Oh Jacque!

I’ve lucked into being able to watch Essential Pepin on my local PBS station. I love this man. I sit at his feet. I laugh at his stories. I admire his devotion to the food traditions of his family. I learn things like the difference in motion used for beating egg whites vs that for beating cream (if you beat cream like egg whites you end up with butter!). He mentions his cooking buds like Julia and others. He’s very matter of fact and traditional and pretty purist in his cooking but sometimes he forgets to put something in and adds it at the end and says so. Or he explains why some people do things this way and he does them this other way. He just made a souffle in a rectangular dish, daringly throwing his egg yolks into the still hot white sauce (no problem) and ending up with a beautiful brown souffle which, he adds, he only makes for people he really loves. No bizarre ingredients but sometimes surprising amounts of olive oil. I long to be able to use a knife for chopping as he does. Oh Jacque Pepin, my current kitchen hero!