What would Jacques Pepin Cook for Obama?
The celebrity chef on his new TV show, playing pétanque in Golden Gate Park and what he'd cook for the Obamas.
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.
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