Jacques Pépin’s Cookbook Teaches You How to Save Money, Time and Effort

Well, my wife passed in December 2020, so that changed my life. For 54 years, I sat down with my wife and we shared a bottle of wine at dinner every day. When you eat by yourself, it’s totally different. Before that, when you are a younger chef, you tend to add to the plate — more and more. And you get to be a certain age, and, of course, your metabolism changes, everything changes. And now if I have a good tomato out of the garden, I add a bit of salt on top and olive oil, and that’s it. I cut out embellishment to get closer to the heart of the food and simplicity.

What inspired you to write this latest book in the Cooking My Way series?

Courtesy Harvest Books

Cook With Jacques

Pépin shared three recipes from Cooking My Way for AARP members to try:

Cauliflower and Crumbs

Cook the cauliflower ahead of time and add in homemade breadcrumbs for a tasty crunch.

Herb-Stuffed Zucchini Boats

This can be served cold or hot, and you can sharpen the flavor by garnishing with fresh herbs just before serving.

Apple-Pear Brown Betty

Try this easy dessert you can make in mere minutes.

Well, each time I do a book, [the publishers] already asked me, “What do you think you can do for the next book?” So here I have a book coming out next year and it’s 100 recipes, but it also has 100 paintings. I really wanted to do more of a book of painting, and they said, “OK, can we have recipes with painting?” That would be one of the reasons that I did it.

Cooking economically doesn’t mean less delicious meals, does it?

No, no. Cooking economically has nothing to do with the quality of the food. In a professional kitchen, it’s like a ballet. Everything is used in a certain way and nothing goes to waste. It’s beautiful to look at. Sometimes, I’ve seen people create a good dish, but there are enough leftovers for a week, and it’s like a disaster. This is not great cooking for me.

You write in the book’s introduction that it’s in your nature to be thrifty. Can you elaborate?

I was raised during the Second World War. My mother would never have thrown [out] a piece of bread. If my father threw a piece of bread out, he kissed it first and then he threw it to the chickens. Now, for example, I have peas in the summer, but the shell of the peas I cook with potato to do a soup. I put an empty milk carton in front of me when I do a lot of cooking. I put the stem of parsley in there, the juice of a tomato or the trimming of carrot … all of that goes into the freezer. Next time I do a stock, I grab one of those cartons and I have all the garnish for the stock.

In the book you talk a bit about leftovers. How can leftovers be an asset?

Very often I do leftovers on purpose. If I cook beans, for example, it’s going to take an hour and a half, so I don’t cook for my recipe. I cook for three or four [portions], divide it into containers and freeze it. Frozen food can be excellent. It’s just as nutritious as fresh. For me, the word leftover doesn’t exist as a negative term. For example, if I cook a big fish for a party, whatever I have left over, I pick off the bone and I have a bunch of fish left over. The day after I may do that with some pasta. I maybe even put it in a pan to do a tart with a custard. That may be better than the original.

The book is beautifully peppered with your paintings. How does painting add to your life?

This is certainly an essential part of my life, but even more now than it has ever been. It completes me in some ways. I get into a painting, and the time goes by — two, three hours, and I don’t realize it. And very often I don’t know exactly what I’m going to start with, but eventually, usually, the painting kind of takes a whole day. I kind of react to it. I put a color here, I put a shape there because it feels good without trying to validate it in some way. It has a similarity with cooking.

You had a really beautiful friendship with Julia Child, who passed away in 2004. Can you share a favorite memory of her?

[I thought] of her last Sunday [because] we [had] a big party at the Madison Beach Hotel where I live in Madison, Connecticut. It was for the Julia Child Foundation and the Jacques Pépin Foundation to raise money for the Smithsonian Institute. ... We talked about her a great deal that night. I knew Julia for basically half a century because I met her in 1960 and we were friends for all of those years. Often people say, “Oh, how was she in normal life?” She was exactly the same way she was on television. I don’t think that there was anything fake about her. We cooked a lot together, we drank a lot of wine together, and we argued a lot.

You started your foundation in 2016. Why is helping the next generation of chefs so important to you?

It’s not only the next generation of chefs. We work with a community kitchen to teach people who have been a bit disenfranchised by life, like people who come out of jail, homeless people and former drug addicts so that they could reintegrate into the workforce. We need people like this. We can train someone in six weeks to peel onions, wash salad, sharpen a knife and poach an egg. If that person likes it, they stay there, and maybe five years later, they are the chef in that restaurant. So you can redo your life and get some pride in what you’re doing so it’s a good thing.

You have so much energy. How do you stay fit and healthy? What are your habits?

I drink a lot of wine. I have a doctor who told me that I should drink a glass of wine a day, but fortunately I have five doctors.