Jacques Pepin Quotes

My mother likes what I cook, but doesn't think it's French. My wife is Puerto Rican and Cuban, so I eat rice and beans. We have a place in Mexico, but people think I'm the quintessential French chef.

Jacques Pepin

• People
• Mother
• Wife

I say: If you don't know how to cook, I'm sure you have at least one friend who knows how to cook. Well, call that friend and say, 'Can I come next time and can I bring some food and can I come an hour or two hours ahead and watch you and help you?'

Jacques Pepin

• Time
• Help
• Food

One of the biggest problems with young chefs is too much addition to the plate. You put cilantro and then tarragon and then olive oil and then walnut oil or whatever. It's too much.

Jacques Pepin

For everyday, we like Beaujolais, Grenache or Syrah, and we like a lot of it! It's a family tradition: We would never consider having a meal without wine.

Jacques Pepin

• Family
• Everyday
• Wine

You have no choice as a professional chef: you have to repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat until it becomes part of yourself. I certainly don't cook the same way I did 40 years ago, but the technique remains. And that's what the student needs to learn: the technique.

Jacques Pepin

• Professional

It is not things in themselves which trouble us, but our opinions of things.

Jacques Pepin

• Things
• Trouble
• Opinions

The idea of old was to conform yourself to a style of cooking, it was not to create a style of cooking. Now the chef is so much into 'I want to sign that dish and say I am the one who made that dish.'

Jacques Pepin

• Style
• Cooking

I am a glutton. I'll eat whatever is there. Pizza. I love hot dogs anywhere. I've got nothing against any of that. If I feel like eating, I eat. I don't feel guilty about it at all.

Jacques Pepin

• Guilty
• Pizza

Great cooking favors the prepared hands.

Jacques Pepin

• Great
• Cooking