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09/20/2017 07:00 AMWhen Jacques Pépin started cooking with his granddaughter Shorey, she was a babe in arms, no more than two. He’d lift her up and let her stir the pot. Delighted with her contribution, she was all the more likely to eat the meal she had helped prepare.
As she grew older, around 5 or 6, and more involved in the preparation of the meals, Pépin would prop her up on a small box so she could reach the counter.
“I remember that little box I used so she could stand and help me,” says Pépin. “Now she will be almost taller than me.”
The collaboration of Pépin, 81, and his granddaughter Shorey, 13, has resulted in yet another of Pépin’s fabulous and fun-to-read cookbook, A Grandfather’s Lessons; In the Kitchen with Shorey, which was published this month by Rux Martin/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He’s planning a series of appearances in the area to talk about the book and sign it, including one coming up at Madison Beach Hotel with R. J. Julia in Madison, and another at The Perfect Pear in Chester.
For Pépin, of Madison, a world renowned chef and cooking show TV star, this will make more than 25 cookbooks to his name. It is full of recipes, ranging from simple and fun to elegant and bit more complex, but as important as the recipes are observations made by Pépin, who echoes the experience of grandparents everywhere when he reflects upon what he learned while cooking with Shorey.
“I learned that maybe I am more natural with her, more relaxed in the sense that she is my granddaughter,” he says. “I cook with her. I have fun. I don’t have to scold or correct her. That is the role of her mother and father. This is an easier way of having a relationship.”
His experience cooking with Shorey has reinforced a host of other lessons he has learned throughout his life: that if you want someone to be good at something, start them young; that conversations that start in the market and in the kitchen continue at the dinner table; that part of being a good cook is learning how to be frugal and economical; and that it’s important to master both specific techniques and the fine art of having fun in the kitchen.
He’s a Natural
In Pépin’s new book, the reader will learn several different ways to cook fish, including using a water bath and a hot oven, but they’ll also learn new ways to play with Jello, and how to gussy up store-bought rotisserie chickens and pound cakes from the freezer section of the supermarket. The recipes range from something quick—perfect for a single, working mom on a weeknight—to good enough for guests on the weekend.
Just like his granddaughter Shorey, Pépin’s love for food started early in his life, in his case in the kitchen under the watchful eye of his parents, who owned a restaurant in France. He went on to become a personal chef to Charles de Gaulle, to win the Lifetime Achievement Award from the James Beard Foundation, and the Legion of Honor, France’s highest distinction.
This man with so many international honors and acclaim, one who can rightfully claim the title of the most famous cooking teacher in the Western world, seems to be a natural at this grandfather thing. That’s all the more remarkable since he lost both of his grandfathers in World War II before he could get to know them. His grandmothers died when he was young, too. While he may have had no specific role models of grandparents to work from, it’s clear from the book that he wasted no time when it came to being a hands-on grandpa.
Pépin always felt that for a child coming home from school, “the best place to sit is in the kitchen. There is the voice of your mother and your father. There is the clang of the equipment. Those things stay with you the rest of your life.”
He remembers spending time with his daughter, Claudine, when she was young, taking her to the garden, showing her different kind of herbs.
“It’s a question of making it part of your everyday life,” he says. “So that they get used to it young.
“And the fact is, frankly, that even with turning 82 years old, I can have a conversation with a teenager now. It’s another world, I’ll tell you.”
Waste Not, Want Not
Of course, you wouldn’t start by giving a young child responsibility for a very hot stove or a very sharp knife.
“You go slowly, from one year to another. You don’t give her a chef’s knife right away. Maybe you give her a vegetable peeler. Have her clean up the salad. Or salt the beans. You can show her how to set the table properly,” he says. “And she always enjoyed doing table manners with me. She was always questioning me. ‘Sit up straight!’ ‘Don’t put your elbows on the table!’ ‘Don’t chew with your mouth full.’”
It is a measure of Pépin’s genius—a small measure, yes, but genius nonetheless—that he and her parents not only managed to school her in the basics of table manners, but that he then turned it into a game where she would catch him out.
“She got very quick with that,” he says.
He took her to market—both the farmer’s markets and the supermarket—and to farms nearby to pick out eggs.
“I would ask her, ‘Smell this tomato, smell this, smell that,’ make her involved,” he says.
And, while the cooking was important, the time around the table was even more so.
“It is a bit of the glue that can keep a family together, in my opinion,” he says. “Since Claudine was very small, just about every night—and I’ve been married for 51 years—we spend an hour at the table and recap the day. Otherwise, you will never have anything in common with a kid.”
He says he’s also worked hard to make sure Shorey understands the value of being economical in the kitchen.
“That is so important for me, maybe because I was born in the Second World War. I am very miserly in the kitchen. I cannot throw out a piece of bread,” he says.
It’s a lesson he provides in the book as well, on page 64 and 65, “A Lesson on Leftover Bread.”
“In America, we waste so much stuff. I look in the refrigerators of people. There is so much stuff, what do you with all of it? It goes against my grain. My mother had a restaurant, and nothing was thrown out,” he says. “You go into West Africa, you go to China. There is no place in the world where people throw food away, or waste it the way we do here.”
Some Favorites
As for the recipes in the book, he’s hard pressed to name a favorite. But then he thinks a bit, and mentions the Curly Dog with Pickle Relish. When he was a young man, Pépin used to work at the Howard Johnson Commissary in Queens Village. Then, as now, he liked to present food in unconventional ways. He cuts this hot dog up so it curls when it cooks, then he pops a bit of homemade pickle relish (amped up with Sriracha and sugar) in the middle, and serves it on a half hamburger bun.
“It’s one of those recipes that is more fun than anything else,” he says.
There is another, for raspberry cake.
“Shorey likes to do this for her mother,” he says. “I take a nice pound cake that I got at the market, trim it all around. Then you put the trimmings in the food processor to make crumbs. And spread some jam. Who doesn’t like pound cake and jam? It looks good, and Shorey can do this.”
Yet another recipe for Roast Chicken on Garlicky Salad again makes great use of supermarket staples: a rotisserie chicken, hydroponic Boston lettuce, served with a garnish of scallions, shallots, and garlic sautéed in extra-virgin olive oil dolloped over the top. It’s easy enough for a weeknight and good enough for a casual get-together with friends. It takes about 20 minutes to pull it all together.
He says when he was in the kitchen with Shorey, he really wanted to teach her something that was simple, but not simplistic.
“It’s not like I’m looking down with her with these dishes. They are simple, and very good,” he says. “These are recipes that I am happy to have for dinner at any time.”
Jacques Pépin will be talking about his new book and signing it on Sunday, Sept. 24 at Madison Beach Hotel in Madison with R. J. Julia Booksellers; on Saturday, Sept. 30 at La Grua Center in Stonington; on Sunday, Oct. 1 at the Perfect Pear in Chester; on Saturday, Nov. 4 at Stew Leonard in Norwalk; and on Sunday, Nov. 12 at the Holiday Market for High Hopes Therapeutic Riding in Old Lyme. Contact the individual venues for information about times, and signing up. Never one to slow down, Pépin is also working on another book due out in October, My Menus: Remembering Meals with Friends and Family, which will showcase his beautifully illustrated menus. To find out more about his books, and his other adventures, visit www.surlatable.com and search for “Pépin,” or visit jacquesPépinart.com.