Jacques Pépin at MAD5: "Techniques of the Past for the Future"

Good morning!

(Applause)

Good morning, everyone!

(Audience) Good morning!

Claudine and I are delighted
to be with you this morning

to be the first one.

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

that was in 1949.

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

I was already in that business.

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

and 12 of them owned by women,

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

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

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

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

my mother had that little restaurant

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

would walk with my mother to the market,

the St. Antoine market
along the Saône river,

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

Buying a case of mushrooms
which was getting dark,

maybe for a third of the price or less.

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

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

She did not have
a refrigerator at that time.

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

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

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

and that she has to use it that day.

And the day after,
we start all over again.

Everything was organic,
everything was local.

The word organic did not really exist,

chemical fertilizers
did not exist either,

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

so everything was, local and organic.

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

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

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

you have to be willing,

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

We learn through a type of osmosis.

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

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

That was about the end
of the apprenticeship.

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

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

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

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

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

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

My name was [Hugues] at the time,

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

He said, "You start tomorrow".

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

that you'll learn in the kitchen.

To be first a craftman.

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

something that you can show --

It's easier to show --

than to explain in words --

You can do that to chocolate as well --

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

and we used to --

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

and now you can charge 20 bucks for it --

(Laughter)

Put that in water that's cold --

(Applause)

Thank you, Titine.

For me, first you have to be a craftsman.

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

that is very important.

Just like --

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

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

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

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

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

So that makes you a chef? Not really.

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

You have to first know your trade,

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

first, you know your trade.

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

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

When you learn something
you learn it a certain way

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

and you do it your way, eventually.

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