Of the 20-plus cookbooks Jacques Pepin has written, Chez Jacques is his most personal and engaging. Now starring in his tenth PBS series, Pepin ranks among America’s most beloved cooking teachers, and this book shows us why.

The book’s 100 recipes -- for soups and appetizers, main courses, side dishes, and desserts -- are Pepin’s own favorites among the thousands he has created over a lifetime of cooking. Using readily available ingredients and relying upon familiar techniques, these are the dishes he makes when preparing food at his Connecticut home. But Chez Jacques is more than a collection of well-liked recipes; it’s also a captivating sentimental journey. Each dish is introduced by a recollection -- of picking dandelion greens for a spring salad, of buying fresh eggs from the local farmer -- that invites readers to share in the traditions and rituals of Pepin’s most intimate circle.

This treasury of great food, lore, and memory is exquisitely illustrated with a sampling of Pepin’s paintings, as well as hundreds of color photographs of the finished dishes and of Pepin in all his “natural habitats” -- pitching boules with a group of friends, savoring a glass of chilled rosé in the afternoon sun, painting landscapes, designing menus, and, of course, working in his kitchen.