WEBVTT

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Good morning!

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(Applause)

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Good morning, everyone!

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(Audience) Good morning!

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Claudine and I are delighted 
to be with you this morning

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to be the first one.

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I left home when I was 13
to go to apprenticeship,

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that was in 1949.

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Actually, home was the restaurant
where my mother was the chef,

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I was already in that business.

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In fact, there was 12 restaurants
through the years in my family

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and 12 of them owned by women,

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I'm the first male to enter 
that business in my family.

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I went into apprenticeship from Lyon,
where my mother had her little restaurant

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to Bourg-en-Bresse, where 
I was born a few miles away.

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Prior to that, when 
we were about 8-9 years old,

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my mother had that little restaurant

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so, my brother and I,
before going to school,

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would walk with my mother to the market,

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the St. Antoine market
along the Saône river,

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and she would walk the market one way, 
about 1/2 a mile, and buy on her way back.

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Buying a case of mushrooms 
which was getting dark,

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maybe for a third of the price or less.

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We carried, of course, 
we didn't have a car at the time.

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She'd get home and start doing 
her vegetables, peeling for the day.

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She did not have 
a refrigerator at that time.

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She had an ice box, that is
a block of ice into a little cabinet,

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so she'd have chicken of the day, meat,

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fish, usually, whiting or mackerel 
or skate -- inexpensive fish,

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and that she has to use it that day.

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And the day after, 
we start all over again.

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Everything was organic, 
everything was local.

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The word organic did not really exist,

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chemical fertilizers 
did not exist either,

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or fungicides, insecticides, pesticides,
all that stuff did not exist,

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so everything was, local and organic.

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I went into apprenticeship, 
I was 13 years old and, at that time,

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it was very structured,
well, still is to certain extend,

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you got to be there on time,
you got to be clean,

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you have to be willing,

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it's discipline, it's structure,
that's the way a kitchen can work.

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We learn through a type of osmosis.

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The chef never really explained anything, 
he'd just say, "Do that".

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And if you say, "Why?", and 
he'd say, "Because I just told you".

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That was about the end 
of the apprenticeship.

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Probably, just as good 
for someone 13-14 years old.

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So, we worked, repeating, and repeating,
and repeating those techniques ad nauseam,

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we were not allowed
to go to the stove for a year.

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So, during that year,
I plucked a lot of chicken,

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eviscerated a lot of chicken, 
scaled fish, chopped parsley,

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all of that type of things,
and then the chef called me --

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My name was "you" at the time,

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then by the time I went to the stove
they called me Jacques, so I got the name.

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He said, "You start tomorrow".

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"I start tomorrow?"
I didn't know how to do it,

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but when I went to the stove,
I knew how to do it.

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It was through that type of osmosis,
things that you show,

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I've got a book called, "La technique",
that I published in 1975

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so, it's 40-year old, and I don't cook
the way I did 40 years ago.

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But the way I did an egg white, 
or sharpen a knife, or bone out a chicken,

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to [inaudible]... it is that kind 
of permanence, that kind of continuity

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that you'll learn in the kitchen.

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To be first a craftman.

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And very often it's very difficult 
to explain in words

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something that you can show --

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It's easier to show --

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than to explain in words --

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You can do that to chocolate as well --

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You'd do that at exactly 
the right temperature --

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and we used to --

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put the butter in
a little container and that on top,

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and now you can charge 20 bucks for it --

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(Laughter)

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Put that in water that's cold --

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(Applause)

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Thank you, Titine.

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For me, first you have to be a craftsman.

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You have to be a craftsman, and 
it's that repeat, and repeat, and repeat,

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that is very important.

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Just like --

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you spend a 1-2 years
in a studio in art school

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and learn the law of perspective
-- it is perfectly fine,

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and you learn how to mix 
yellow and blue to make green,

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what to do with your sand, 
with your spatula, with the brush --

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then you can come out and 
do one painting after another.

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So that makes you a chef? Not really.

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But you're by then, a good craftsman,
and that's very important.

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You have to first know your trade,

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whether you are a shoemaker,
or a cabinet maker, like my father,

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first, you know your trade.

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So, those things that we boned out
I learned as a child --

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Then, I learned this from...
I don't remember where I learn that but

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when you learn something 
you learn it a certain way

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and after a while, you don't remember 
where it comes from,

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and you do it your way, eventually.

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To do a type of lollipop like that 
as we used to do that you --

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So, those techniques, as I said,
first make you a craftsman,

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and if you are a good craftsman
then you can run a restaurant.

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There are about 
20,000 restaurants in New York

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and 100 are well known, maybe 200, 
maybe 300, maybe 400 even,

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but what happen to the 19,500
is that they are run by artisans,

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people who know how to work properly,

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and this is the only way if you become,
in my opinion, a good craftsman,

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if you have that type of knowledge
then you can express yourself.

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This is half of yourself, 
the other half has to do with talent.

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If you happen to have talent like,
if you have taste, a bit of a vision,

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if you have a little bit of creativity,

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then you can express yourself,

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you now have the means
to express yourself,

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if you've gone through those techniques.

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You have to repeat those techniques,
as I said, long enough

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so you can afford to forget it after.

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Here we are, 
half of this, now the filet --

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(Claudine) If you have any questions
you should shout them out,

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it's a good opportunity.

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There's going to be a test.

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(Laughter)

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(Jacques) This way --

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There's my carcass.

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Now, [inaudible] filet,
you remove it here --

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This one here --

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So, you free your hand
by learning those techniques

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and as I said, you can think in term 
of texture and other things

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because, as I said, you free your hand
by repeating and repeating.

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Now, this is one part of yourself,

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half of yourself is there, 
it's the craftsman,

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and the other part of yourself

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will depend on whether 
you have talent or not,

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and even if you have 
a little bit of talent, not too much,

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you can still run a little restaurant
by being a good technician.

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If you have a lot of talent,
then you can take it further,

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but not all the chefs are René Redzepi,
or David Chang, or José Andrés --

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Here we are --

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(Applause)

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(Jacques) At that point 
you really don't want to cut the bone

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because the skin will shrink 
all over the place so, we break it.

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And you know, the interesting part,
if you carve in the dining room,

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or if you do a quail 
or a pheasant or a goose,

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the morphology is the same.

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If you cut a chicken 
in pieces to do a skew,

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you cut exactly in the sample place,
at the shoulder joint, at the hip joint.

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Okay.

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Now, you have to be very proud 
of what you're doing

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but you also have to be humble
to a certain extend

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because there's always someone

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who can think with 
more creativity than you,

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or who can think harder than you do.

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We're all limited 
by the extent of our taste

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and they are different,

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and sometimes you have a food critic
who really doesn't know how to cook

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but maybe can taste better than you do.

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We follow on that 
and sometimes it's difficult to take

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but that's the way it is.

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For me, a young chef should work
with a good chef, in a good place,

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and at that point your [inaudible] is 
to try to visualize what that chef does,

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if he or she works with you
then you try to see --

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Yeah, where there's no bones --

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a little bit here --

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you try to see the food through
his or her sense of aesthetic,

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their sense of taste,

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and even if it doesn't coincide with you,

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most of the time

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it won't coincide with your sense of taste
or your sense of aesthetic,

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but it doesn't really matter 
at that point,

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you have to look at it through that,

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and you do it for a year or two,

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then you work with another chef
for a year or two,

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and again looking at things
from a different point of view,

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different sense of aesthetic,

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and then maybe with a third one
a few more times,

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then at some point 
you're going to give it back.

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You're going to give it back,

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and now you're going to filter it
through your sense of taste,

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through your sense of aesthetic,

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that's how it works

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because ultimately, at some point,
you cannot escape yourself,

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you are who you are, and that's the way
how you are going to do it.

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It's always a bit of a paradox for me

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because I work with young chefs
at Boston University

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and everyone wants to do 
something special and different.

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I do a class which I call a perfect meal,

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which is a roast chicken,
a bol of potatoes and a salad.

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It used to be this way --

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they all go to the stove
to do the same type of things

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and I say, "Don't try to blew my mind
because I know that I have 12 people here

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and I'm going to have 
12 different chicken."

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That's the way it is so --

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you don't really have to 
torture yourself to be different,

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you are different,

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there's no way that you can do

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exactly the same thing
than the person next to you.

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This is a good beef stuffing but --

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just to give you an idea.

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Okay, Titine --

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We have our galantine,
that is if we poach it,

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and a