The Humble Gourmand

The audio version of Jacques Pépin’s book, The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen, is beautifully written by Pépin and read by actor Michel Chevalier (with an animated, French accent perfect for this writing). The unabridged audio (10 CDs) is a true pleasure, great fun, and an engaging listen (much like Pépin himself) for the car or while walking/hiking/commuting. It produced many “driveway moments” — and strange looks from other drivers -– as I burst out laughing while listening in the car.

Pépin tells his life story through gastronomic senses, painting the stories of his life against the backdrop of his culinary education. Pépin was obviously born to cook, and to write. His chapters consistently capture a great sense of time and place, with insights, humor, self-deprecation, and a real joy of life. That English isn’t his first language is just astonishing -– his writing is top-notch and very personal. (Perhaps listening to the audio version smooths over any imperfections and makes them seem oh so French, ooh la la!). After hearing his story, you feel a close kinship with the author. This is a rare quality among memoirs today. We’ve become a bit jaded with the standard approach to such stories, especially with the recent rise of celebrity chef culture (which has grown to new proportions of ego and flash with little basis in experience and content).

Pépin begins with an account of his childhood in rural France just after World War II. It’s wonderfully descriptive and told with a keen eye towards his gastronomic senses — we feel what he felt as a child. His mother’s home and restaurant cooking plus his father’s role as a wine purveyor had an enormous impact upon Pépin in his early years. He came to see food as his preordained destiny. Meager post-war food availability and selection clearly influenced him deeply and he describes his favorite foods of childhood in wonderfully unaffected terms. Catching and cooking fish fresh out of a stream with his brother on a lazy summer day hits all the right notes. We taste the food right along with him.

Apprenticeship and a rise through the restaurant ranks is the core of Pépin’s story. He follows the old French culinary way of apprenticeship, which has become an anachronism today, even in France. There were no shortcuts. Pépin may be one of the last to learn the old-fashioned way, from scratch, through a classic French restaurant kitchen apprenticeship. (In fact, this book is fine companion to the recent film Ratatouille, which has a few things to say about apprenticeship.) Pépin rises to every challenge with gusto and a positive can-do attitude that propels him to the highest ranks of French culinary society — a top-starred restaurant in Paris and then as personal chef to the French president and prime minister. That he achieves all of this in his early twenties is a tribute to his single-mindedness and his culinary and interpersonal talents. He makes friends everywhere.

Then, Pépin chucks it all for a new adventure in the U.S., where he first learns English and helps found and fan the growing U.S. interest in food during the late 1950s and ’60s with the like of Craig Claiborne, James Beard and Julia Child. His take on the early galleys of Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking are fascinating. Pépin knew all the greats of the ’60s culinary movement (and most since), and he offers insights into the contributions and strengths of all these culinary players without the usual back-biting and undercutting often found in memoirs — especially in the culinary world. He captures the New York and Hunter Mountain/Woodstock culinary scene perfectly in a few bold strokes of the pen.

Again and again, Pépin reinvents himself by avoiding the expected route. He doesn’t become President Kennedy’s chef but instead takes on prepared restaurant food in Howard Johnson’s corporate kitchen, of all places. Pépin seems a bit of a latecomer to the TV chef movement; he describes his early tries, which never seem to take off, an obvious disappointment to him. He only begins to teach while recovering from a near-fatal car accident at age 39. Injuries prevent him from returning to grueling and backbreaking tedium as head chef in a gourmet kitchen. Pépin instead adapts his knowledge to ordinary American kitchen cuisine and brings it up a notch or two. The story is both inspiring and a classic telling of a life in cooking, lived through gastronomic senses.

The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen
By Jacques Pepin
Audio read by Michel Chevalier
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (April 2003)
Hardcover $26 / Paperback $15 / Unabridged Audio CDs/Cassettes $37/$32
ISBN-10: 0618331263
ISBN-13: 978-0618331260

1. sewolfe

   July 14 11 a.m. 1

   Can you tell me where in DC I can find this?
   I want to avoid Ebay.
   

   Many thanks, Shelly Wolfe wolfepack4@hotmail.com

2. Alison

   July 16 1:21 p.m. 2

   Shelly, I can't say with certainty, but I'd check with Kramerbooks in Dupont Cirlce or Olsson's in Crystal City/Dupont/Courthouse/Old Town. I'm sure they could order it for you if they don't have it in stock.

3. patrickbrown448

   July 18 10:37 a.m. 3

   Shelly - The best place to buy this is at at Daedelus Books - they have a (great) store near Columbia, MD and online. See details at: http://www.daedalusbooks.com/

   It was on sale there at clearance prices (~$6 for the book and $10 for the CD/cassettes).

   Cheers, Patrick

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