WORLD;RENOWNED chef Jacques Pépin
has had a career filled with high-water
marks: cooking for former French
President Charles de Gaulle, developing
food lines for Howard Johnson’s restaurants, winning a Daytime Emmy (with
Julia Child) and multiple James Beard
Foundation awards, writing best-selling
books and hosting popular television
shows. But the ;;-year-old has a newer passion: cooking with his ;;-year-old granddaughter Shorey Wesen. The culinary
companions have a new television series
debuting this fall and a brand-new cookbook, A Grandfather’s Lessons: In the
Kitchen with Shorey.
The twosome have been cooking on TV
since Shorey was ; years old, and the book
provides simple, elegant recipes and food
lessons (such as what to do with stale
bread) to intrigue kitchen neophytes as
well as inspire family cooking sessions like
theirs. Pépin notes that he and Shorey
worked on four fish dishes that took no
more than five or six minutes to prepare.
“As I get older, I simplify and simplify my
cooking,” Pépin tells The Connection from
his home in Connecticut. “We don’t need
too much embellishment anymore—just
going to the essential part of the dish.”
Starting off with something simple
and then adding one’s own embellish-
ments sounds like a good way for begin-
ners to indulge in the art of cooking. “I
really like making dishes that are my own,
because I know a lot of stuff we do on the
show my friends wouldn’t be as interested
in eating,” says Wesen. “But I can do a lot of
things that make them perhaps more
appetizing for people that I know.”
Food runs in this family. Wesen’s
father is a professional chef, and her
mother, Claudine (Pépin’s daughter),
cooks all the time. Yet while she enjoys
cooking with her grandfather, Wesen does
not want to continue down that path. “I do
not want to be a chef when I grow up,” she
FOR YOUR TABLE
THECOSTCOCONNECTION
A Grandfather’s Lessons (Item #1184015,
9/12) will be available in most Costco
warehouses, along with a variety of foods
to cook with your family and friends.
Jacques Pépin teaching
his 13-year-old grand-
daughter, Shorey Wesen,
in the kitchen.
