UNITED STATES
CBS News
[with video]
Years before he even got there, Eric Ripert pictured the restaurant he’d own. A psychic told him he’d work in a restaurant in a city surrounded by water. That became a reality, along with much more, all documented in his new memoir, “32 Yolks: From My Mother’s Table to Working the Line.”
Watching his mother and grandmother in the kitchen when he was growing up in France instilled an early passion for cooking in young Ripert. But it was in the kitchen of legendary French chef Jacques Pepin that nine-year-old Ripert felt “something different.” …
“He accepted the fact that I would come and observe in the kitchen and he would sit me next to the counter and I was fascinated by the moves, by what he was doing and by the smell and by the food that he was giving me, too,” Ripert recalled.
Ripert’s memoir is the latest addition to his growing book collection. He’s written five cookbooks and expects to write another, but wanted to write something to “inspire young people” to encourage them that “it will be tough but they will get to where they want if they have the will.” He gets personal about some of the painful ordeals he’s faced in his childhood, including his parents’ divorce, physical abuse from his stepfather and a predator priest.
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