My background is as a chef. I never went to cooking school, unthinkable now, but went to France to work in restaurants there. In those days—the 1970s—food in America was execrable. Even fancy “French” restaurants in Manhattan had mediocre food. You couldn’t get an espresso out of Greenwich Village. In France, fifty years ago, things were much different. People actually went out to lunch, even alone, in nice restaurants with white tablecloths. Virtually every table had a bottle or half-bottle of wine on it since eating without, even at lunch, would be unimaginable.

I’m not sure why I fell in love with France. I’ve always had, and I share with others, a profound sense of having been there before. It wasn’t just the good food, the extraordinary butter, and the fascinating language, but everything French: the yellow fog lights required for cars, the toilet paper that didn’t come in rolls, the keys that looked like skeleton keys from my childhood, the admiration of things antique.

Ultimately, I moved to France and worked in restaurants to learn how to make that marvelous food. But it wasn’t until many years later that I discovered that the job of the cook was to bring the qualities of the ingredients into focus, to underline them, and in those days some of these products were magnificent. I remember inch-thick white asparagus, furry boars’ heads sitting on the back tables of butchers, and, when in season, game of all kinds hanging from the entranceways of the butchers and volaillers. Some streets, the market streets, would be lined with oyster sellers and farmers with pushcarts selling a bunch of leeks or bundles of herbs. My own neighborhood in Montmartre had three charcutiers, four boulangers, two volailliers, une tripèrie, une poissonèrie, three butchers, one horse butcher, several patissèries, crèmeries.…, On a recent trip, only the fish store remained. My memory of a bright and vibrant working-class neighborhood, streets and cafés jammed except in early afternoon, was replaced by a dull and dreary street corner. But to steal a notion from Hemingway, those memories have carried me a long way, to the end of an almost 50-year career.

Over these many years, starting when I lived in France in the 1970s, I collected cookbooks. Some, which I still have, I’m selling here. Perhaps it’s fear or just getting old, but I want to lighten my load and clear out my cookbooks, which, I hate to admit, I rarely consult.

I would like to think that there are still people out there who remember me in my glory when I was coming out with a book a year and had the honor of receiving seven James Beard Awards. In such a case, I’ll gladly endorse any book with my ex-libris stamp and sign it to whomever one wants. While you can buy my own books here, you can also consult jimcooks.com where there’s a link to Amazon.