Food and good reading too

The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen
by Jacques Pepin


Not much of a plot (*biography*) but a really good air travel companion.  Not so good the next day when I'd eaten too much dinner and was feeling vaguely nauseous--that made it hard to enjoy the luscious food he was preparing.  I found it hard to imagine the food throughout, and maybe that's a good reason for his including the recipes in the book. Reading and possibly cooking his recipes would have made a real foodie squeal with delight. Or maybe the recipes were included simply because recipes sell books.


Not being a foodie, I admit the only one I really wanted to try was his mother's apple tart.  Maybe I'll do that to get rid of all the leftover apples in the fridge. I'm sure they're not the "right" apples for the recipe, but it would be in keeping with a food culture where nothing is thrown away.

So, despite my longing for culinary details--what did the foods really taste like?  What did the dishes look like?  Did they squish or ooze or pop! when you bit into them?  Other than that, the book was very entertaining and never, never fell into the trap of idle name dropping like so many other celebrity bios do. He'd drop plenty of names, sure, but every one had a succinct description, a funny story, or a cooking disaster to put them in place in his life.