What would Jacques Pepin Cook for Obama?

Chef, cookbook author and television personality Jacques Pépin has had a career that should make most culinary students feel entirely unworthy. He'll be in San Francisco tomorrow for the 20th annual Kidney Foundation Author’s Luncheon (buy tickets here) and to promote his 12th show, “More Fast Food My Way”, airing now on KQED. The show was filmed at the KQED studio in San Francisco last October. I caught up with him before the event to talk Julia Child, his new TV show and Obama.

JP: Yes! I think I should have called it “Food Fast My Way” instead. It's a series based on demystifying cooking and making it simpler for people. At a restaurant, you have many cooks preparing ingredients, so when you go to cook the dish it comes together quickly. With these recipes, you use the supermarket as a prep cook—pre-washed spinach, pre-sliced mushrooms, canned beans. Sometimes I’m into slow food, but sometimes you go to the market and come home and want to eat. I think everyone feels that way sometimes. So this series addresses that need.

7x7: You’ve written 26 cookbooks. This is your 12th cooking show. You have been a Dean at the French Culinary Institute and helped found, with Julia Child, the Gastronomy Program at Boston University. Is there anything you still hope to accomplish professionally?

JP: I look forward, not backward. I plan to continue to do more of the same. As long as I’m hungry—and I’m always hungry—I will keep cooking.

7x7: Food television has changed since the early days, when it was just you and Julia on PBS. Do you think this is a good thing, or a bad thing?

JP: I think it’s a good thing. Anytime you bring more people into food it’s a good thing. For me, and for Julia, it was always about teaching people, which is what we felt comfortable with. But everyone of television has their own fan base, a group of people that can relate to them.

7x7: Do you watch any other cooking shows?

JP: To be honest, I don’t even look at my own show! I think I’ve seen five or six of the 26 episodes I filmed for More Fast Food. I don’t really look at cooking show television. But I have seen Top Chef a couple of times. Usually, though, I’m watching CNN.

7x7: Do you follow politics? What do you think of the current climate in America?

JP: Without question, I am getting tired of the election stuff. It’s been going on for a year and a half now, and I think it has just gotten more and more personal and belligerent. And the country is in a dire economic situation, so that changes everything. But I am a democrat and I will vote for that ticket.

7x7: Jacques Pépin as White House chef?

JP: Well, you know, I cooked for the French president, and then I was asked to cook for the Kennedy White House. But I turned it down. I went to work for Howard Johnson’s instead.

7x7: What might you cook for the Obama’s if given the chance?

JP: I would do something straightforward and simple, with a bit of sophistication. He’s a straightforward man. I’d love to have the chance to cook for them.

7x7: You film your cooking shows here in San Francisco. What do you like to do while you are in town?

JP: I am usually here for a month or so while filming, and I have a lot of friends in San Francisco—Roland Passot, Hubert Keller, the Mitchell brothers. It’s my second home, and one of my favorite cities. I also like to go and eat at Yuet Lee. I love Chinese food.

7x7: I understand you like to play pétanque. Have you ever played at the courts in Golden Gate Park?

JP: Well, let me tell you, I am a formidable pétanque player. But I haven’t been to those courts. I don’t want to terrorize people! We drink a lot of wine while we’re playing. I had a sit-down dinner for 50 people at my house three weeks ago for all the people in my pétanque corps. I think we drank 65 bottles of wine. I lost.

7x7: Maybe because you had too much wine?

JP: Not enough!

7x7: Your next book, I understand, will be a 700-recipe compilation of all of your past recipes. Is this your magnum opus?

JP: It’s certainly a nice way to revisit and rewrite old recipes. There will probably be 1000 recipes in the book, but I think my magnum opus was my two-volume The Art of Cooking that I wrote in the ’80s. It took five years to finish and had 3,000 pictures. I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done, and I think it sold the fewest copies.

7x7: What do you hope is your lasting legacy?

JP: My daughter and my granddaughter are my legacy. Cooking is relative. I’m amazed when I meet young chefs and they don’t know any of my mentors. When I’ve been gone five years, I probably won’t be remembered.

7x7: I doubt it, Jacques, but I appreciate your modesty.