Dan Pashman: Hey everyone, Dan here with another Reheat for you. And this one I — I love this episode. It features what will seem like an unlikely pairing: Sammy Hagar of Van Halen fame and the great French chef Jacques Pépin. As you'll hear, and this is what I love about this episode, these two have a lot more in common than you'd ever suspect.

Dan Pashman: This episode first came out in 2015. Since then, I’m happy to report that Sammy is still touring and playing shows. He's launched another tequila brand, called Santo Tequila, with the one and only Guy Fieri.

Dan Pashman: Jacques, meanwhile, is turning 90 next year and the festivities have already kicked off with a series of dinners and fundraising events to support the Jacques Pépin Foundation. You can learn more at CelebrateJacques.org. 

Dan Pashman: Quick reminder that if there’s an archived Sporkful episode you want us to pull out of the deep freezer and reheat, let us know! Send an email or voice memo with your request to hello@sporkful.com. Include your first name, location, the episode you want to hear and why. Thanks so much! Enjoy the show. 

Dan Pashman: This episode contains explicit language that is not bleeped. 

CLIP (JACQUE PÉPIN): It is difficult to make a real good omelet. And there are different kinds of omelets. I'm going to show you two types of omelets. 

Dan Pashman: This is legendary Chef Jacques Pépin, demonstrating a classic French omelet. 

[CLIP OF VAN HALEN "MAS TEQUILA"]

Dan Pashman: And this is Sammy Hagar’s classic song, "Mas Tequila". What does one have to do with the other? Well, Sammy’s a legit rockstar — he used to front Van Halen. But he says before he learned to rock, he learned to cook. 

CLIP (SAMMY HAGAR): To me, I just want to take toasted French bread and some tomatoes, a little bit of basil, salt and pepper, and olive oil, and I'm good to go. 

Dan Pashman: And it turns out Jacques Pépin's kind of a rock star in his own right. I mean, the guy knows how to party:

CLIP (JACQUES PEPIN): I bought 70 cases of wine this spring.

CLIP (DAN PASHMAN): 70 cases?

CLIP (JACQUES PEPIN): Yeah, 70 cases.

CLIP (DAN PASHMAN): ... of wine? Oh my God.

CLIP (JACQUES PEPIN): We do drink a lot of wine. 

[LAUGHING] 

Dan Pashman: And the similarities go a lot deeper, from their memorable childhood experiences with food to their passion for eating today — these two guys have a lot more in common than you ever imagined.  

Dan Pashman: Today on The Sporkful, Sammy and I talk about the art of making fresh mozzarella and what he learned about food from his Sicilian immigrant grandparents. Then Jacques and I drink beer out of paper cups and talk about his arrival in America and his first encounter with an Oreo cookie. 

Dan Pashman: By the end of this show, I think you’ll find that neither of these guys is who you think they are. Stick around. 

[CLIP OF VAN HALEN’S "MAS TEQUILA"] 

Dan Pashman: This is The Sporkful, it’s not for foodies, it’s for eaters. I’m Dan Pashman. Each week on our show we obsess about food to learn more about people. In the '90s, Sammy Hagar opened his first Cabo Wabo Cantina restaurant and launched Cabo Wabo tequila. He eventually sold the tequila company for $91 million. 

Dan Pashman: But times weren’t always so flush for Sammy. In his new cookbook Are We Having Any Fun Yet?: The Cooking & Partying Handbook, he describes his humble beginnings on food stamps. And he talks lovingly about his Sicilian grandparents, who made all the classic Italian staples from scratch in their trailer. 

Dan Pashman: When I met up with Sammy, I brought him some fresh mozzarella from a place in Brooklyn called Caputo’s. It was still warm … 

Sammy Hagar: It's beautiful. Ohh ..

Dan Pashman: This mozzarella was pulled less than two hours ago.

Sammy Hagar: Wow. That's ... That's an art form. You know, my grandpa did it. To me ...

Dan Pashman: Sammy’s grandparents drove their trailer up and down the American West taking seasonal restaurant jobs for a few months at a time, then moving on.  

Sammy Hagar: They fought all time but they were never, you know, apart. I mean, it was like, you know, they were — they did everything together cause my grandpa couldn't read and write, and my grandma could. And she would — he drove. She didn't know how to drive a car. So she read the map, the road signs, and said, hey — you know, she called him Daddy, my mom called him Daddy, everyone called him Daddy but me. I called him Grandpa. And she'd go, "Daddy! You got to go left up here!" And he'd go, "Well, son of a bitch, you got to tell me sooner! I didn't see the turn!" And then, you know, and they'd have a trailer behind them and a big ol' station wagon as big as a house, itself, and they just would argue all the time.

Dan Pashman: Tell me about the time you found a dead deer on the side of a road.

Sammy Hagar: [LAUGHS] Well, that was grandma now ...

Dan Pashman: Right.

Sammy Hagar: Now we're talking grandma.

Dan Pashman: Right, we're talking grandma. Tell me the story. 

Sammy Hagar: So ... Well, my grandma and grandpa got in a big fight cause my grandma would get drunk once in a while and she would … You know, that she would run away. And she usually would walk to our house and my mom would, you know, take care of her. Right? And, so she was at our house. And I was going — it was on a weekend, and I was going up to see the band play with my buddies, three of us. So I had a '57 DeSoto, which has a huge trunk. It's a huge car to begin with.

Dan Pashman: Right. [LAUGHS]

Sammy Hagar: Big old fends on it, you know? It's about three cars in one. And in front of us, we see this car. It's up in the mountains. We're going up to Crestline, Lake Arrowhead area, and a car — a deer jumps out in front of the car and the guy hits the damn deer and kills it, man. Boom! It flies over his car. He slams on the breaks and then he keeps going. And I'm going, “Stop!”, I'm going, "Shit! Come on, guys! Put this deer in the trunk!" They're going, "What?!"

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Sammy Hagar: I'm going, "Yeah! Yeah, man!" Come one, I knew what to do with that thing, right? [LAUGHS]

Dan Pashman: Right.

Sammy Hagar: I was 17, you know, 16, 17? And you know, these guys didn't no part of it, man.

Dan Pashman: Right.

Sammy Hagar: I said, "Don't worry about it, man. Come on, help me out." So we throw it in the trunk. We go up and party all night, come home at midnight. My grandma's ...

Dan Pashman: So you went to the concert?

Sammy Hagar: Yeah, I went to the concert.

Dan Pashman: With a dead deer in your trunk?

Sammy Hagar: With a dead deer in the trunk.

Dan Pashman: Okay. [LAUGHS]

Sammy Hagar: Obviously, we didn't pick up any girls.

[LAUGHING]

Sammy Hagar: What do you got in the trunk?

[LAUGHING]

Sammy Hagar: I mean, I didn't even think about that.

Dan Pashman: Right. [LAUGHS]

Sammy Hagar: But no, we danced ... I'm sure I danced with girls but I didn't try to take them home.

Dan Pashman: Right.

Sammy Hagar: So ...

Dan Pashman: I'm glad you had your priorities straight.

Sammy Hagar: Well, it wasn't really a priority ...

Dan Pashman: You were like, no girls tonight.

Sammy Hagar: But I would have taken that deer and thrown it out if some fine girl wanted to ride that trunk with me ...

[LAUGHING]

Sammy Hagar: So my grandma's sleeping on the couch. I walk in the house and I say, "Grandma! I got a deer in the trunk, man." She shot up like a ... [LAUGHS] like a bullet, man. "Where is it? How big is it?" I say, "Come on, take a look." It was a doe, but it was a big one. And man, she ... little ... She was 5 '1, if she was 5 ... I don't think she was 5 '1. She was like 4 '5. You know, little tiny Italian lady, skinny as hell, smoking a cigarette, drinking — poured herself a big glass of wine, comes walking out ...

Dan Pashman: This is not, like, 1 o'clock in the morning?

Sammy Hagar: Yeah, midnight, one, two, you know? She helps me rip that deer out. It's heavier than shit ... [UNINTELLIGIBLE] ... Now, it's hard as a rock. You know, like he's stiff as hell? And she goes, "Put it in the backyard! Come one! Help me get this ..." We're dragging it in the backyard ...

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHING]

Sammy Hagar: We had a little lawn about ... you know, backyard about this big with a lawn and a clothesline and I said, "Okay, Grandma. I'm going to bed." She's sharpening her knives up, man, getting ready to go. I wake up in the morning. My mom's screaming, "Oh my god ..."

[LAUGHING]

Sammy Hagar: Screaming, like " Oh my god!" My grandma's sitting there in her nightgown, smoking a cigarette, still drinking wine, blood all over her, and that deer's hanging on the clothesline. It's skinned up. The skin's laying out. The chops are all in stacks. My mom, telling the story later, said " Oh my god, I thought Mommy killed Daddy."

[LAUGHING]

Sammy Hagar: Like, her dad came over to get her and she killed his ass. 

Dan Pashman: Right.

Sammy Hagar: And I'm telling you, that's how crazy things were, you know? But we ate that venison forever. But she butchered a frickin' deer …

[CLIP VAN HALEN'S "MAS TEQUILA" ]

Dan Pashman: So that was Sammy’s grandma. Then there was Grandpa Sam. He was also a real character. For one thing, whenever he’d leave a restaurant job, he’d clean the place out. 

Sammy Hagar: He was kind of a thief when he'd work in restaurants. [LAUGHS] He'd load that car up, man, with ... Always, it was the same stuff. It was quarts of whipping cream ... 

Dan Pashman: Right. [LAUGHS] 

Sammy Hagar: And it was big pound slabs of butter. 

Dan Pashman: Right. 

Sammy Hagar: And it was filet mignon that was in the big shrink wrap thing. 

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] 

Sammy Hagar: You know, like, you know 20 pounds of filets. You know, sometimes he'd bring an old' 5-gallon tub of ice cream, you know? And we'd see him coming with it, pulling his trailer, he wouldn't even go home first, man. We'd say, "Here comes Grandpa with the bounty!" We'd all run up there, jump around the car, and we'd be eating steaks for a few months and making our own butter out of the cream and making whipping cream and putting cream on our cereal instead of skim milk. Anyway, so it was just great. You know, we'd just love grandpa's — the fact that he was a thief ... 

[LAUGHING] 

Dan Pashman: And you said that he made his own salamis, he pulled his own mozzarella ... 

Sammy Hagar: Totally.

Dan Pashman: What was it like walking into that trailer?

Sammy Hagar: I'm telling you, it was like a deli.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Sammy Hagar: When you parked your car, you'd smell it if he had — especially in the summer if he had it all opened up. And if not, if it was in winter and he had it closed up and you walked in there, man, it was — you opened that door, it's like, "Oh my god, I just want to live here."

Dan Pashman: You said that you learned how to cook even before you learned to rock.

Sammy Hagar: Oh, absolutely.

Dan Pashman: Tell me about one of your earliest memories of cooking something and having that experience as a kid.

Sammy Hagar: I remember coming home from school and my mom was working and I was home first and nothing, nobody around. I was starving, so I just started digging around — and it's in my book — and we had that little —those little pop-open biscuits, where you hit them on the side and they bust open. And so I whooped on out and I took some spaghetti sauce and I rolled it out and some — the green mozzarella cheese, the same thing — you know, the parmesan, the romano, whatever, the green bottle — we had some of that and there some old crap that, you know, it was so hard .... Anyway, I sprinkled it all over the top ...

Dan Pashman: Right, like the store bought supermarket cheese.

Sammy Hagar: Yeah, cause that 's all that was in the refrigerator, basically, you know?

Dan Pashman: Right.

Sammy Hagar: And I put it in the oven. I don't know how I thought about what temperature or whatever, but it puffed up, and it was good, man! And I thought, "Holy shit," you know? So when my brother came home from school, I made him one. And my brother was three years older than me, so he picked on me. I was, like, you know, "Shut up! You don't know nothing. Wait till mom leaves, I'm gonna beat the shit out of you," you know? [LAUGHS] We had that kind of relationship.

Dan Pashman: Right.

Sammy Hagar: And so I thought, "I'm gonna blow his mind," and I made it. And he said, "Wow, Sammy, that was good, man. Make another one." And I ... Man, I was so high, I thought, "Wow, my brother likes me, man. [LAUGHS] He's gonna treat me good now," but that was only for another day. But ...

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Sammy Hagar: But that was ...

Dan Pashman: But still, that feeling ... You had that feeling.

Sammy Hagar: It totally made me think I can cook.

Dan Pashman: Right.

Sammy Hagar: And I stuck with it. So ... And that same thing with writing a song, you know, the first time you write a song, you play it for your buddies or your girlfriend, and they go, "Wow, that's really great."

Dan Pashman: So how is cooking like rocking?

Sammy Hagar: It's not as much like rocking as it is, like, songwriting. So, you know, you're gonna write a song. I don't have an idea. I just kind of think, "Eh, I kind of want to write a kind of a mellow song," so I go and get an acoustic guitar to start with. And I start playing a melody and some chord changes. And then you go, "Okay, now I need some words." So then you write some words. And then when you're all done with it, you're going, "Now, you know what it needs? It needs, like, a bass guitar and just some bongos and a shaker," and then this is perfect. This song is right, right? That's like cooking. You go, "Well, I'm gonna start with a chicken," right?

Dan Pashman: Right. 

Sammy Hagar: And then you just start going. And it's exactly the same process when you cook creatively. And they are both equally — I can't say as rewarding financially ... [LAUGHING] But they're both equally as rewarding, you know, to your emotion, to your physical and your spiritual side of you, going, "I just wrote a great song. I'm so happy," or, "I just made this fantastic meal, I'm really really happy," and that's note for note. It's very very similar ...

[CLIP VAN HALEN "BAD REPUTATION"] 

MUSIC  

Dan Pashman: That’s Sammy Hagar. His new book is Are We Having Any Fun Yet?: The Cooking & Partying Handbook. And Sammy’s graduated from biscuit dough pizza. I've got to say, this book includes recipes for tuna ceviche, paella, and a lot more. And speaking of paella, I got to say, one of my favorite parts of Sammy's book is he talks about how ... So he's friends with Tommy Lee, the drummer from Mötley Crüe — natch? And Tommy Lee also likes to cook. So Sammy got Tommy a paella-making kit as a gift. And now, whenever Tommy Lee makes paella, he takes photos of his paella and texts them to Sammy Hagar. I mean, who knew rock stars were so adorable? 

Dan Pashman: Coming up, I’ll talk with legendary French chef Jacques Pépin. And I think you'll hear why this segue isn't nearly as bizarre as it may sound. Jacques will explain why he keeps his beer in the fridge next to his truffles, and why when he goes into a restaurant kitchen, the first place he looks is in the garbage. Stick around. 

[CLIP VAN HALEN "BAD REPUTATION"] 

 

+++BREAK+++

 

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: Welcome back to The Sporkful, I'm Dan Pashman. Hey, exciting news! Sgfoloni is offering 20% off on a special gift set of my cookbook, plus one box each of my three pastas. But it's only for a limited time! Now through next Thursday, October 17th, which, by the way, is National Pasta Day. Get your holiday shopping done early! Pick up this special gift set and get 20% off at Sfoglini.com. That's S-F-O-G-L-I-N-I-.com. Thanks. Now, back to this week's reheat.

MUSIC 

Dan Pashman: Jacques Pépin was a celebrity chef before anyone had ever heard of such a thing. Way before there could be two whole cable networks devoted entirely to food and cooking, Jacques Pépin, Julia Child, and a few others paved the way. A year ago, Jacques celebrated his 80th birthday with the release of his 25th cookbook, Jacques Pépin: Heart and Soul in the Kitchen.  

Dan Pashman: I had read that he enjoys a good beer, so when he came into the studio, I had some ready. 

Jacques Pépin: Yes. 

[CRACKING OPEN A BEER] 

Jacques Pépin: Good. 

Dan Pashman: Sounds nice. 

Jacques Pépin: I do it with a knife or with a fork anyway. 

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] I got mine. 

Jacques Pépin: Well ... 

[CRACKING OPEN ANOTHER BEER] 

Dan Pashman: Now you're pouring it into the paper cup. 

Jacques Pépin: Yes.

Dan Pashman: This is so great. I'm pouring mine into a paper cup too.

Jacques Pépin: Yeah, I like it out of a glass better than out of — out of the bottle.

Dan Pashman: Out of the bottle. Why?

Jacques Pépin: I don't know why. Because ... [LAUGHS] Maybe I'm a slob when I drink?

[LAUGHING]

Jacques Pépin: Directly out of the bottle, it'll end up on my shirt ...

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] Well, cheers. We can't get a clinking sound effect cause now we're drinking beer out of paper cups.

Jacques Pépin: Okay, well that's good. Good, thank you. Thank you very much.

Dan Pashman: You're welcome. Do you ever get concerned about — this is one of my calculations I make when I'm eating is that if I'm — I don't want to drink too much beer when my focus is on the food cause I'll feel too full and I can't eat as much.

Jacques Pépin: Right.

Dan Pashman: Is that a concern for you ever?

Jacques Pépin: Never.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Jacques Pépin: I'm a real glutton, you know?

Dan Pashman: Right. [LAUGHS] I read that you keep beer in your fridge next to the truffles.

Jacques Pépin: Right.

Dan Pashman: Why?

Jacques Pépin: Because if people ask you, "Do you have a beer?", you say, "Yeah, yeah. It's next to the truffle in the refrigerator ..."

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Jacques Pépin: So, it sounds good, you know?

Dan Pashman: But it seems like you get a kick out of combining highbrow and lowbrow?

Jacques Pépin: Yes, I mean, you know, we are — you know, certainly, 30 years ago, any good mother would want their child to marry a doctor, a lawyer, or an architect, certainly, not a cook. And now, we are geniuses, you know?

Dan Pashman: Right. [LAUGHS]

Jacques Pépin: And I don't know what happened, but I mean, I'm enjoying it, but ....

Dan Pashman: You came of age in France during the Second World War.

Jacques Pépin: Right.

Dan Pashman: How did that affect your approach to food?

Jacques Pépin: Well, I am extremely miserly in the kitchen and that's probably because of my mother, aunt, and others ... I mean, food was kind of scarce and nothing was wasted. I mean, still now, whether I do consulting work in restaurants ... Or even when I go in a restaurant like this, I am drawn right away to the garbage can [LAUGHS] to see what's in there. And I get crazy most of the time, like half bread in there ... I mean, you have broccoli ... That gets me crazy, you know?

Dan Pashman: Do you remember your parents? Like do you remember being like them teaching you that? Do you remember specific moments of that?

Jacques Pépin: No, no. No, it was just part of life. I mean, certainly, my mother died last year and she was 99 and a half, so .... My father died many many years ago, and it was my mother cooking because she had a little restaurant. Actually, there was seven women who had restaurants in my family. I'm the first male to go into that business. And even after I had been the chef to the French president, you know, in the '50s working in the biggest place in Paris, if I get back home to my aunt and all that, I go into the kitchen, they say, "Get out of here! You dirty too many pots! You use too much butter!"

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Jacques Pépin: So they were not impressed at all.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: You say you never spend more than $12 for a bottle of wine. Right?

Jacques Pépin: [LAUGHS] Well, I do sometimes more ... But on the whole, you're right. I bought 70 cases of wine this spring.

Dan Pashman: 70 cases ...

Jacques Pépin: Yeah, 70 cases. Yeah.

Dan Pashman: Of wine? Oh my god.

Jacques Pépin: We do drink a lot of wine.

[LAUGHING]

Jacques Pépin: At my house, when we do the big bull party ... 

Dan Pashman: That's exactly the number of cases of wine I would've hoped you would have bought. 

Jacques Pépin: Yeah, right. 

Dan Pashman: You came to America in 1959 ... 

Jacques Pépin: Right. 

Dan Pashman: What was American food like when you got here? Or what was your reaction to it?

Jacques Pépin: Well, it was another world altogether. It was only salad and that's what I've heard. There was no mushroom. I remember I lived on 50th and 1st Avenue. I think it was D'Agostino brothers, one of those — and I go there and I say where are the ... 

Dan Pashman: The supermarket? 

Jacques Pépin: Yeah, supermarket. Where are the mushrooms? They say, "Aisle 5," and that was canned mushroom. 

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS[ 

Jacques Pépin: You have to go to a specialty store ... 

Dan Pashman: Just to get fresh mushrooms. 

Jacques Pépin: Yeah, or parsley even. 

Dan Pashman: Wow. 

Jacques Pépin: It was amazing. But on the other hand, it was my first supermarket. Cause in France, supermarkets had not started and so I thought it was fantastic. 

Dan Pashman: Tell me about the first time you ate an Oreo cookie. 

Jacques Pépin: Ooh ...

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] 

Jacques Pépin: I don't remember the first time. I think it may have been with a dear friend? He was the executive chef of the Pavillon, became kind of a — my older brother, like mentor — and took me to his house in East Hampton, a little house, in the spring — in East Hampton, a summer cottage. I remember the first time that I had — for breakfast, his wife gave me those little packages in cardboard with a dotted line in the middle that you cut through. You open it and that was cornflakes in the middle of that ... or Rice Krispies. 

Dan Pashman: Oh, right! Yes, the little cereal box that turns into the bowl. Yes. 

Jacques Pépin: And you pour it directly. I thought that was really neat. 

Dan Pashman: Yeah. [LAUGHS[] 

Jacques Pépin: Because ... And I love the taste of ... I still love cornflakes. Now, I mix it with chocolate. But at that point, it might have been that time I had an Oreo cookie and I liked it. I still like it. 

Dan Pashman: Let's talk for a minute about tuna tartare and bagel chips. 

Jacques Pépin: Oh. 

Dan Pashman: One of the recipes in your book. I love that it includes bagel chips. 

Jacques Pépin: Right. 

Dan Pashman: Describe your favorite bagel chip to me. Do you like the ones that are really thin and a little bit burnt? Or do you like the ones that are thicker and a little bit softer?

Jacques Pépin: No, the first one. The ones which are really crunchy and ... 

Dan Pashman: You like a lot of crunch. 

Jacques Pépin: Right. You know, I maybe look like the quintessential French chef, and you open the restaurant and I have an eggplant, a Chinese style — I have ... sushi. I have raw fish, like this one, which did not exist when I was kid. You know, after half a century in America, I've absorbed so many other types of cuisine that this is really a very American book in that sense. Especially, I've been married for 50 years to a woman born in New York City, from a Puerto Rican mother and Cuban father, so all of that. And I don't think that I was ever very chauvinistic about my food. I remember my mother coming here 40 years ago and eating my food, and said, "Wow, this is good but it's not French." I said, "No, maybe it's not." So I never really tried to be French totally and but at the same time, I don't try not to be French. I don't really think in those terms. 

Dan Pashman: I host this show here ... I'm not a chef. 

Jacques Pépin: Yes. 

Dan Pashman: I like to eat. Somehow I managed to convince people to give me a job doing this. There are times when I'm in a sort of more high-end food circle. 

Jacques Pépin: Right. 

Dan Pashman: And I kind of look around and I kind of feel like I don't belong here. 

Jacques Pépin: Right. 

Dan Pashman: Like I don't have the knowledge or I just sort of like, I don't have the taste, I don't understand. And maybe that's my own insecurity, but I'm curious, like ... 

Jacques Pépin: No, I feel the same way. 

Dan Pashman: Tell me about that. 

Jacques Pépin: Yeah, I feel the same way. Now tonight, we're going to have dinner — and Magnus Nilsson, you know, famous chef from Fäviken? And if I eat Dan Barbar or any of the great chef like this, I mean it blows my mind because I wouldn't even know where to start what they did. You know? So I will say, "Wow!" I mean, this is amazing. Now, is that what I want to eat every day? Probably now. 

Dan Pashman: So when you're in one of those situations where you feel like maybe you don't belong or it's one of these high-end molecular gastronomy situations ... 

Jacques Pépin: Right. 

Dan Pashman: What do you do?

Jacques Pépin: Well, no. I enjoyed it. I mean, it's a different approach. You know, when I cook, I want to please people. I want them to be able to identify the food and already make a paring in their head and start salivating and say, "That's going to be great with  ..., " whatever. So there is that communion, if you want all that interchange between the person you're going to feed, the feeder and the ... [LAUGHS] 

Dan Pashman: And the feedee. Right. 

Jacques Pépin: The feedee. But molecular cooking, that is exactly the opposite. It's a trick for the chef. The idea is to stump you. But special occasion is special occasion. You don't, otherwise you go back to a beer and a taco, you know? 

Dan Pashman: You said that this is your last big cookbook, at least. I know that you got some other ideas in the works ... 

Jacques Pépin: Right. 

Dan Pashman: But sort of your last big cookbook TV series. But you haven't ruled out in particular a project with your granddaughter. 

Jacques Pépin: Right. 

Dan Pashman: What do you like to cook with her?

Jacques Pépin: Well, you know the lesson of my grandfather, you know, doing little things. I enjoy cooking with her, teaching her and she's eleven-years-old now. I started when she was, like, four or five cooking with her. and it's always fun. I mean, and there is nothing like cooking with your kid in the kitchen. I mean, when my daughter was a year and a half old, I hold her in my arms and make her stir the pot. So she, quote, "stirs the pot", she, quote, "made it". 

Dan Pashman: Right. 

Jacques Pépin: So she was going to eat it. So that's very important to get the family involved. I mean, there is no place like the kitchen for a child coming back from school, you hear the noise of the kitchen, the klang, the smell of that kitchen, the taste — both of your father, your mother — that stays with you the rest of your life. It's very visceral. 

Dan Pashman: And many years from now ... 

Jacques Pépin: When I'm dead. 

Dan Pashman: When your grand — what was that?

Jacques Pépin: When I'm dead ... 

[LAUGHING] 

Dan Pashman: Right. Maybe when we're all dead. 

Jacques Pépin: Right. [LAUGHS] 

Dan Pashman: When your grandkids are grandparents themselves ... 

Jacques Pépin: Oh boy ... 

Dan Pashman: What do you hope that they'll say are their special food memories from cooking with you?

Jacques Pépin: I hope that they will do some of those tastes that I did with their kids and I hope that when they do it, they have a smile on their face, you know, that I brought some pleasure in their life and that's what the food does. I mean, you know, you bring pleasure to people and that's how I would like to be remembered. I mean, the table is a great equalizer. I mean they may seat you in a table next to the C.E.O. of General Motors that you don't know. They don't know you. They start talking to you around the table. In a normal situation, they would never speak to you.

[LAUGHING]

Jacques Pépin: But the table is the equalizer. They're eating around the table, who cares? So that's a great way of spending your life.

Dan Pashman: Jacques Pépin, it's a real honor to have you here. Thank you so much.

Jacques Pépin: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me and thank you for the beer. I just finished it.

Dan Pashman: All right.

Jacques Pépin: That was good.

Dan Pashman: Perfect timing then.

Jacques Pépin: Carte Blanche. Thank you. Cheers.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

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Dan Pashman: I've got to say, I really loved hearing how much Jacques and Sammy have in common. You hear a guy like Jacques Pépin talk about coming home from school as a kid and the sounds and smells of the kitchen, that could just as easily be Sammy Hagar walking into his grandparents' trailer. And you hear Sammy talk about how it made him feel when his older brother liked his pizza. You know, that's the same feeling that Jacques Pépin's been chasing his whole life, like he said, bringing pleasure to other people. 

Dan Pashman: And I really love what Jacques said about how the table is the great equalizer. You know, I like to think of this show as sort of a big dinner table. You know, the kind of place where Sammy Hagar and Jacques Pépin end up side by side with you and me. 

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Dan Pashman: That does it for this week. Please make sure you subscribe to this podcast wherever you get it, that way you’ll never miss an episode. 

CREDITS

Dan Pashman: And hey, did you know that you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? Then there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to SiriusXM.com/sporkful. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

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