Pepin's career has spanned an impressive scope of the culinary field, from working in some of the greatest restaurants in the world to developing recipes for Howard Johnson's to teaching. After a childhood and young adulthood in France, he came to the United States; the elite culinary community in the US was fairly small at the time, and by the sound of it, he became friends with anybody who was anybody. He began his career long before the days of celebrity chefs and clearly just wanted to spend his life doing what he loved. The book was published in 2003, at which point Pepin had become incredibly famous, but nonetheless his tale comes across as very humble. From his life in France during World War II, to his grueling kitchen education, to his arrival on America speaking barely a word of English, to his rise to the status of a culinary icon, Pepin has led an often difficult, though always optimistic, life, and his story is incredibly inspiring. Furthermore, Pepin was involved with many of the biggest culinary changes in 20th century America, and the book gives a front seat view into the extent to which the culinary landscape has changed.
I particularly enjoyed The Apprentice because it ties together ideas (and in some cases, literal events) from a range of other food-focused books. Pepin was great friends with Craig Claiborne, and a number of scenes from Claiborne's A Feast Made for Laughter are also recounted in The Apprentice; hearing about the relationships within their circle of friends gives another (interesting) perspective about the lives of some of the great American gourmands in the 1960s and onwards. Pepin also makes some observations that actually mirrored a conversation on this blog, in relation to Amy B. Trubek's The Taste of Place. Upon arriving and beginning to work in the United States, Pepin was struck by the culinary freedom that was evidenced. Kitchen work arrangements and the range of food he could produce were vastly different from the world in which he had grown up. There is a great quote from the book that emphasizes this point:
"Perhaps the most important thing I came to understand during my decade at HoJo's was that Americans had extremely open palates compared to French diners. They were willing to try items that lay outside their normal range of tastes. If they liked the food, that was all that mattered. I wasn't constantly battling ingrained prejudices as I would have been in France.... In France, unless a dish was prepared exactly "right," people would know and complain. In the States, if it tasted good, then fine, the customer was happy. A whole new world of culinary possibilities had opened up before me." (p. 165)
Pepin's classical culinary training (started at the age of 13!) clearly impacted his culinary aesthetic throughout his career. The book depicts a man, however, who was incredibly down to earth. He was not a food "snob" by any means; he loved fishing, mushrooming, and otherwise gathering his own food; he was a pragmatist; and he frowned on nouvelle cuisine's transition towards creativity for creativity's sake. He firmly believed that classical techniques (and common sense!) should be the basis for innovation. The book includes a number of recipes, and they clearly convey his love of homestyle comfort food that can be shared with family and friends.
For anyone interested in the world of food, this book provides an enthralling firsthand perspective from someone who is not only a culinary hero but also a human inspiration.
