Home Cooking with Jacques Pepin and Klancy Miller

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 August 2021

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For generations of cooks, Jacques Pépin has been the master. Early in his career he cooked for eminences like Charles DeGaulle, and was offered a job at the White House. But after a serious car accident ended his time in restaurants, Pépin remade a new career as a teacher, cookbook author, chef, and broadcaster. On television—at first alongside his friend Julia Child—he brought the gospel of French cooking into so many American homes, at a time when there was no other fine cuisine. At eighty-five, he is still active on Facebook Live, with a notably humble variety of use-what-you-got cooking that’s well suited to the pandemic era. Pépin consented to a one-on-one lesson with David Remnick, a cooking novice, and together they tackled the subtle art of making a crêpe. Plus, Klancy Miller, the author of “Cooking Solo,” talks with the food correspondent Helen Rosner about her underlying philosophy: you should treat yourself as well as you would treat anyone else.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:10.9	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I'm in my kitchen, standing at the stove
0:17.0	with a laptop on the counter. And meanwhile, as the pan heats up, I'm zooming into another
0:22.4	kitchen in Connecticut, where Jacques-Pepin is perched on a chair. He's 85 and looks 20 years younger.
0:30.9	He came to prominence as a chef in the 1960s after years of cooking and regimented French kitchens.
0:37.3	He cooked for Charles de Gaulle and other
0:39.2	French leaders, and he was offered a job at the White House too. But starting in the 1970s,
0:45.8	Papin willed a new career into being, teaching, publishing books, and broadcasting. He trained
0:52.8	generations of chefs, and on television, first alongside
0:56.8	Julia Child, he brought the gospel into many, many American homes. So it's a little unnerving,
1:04.3	uncanny, looking at Jacques Pepin because I've seen him so many times in this kitchen,
1:08.6	but now he's looking back at me, and the expression in
1:12.1	his hazel eyes is he's concerned because he's already sized up my skills at the stove.
1:19.1	So I have to tell you I'm nervous as hell. It's like getting basketball lessons from LeBron James.
1:25.5	I don't know what to tell you.
1:27.4	No. This is not tell you. No.
1:28.3	This is not brand surgery.
1:31.5	It's all right.
1:33.2	Are you sure?
1:34.5	Are you sure?
1:35.7	Yes.
1:36.4	I'm only halfway decent at scrambled eggs.
	...

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