Essential Pepin [Hardcover]

Cookbooks are a hard sell these days. If you want a recipe, you can get 20 versions on Epicurious, or use google and get thousands. If you want to see a technique demonstrated, youtube probably has it. So what would impel anybody to actually pay for a cookbook? In one word - Wisdom.

This tome (and it is, a tome) is a collection gleaned from Pepin's lifetime as a chef, (somewhat) updated to accommodate modern sensibilities. It has a remarkable range, from dorm food (pita pizza? really?) to roast goose with all the trimmings, to home-cured ham (cooking time - 8 months). It also has notable breadth, including not only things we Americans expect from a French cook (frogs legs, croissants, cassoulet), but also Asian soups, Indian relishes, and other dishes that have found their way into the US diet. (I was tickled to find my grandmother's schav recipe on the first page. Using chicken stock and sweet cream instead of scallion broth and sour, but still). Most of the recipes rely entirely on fresh ingredients (Tabasco sauce and such being the exceptions), but there are notes about potential substitutions (using canned stock for fresh, for example).

What makes this all worth it, however, is is the tidbits of knowledge larded throughout: "Moisten your hands before rolling out the meatballs," "You can double the dressing recipe - it will keep in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks," "Don't worry if some of the stuffing is visible - it will not leak out," "You can make this ahead and reheat it, but add the peas at the last minute so they won't lose their color." And so on. This, coupled with the advice on techniques, brings the recipes out of the realm of "scarey French food" and into the realm of "totally doable." (People familiar with the Julia and Jacques series may recognize the philosophy). Pepin isn't so much lecturing, as looking over your shoulder while you cook.

There are no food-porn photos of glistening and steaming finished dishes, just occasional simple drawings reminiscent of those in the Joy of Cooking, or James Beard's books. All good - they would just have gotten spattered with melted butter anyway. This book will be living in the kitchen, not on the coffee table.

If I had to find something to complain about, it would be in some of the recipe names - the recipe for "cucumber-yogurt relish," for example, notes that it is "often served as an accompaniment to hot dishes in Indian cooking," but doesn't call it Raita. We know what that is. (Hopefully the index will have a cross-reference, but my advance copy did not have the index yet). There are also shaded boxes highlighting various techniques, which is wonderful ("how to bone a chicken," "artichoke hearts - basic techniques," "safety considerations with salami and ham," etc.), but some worthy advice is not set off in shaded boxes, and some of the boxes contain things like "alternate recipes," which is interesting, but not what I'm going to flip through looking for. Again, I have an advance copy, so some of this might change.

I didn't get the DVD, so I can't comment on that, though if I should somehow obtain one I will update my review (ahem). Even without the DVD, however, this cookbook is recommended.

(Oh, and for people trying to decide between this and Jacques Pépin's Complete Techniques- there is some overlap, but this book is more chatty and home-cooking oriented, while that one cares more about presentation and garnish. I'm also quite sure the DVD will be easier to follow than the photos in the earlier book. If you can find a good price for the paperback, however, it's worth owning both.)

In "Essential Pepin: More Than 700 All-Time Favorites from My Life in Food," world-renowned chef Pepin, popularly known for his cooking show, shares his recipes--which are divided into categories like soups, salads, eggs and cheese, pasta/rice/grains/potatoes, breads/sandwiches/pizzas, shellfish and fish, poultry and game, meat, charcuterie and offal, vegetables and side dishes, fruit desserts, puddings/sweet soufflés/ crepes, cakes/cookies/candles, tarts/pies/pastries, frozen desserts, and basics.

After each category, a page of recipes and corresponding page numbers is listed. The recipes themselves are listed with a related tidbit of information, list of ingredients, and a couple of short paragraphs detailing the preparation techniques. Most of the ingredients for the recipes are pretty basic and, thankfully, easy to find.

The recipes cover a wide range of food: anything from risotto with vegetables, mint ice cream, black truffle salad, chocolate soufflé, cheesecake with apricot blueberry sauce, chocolate mousse, potato crepes with caviar, poached oysters with mushrooms and red pepper, apricot fondue, to Christmas fruitcake, broiled lobster with bread stuffing, onion and bread soup, smoked salmon, strawberry buttermilk shortcake, and etc, etc, etc. Throughout the book, well-known dishes are mixed up with more exotic once.

The book ends with a long and comprehensive index, organized by ingredients and meal categories. A DVD is included with the book.

Now to my thoughts: I tried making some of the recipes in the book, and was impressed by the results. My favorite so far is the black truffle salad. The book is pretty hefty--as the 700 plus recipes in the title indicate. It's definitely worth it though. Recommended for fans of cooking programs, newbies, as well as professional cooks.

Jacques Pepin's career as a cooking teacher to the masses has tracked that of his good friend Julia Child in some striking ways -- they started off with a masterwork (Mastering the Art of French Cooking for Julia and the books that would become Complete Techniques for Jacques), and spent their careers writing books more or less tied to their television careers until creating a grand summation of all they've done before; in Julia's case, The Way to Cook, in some ways a total, ground-up rewrite of Mastering. Now in his 70s after over three decades of television and a much longer career that includes the Howard Johnson lobster roll as one of his points of pride, this is Pepin's magnum opus.

Surprisingly, it isn't a teaching book. For that, Complete Techniques is the book -- though old with numerous dated recipes, the basics in that book apply now as they did in the 1970s. No, this is all recipes -- a phone book-sized listing of the things Pepin likes. (Sadly, the lobster roll isn't in here; for that you want Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home.) In that regard it perhaps comes a little closer to The Complete Robuchon, though Pepin's years in America make for a very different book, French in inspiration but ultimately covering much more ground; indeed, a great part of the recipes are rethinking American ingredients in French ways.

Unfortunately for us early adopters, we didn't get copies of the DVD, so I can't say anything about it; this is rather unfortunate, but it just means I'll have to get my hands on a copy of the final book. That will definitely be money well spent. If Pepin retired the day the book came out, he'd still be going out on top.