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This is the 50th anniversary edition of La Technique from 1976 and La Méthode from 1979, combined into a single 736-page volume. Around 1,000 photographs and more than 600 techniques, all demonstrated by Pépin himself with his hands in the frame.
The spreads work as instructions rather than recipes. How to bone a chicken, turn a mushroom, sharpen a knife, roll an omelette or break down a fish. You do not come to this book to decide what to cook, but to find out how a particular task is done, which is why it is organised by technique rather than by meal.
The edition also contains 160 recipes, but in this context they are almost an appendix.
Pépin was a teacher throughout his life. He made television with Julia Child in the Emmy-winning series Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home, and taught for decades on the gastronomy programme at Boston University that he established with her. The book is still used in culinary schools.
Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 736
Language: English
First published: 1976
The Kitchen Lab Selection
Pépin cooked for three French heads of state, de Gaulle among them, and then turned down the job of White House chef under Kennedy. He took a position at Howard Johnson's instead, the American roadside chain, and stayed for ten years because he wanted to understand how food is produced at scale. That says a good deal about what sort of person he is.
And that is roughly the person this required. Handwork cannot be learned by reading. No one can describe in text how a knife should be held or how an omelette is rolled; you have to see it done. Here are more than 600 techniques photographed step by step with his own hands in the picture, and since 1976 nobody has seen any reason to redo the work.
