Tips from Chef Jacques Pépin
by Joe David
Anyone who has watched Jacques Pépin whip up a meal on television would believe cooking was the easiest thing in the world to do. A little of this and that. And voilà, a caneton à l’orange, suitable for royalty. Unfortunately, it is never that simple in real life. Mistakes often occur and ruin your carefully planned meal unexpectedly. What can one do to reduce them? I turned to Chef Pépin for his explanation.
Pépin’s gastronomic career, which spans over 50 years, began as a child in Bourg-en-Bresse, France, in his parent’s kitchen. What he learned at home prepared him for what soon followed. By the time he was in his twenties, he was mingling with the rich and powerful, as personal chef to three French heads of state. His meteoric rise to the top was followed by more noteworthy successes – a cooking show with Julia Child, newspaper and magazine food columns, countless awards, and a string of best-selling cookbooks. In short, the child from Bourg-en-Bresse who had traveled the spiraling road to success had reached the top in his profession. Today, a gentleman of “that certain age,” he is enthroned securely as an elite master among consummate French chefs.
When I met him for the first time in the sleek-and-modern dining room of the French Culinary Institute (Soho, New York City), where he is the dean of special programs, I couldn’t help observing that his public and private image seemed identical. While we sat at a table talking and drinking coffee, he behaved exactly as he appeared on television to millions of viewers – charming, polite, and professional. “Everyone knows about your many achievements.” I said. “But what about your culinary disasters? Have there been many?”
He smiled. My question obviously amused him. “Of course,” he said with a pleasingly sonorous blend of English and French sounds. “Things can and do go wrong unexpectedly in the kitchen. But,” he added, “a professional chef to survive must learn to make quick recoveries.”
He then told me about a chocolate cake that he had prepared for some friends. During the preparation, the chocolate became too brittle. To save it, he had to make drastic changes to the cake. This meant he had to roll the chocolate into small bands, scoop some cream over the chocolate, and build from there. “When I finished,” he said proudly, “the cake had no resemblance to the more traditional cake I had in mind – but it worked. So I served it to my guests without saying a word, as though this was how the cake was to be prepared.”
Impressed with how uncomplicated he made recovery sound, I was immediately reminded once again of the videos I had seen of him mixing and blending ingredients effortlessly. Nothing seemed difficult for the master. “Has your experiences in the kitchen always been successful?” I asked. “Have you never had an unrecoverable embarrassment?”
His eyes twinkled with amusement. “Well, there was this incident a long time ago in Sacramento during a ‘Go Natural Tour’,” he said, as he struggled to suppress his laughter. “It was a big, elegant event. Everyone was there – House Beautiful, Playboy and over 3,000 important guests. During the show, I came on stage, blended the ingredients for a soufflé, placed it in the oven, then disappeared for thirty minutes. When I returned to check on the soufflé, I was immediately horrified at what I saw.” He smiled broadly – the embarrassment and the amusement were too enjoyable a memory for him to suppress, and they became entangled in his words. “In all my years of cooking, I never saw a soufflé so burned. A thick, charcoal crust covered the top and, when I broke through it, the ingredients in the center were still liquid.” We both laughed together, two strangers connecting for a moment over a tragedy in the kitchen. “Somehow the oven had automatically switched to self-cleaning,” he explained, after recovering his composure. He then added like a true professional: “The audience loved it! They gave me a standing ovation.”
Every host and hostess panics at the thought of having a similar disaster before guests arrive. Pépin offers five important, often overlooked principles for good cooking that he recommended to me that will help avert such a disaster. They are:
1. Plan ahead – When you invite friends over for a meal, you should never treat it as an opportunity to be experimental. If you want to achieve excellent results in the kitchen, never, never select new recipes. One mistake and your meal could turn into a disaster. The solution: he recommends that you serve only foods that you have prepared before successfully. “When you are familiar with something, you should go with it. You get your best results this way,” he said, “But most important, select a menu that will please everyone.”
2. Work the menu in your head – When planning your menu in your head, choose food that will be easy for you to prepare and that will be workable for the amount of people expected. You certainly don’t want to prepare a raspberry soufflé for twenty, if you don’t have the oven space for so many soufflés. Also, give careful attention to all the details of the menu – from the appetizer to the dessert. “Your goal should be to select dishes that are tasty and appealing,” he said, “and that will complement each course.”
3. Survey the market for seasonal food -- Food in season tends to be less expensive and, of course, more nutritious than out-of-season food. It also has better flavor. By planning your menu 24 hours or more in advance, you provide yourself with enough time to locate food that is in season and available at the price you want to pay. “Remember, the quality and freshness of the food are 60 or 70 percent of the cooking. The less you do to the food, the better it will be.” He then added modestly: “I think too much credit is given to the chef, not enough to the farmer.”
4. Prepare food in advance – Everything that could be should be prepared in advance. In a professional kitchen, the chef has helpers to create a mise en place (i.e., prepped ingredients placed within reach for easy cooking). All the chef needs to do, for example, is sprinkle the onions, add a little oil and a dash of white wine to the already-cleaned fish and place it into the oven. At home, the situation changes. You must do all the preparing yourself and have your mise en place (the sauces, the chopped olives, the vegetables, etc.) laid out and ready to be used before your guests arrive. To simplify your task, you should always try to purchase foods that have already been prepped for you – boneless and skinless chicken, mixed lettuce, grated cheese, etc. – and finish them off in your kitchen. “In planning for a party, your goal is to have seventy-five percent of the work done in advance. This way you will have plenty of time for your guests. If you are serving leek and potato soup, for example, the leek, potatoes and all the seasoning should be already cooked. All you need to do last minute is to add the chives, sour cream, and croutons.”
5. Setting the table – You must give careful thought to your setting: Should it be indoors or outdoors, formal or informal? Flowers, plants, table coverings and the like need to be in place, whenever possible, the night before. Don’t be afraid to be daring and original in what you do. Be imaginative. Have fun. “If you have an especially nice wooden table,” he said, “show it off. Forget the tablecloth and use only place mats. For outdoor parties, you can place your bottled liquids in a wheel barrel filled with ice and, for your flower arrangement, you can mix the flowers with some dead wood and stones for a garden look. Make the setting look attractive and inviting.”
“But you must never forget something very, very important,” he said in conclusion, “you must always be happy with what you do. And as Jean Brillat-Savarin once said, you must make your guests happy while under your roof. This means you should pair them carefully to avoid any clash of personalities. And you must never, never forget, even at the cost of your meal, that pleasing your guests is your most important concern. For this is the true goal of fine entertaining.”
Pépin’s gastronomic career, which spans over 50 years, began as a child in Bourg-en-Bresse, France, in his parent’s kitchen. What he learned at home prepared him for what soon followed. By the time he was in his twenties, he was mingling with the rich and powerful, as personal chef to three French heads of state. His meteoric rise to the top was followed by more noteworthy successes – a cooking show with Julia Child, newspaper and magazine food columns, countless awards, and a string of best-selling cookbooks. In short, the child from Bourg-en-Bresse who had traveled the spiraling road to success had reached the top in his profession. Today, a gentleman of “that certain age,” he is enthroned securely as an elite master among consummate French chefs.
When I met him for the first time in the sleek-and-modern dining room of the French Culinary Institute (Soho, New York City), where he is the dean of special programs, I couldn’t help observing that his public and private image seemed identical. While we sat at a table talking and drinking coffee, he behaved exactly as he appeared on television to millions of viewers – charming, polite, and professional. “Everyone knows about your many achievements.” I said. “But what about your culinary disasters? Have there been many?”
He smiled. My question obviously amused him. “Of course,” he said with a pleasingly sonorous blend of English and French sounds. “Things can and do go wrong unexpectedly in the kitchen. But,” he added, “a professional chef to survive must learn to make quick recoveries.”
He then told me about a chocolate cake that he had prepared for some friends. During the preparation, the chocolate became too brittle. To save it, he had to make drastic changes to the cake. This meant he had to roll the chocolate into small bands, scoop some cream over the chocolate, and build from there. “When I finished,” he said proudly, “the cake had no resemblance to the more traditional cake I had in mind – but it worked. So I served it to my guests without saying a word, as though this was how the cake was to be prepared.”
Impressed with how uncomplicated he made recovery sound, I was immediately reminded once again of the videos I had seen of him mixing and blending ingredients effortlessly. Nothing seemed difficult for the master. “Has your experiences in the kitchen always been successful?” I asked. “Have you never had an unrecoverable embarrassment?”
His eyes twinkled with amusement. “Well, there was this incident a long time ago in Sacramento during a ‘Go Natural Tour’,” he said, as he struggled to suppress his laughter. “It was a big, elegant event. Everyone was there – House Beautiful, Playboy and over 3,000 important guests. During the show, I came on stage, blended the ingredients for a soufflé, placed it in the oven, then disappeared for thirty minutes. When I returned to check on the soufflé, I was immediately horrified at what I saw.” He smiled broadly – the embarrassment and the amusement were too enjoyable a memory for him to suppress, and they became entangled in his words. “In all my years of cooking, I never saw a soufflé so burned. A thick, charcoal crust covered the top and, when I broke through it, the ingredients in the center were still liquid.” We both laughed together, two strangers connecting for a moment over a tragedy in the kitchen. “Somehow the oven had automatically switched to self-cleaning,” he explained, after recovering his composure. He then added like a true professional: “The audience loved it! They gave me a standing ovation.”
Every host and hostess panics at the thought of having a similar disaster before guests arrive. Pépin offers five important, often overlooked principles for good cooking that he recommended to me that will help avert such a disaster. They are:
1. Plan ahead – When you invite friends over for a meal, you should never treat it as an opportunity to be experimental. If you want to achieve excellent results in the kitchen, never, never select new recipes. One mistake and your meal could turn into a disaster. The solution: he recommends that you serve only foods that you have prepared before successfully. “When you are familiar with something, you should go with it. You get your best results this way,” he said, “But most important, select a menu that will please everyone.”
2. Work the menu in your head – When planning your menu in your head, choose food that will be easy for you to prepare and that will be workable for the amount of people expected. You certainly don’t want to prepare a raspberry soufflé for twenty, if you don’t have the oven space for so many soufflés. Also, give careful attention to all the details of the menu – from the appetizer to the dessert. “Your goal should be to select dishes that are tasty and appealing,” he said, “and that will complement each course.”
3. Survey the market for seasonal food -- Food in season tends to be less expensive and, of course, more nutritious than out-of-season food. It also has better flavor. By planning your menu 24 hours or more in advance, you provide yourself with enough time to locate food that is in season and available at the price you want to pay. “Remember, the quality and freshness of the food are 60 or 70 percent of the cooking. The less you do to the food, the better it will be.” He then added modestly: “I think too much credit is given to the chef, not enough to the farmer.”
4. Prepare food in advance – Everything that could be should be prepared in advance. In a professional kitchen, the chef has helpers to create a mise en place (i.e., prepped ingredients placed within reach for easy cooking). All the chef needs to do, for example, is sprinkle the onions, add a little oil and a dash of white wine to the already-cleaned fish and place it into the oven. At home, the situation changes. You must do all the preparing yourself and have your mise en place (the sauces, the chopped olives, the vegetables, etc.) laid out and ready to be used before your guests arrive. To simplify your task, you should always try to purchase foods that have already been prepped for you – boneless and skinless chicken, mixed lettuce, grated cheese, etc. – and finish them off in your kitchen. “In planning for a party, your goal is to have seventy-five percent of the work done in advance. This way you will have plenty of time for your guests. If you are serving leek and potato soup, for example, the leek, potatoes and all the seasoning should be already cooked. All you need to do last minute is to add the chives, sour cream, and croutons.”
5. Setting the table – You must give careful thought to your setting: Should it be indoors or outdoors, formal or informal? Flowers, plants, table coverings and the like need to be in place, whenever possible, the night before. Don’t be afraid to be daring and original in what you do. Be imaginative. Have fun. “If you have an especially nice wooden table,” he said, “show it off. Forget the tablecloth and use only place mats. For outdoor parties, you can place your bottled liquids in a wheel barrel filled with ice and, for your flower arrangement, you can mix the flowers with some dead wood and stones for a garden look. Make the setting look attractive and inviting.”
“But you must never forget something very, very important,” he said in conclusion, “you must always be happy with what you do. And as Jean Brillat-Savarin once said, you must make your guests happy while under your roof. This means you should pair them carefully to avoid any clash of personalities. And you must never, never forget, even at the cost of your meal, that pleasing your guests is your most important concern. For this is the true goal of fine entertaining.”
U.S. Airways Magazine