Julia & Jacques Cooking At Home

It is probably pure destiny that these two culinary legends should collaborate on one or more projects. Pepin came to the United States in 1959 and almost immediately got a position as a chef at La Pavilion, based on his great good luck of being the chef to the family of Charles DeGaulle while DeGaulle was President of France. Three years later, Julia Child's book was published and Pepin was dumbstruck, as he felt that this is the book he should have written himself. Pepin was lead from the strenuous world of the professional kitchen to a career of writing and teaching when he was seriously injured in an automobile accident and he could no longer spend the long hours of standing.

This volume is a delight to read, even if you prepare none of the recipes in the book. In fact, the recipes tend to take a back seat to the dialogue between the two principles credited with the creation of the book. The book also enjoys one of the best possible support staffs available for culinary literature. Alfred A. Knopf publishes the book and the editor is Judith Jones, the same editor who convinced the Knopfs to print Julia Child's first landmark book. Knopf's artistic and production talent available for a major book publication has been applied to full effect. The text has the benefit of having been assembled by a professional culinary wordsmith, David Nussbaum, who culled the recipes and comments from the 'authors' notes and the videotapes of the PBS TV series.

The general layout of the book is that each principle author provides a recipe on an important ingredient or dish such as mussels, shrimp, hamburger, or potato salad. Each major ingredient is accompanied by sidebars by one or both of the principle authors on either handling the ingredient or strategies for preparing the dish. Some of the most interesting encounters come when the principle authors do not agree on a technique. Some disagreements are surprising, as when Chef Pepin prefers the American technique of making a hamburger while Ms. Child prefers the French, where a savory shallot saute is worked into the middle of the hamburger patty. The index very cleverly color codes recipe titles indicating whether they were supplied by Ms. Child or Chef Pepin.

The point at which the recipes wrest your attention from the banter between the two authors is when the book offers a sample of French home cooking which has rarely if ever seen the inside of an American home kitchen outside of the world of professional chefs and professional foodies. The first such recipe is Jacques's Sausage in Brioche. This is a sort of French beef Wellington where sausage replaces the beef fillet and brioche replaces the puff pastry. This is not a recipe for wimps, as brioche dough typically must be risen overnight to fully develop the dough. Pepin does give a shortcut, but it is not recommended.

The topics of the recipe chapters are familiar to all who have looked through a French cookbook. These chapters are Appetizers, Soups, Eggs, Salads and Sandwiches, Potatoes, Vegetables, Fish, Poultry, Meats, and Desserts.

The photographic arts are put to very good use in this book. Not every dish is accompanied by a photo of the finished preparation, but every special technique is explained in great detail and demonstrated very effectively in pictures. And, the techniques are not limited to the usual cutting up a chicken and cleaning an artichoke.

If you have a happy collection of good cookbooks on classic French cookery, you probably already have recipes for many of the dishes in this book. You do not buy the book for only the recipes. You buy the book for the special insights these two major culinary educators can give you on dishes, ingredients, and techniques and for the riff created when their opinions are different.

The long and the short of it is that you buy this book for inspiration. I have yet to find a culinary teacher who can encourage me to try a difficult recipe as effectively as Julia Child. I can also not find a culinary teacher who can explain technique as well as Jacques Pepin.

Very highly recommended for foodies and fans of both principle authors.