Jacques Pepin Quotes

When I left to go into apprenticeship in 1949, it was only four years after the war, and people don’t realize, we still had tickets for butter, meat and so forth in France until 1947. It’s not like the end of the war, everything was plentiful – it wasn’t.

When I pair food and wine, I start with the food. If I have a beautiful roasted bird, I might choose a Cabernet or Pinot Noir, or maybe a Syrah, depending on the sauce and what is in my cellar.

When I was a child, we always had wine on the table, no matter how simple the meal. The wine had no special identity; it was just ‘the wine,’ from the cellar cask. The rules were general: white with the first course, red with the main course.

When you are at home, even if the chicken is a little burnt, what’s the big deal? Relax.

You can’t escape the taste of the food you had as a child. In times of stress, what do you dream about? Your mother’s clam chowder. It’s security, comfort. It brings you home.

You know, my parents had a restaurant. And I left home, actually, in 1949, when I was 13 years old, to go into apprenticeship. And actually when I left home, home was a restaurant – like I said, my mother was a chef. So I can’t remember any time in my life, from age 5, 6, that I wasn’t in a kitchen.