Great cooking favors the prepared hands.
Jacques PepinRead
Cooking is the art of adjustment.
Interpretation
Cooking requires flexibility and creativity to adapt to changing circumstances.
Jacques Pepin's quote emphasizes that cooking is not just a mechanical process but an artistic one that requires constant adjustment and adaptability. Just as an artist modifies their techniques to express their vision, a cook must make real-time decisions, alter recipes, and respond to the ingredients available, highlighting the importance of creativity and spontaneity in the culinary arts.
In practice
A chef reflecting on their culinary journey during a cooking class.
Great cooking favors the prepared hands.
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.'
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.
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.
Probably a mistake, you know, that people make in America, to think that all great chefs are a male... I'm still the only male in the family who went into that business.
Children never lie...I remember my daughter standing in her crib the first time I gave her caviar. I put it on bread. She ate it and said, "Encore, Papa."
I feel like my music has become a lot of things. It's hard to label the evolution, but I like there to be an evolution. I just like to paint with all different kinds of colors.
Music is the only religion that delivers the goods.
There is no separate art of life. If you know how to allow poetry, if you know how to allow dance, if you know how to allow love - if you know how to ALLOW, then you know the art of life. In the allowing, in the let-go, in the surrender, is the art of life. How not to be and to let God be - that is the only art of life.
Someday I'll design a typeface without a K in it, and then let's see the bastards misspell my name.
The person whose work introduced me to the craft was Lorraine Hansberry. The person who taught me to love the craft was Tennessee Williams. The person who really taught me the power of the craft was August Wilson, and the person who taught me the political heft of the craft was Arthur Miller.
As a magician, I try to show things to people that seem impossible. And I think magic, whether I'm holding my breath or shuffling a deck of cards, is pretty simple. It's practice, it's training, and It's practice, it's training and experimenting, while pushing through the pain to be the best that I can be. And that's what magic is to me.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.