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Results so far:
| Child | 61% | 49 votes | Total: 80 votes | |
| Pepin | 39% | 31 votes |
Child
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Add to FavoritesThere's no question about it, Julia wins. I am the author of an award-winning cookbook, Help-I Gotta Cook! and I got to the point where I was comfortable writing a cookbook by literally reading, from cover to cover, over 1000 cookbooks. In using them I have cooked over 30,000 meals and I can truthfuly say, her cookbooks were the ones that took me through the kindergarten of kitchen techniques and finally got me graduated.
Most cookbooks give you at best 3-4 recipes that you will keep. With Julia however, you didn't just get a cookbook you got a textbook as well. She didn't only give you recipes she gave you what I consider the most valuable bit knowledge when it comes to cooking - how to treat foods. Take a chicken breast and Julia will give you 20 ways to treat it. That's exactly what my cookbook does and I learned a lot of those treatments from Julia.
As to whom was the better chef, I don't think anyone can answer that because how a meal tastes to you is now how it tastes to anyone else. How many times have you cooked a dish that tasted wonderful to you and then have someone else say it was only so so? The main reason Julia stood out from the crowd is that she was not in the least dogmatic, like James Beard, for instance. When cooking one of her dishes, if you discovered you did not have a specific ingredient she prompted you to find another. Her recipes weren't scientific formulas they were ways to cook good food.
In her role as a teacher, Julia transformed the eating habits of America in the 50"s with her television show. People who could barely scramble eggs went wild over Coq au Vin! Julia Childs probably introduced more new dishes to the American scene than everyone else combined. Running short of ingredients, missing one or two, forgetting something important in front of a huge TV audience never fazed her one bit. She taught Americans that it was okay to make a few mistakes in the kitchen and to just develop a laid back attitude as long as what you cooked was delicious.
If you can read The Way To Cook and not begin to feel comfortable in the kitchen you should probably leave the kitchen forever. She taught us all how to recognize the building blocks of a good meal and, if we wanted to build a different kind of meal instead of the one she was talking about, it was alright with her.
One other thing Julia did for all of us cooks, professional or otherwise. She challenged us. When I first read her multi page recipe for Cassoulet it scared me to death. It took almost 2 years before I tried it, and when I did, it was a huge success. I must confess, I never made it again but for a little while, I was almost as good as she was.
Learn more about this author, Ed Dugan.
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Pepin
Pepin hands down! Being french and indeed having written my own Cookbook in concert with my family.. "Grandmere Awesome Family Cookbook." I think I can tell you that by the very nature of things Pepin is a Natural whereas Mme Child, was self made and tended to make things too complicated. She was however and excellent business woman and it might explain why she lasted so long on T.V. She also didn't have a french accent so she was able to be better understood by the T.V vievers.
This might also explain why so few great cooks like the most famous of all Paul Bocuse , never made it big in our country. Yet when He came on he , like Jacques Pepin, he made everything look appetising and somehow looking at him , you knew right away this was a CHEF! Indeed his family had been in the restaurant business since 1765! Cooking is thought as one of the great art in France and is never taken lightly, even tho they have tried "cuisine minceur" without much sucess, for even as Paul Bocuse himself said about it: "Life is too short for cuisine minceur and for diet. Dietic meals are like an opera without the orchestra."
When you go on the Cooking TV channels today, it is one succession of chefs after another. One making it look easier then the other..not realizing that cooking is not about how easy it can be made, but how good it should taste! It is sad to see that eating has become just another part of our busy life, with no pleasure taking in preparing a meal and thus eating it, it might also explain the epidemic of overweight people we now have, even children in our schools! who most likely eat half their meals in fast food joints. Sad indeed.
Just to give you the importance that Chefs have in France..when the late Fernand Point of the restaurant "La Pyramide" in Vienne a small city outside of Lyon died..The president of France attended his funerals, it was even shown on television. and in the kitchen on top of the unlighted and scrubbed stove. laid the tallest chef's hat that Mr Point had worn all his life. It was said by the way that American clients sometimes reserved their tables at La pyramide months in advance! and thus we go back to Madame Child, unlike Jacques Pepin, she never owned a restaurant anywhere, the ultimate taste for a chef's excellence.
In fact she took herself much too seriously, when reading her life story written by her nephew after she died, I was amused to see that she had said, that after she became famous on T.V. she tried to avoid people eyes so as not to be aknowledged!Oh my my this would never happen with Jacques Pepin..non non non!
Learn more about this author, Pierrette Komarek.
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