As Good As it Gets

When it comes to the culinary world, one of the biggest legends in the industry is Chef Jacques Pepin.

He is just awesome.

With over 60 years of cooking experience, various shows on TV, including one with Julia Child in the late 1990's, Jacques has also published many books. His most notables being La Technique and La Methode. For many years, these have served as the bible to French cooking. And they still do. If you have ever heard Tom Colicchio talk about how he got into cooking, it was by studying these books and self teaching himself the classic techniques of the French. In fact, in the latest season of Top Chef, Jacques appeared with several other Master Chefs on a panel for the top 5 contestants to cook them a "last meal" of the Chefs choice. Carla was assigned to cook Jacques his last meal request of squab and peas, which she did incredibly well.


As the Dean of Special Programs at school, we are often very lucky to have him come in and give a demo. Today he gave a class on basic techniques. Basically, he covered all the fundamentals we have learned over the past 2 months, but to see it from the master himself was just amazing. He literally filleted and skinned a fish in 4 strokes of the knife, and so fast that if you blinked you probably missed it. And deboning a whole chicken? Pretty close to a minute or so, and that was with stopping to explain some steps to us.

Like a dork, I brought in my book I had of his and asked him to sign it.





Life is good.