Jacques Pepin Popular Books

Jacques Pepin Biography & Facts

Jacques Pépin (French pronunciation: [ʒak pepɛ̃]; born December 18, 1935) is a French chef, author, culinary educator, television personality, and artist. After having been the personal chef of French President Charles de Gaulle, he moved to the US in 1959 and after working in New York's top French restaurants, refused the same job with President John F. Kennedy in the White House and instead took a culinary development job with Howard Johnson's. During his career, he has served in numerous prestigious restaurants, first, in Paris, and then in America. He has appeared on American television and has written for The New York Times, Food & Wine and other publications. He has authored more than 30 cookbooks, some of which have become best sellers. Pépin was a longtime friend of the American chef Julia Child, and their 1999 PBS series Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home won a Daytime Emmy Award. He also holds a BA and a MA from Columbia University in French literature. He has been honored with 24 James Beard Foundation Awards, five honorary doctoral degrees, the American Public Television's lifetime achievement award, the Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2019 and the Légion d'honneur, France's highest order of merit, in 2004. Since 1989, Pépin has taught in the Culinary Arts Program at Boston University and served as dean of special programs at the International Culinary Center in New York City. In 2016, with his daughter, Claudine Pépin and his son-in-law, Rollie Wesen, Pépin created the Jacques Pépin Foundation to support culinary education for adults with barriers to employment. He has lived in Connecticut since 1975. Early years Pépin was born in 1935 in Bourg-en-Bresse, France. Pépin was the second of three sons born to Jeannette and Jean-Victor Pépin. After World War II, his parents opened a restaurant called Le Pélican, where Pépin worked as a child, and later became known for his love for food. At the age of thirteen, he started his apprenticeship at Le Grand Hôtel de l'Europe in Bourg-en-Bresse. At age sixteen, he went on to work in Paris, training under Lucien Diat at the Plaza Athénée. From 1956 to 1958, during his military service, Pépin was recognized for his culinary training and skill and was ordered to work in the Office of the Treasury, where he met his long-time cooking partner, Jean-Claude Szurdak, and eventually became the personal chef to three French heads of state, including Charles de Gaulle. In 1959, Pépin went to the United States to work at the restaurant Le Pavillon. Wanting to complete his education, he enrolled in English for foreign students, a GED equivalent and eventually General Studies classes toward a Bachelor of Arts degree at Columbia University. Soon after his arrival, The New York Times's food editor Craig Claiborne introduced Pépin to James Beard and Helen McCully. McCully introduced Pépin to Julia Child, who became a lifelong friend and collaborator. In 1961, after Pépin had declined an offer from John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy to serve as chef at the White House, Howard Johnson, a regular Le Pavillon customer, hired him to work alongside fellow Frenchman Pierre Franey to develop food lines for his chain of Howard Johnson's restaurants, where Pépin served as the director of research and development for a decade. In 1970, Pépin earned his Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University's School of General Studies, and in 1972, his Masters of Arts in French literature from the Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Pépin entered into a doctoral program at Columbia, but his proposed thesis on French food in literature was rejected for being "too frivolous for serious academic pursuit" (Pépin, para. 3). In 1970, Pépin opened a specialty soup restaurant and lunch counter on Manhattan's 5th Avenue called La Potagerie, and began to enjoy popular success with appearances on talk shows such as What's My Line? and To Tell the Truth. Pépin's career as a restaurant chef ended abruptly with a near fatal car accident in 1974. Middle career Beginning in the mid-1970s, Pépin reinvented himself as an educator, author and eventually a television personality. Pépin worked as a consultant for restaurateur Joe Baum on his Windows on the World project, and offered classes at small cooking schools and cookware shops around the United States. In 1976, Pépin authored his cookbook La Technique, followed by La Methode in 1979. The use of thousands of photographs, illustrating the techniques and methods required to achieve certain culinary results, provided a window into the art of cooking. The books are credited by chef Tom Colicchio and others as helping them to learn the craft of cooking. In 1982, along with Alain Sailhac and André Soltner, Pépin was invited by Dorothy Cann Hamilton to become one of the deans at the newly formed culinary school, the French Culinary Institute, in New York City, now known as the International Culinary Center (ICC). Also in 1982, he filmed his first television series, with PBS local station WJCT-TV in Jacksonville, Florida, and published a companion cookbook entitled Everyday Cooking with Jacques Pépin. Through the 1980s and into the 1990s, Pépin was published as a columnist for The New York Times, and a guest author for Gourmet, Food & Wine and many others. He authored several more cookbooks, including The Art of Cooking, volumes 1 and 2, and The Short-Cut Cook. In 1989, Pépin partnered with Julia Child and Rebecca Alssid to create a culinary certificate program within the Metropolitan College at Boston University (BU). This effort eventually led to the first, and still one of the few, Master's degrees in Gastronomy. Pépin's 1991 television series Today’s Gourmet, filmed at KQED studios in San Francisco was created from recipes from several books, brought together in the companion cookbook Jacques Pépin's Table. In 1994 and 1996, Pepin and Julia Child appeared in 90 minute PBS specials, Cooking In Concert and More Cooking In Concert, filmed live before a Boston audience as part of the PBS annual fund drives for those years. In 1996, Pépin introduced his then 27-year-old daughter Claudine, in three television series and companion books: Cooking with Claudine, Encore with Claudine and Jacques Pépin Celebrates. The father to daughter relationship, combined with an instructor to culinary novice relationship, demonstrated Pépin's work as a chef and teacher. Each of the three series earned the pair James Beard Foundation Awards. In 1999, Pépin teamed up with Julia Child for the series and companion book Jacques and Julia Cooking at Home. The TV series, produced by Susie Heller, won a Daytime Emmy Award and a James Beard Foundation Award. In 2003, Pépin published his autobiography, The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen. Later career In the 21st century, Pépin continues to cook, write, publish, film for television, paint and take on new projects. Throughout his career, he has toured and taught on crui.... Discover the Jacques Pepin popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Jacques Pepin books.