The Long View: French Gourmand Jacques Pepin

Chef Jacques Pepin — or, as Julia Child called him, "the best chef in America" — has spent more than six decades in the kitchen savoring food.  Even now at 75, he still swears that "the greatest thing of all is bread and butter."  "If you have extraordinary bread and extraordinary butter, it's hard to beat bread and butter," Pepin tells NPR's Renee Montagne.

During World War II, food was scarce. The family didn't have much to eat at their home near Lyon, in Bourg-en-Bresse. Ever resourceful, Pepin's mother sent the young boy and his brother to live on a farm during the summers. There, he would have milk and whatever produce grew on the farm.

That farm is where Pepin first came so close to cows — and what he remembers most was their warm milk. "It was really lukewarm and very creamy and delicious. That was probably one of my first memories of food," he says.

 Back at home, his mother worked hard to conjure up meals out of practically nothing. Even today, Pepin says his mother "is very miserly in the kitchen. She can cook anything."
 
Listen to the interview and read excerpts from Pepin's autobiography: The Apprentice: My Life In The Kitchen here.

Super Bowl Food Fight: Indy Vs. Big Easy

Football fans are looking forward to this Sunday's Super Bowl — and a day full of good food. But the menu doesn't have to be limited to pizza and nachos. We asked two chefs from the Colts' and Saints' hometowns about what they'd be cooking this weekend.

From New Orleans, Donald Link is chef and owner of the restaurants Herbsaint and Cochon. His Super Bowl party continues a tradition he inherited from his parents.

This year, the party will include sausage and salami from Link's butcher shop. But those are just for snacking, he told NPR's Linda Wertheimer. "The main dish that I always cook is the seafood gumbo," Link said — like the one featured in his cookbook, Real Cajun.

Link's party will be at his home, which he repaired after Hurricane Katrina. In those renovations, he said, he made sure to include clear sightlines from the kitchen to the TV.

"We actually stood where the stove was going to go and lined it up to where the TV would be, just to make sure that we had the broadest view of the TV," he said.

And from Indianapolis, Regina Mehallick is chef and owner of R Bistro. Her restaurant is decked out for the big game, she said, complete with blue flowers and cadet-blue napkins to match the Colts' uniforms.

Mehallick, author of Regina's Seasonal Table, also emphasizes locally grown produce and meats.

"We should definitely have blue popcorn," Mehallick said, "because corn is popular here in Indiana."

Her main dish will reflect another local favorite: a breaded pork tenderloin sandwich. The R Bistro version will be crusted in panko flakes. And since Indiana is a large producer of duck meat, Mehallick is considering serving duck wings — "done the classic way that chicken wings would be done," she said.

Both cities have been abuzz for nearly two weeks, as fans dream of an NFL title.

But Link says his Saints party will be a bit tamer than past versions — partly because he wants to be sure to have time to sit down and watch the game.

"I'm getting kind of chills, just about to say it," he said. "But with Mardi Gras this weekend and the Saints in the Super Bowl — I mean, this is a fantastic time to be here."

In Indianapolis, the lingering effects of the economic recession aren't putting a damper on the excitement, either.

The city has been a scene for pep rallies and parties — and people dressed in all blue and white, Mehallick said. She admitted to wearing a Colts jersey as she spoke to NPR.

"This is a big sports city," she said. "This is just a happy time, it's bringing people together. Lots of people on the street are saying hello — and go Colts."

The interview ended on a civil note — up to a point.

"Donald, good luck — but I hope we win," Mehallick said.

"Who dat?" Link replied.

Listen to the full story and download the recipes here.

On NPR - Alton Brown Celebrates Ten Years of "Good Eats"

Good Eats has become a staple on the Food Network, but it's not a typical cooking show. Alton Brown created the Peabody Award-winning program to be a mix of MacGyver, Mr. Wizard and History Rocks.

When Brown last appeared on Weekend Edition, he had just finished his motorcycle tour of America's road food. Now, as his show celebrates its 10th year on the air, he has a new book out this month. Good Eats: The Early Years is the first of a three-volume set.

Brown tells NPR's Liane Hansen that it was painful in some ways to look back on his show's early years. "When you're just starting out, you make a lot of mistakes," he says. "I think one of the whole points of waiting 10 years to do a book — which I always said I was going to wait, the show's got to make it a decade before I would do a book — is you get that space required for retrospection."

But he says it was also a "valuable, cathartic" experience. "You get to kind of pay for your sins — or at least make a few small repairs."

Brown launched the quirky program to break out of the staid cooking show format featuring people behind a cooktop. The camera chases Brown from scene to scene as he encounters oddball characters and explains the science behind baking, roasting and other kitchen mysteries. He credits '90s-era kids show Pee-wee's Playhouse as one of his inspirations. "Laughing brains are more absorbent," he says.

"I think a lot of food shows, especially when we started Good Eats back in the late '90s, they were still really about food. Good Eats isn't about food, it's about entertainment. If, however, we can virally infect you with knowledge or interest, then all the better."

But after 10 years and 200-plus episodes, Brown says he isn't really looking for new material anymore. "I think in the end there are only 20 or 30 tenets of basic cooking." Teachers he's talked to tell him the way to really get things to stick in peoples' minds is to master artful repetition. "It's going at perhaps the same issue from different angles, from different points of view, from different presentation styles, that really makes things sink in and become embedded," he says.

Read the rest of the story and listen to to the complete interview here.