Celebrity chefs Jacques Pepin (and his daughter Claudine), Paula Deen and Giada De Laurentiis will be in Houston September 15 and 16 for the 2012 Metropolitan Cooking & Entertaining Show at Reliant Center.
What is the MetroCooking Show, as it’s known? Imagine a marketplace with hundreds of specialty food purveyors, plus cooking demos, tastings and hands-on workshops. Pepin and friends will be joined by local chefs, too, including Hugo Ortega (Hugo’s), Kiran Verma (Kiran’s), Jamie Zelko (Zelko Bistro), Ronnie Killen (Killen’s Steakhouse), Michael Cordúa (Churrascos, Américas, etc.) and Rebecca Masson (Fluff Bake Bar).
We recently caught up with Jacques Pepin and peppered him with questions. We had so much good conversation that we’re doubling the size of our usual “5 Nosy Questions” feature.
At the end of a long day, what do you cook for just yourself? First of all, I never cook for myself. I do not like to eat alone. For me cooking is all about pleasing other people. If I have to eat alone, I prepare a sandwich and a glass of wine. When I cook for my wife – we’re married 46 years – I fix something like gravlax, pork and beans and a salad. It depends on what is available, too. Like today I went out and found a basket of wild mushrooms. They will be part of tonight’s dinner.
What is your favorite wine? Free wine is my favorite. People, friends, give me very good wine. Truthfully, except for sweet wine, I can always find something I like. I may have a preference for Rhône Valley wines.
Of all of the cookbooks and TV series that you have done, which do you consider your legacy? Oh, I don’t really know. Talking about your legacy while you are still around is kind of freakish. I guess people like different books and shows for all different reasons. Maybe after I have gone on to other places, I would say some shows I did on techniques, knowing how to do things – it is the teaching I do – and learning the basics. I think things like that is what I want to be known for.
American food was very limited when you first came to this country. What has surprised you most about the evolution and maturation of the American food scene? Yes, when I first came here you could find just one salad in the market. There were no shallots, no oregano, none of many things. It is so different now. What I would say surprises me the most is the speed in which it has changed. What we have done in 20 years here would take a century to accomplish in Europe.
People have become so willing to try new things. It takes a place like America for this to happen. People in France are so much inside their own food. Eighty, 90 percent of what people eat in France is French food. It is the same in Italy with Italian food, Greece and Greek food. This country has so many cultures that we try so many different things.
What (aspect of the American food scene) still needs work? A lot of the food is still made of artificial things. Too many children don’t recognize a tomato by its color or the shape but by the package they think tomatoes come in.
I did a book called Fast Food My Way where I show people you can cook a meal that is very healthy and very fast but still use no packaged food, no processed food, nothing artificial. We have discovered farmers’ markets and gardening, so it is changing. Of course some have gone way too far. You go to a restaurant where they introduce you to a carrot and say this carrot was born on the 9th of December and tell you where. [Laughs.] It is a carrot!
Did you ever try to persuade your daughter Claudine to go into a different line of work? Actually, I never told her not to go into the food business, but when she was a teenager, she was determined never, never to do what her parents did. She went to school and earned an undergraduate degree in political science and philosophy and did graduate work in international relations at Boston University. She went to Europe for more studies. Then she came back, started selling wine and married a chef.
Julia Child’s 100th birthday is being celebrated in the U.S. this year. Can you tell us something about Julia that few people would know? I met Julia in 1960. The thing about her is she was so down to earth. She would prepare an exquisite dish and then also have a side of French fries from McDonald’s. She was very democratic with food in this way. The same with wine. She would have a martini and then some more wine. I loved her simplicity.
Besides a good set of knives, what is your favorite or must-have kitchen gadget? A rubber spatula! When I started we didn’t have this. And plastic wrap. It didn’t exist. It’s the best thing to have. And a good vegetable peeler.
When you attended Columbia University, your advisor nixed your first doctoral dissertation idea. What would you like to say to him now? I proposed to write about the History of Food in French Civilization in the context of literature from the 16th to the 20th centuries. They said, “Are you crazy? You want to talk about food?” A while ago I was giving an address at Columbia and while I was being introduced the speaker mentioned that this dissertation had been refused. He said they would be happy to have it now. [Note: Pepin and Julia Child both proposed the subject to Boston University, and a similar course is now offered in their master’s program in Liberal Arts.]
What food question do Americans ask you most often? “Do you cook every day?” The answer is yes, because I eat every day.