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 wrote ‘Fast Food My Way’ in 2004, I hoped that my friends would prepare my recipes. Now, more people cook from that book than any other I’ve written in the past 30 years.

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.