What's Jacques Peppin up to these days?

[housewolf]

Nice article, courtesy of a tweet from Dorie Greenspan

For Pepin, cooking is about technique, not stardom
http://news.yahoo.com/pepin-cooking-technique-not-stardom-133419748.html

MADISON, Conn. (AP) — Back in the woods, behind the kitchen, French and American flags fly over Jacques Pepin's petanque court. He launches his heavy, metallic ball toward a visitor's, popping it off course with a sharp, expert crack.

"That is how you play petanque," he says, smiling at his pupil.

Whether it's lawn bowling or making an omelet as bright and unblemished as the noontime sun, Pepin is, above all things, a teacher. A trim, elegant 75, the greatest cooking instructor America has ever known has entered a genteel upper middle age. His hair is thinner, the limp from the car accident that turned him from chef to professor is a bit more pronounced. But the man who taught two generations of home cooks — and many of today's celebrity chefs — how to hold a knife can still out-chop a food processor and make boning a chicken look like magic.

"I tell a student that the most important class you can take is technique," Pepin says while chopping chives beneath a decorative tile that reads: "A great chef is first a great technician." ''If you are a jeweler, or a surgeon or a cook, you have to know the trade in your hand. You have to learn the process. You learn it through endless repetition until it belongs to you."

And nobody owns technique like Pepin.

read the rest:
http://news.yahoo.com/pepin-cooking-technique-not-stardom-133419748.html

[elleng]

1. Often watch him weekends, and love to see his techniques.

Also enjoy his interplay w Julia.

Thanks.

[NJCher]

2. there's something restful about watching him

I could watch hours of Jacques cooking.

I think of all the well-known chefs, he's the one with the philosophy of food and food prep that I like the best.


Cher

[Phentex]

3. and it never came across as manufactured for tv...

unlike many of the so-called chefs on today's shows.

He seems genuine.

[housewolf]

4. I'm with you on this

So many of the cooks/chefs on tv talk so fast, move so fast and take shortcuts so it's often hard to grasp what they're doing

[EFerrari]

5. He's my favorite. He packs so much into his time.

I don't like the forced chatter that so many of these folks do, it's annoying. He's never like that. He's always thinking like a teacher.