Legendary Chef Jacques Pépin — The Pursuit of Mastery, Meeting Julia Child, and More
Tim Ferriss visits chef Jacques Pépin and his daughter Claudine to talk about his path from French apprentice to Howard Johnson and Julia Child, and why he teaches technique over recipes.
The gist
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Pépin says he focuses on technique rather than whole recipes, like poaching an egg or peeling a carrot, since techniques carry across any cuisine.
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Pépin's fridge soup turns wilted salad and old onions into soup with water and salt, finished with pasta, rice, or nothing.
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Pépin advises following a recipe exactly as written at least twice to learn the target taste, then improvising to reach it faster or better.
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Ferriss describes Per Se's kitchen as silent like a library, and praises Thomas Keller's simple, high-heat staff-meal roast chicken.
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The Jacques Pépin Foundation, run by his son-in-law, teaches kitchen skills to former inmates and recovering addicts and offers hundreds of hours of free lessons.
"What my wife called fridge soup is probably one of the best examples. I open the refrigerator and I have wilted salad and onion that's been there for weeks. We take all of that together with water, salt, put it in a pot to make a soup... and finish with some pasta in it or ric..."
▶ Play at 9:01"After that you have the taste in your mouth. So you want to reach that taste. If you can reach it in a better way, faster way, that's okay... I've seen people cooking with a recipe that they never follow at all. And I don't agree with that. At least once or twice, do it accord..."
▶ Play at 34:26
Tim Ferriss uses it
"I remember the first and only time I've been to Per Se, I did a tour of the kitchen... and it was, as you said, dead silent. It's like a library... Everything was very precise. It was very quiet, like you said, a quiet ballet. Food was of course impeccable."
▶ Play at 45:08
Tim Ferriss uses it
"One of my favorite ways to cook roasted chicken came from not any dish prepared in his restaurant. Well, it was prepared, but it was for staff meals. Before service, just a super simple high temperature way of cooking roast chicken. I was like, man, that's so simple. So few mo..."
▶ Play at 49:32
Tim Ferriss recommends it
"Certainly people should check out jp.foundation. I'll put that in the show notes at tim.blog/podcast as well."
▶ Play at 57:42What they recommend · 5 picks
"After that you have the taste in your mouth. So you want to reach that taste. If you can reach it in a better way, faster way, that's okay... I've seen people cooking with a rec..."
"One of my favorite ways to cook roasted chicken came from not any dish prepared in his restaurant. Well, it was prepared, but it was for staff meals. Before service, just a supe..."
"Certainly people should check out jp.foundation. I'll put that in the show notes at tim.blog/podcast as well."
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See what they all swear by Or pick your own peopleTim Ferriss
3 picks · host
"One of my favorite ways to cook roasted chicken came from not any dish prepared in his restaurant. Well, it was prepared, but it was for staff meals. Before service, just a supe..."
"Certainly people should check out jp.foundation. I'll put that in the show notes at tim.blog/podcast as well."
"I remember the first and only time I've been to Per Se, I did a tour of the kitchen... and it was, as you said, dead silent. It's like a library... Everything was very precise. ..."
Jacques Pépin
2 picks · guest
"After that you have the taste in your mouth. So you want to reach that taste. If you can reach it in a better way, faster way, that's okay... I've seen people cooking with a rec..."
"What my wife called fridge soup is probably one of the best examples. I open the refrigerator and I have wilted salad and onion that's been there for weeks. We take all of that ..."
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