Category — Chef Interviews

We know Jacques Pepin — or as I can’t help calling him, The Great Monsieur Pepin — as a master culinary technician, the cookbook author and public television personality who taught millions of American home cooks and scores of professional chefs how to sharpen a knife, break an egg and, just for fun, remove the bones from a whole chicken (a trick he performs in less than a minute)

But there’s another story, one that almost never gets told. It’s about how he — and his food — became American. Please check out this piece at NPR.org.

Courtesy Clarkson Potter

Fall is cookbook season (bet you didn’t know that, right?) the time when the floor in my office becomes completely obscured by gigantic tomes meant to prepare you for cold winter nights around the table. This year’s crop featured a notable windfall by celebrity chefs. We’re talking Mario Batali, Jamie Oliver, John Besh, Todd English, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Heston Blumenthal and…wait for it….Ferran Adria. But even Adria, the king of molecular gastronomy, is delving into comfort food, homey meals of macaroni and cheese, buttermilk pancakes and Sunday roasts. So you think you can cook? Please check out my story if you want to prove you got the goods.

Whether you’ve got a meatball fiend, an armchair traveler, a rock n’ roll groupie or a plain old celebrity chef stalker on your gift list, cookbook publishers have provided. Please check out my story for some ideas about what to get the cook on your list.