last year. In the last 20 years, 25 years,
most of them mine. In the last 25 years, 30 years,
we've done over 20,000 books related to losing
weight and diet. And we are now 40% fatter than
30 years ago, so it doesn't seem to work. I don't know. I think you can eat whatever
you want, but you can't swallow it. That's the problem. [LAUGHTER] JACQUES PEPIN: But It is true. And your percentage
is even low. It's like 90%. Now, the amount of sugar that
you have in something like catsup and all that savory stuff
is just amazing, more than in soda. It's really frightening. For me, you start with
kid and all that. First, you never eat something
you can't recognize. It's already a good step. And many often, of course, for
most kids, a chicken is rectangular with
plastic on top. It doesn't have any feet and
head, but you still know that it's chicken. But now I was, I don't know,
somewhere not too long ago, and there was a little kid. And so you move from this to
something less recognizable to even Cheerios or stuff like
that, cereal, where you look on the box, you don't really
know exactly what's in there. But now, that kid there where I
was, would ask your mother, she wanted to eat the red
box or the green box. So now, it goes one
step further. The food is recognized just
by the color of the box. That's why they have
absolutely no idea what's in there. We have to avoid processed
food at all cost because that's really deadly, the junk
that there is in it. But, of course, on the other
hand, markets are opening. The markets have never been as
beautiful as they are today. When I came to America, there
was only one salad. It was iceberg, period. No leek, so shallot, no Oriental
vegetable in the supermarket. Now the supermarkets are
absolutely beautiful. And people tell me they don't
want to cook anymore. So what do they do with the
stuff at the end of the week? Someone must buy it. Otherwise, they wouldn't
replenish it on Monday. So the last few years,
people are cooking. And then we are becoming
"localvore." You have to go local food now, organic. And so all that is good. It used to be like that
not that long ago. I already said, my mother
and my father were organic farmers. Of course, they had no idea what
the word "organic" meant. But the point is that chemical
fertilizer did not exist, and fungicides, insecticides,
pesticides did not exist either. So basically we used some cow
manure, whatever we had. We did the garden,
and that was it. So we're going back to
this, and it's fine. It's terrific, actuality. And eating from next-door
farm. But then we always exaggerate. Here we go. And I've been to restaurants
where they introduced me to carrot. This is a carrot. Her name is Sarah. She went born on the
7th of March. Give me the goddamn carrot. So we go too far sometimes. ANJALI KUMAR: That seems
a bit extreme. JACQUES PEPIN: But it happens. ANJALI KUMAR: So don't go to
that restaurant, whoever was asking for the restaurant. AUDIENCE: So it feels like
there's a lot more TV celebrity chefs now, and
the rise of the Food Network and all that. JACQUES PEPIN: Yes. AUDIENCE: So I'm just curious
what your opinion of the current generation
of TV chefs are? Are there any that you're
a particular fan of or anything like that? JACQUES PEPIN: Well, I was-- I forget where I was. I was at a convention
a few weeks ago. There was a food historian
saying that there is 407 cookery shows on television. That kind of my mind. I mean, I don't know whether
it's accurate, frankly. But even if there's only 200
or so, it's just amazing. But people look at it for
different reasons. I'm sure many people look at
my show and say, well, that guy's boring. All he does is cook, too,
and do and whatever. And it's fine. Some of the people do Italian
for entertainment, for other type of thing, and I think the
more it brings people into food, the better it is. Every year, I go to the Food
and Wine Festival in Aspen. Last year was the 30th
anniversary, and I think I did it 28 times, many times with
Julia and then even my mother when she came. So it's 5,000 people there. Last year, we drank 45,000
bottles of wine from Thursday until Monday, 5,000 people
there, and about 300 wineries. And if you know Aspen, everyone
is kind of very cliquish because it's
all closed in there. No one has a car. And it's a great thing. Now, everyone is into food. Everyone knows you there. So people will come to me and
say, I know you had all the shows on television. You are the best. And the reason those people
say that is that only the people who like me
come to see me. The other ones don't. They go to-- I don't know-- Bobby Flay next door and say,
you know, we look at all of the shows on television. You are the best,
and so forth. That way, I think it's fine. We all have our own way
of doing things. Some people like it. Some don't really care
one way or the other. And so for me, I don't
really look-- to tell you the truth-- much
at cookery shows on television. Most of the time I don't. So I don't really know that
many, but certainly, a show like "Hell's Kitchen" or
whatever is certainly not the way to train someone in the
kitchen because there is a great of love, at the risk
of sounding a bit mushy. But cooking, you have to
cook with your gut. It's something which
is automatic. There is a great deal of
affection of love that you bring into what you do. And yelling at people your head
off is not going to train someone properly. But I know that this
is television. That's the way it is. If you go into the kitchen at
Per Se with Thomas Keller, or Jean-Georges, or [INAUDIBLE],
there's no noise. The chef is there. You order. We order this, this, this. Say, yes, chef, I will do. I say pick up this, that, too. The guy pick up. No noise. You hear the cling
of the thing. That's all you hear. It's very organized. It's very structured and
disciplined in a sense, so no televisions come there. There's nothing to film. You're noticing that
It's really boring. So they create those shows,
where everything is hey, man. But it's not really the way
it is in a real kitchen. And as far as all the shows,
there are some very good chefs on television. I mean, certainly people like
Lidia Bastianich and Bobby Flay or Mario Batali,
I mean, those guys are really good chefs. I've seen some others who
wouldn't recognize a carrot from a potato, but. they don't do it for that. And often I asked people,
how many people cook out of a show? Not that many, really. They look at it for
other things. That was your question, right? No, his question. AUDIENCE: I was just wondering
if you remember the first thing you taught your daughter
to cook and what you would recommend for someone as like a
first way to introduce their children to the kitchen? JACQUES PEPIN: To cook with your
daughter, you mean, or children in general? Yeah. They say you have to
get them involved. When Claudine was a year
old, I hold her in my arm, and we cook. She's stirred the pot. So she stirred it. Quote, she made it. And she was going to taste
it, of course. And as I said, again,
we don't explain the menu to the children. We cook whatever we cook. And you find out that the kid
absolutely adores string beans for like a month, and then they
hate string beans for another month. And then they like
this and that. Claudine liked-- it ended up
when she was a kid like artichokes and Brussels sprouts
were like her favorite vegetables. And also the fact that certainly
she had frog legs and escargot, as we are
French, at my house. And the kids don't
really mind that. Usually, very small kids, up to
like age seven, eight, and they go to school, and they
talk to their friends, and say, you eat what? Yuck. This is still so. So you have that type of thing,
that they want to be the same than their friend,
and you have to go through that. I remember taking Claudine
when she was like 10, 12 years old. We always spent a weekend
together in New York, go to the theater, or a movie,
and go to a restaurant. And I said, OK, you want to
go to see Tonton Andre. Uncle Andre was Andre Soltner,
the owner of Lutece, here, because she knew him. One of the greatest restaurants
in New York. And I said, it's
your birthday. She said can we go to Burger
King or whatever. So I said, fine, OK. So nothing is wrong,
occasionally, here and there. But the kid should be partaking
of the food, being part of it, and there is nothing
better for a child coming back home and listening
in the kitchen. The kitchen is the most
comforting place of the house. And hearing the cling of the
pots and pans, the smell in the kitchen, the voice of your
mother, those smells, those sounds, and all of that will
remain with you the rest of your life. It's a very important
comfort zone. You see that with those kids in Afghanistan or whatever now. What you dream at night,
that type of food, not really for the food. You want it for the comfort
and what it brings. I think it was a Chinese
philosopher Lin Yutang, I think, who said the entire
paraphrasing, patriotism is the taste of the dishes
you had as a child. And there is a great deal of
truth in this, because that brings so many other things. So. I don't want to get
too deep here. ANJALI KUMAR: Now what
was your question? Go ahead. AUDIENCE: So what is it that
excites you the most about what's happening
in food today? JACQUES PEPIN: Well, the
involvement of the farm, the-- yes, the entrees that
people are. And that's kind of unique
to America, too, to a certain extent. Because for many Europeans,
they look at Americans and say, those people
eat five dishes. This is it-- hot dog, hamburger,
fried chicken, pizza, and can of macaroni,
or whatever. Which is, of course, not true. And which is, of course, true. If you go into the [INAUDIBLE]
crowd, if you want, that's usually where you have a lot of
obese people, and they will eat four, five dishes
over and over again. That's how people eat. But then, conversely, if you
move in any urban center, even a small town now, the amount of
restaurants is staggering. And the diversity,
because we are a country of ethnic people. For one night, you're going
to eat Turkish. Then the day after
is Shanghai. Then it may be Italian,
French, Portuguese, Greek, and all that. And that's the way people eat,
which is absolutely amazing. Even for me, I go back to France
now, and after a while, I'm bored with the food because
I'm used to more diversity and other
things here. Because if you go to France, the
food is good, and you're born with that type of food. That's what you eat, so 99%
of people eat French. There are Chinese restaurants
and all that, but basically, I'm talking especially
in the country, people will eat French. I did the same thing in Italy. 99.9% of Italians eat
Italian food. Same thing with Portuguese, with
Greek, and with Spanish and so forth, because the
food is good and that's what you're used to. But in America, that's
not the case. And you explore in all those
different directions, and it's very exciting. And good food, too. ANJALI KUMAR: Great. JACQUES PEPIN: Yes, sir. AUDIENCE: So thanks
again for coming. When you were talking a little
bit about "Hell's Kitchen," I was reminded of your memoir,
"The Apprentice." Or was it "The Apprenticeship"? I apologize. It's been a few years. ANJALI KUMAR: The show on NBC. AUDIENCE: But it's
a wonderful book. JACQUES PEPIN: Thank you. AUDIENCE: And I was trying
to think back to your descriptions of what it was like
to cook in the old world in France and of kind of the
great French chefs, and what that apprenticeship was like,
and how it in some ways it could be pretty brutal. And I thought those were kind
of very interesting descriptions, because we went
through kind of a dead zone of cooking, at least in America,
and as you've said today, it's back. JACQUES PEPIN: Yeah, it's-- AUDIENCE: So what was all that
like when you were young in France, coming up, and then
maybe a little bit of what it was like when you were kind of
cooking for the government and the royalty? I mean, that whole trajectory
of your career is sort of unknown to Americans, I guess. JACQUES PEPIN: Yes. Well, from '56 to '59, I was
chef to the President in France under the Fourth
Republic. The government was changing at
a rapid pace, and I finished with de Gaulle in '59. And someone introduced me, as
you did, a few weeks ago and said that man cooked for three
French presidents. Three of them are dead. OK, I think one is
still alive. I'm not sure. The apprenticeship that I did,
it was another world. Interestingly enough, if
I look at my father-- well, I never knew
my grandfather. They all died in the
first World War. But my father and other older
people at that time, my generation it was different
than they were, but not that different. Remember, there was no planes
here at the time. We had no television. There was no internet. It was really-- barely electricity, so it was
different for my parents. It was different for me,
but not that different. Now, I look at my granddaughter,
wow, In those one or two generations. I mean, if they look
at my book, it's like the Middle Age. It's really, really
another world. Just the management of the
stove, to start with. We had a stove that you start in
the morning, put some paper and some wood, then coal,
and you have to keep that thing hot. Now, those were very large
rectangular stoves, almost as big as that stage. And there is different-- six
people are working on it, three on each side, like the
sous department, the fish, and so forth. And then in between there
was the oven. You open the door on one side. On the other side, it
was like a funnel. So there was no thermostat, of
course, or stuff like that. When that thing really had red
on top, the temperature was probably 500 degrees
in the oven. And on one side, someone
is cooking a fish. I'm cooking a souffle
on the other side. So you have to work within the
food itself to move it close to the door, open the door a
little bit, put a thing in front of it to regulate the
temperature and so forth. It's not like we put it on the
timer, 20 minutes, 375, go take a nap. It was totally different
things. And that stove was hot. Like at the Plaza Athenee in
Paris, still we had no stove. The people are coming. The lunch crowd come
at 12 o'clock. Now, the people in charge of
the stove, which were the first [INAUDIBLE], if you did
not regulate it properly, then that thing is not lukewarm, but
not really hot enough for the first 30 people who come in,
and that pushed back the whole dining room. When that people came in the
dining room, that stove had to be red to where the chef would
be out of his mind. So just the management of that
was a great deal of work, which, of course, doesn't exist
at all anymore because it's another world. Now, there was no
school, really. You worked behind the line
as an apprentice. And you were not particularly
well treated. If you did something wrong, you
got a kick in the behind. And that was not a big deal, but
that's the way things were with some people,
not with all. But also the fact that they
didn't tell you anything. They do a sauce. You say, what is that? It's a sauce [SPEAKING FRENCH], which means nothing. Or if the chef tells you to
do this, and you say why-- first, I would not even
have said why. But if I had said why, he said
because I just told you. That's about the end
of the explanation. So you learn by osmosis,
by stealing the things. And there was no recipe. It was purely memory of
the senses in the [SPEAKING FRENCH] sense of the taste, and look,
and smell, and so forth. And then for a year, I cleaned
up pots, pans, did vegetables, too. And one day, the chef
told me, you? Tomorrow, you start
at the stove. Wow! I was flabbergasted. I said, I don't know. I went to the stove, and
I knew how to do it. Why did I know how to
do it and remember? Through that type of osmosis. That was a type of
apprenticeship, which is very different now. But remember, I was 13, 14,
15 years old during my apprenticeship. And it's a way of learning,
which is still applied to a certain extent. I used to teach skiing in
upstate New York, here. That's how I met my wife. I've been married 47 years. So I would teaching skiing. I remember for several years,
I taught the kids, middle school, or whatever it was,
seven, eight years old, 10 years old, from a
Catskill school. And they would come up to
teach kids how to ski. You go up the mountain,
say, stay close to me, and you go down. If you put them on the line
and talk to them about the full line and the position of
your wedge, and all that, it comes here, and it
comes out there. They want to ski. The same weekend, I'm giving
a class to a lawyer, maybe. And that person, 30 years old,
to want to know why I'm turning, why this, why
the position, too. It's a totally different
explanation. This is probably
what we do now. At the French Culinary Institute
here, we cater to the people. It costs a fortune. We explain. We show them. We cater to them-- totally
different than when I was an apprentice. When I'm there, sometimes there
is graduation, and often I'm a judge. I'm amazed, absolutely amazed,
what they can do in the six months they have been there. I would never have been able to
do that after three years of apprenticeship. Never. However, I was certainly much
faster with my knife, cleaning all kinds of manual things that
you learn through that type of endless repetition. So a very different way
of learning now than it used to be. ANJALI KUMAR: All right. Well, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for coming. JACQUES PEPIN: Thank you. ANJALI KUMAR: You can come back
for a ham sandwich or anything else-- JACQUES PEPIN: OK. ANJALI KUMAR: --any
time you'd like. Thank you. [LAUGHTER] JACQUES PEPIN: Thank you.
