The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen by Jacques Pepin
A truly delightful book to read that took me through a life begun in the war ravaged years of World War II. Jacques Pepin had the good fortune to have two wonderful loving parents that instilled in him the priceless values of thrift, culinary expertise, and wine management. These basic values laid the bedrock for Jacques lifetime giving him the very best fundamentals for his goals of perfection in everything he did.
He is not a wine snob or a food snob.
A joy to read, I loved it!
EXCERPTS:
Tilting the bottle so that the wine ran down the inclined neck in a gentle flow. “You must never let the wine fall on itself in the bottle and create foam. That will disturb the clarity.” After we filled them, we stopped the bottles with corks that had soaked in an almost boiling mixture of water and wine for fifteen or twenty minutes. Then we waxed the bottles. Papa showed us how to dip about an inch and a half of the tip of each corked bottle into the melted wax; red wax for red wine, yellow or green for white. With a swift movement of his wrist, he created perfectly formed caps on the top of the bottles. When it came time to uncork his wines, Papa held the bottle flat, parallel to the floor, with the waxed tip above a saucer. Using the rounded side of a teaspoon, he tapped gently as he rotated the bottle, until the wax cap crumbled and fell into the saucer. He then opened the wine with his corkscrew, smelled it in the bottle, and poured it gently into glasses. The corks were precious and never discarded. Instead of being sealed into standard bottles, the wines were put in pint-size pots, slender green bottles with thick glass bottoms that are particular to the Lyon area. Roland and I placed the pots in metal baskets and topped them with the corks. When we had finished drawing the daily quota—about ten baskets—we sulfurized the barrel so the wine wouldn’t spoil. Igniting the end of a little greenish yellow stick of sulfur attached to a piece of metal wire, we lowered the stick into the bunghole and sealed the hole. The fire “ate” the oxygen left above the wine, and after the fire died, the wine was perfectly preserved until the next day, when the barrel was opened again.
The French say, “L’éxactitude est la politesse des rois” (Punctuality is the good manners of kings).
I am mad about charcuterie. Pig’s feet, headcheese, blood sausage, and andouillettes (chitterling sausages) are among my favorites. I have eaten termites and worms with the Bushmen of East Africa and rotten fish with the fishermen of West Africa. I have consumed eggs fertilized with chick embryos in Vietnam and China, as well as rattlesnake and “gator” meat in Florida. I am not a skittish eater. While I do enjoy the esoteric, refined food of the great restaurants, I eat that food only occasionally. My everyday tastes tend to a fare of roast chicken, braised pork, sautéed whiting, and tomato salad. I love chocolate desserts and custards and remember with great fondness the large, bluish, juicy cherries of my aunt’s garden and the extraordinary deep-orange apricots from the Rhone Valley, still warm from the summer sun and sticky with natural sugar and ripeness. I like copious glasses of wine with my food, and I do not like to eat alone. I need family and friends to enjoy the dishes and the pleasure of dining.
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