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Jacques Ppin
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Jacques Pépin receives inaugural Julia Child Award

Award honors individual who has changed the way America eats

Veteran celebrity chef and culinary legend Jacques Pépin received the inaugural Julia Child Award Thursday.

The award was presented by The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. It honors “an individual who has made a profound and significant difference in the way America cooks, eats and drinks,” according to the foundation, which Child established in 1995. She died in 2004.

According to the foundation, the award was established to encourage people to understand and value food, eating and drinking, encourage them to cook at home, expand public awareness of the recipient, and to help further his or her objectives through $50,000 in grants to non-profit organizations of his or her choosing.

Child and Pépin were famously good friends, and their PBS TV cooking series “Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home” won an Emmy Award and a James Beard Award in 2001.

“Julia and Jacques brought the French zest for food and wine to the American table, creating and indelible mark on our nation’s culinary history,” John Gray, director of the National Museum of American History, said in a press release. “These two great friends prepared so many meals together for their television audiences in Julia Child’s home kitchen on display at the museum and so I offer my congratulations to the formidable Jacques Pépin.”

Pépin was born in 1935 in Bourg-en-Bresse, France, and begin his cooking career as an apprentice at age 13. He flourished in the kitchen and eventually became a personal chef for three French presidents. He moved to the United States in 1959, first working at Le Pavillon in New York City before becoming director of research and development for the Howard Johnson Company, a position he held from 1960 to 1970. He went on to write more than two dozen cookbooks, including “La Technique,” a foundational manual on French cuisine. He has hosted more than a dozen cooking series. He was inducted into the MenuMasters Hall of Fame in 2000 and was awarded Le Legion d’Honneur, France’s highest civilian honor, in 2004.

Pépin currently serves on the board of and is a spokesman for Spoons Across America, an educational program that teaches about healthy eating. He also participates annually in events for the hunger relief organization Share Our Strength.

Pépin has selected as recipients for the grant Boston University’s Programs in Food & Wine, which offers certificates in food studies and culinary arts and a graduate degree in gastronomy, and Wholesome Wave.

“Wholesome Wave is a unique and extraordinary program that supports low-income families and gives them access to fresh, healthy produce from farmers’ markets. This is a worthwhile and much needed program that has my full backing,” Pépin said in a release.

Both recipients will receive $25,000.

Pépin was selected for the award by a five-person jury led by Jim Dodge, director of specialty culinary programs for non-commercial foodservice operator Bon Appétit Management Company, based in Palo Alto, Calif. Also on the jury were Darra Goldstein, the Wilcox B. and Harriet M. Adsit Professor of Russian at Williams College and founding editor of “Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture;” Los Angeles Times columnist Russ Parsons; Los Angeles-based chef and restaurateur Nancy Silverton; and Boston-based chef and restaurateur Jasper White.

Update: Oct. 6, 2015  This story has been updated with details regarding the recipients Pépin selected for his $50,000 grant.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected]
Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary

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