THE ESSENTIAL MAGIC OF JACQUES PEPIN

Jacques Pépin, one of the food world's living legends, reflects on a career that spans nearly eight decades.

- Kat Kinsman

JACQUES PÉPIN'S HANDS are resting quietly on his kitchen table, and it's taking every ounce of my willpower not to stare. I know these hands well, and you do, too. They've been photographed meticulously barding a roast or folding a tart in the pages of La Technique, whisking a crème pâtissière while bickering with Julia Child on a TV screen, curled around a knife handle and an onion half on the cover of Everyday Cooking with Jacques Pépin, casually wielding a flaming pan of crêpes suzette as he lovingly taunts his cook-off opponents at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen. At the Mad Symposium in Copenhagen, I saw these hands projected many times their size on a screen above him, boning a chicken and rolling an omelet as he spoke to 300 silent, awestruck chefs and spectators about the importance of mastering technique. He never looked down. These are magic hands.

Mine are shaking as I slide over the manila envelope I'd clutched on the train ride to his Connecticut home. It feels like a bit of a risk, and Gaston, the small, dark gray French poodle nestled in his lap, grumbles in protest when the 87-year-old chef leans forward to flip open the March 1978 Playboy nestled inside with some old photographs. But Pépin's face warms. He recognizes his own work-a step-by-step tutorial and recipe for a soufflé-and beams into full sunshine when he finds out, to his complete amazement, that this 18-page insert within the magazine is considered the debut issue of Food & Wine, and his recipe is the first the publication ever ran.