She was also the inspiration behind the 2009 film Julie & Julia, which was based on a cooking blog by Julie Powell.
Child followed with the launch of The French Chef on the small screen, and she cemented her reputation as an industry icon through additional books and TV appearances, until her death in 2004. The Waters documentary will be aired immediately after Pepin’s.TV chef and author Julia Child became a household name via the groundbreaking cookbook 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' and her popular show 'The French Chef.' Who Was Julia Child?Īfter attending culinary school in France, Julia Child collaborated on the cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which became a bestseller upon its 1961 publication.
Pepin-who has created 13 public television cooking series and written a new cookbook that will be published in September, A Grandfather’s Lessons: In the Kitchen with Shorey, about cooking with his granddaughter-said he was “flabbergasted” by the new documentary, calling it “the great summit of my career.”
Other significant changes in American cooking since his arrival, he added, are “men moving into the kitchen at home, going to wine classes,” and the rise of female professional chefs. “Supermarkets were never as beautiful as they are today, they were a gastronomic wasteland,” he said. In an interview this week, Pepin said that when he arrived in New York in 1959, the first supermarket he visited only sold iceberg lettuce and canned and not fresh mushrooms it did not offer shallots or leeks.
With his early landmark books on the fundamentals of culinary craft, La Technique (1976) and La Methôde (1978), and television shows, Pépin ushered in a new era in American food culture. In 1974, a near fatal car accident became the catalyst that pushed Pépin’s life in a different direction as writer, teacher, and ultimately media star. While at Le Pavillon, Pépin was courted for the position of “first chef” in the Kennedy White House, a position he turned down, going to work instead for ten years for the Howard Johnson’s hotel and restaurant chain, where he learned about mass production, marketing, food chemistry and American popular food. In later years, he partnered with Child on a television series, Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home, for which they won a Daytime Emmy in 2001. In New York, Pépin landed a job at Le Pavillon, then the most influential French restaurant in the country, and befriended Craig Claiborne, food editor of The New York Times Beard and Julia Child. “America was a golden fleece, you know, it was the promised land for many people after the war, and me included.” “I was excited about going abroad, by learning a new language,” said Pépin. However, not content cooking in French palaces, he moved to the United States in 1959. Now an accomplished chef, he was assigned to create special dinners for the top brass, and later became the personal chef for three French heads of state, including Charles de Gaulle. Four years later, he was drafted into the Navy, cooking at Navy headquarters in Paris. Nearly 17, he moved to Paris, initially without a job, and eventually worked at dozens of restaurants, learning about classical cooking. The film traces his journey from his childhood in the countryside of wartime France, where his family’s tradition of entrepreneurial women running restaurants propelled him into an early culinary career. Pépin was born in 1935 in Bourg-en-Bresse, near Lyon. “Jacques Pépin really was the first person to land on the American scene and say technique matters, craft matters,” said journalist Fareed Zakaria. Premiering May 26, Jacques Pepin: The Art of Craft, profiles a young French immigrant with movie-star looks and a charming Gallic accent, who elevated essential kitchen techniques to an art form and became one of America’s most beloved food icons. The Child documentary will be broadcast immediately after Beard’s. His recipes were an interesting combination of Asian and European flavors, with a focus on American ingredients.” I think this is what made him unique when he first moved to New York in the late 1930’s. He had a huge influence on Beard's palate and you see this reflected in many of his writings.
Ju Let had worked for Beard's mother in her boarding house and then moved over to their family home after she sold the hotel. She said she was also surprised to learn “about the Chinese chef that was really like his godfather. They started raising around $35,000 and they now raise over $19 million for homebound seniors.” I had not been aware that he was the co-founder.
Elizabeth Federici, a producer of the documentary, said “one part of his legacy that most people aren't aware of is City Meals on Wheels.