Jacques Pepin Cooks Beef Tongue With Horseradish Sauce

Pepin has recently announced his donation of the card from that long-ago meal when he dined with Julia Child at her dwelling shortly before her kitchen was dismantled and delivered to the Smithsonian Institution. National Museum of American History

The food world these days often seems as crazily polarized as so much else in our lives: You lot're either a no-gluten, anti-carb, sustainable-everything consumer of cage-costless eggs and nitrate-gratuitous bacon or else you're a devotee of the drive-through lane, the freezer example and the Crock-Pot.

Although it tin seem hard to notice a heart ground, cooks and eaters everywhere can find an island of sanity in the person of master chef Jacques Pépin, who this yr celebrates his 80th birthday with the publication of a new cookbook, Centre & Soul in the Kitchen.

Pépin has cooked, tasted and nibbled his style through more than than two dozen cookbooks and innumerable television shows, and among the most honey was "Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home" with the indomitable Madame Child. He created countless dishes in Julia'south iconic kitchen, whose delightfully anachronistic pegboards and cute copper pots are now on brandish at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

The duo'due south nonstop lite-hearted bantering became a storied part of their collaboration. Exist it a argue about if the proper manner to begin cooking a chicken dish—wash the bird or not. Or whether or non to clasp water out of spinach. These small disagreements became their signature. (For the record, Julia firmly insisted that Jacques' eddy-and-squeeze spinach method resulted in a "slight bitterness.")

"People always talked about the way Julia and I would argue on the show," Pépin recalls. "She liked white pepper; I liked black pepper. I liked kosher salt, she didn't. But actually, you know, these were pocket-sized differences, only for fun. We did concur on what's of import: the family sharing a recipe, the value of the best possible ingredients, the accent on sense of taste more than than presentation."

Because of his long association with Julia, it is but fitting that Pépin is existence honored with the first-ever Julia Child Award, to be presented to him at the American History Museum past world-renowned chef Daniel Boulud at a gala dinner on October 22.

Tanya Wenman Steel, director of the award, explains that once a short listing of possible honorees was assembled, it apace coalesced effectually him. "He exemplifies all the award's criteria: educator, mentor, bridge-architect, tremendous integrity, cracking communicator. He has all of the wonderful qualities that Julia had."

In Eye & Soul, likely the valedictory to his long career, the chef shows that he can go both means: French and global, traditional and modern. The cookbook presents simple, easy-to-understand recipes for such classics as salmon rillettes, duck liver mousse, and cheese gougères, only these hallmarks of French cuisine mix it upwardly with tostadas and tortillas lifted from the Mexican pantry and a chicken version of pho, the wonderfully aromatic soup from Vietnam.

And although Pépin may have strong feelings about which kind of pepper is best or the importance of choosing a expert pocketknife, brand no mistake about it: He is no food snob. And what's more, he is funny! In Heart & Soul, he writes of small fish such as sardines and anchovies, "Much is made of the omega-3 health benefits of eating oily fish. I'thou a cook, non a medico. I consume them because I similar them, and if they happen to be good for me, all the better."

Although he has now lived for so many years in the United States that he volition tell y'all that he's from Connecticut, non from France, he still retains the French reverence for certain culinary traditions, among them foraging. (Even today, every pocket-size-town French pharmacist will propose mushroom foragers about whether their specimens are poisonous or not.) Pépin used to run regularly in the forest well-nigh his abode, and although he no longer does that quite as much, he still goes out in the fall and collects nature's bounty–rosehips to brand jelly, dandelion greens for salad.

"This year, I got 15 to 20 pounds of mushrooms. I use them for all kinds of things: stews, soups, sautéed with herbs. I put a whole bunch in the freezer. I clean them, put them in the oven then freeze them with their liquid." Many of them go into the stuffing for his turkey at Thanksgiving, that most American of holidays.

Another French passion he has retained throughout his New World life is the love for organ meats. Young chefs in contempo years take brought back a renaissance in and so-chosen "nose-to-tail" eating, in which all parts of an animal grace the table, simply Pépin never lost his enthusiasm for tripe, tongue and kidney. "Years ago, we fabricated these things at home," he says. "But we didn't think they were for restaurants, at least non in America." The new volume includes non i but two tongue recipes—one for a cold beefiness tongue with ravigote sauce and the other for veal natural language.

Simply if nose-to-tail cuisine is non appealing, fear non—Pépin volition never look down his nose at you. He has nothing but praise for real-life domicile cooks. "At that place is nil more artistic than feeding a family unit of vi every night," he maintains. "When yous're under a time constraint, to do it in an hour, that is really an achievement. And then to diversify the bill of fare, to practise it under a low budget—that is true creativity."

Chef Daniel Boulud, who is creating a card to honor Pépin at the honor dinner, remembers that when he himself came to the U.Due south. in the early 1980s, Pépin was already here. "He was such a figure of French cuisine in this state," Boulud says. "He was really the reference for French cuisine—for the American novice, fifty-fifty for professionals. He really wanted to brand sure that people understood first and foremost."

Information technology was this ability to impart his cognition that Pépin shared with Julia Child. "Jacques always enjoyed communication—teaching, doing TV shows, cooking, inspiring. And e'er in a very French way. Jacques is so French when you put him in the kitchen. Yet he is ever interested in everything, from around the globe."

Over the years, Pépin has added ingredients and recipes from around the world to his repertoire—hoisin sauce and the now-ubiquitous Asian sriracha sauce, sushi and Argentinian chimichurri sauce. He's a fan of Wondra flour from the good onetime American supermarket and is non above picking up cooking tips from food TV star Rachael Ray (she didn't pare the potatoes in a dish they were making together, and he decided to get with her method in future versions of the recipe).

Merely ask him about his final dinner in Julia'south kitchen and he seems to call back information technology every bit if it were yesterday.

A few weeks before the Smithsonian's curators came to pack up the kitchen and its contents to be crated and sent to Washington, D.C., a fundraising dinner for xv lucky souls was held at Julia's house. Pépin, his sometime friend Jean-Claude Szurdak, along with ten students from the Boston Academy culinary programme (where Pépin has taught for more than xxx years), created a menu to please Julia on the old Garland stove she loved.

"Believe information technology or not, afterwards 45 years of friendship, that was the start time I ever ate in Julia's dining room. Before that, it was always in the kitchen—her me, her husband my wife—just always in the kitchen," Pepin remembers. "At the dinner, I kept moving from the dining room to the kitchen to melt with the students, from my friend Jean-Claude to Julia, constantly back and forth."

The very French menu that dark consisted of an oyster soup with fresh corn because Julia loved oysters, puffy cheese gougères, rillettes of rabbit, raie (the fish commonly known every bit skate in the U.Southward.), a grapefruit granité (sorbet to the layperson), and much more than, all accompanied by wines carefully selected by the squad of Jacques and Julia.

Pépin has recently announced his donation of the menu from that long-ago repast, adorned with his colorful artwork, to the Smithsonian, and so museumgoers will soon exist able to stand, olfactory organ pressed against glass, and salivate over what Pépin fondly remembers as "an embarrassment of riches."

Jacques Pépin Eye & Soul in the Kitchen

American History Museum Food Nutrient History

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Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/jacques-pepin-donates-hand-painted-menu-his-last-supper-julia-child-180956937/

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