Daily photo Meditation: Everything’s Okay With Jacques Pepin

Because all of his shows are on public-access television, and so you can watch them for free on YouTube, and he embodies the deep and profound safety of being middle class, real middle class, the kind of middle-class where your father had a good job and a house and his father had a good job and a house and so on and so on, an unbroken chain of good men with real jobs and property, and a family to raise therein, and this is your birthright, and you’re going to have it too; Julia Child safe, where you never check your bank balance and you always reach for the bill with the assurance of someone who’s never found anything to be beyond their grasp, and because you have here a good carrot and some nicechives and the fresh butter, and nothing is loud or gorgeous or sexy, just nice nice nice, it was nice yesterday, it was nice today, and it will be nice tomorrow, and you’re safe in the sea of knowing exactly what came before and what is still to come.

 

 You want the carrots cooked, but you don’t want them falling apart. Maybe three pieces of shallot, like this. It could be sliced or chopped, in that case I’m going to slice them. Okay. The shallot could go in in a minute or so, or even now.