Jacques Pépin: Cooking with Claudine

- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

- And I'm Claudine Pepin.

You know, Papa, I'd like to learn how to make a truly great meal like I'd get at home or in a restaurant.

- You'd be surprised how easy it can be.

You can create complex dishes at home if you know the right step.

You know, one of the secret of a great chef is to understand some basic principle.

I'll show you how to make an impressive meal, and one of your favorite dessert.

- Let me guess, does it include chocolate?

- Of course it does.

Learn how to cook like a pro.

- Next, on "Jacque Pepin's Kitchen".

- "Cooking With Claudine".

(upbeat music) Today I will teach you how to cook like a pro.

- All right.

- So you don't have to be intimidated.

You can do really nice dish.

It's a question of breaking it down, knowing what you're doing.

And I know you know what you're doing sometimes.

(Claudine chuckling) - When I know, I know.

And when I don't know, well.

- We are going to start with the leek here.

We're going to do a stuffing for sole.

Here, I remove a couple of those because they're a bit tough.

Cut those on the outside.

But you want to keep most of the green here.

You know what, this one is still tough.

Removing this one, you know?

- Okay.

- And then now you want to open this, this way to expose the center.

You've seen that.

- [Claudine] Yep.

- This is nice, that light green.

And you wanna wash that for me under the water?

- Yes, sure.

- Under running water.

- Yes.

- You wanna get rid of that?

- Yep.

- Good, I have a great helper in the kitchen.

(Claudine laughing) So with this, we're going to do some mushroom, and just mushroom, very thinly sliced.

And the leek, and that we're going to put that between sole.

So let's put a little bit of oil, a little bit of olive oil there.

Then mushroom, our mushroom.

I have those mushroom here.

Ah.

- Like this?

- The leek is clean.

Do I have to check it?

- No.

- Okay, good.

And we slice it.

Remember how many time I've seen you how to slice this?

- [Claudine] Yes.

- [Jacques] Do you want to try it again?

- I like watching, I learn a lot.

(Claudine laughing) - You learn by watching?

(knife chopping) Okay, go ahead.

Put your finger here now.

I'm going to cut and you're going to.

(knife chopping) I see that thumb is coming too close there.

Let's see that.

- [Claudine] Can I push, is that cheating?

- [Jacques] Yeah, just let it run against your finger here.

- Uh huh.

- Okay.

(knife chopping) Are you scared?

(knife chopping) - No.

- Why don't you mix this a little bit for me?

- Okay.

(knife chopping) (pan sizzling) - Okay, and then I'm giving you that.

(pan sizzling) Okay, put a little bit of salt and pepper on top of this.

(pan sizzling) Good.

(pan sizzling) That's good.

And then some moisture is going to come out of it.

And this has to cook about 10 minutes.

So you cover it.

Gonna cook like 10 minutes until it gets stuffed and after you have to let it cool off.

Why you have one like this?

You wanna gimme that one here?

- Sure.

- This is what it amount to when it break down.

- That's it?

- [Jacques] So just cover it and lower the heat.

Yeah, that's it.

- Wow.

- So we're going to start our sole with this.

And as you can see here, I have a sole.

Now usually you see the sole is always black on one side, white on the other side.

The black side has actually more flesh than the other side.

- Why?

- When they do it at the market, I don't know, Claudine.

When they do it at the market, they lift up the whole filet.

The whole filet actually this way.

But the classic way is to cut through that line in the center with a flexible knife like this, and remove one filet here.

- Oh.

- And another filet here.

So that with each side you basically have two filet.

Now there is Dover sole, there is fluke, dab, flounder, Petrale sole.

I mean, you name it, there is over 100 different variety of sole.

And that's what you have here, the two soles.

And you turn it and do basically the same thing on the other side.

- Okay.

- Now after this, you have to remove the skin here.

So you do it this way, hold the skin there and move it in a kind of jigsaw fashion, like whoa.

- Oh wow.

- You know?

To remove that skin, and any of the black stuff, you scrape it out.

It'll be a bit bitter.

- Oh.

- So that's how you do it.

But of course I have some here, which is done.

- Hmm.

- Okay.

So the big filet we keep with the big filet, the small one with the small one.

So we want them about equal size.

- Okay.

- So we are going to stuff them.

So there, let's arrange them this way.

And we put the dark side there because this is nicer looking.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- It'll end up being this way.

So this one with this one.

And why don't you start maybe with a little spoon here, putting the stuffing on top.

- Just on top?

- Yes, yes.

- Okay.

- We want to just spread it out exactly just what you're doing here.

So you put it on this one, this one will go on top like this.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- In addition to that, now we are going to put some scallop on top and have those large scallop.

- Oh yum.

- And just cut them into thin slice like this.

Basically one scallop per person, which we are going to put right on top like this.

You see?

- [Claudine] Mm, oh, that's gonna be great.

- So we have scallop and sole together.

Boy, we are some team, I tell you.

- Hey, we're doing good today.

- Yeah.

- This is awesome.

Well, I'm gonna be able to cook like a pro when I'm finished with this.

- I hope so.

I hope so, maybe me too.

(Claudine laughing) Okay.

- How's that?

- This is great.

- Okay.

- So go ahead, put some of the scallop on top just as I did here.

Okay, then you wanna put this one on top.

See, your sandwich here.

- Oh, okay.

- Go ahead.

- This one with the dark side down.

- [Jacques] Exactly.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- So we do that sandwich here, this one here and there.

And now I'm gonna cook them in there.

So you know what I'm going to do?

We put shallots here, chopped shallots, to create our sauce with it, and tomato.

Tiny tomato.

Okay.

(Claudine laughing) Take that gently like this.

You know your sandwich, you want to arrange them on top the long way like this.

So look at that.

This, so they're slightly bigger, so I'll have the big one.

I'll give you the small one.

(Claudine laughing) Do you want to put salt and a little bit of paper on top of it?

- Okay.

- That looks good, look very professional.

- Thank you.

- And on top of that, when you do fish, you want to cook that with a piece of parchment paper on top.

- Why?

- Because it'll keep the steam.

The steam will come, it touch the parchment paper, fall back like a hot house.

- [Claudine] Oh, okay.

- So here you see what I did?

I can butter a little bit of it, fold the place on the buttered part, fold it in four.

And now from that corner here, all I need is to cut here.

Do you understand that?

- Sure.

- Okay, so we are cutting here.

Now you can open it, open it and place it right on top.

It should fit about.

Oh, okay.

(paper crinkling) - [Claudine] Wow.

- Okay.

And then we have to put some white wine in there.

- Okay.

- So about a third of a cup of white wine here.

A dry fruity type of wine.

Now that you have here, you tuck this around like this.

(paper crinkling) Yeah?

And now you want to bring it back to a strong boil on top of the stove before, before you put it in the oven.

And while this is coming to a boil, I'm gonna show you how to make potato.

- Okay.

- Have a great way to make potato.

We used to do that in Paris.

We used to call that Pomme Savonnette, like a little soap.

And they are very moist because we cook them with water.

I know you like the skin, so I've decided to let the skin for you.

- I do, I like the skin.

- So you want to have nice potato.

If they're a little bit damaged, like at the end, take the end of it.

Then I cut, I stand them this way and I cut just a little bit of that skin here.

- Okay.

- A little bit of that skin here.

(knife chopping) And after that, I cut them in half.

So we really have two big potato slab like this.

And we start cooking them, skin, I mean the big flat down.

- [Claudine] This way, right?

- [Jacques] Yep, this way in the water.

- Okay.

- And you know what I'm going to do with this?

I have three-quarter of a cup of water and the water will eliminate as it's cooked.

It's going to evaporate rather.

And all you're going to be left with is a little bit of oil, little piece of butter.

- [Claudine] Oh.

- The salt, and it's going to brown beautifully.

So what I'm going to do is to cook that for about 15 minutes.

In fact, the fish, I think is cooked.

Why don't you put the fish in the oven here?

- Okay.

- And watch out.

Can you carry it like this?

- Yep.

- Oh, okay.

So this, now what you want to do is to bring it to a strong boil on top of the stove.

You want to lower your heat on like medium.

You wanna cook that for like 15 minutes until it's tender and the water has disappeared.

Then you can take your lid off and continue cooking it until it's brown, like a steak.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Oh, so you can grab that here.

This is cooked, right?

- Yep.

- Okay, as you see the piece of paper on top, the way it's tucked around and the way it protect it.

- [Claudine] Oh wow.

- [Jacques] Now this is nice, you see?

- Oh, that looks beautiful.

- And when we're in a professional kitchen, very often, I keep that.

You reuse it again a couple of times during, leave it here for a minute, I may need it.

What we want to do now is to do the sole.

So you want to lift up your sandwich of sole and scallop and mushroom and leek and all of that in there.

This is great.

See this is nice.

And I could use this actually to put it on top to keep it warm.

You leave it on the side here.

And now we are going to emulsify that to do a sauce with it.

So you want to bring this, I have a lot of juice in there.

Maybe I'll take some of the juice out just to emulsify.

(juice splashing) This.

Put this in there.

See this is a beautiful copper pot.

And maybe we'll serve the sole in there.

This is an ideal place to put the sole in.

So you know what you do, you emulsify that in there.

Right in the bottom, right.

And I'm gonna give you some butter in there.

Remember there is no oil, there is nothing in there.

- Oh look at this beautiful color.

- [Jacques] But there you're going to do this.

- It's great.

- See this is fine, looks terrific.

I want to taste it.

You like it?

- Mm.

Oh, that's really good.

- A dash of salt I think.

Okay, I move that sauce out of the way and I want to replate that in my copper.

And ready.

Okay, you wanna put your sauce on top of it.

This is hot, it just came out of the oven.

And maybe some chives on top of it.

- All of it?

- No, I think that's, we can put maybe some chive like this.

- Oh, that's nice.

- Okay, and this is going to be a real professional meal that you want to serve to your friend.

- [Claudine] Oh, that looks really beautiful.

- Now I wanna show you those potato, because the potato now have been cooked.

So look at that.

See there is no more liquid and they've browned.

So after they brown, they were browning on this side.

Remember?

I turned them around.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- So that they're brown and they are really moist.

So let's get.

- Oh, lemme get a plate.

- A plate for that.

We can arrange this.

- Oh.

- And you know what?

I serve that sometime, I serve that with a tapenade.

- [Claudine] Yep.

You know what a tapenade is over there?

- I know I like it, but I dunno what's in it.

- Oh, okay.

Well the tapenade come from the word tapeno in Provencal, and it means capers.

So it's done with caper, although a lot of people don't even put any capers in it.

They put olive, I have black Kalamata olive in there.

I have a bit of scallion, I have the capers, and I have even an anchovy filet which I love.

I can serve that with the tapenade or without the tapenade.

And as long as we are putting some chives on top, why don't we put some here also?

We can put that here.

This is going to be a great accompaniment to our fish.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Okay, so we're going to do a warm chocolate fondue souffle type.

So very easy for four.

I have two eggs, so it's not that much.

- Okay.

- And we are going to beat the egg whites.

So you go ahead, you start with this, yes.

You know to use that, right?

- Yes.

- You go ahead.

Okay, you can go full speed.

That's it.

Beautiful.

So here I have three ounces of chocolate.

I have about three tablespoon of butter we put in there, which we mix and we're going to melt in there, the sugar.

And I keep a little bit of sugar to finish your egg white with.

Mix this.

(mixer whirring) Now what I have in addition here, I have a little bit of vanilla.

And I'm going to put the two egg yolk, which came from those egg white there.

- How am I doing?

- Oh, you're doing very well.

In fact, now it's practically done.

We can put the thing and continue beating it.

Just mix this together and I'm ready for you.

So this is terrific.

Okay, that's it, that's fine.

So you can release those things.

So I take a little bit of this, mix it with the whisk.

(whisk mixing) That's it.

(whisk tapping) And the rest of it we can fold it inside.

- [Claudine] Sounds good.

- Oh, okay.

- Now I've heard a lot about folding.

- Now you know the way you fold it?

- [Claudine] No.

- [Jacques] Yeah, you go this way and fold.

- So why?

- You see, well I do exactly the same movement with my hand here.

The same thing, but I turn the bowl here.

You go ahead, you try it.

The idea is to keep as much air that you go.

Yeah, that's it, you turn your spatula a little more.

You see?

Turn the spatula.

- [Claudine] Oh okay.

- A little more.

That's it, beautiful.

So let's get those mold together.

Those are buttered.

And we want to fill them up about here.

I know that you're ready.

- It's chocolate.

- You're ready to lick the batter, right?

- Done, it's good.

- Those are going to cook about 10 minutes into the oven.

Why don't you put them in the oven?

- Okay.

- And I have some which are here, which now are, yeah, they are lukewarm.

So we are going to garnish and serve those.

You wanna push this around, and it should come out if you up, like you have a little bit of air.

- [Claudine] Ooh.

- And you can see that this is going to be very soft kind of in the center.

So what you want to do is to serve it lukewarm this way with maybe a tiny bit of cream on top, sour cream.

And maybe you wanna put a little flowers on top of it?

In the middle.

Which one?

- [Claudine] This one.

- [Jacques] This one.

- Why do I have to choose?

I want both.

- You want both?

Well I think it looks absolutely stunning and delicious.

- Thank you.

My father has always been my teacher.

He taught me how to walk, he taught me how to talk.

He taught me how to ski, and now he's teaching me how to cook.

And in doing that I'm sure that he can teach everyone else how to cook too.

(upbeat music) - For our first course, one of your best dish.

I know you love pasta.

We're going to do Fusilli with escarole, eggplant, and olive sauce.

- Oh that sounds great.

- So I just put the pasta cooking a couple of minutes ago.

Let's do the sauce.

It's a mixture of different type of vegetable.

And we're going to start, put that on this side here because we're gonna start with putting olive oil in there.

And you know what those are?

- [Claudine] Pine nuts.

- Pine nuts, yes.

And we're going to saute the pine nuts in there to fry them in the olive oil.

And we're going to do garlic with it.

Maybe we put one more garlic.

- Okay.

- Do you want to peel that one?

In that case, we want to peel it because what we want to do here is to slice it very thin.

You can do the garlic in different type of way, but somehow slice like that is going to be less strong than it would be if you crush it.

So finely sliced like this, it is nice and mild.

So we add that to our pignoli nut.

So look at those.

They look pretty good.

They start frying in there.

(pan rattling) Until they get lightly brown, you don't want them to let them burn.

And what we are going to add to it is the salad here.

And we have an escarole.

You see I opened it to show you how white it is inside.

- It looks good.

- I know you live in Belgium.

And in Belgium, what do they call that?

- I forgot.

- Endive.

- Endive.

- Endive.

And what we call endive here in Belgium you call chicory.

What we call Belgium endive.

Okay, so you see this is browning nicely now.

(pan rattling) So this is the time to add your.

- All of this?

- And there's a lot of moisture in it, yes.

- Okay.

- So you add it to it.

(pan sizzling) Lemme sprinkle a little bit.

I'm gonna put some pepper on it.

(pan sizzling) And salt.

(pan sizzling) Okay?

- Okay.

- I'm gonna reduce that a little bit.

Cover that and that has to cook a couple of minutes.

During that time, I wanna show you how to do the eggplant here.

We have two eggplant.

You see the different eggplant?

This one is long, this one is round.

- [Claudine] Oh.

- One is a male, one is a female.

I forget which.

(Claudine laughing) - I don't know.

- It's all right.

I know, see this is a female.

It has more seed.

It has more seed, yes.

So we are going to cut that, trim the end a little bit, maybe even a little bit of this.

And then we going to cut that into six slice like this.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five slice, like this.

And what we want to do is to put maybe a tablespoon of oil at the most, you wanna spread it out, spread it out on top of this here.

That's it.

And then I put a little bit of salt on top of it.

- [Claudine] Oh wow.

- You know?

And you want to put, press your slice of eggplant in there.

Now you press all of them like this, then you turn them upside down.

- Wow.

Oh, that's awesome.

- And they are seasoned.

And then you put them in the oven like 400 degree for like 45 minutes or so.

So why don't you put them in the oven?

- Okay.

- And I have one here which is cold now.

Yeah, now it's cold or lukewarm.

You check on this.

(pan sizzling) Beautiful.

It's cooking, it's getting wilted now.

And if you think that it's going a bit too fast, put a little bit of water in it.

(lid rattling) - Water from the pasta or?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- A little bit of water from the pasta.

So what we are going to do, see those eggplant, which now are cooked, we're going to cut them into pieces.

Thank you.

- [Claudine] You're welcome.

- This way.

(knife chopping) To add them to our vegetable sauce.

And then we're going to put some olive, we have Kalamata olive here and we want to remove the pit.

So just crush it like this.

And when you crush it, it open, you can pull out the pit.

- Okay.

- So we have all of those.

Good to have.

That's how you pit that one, huh?

(Claudine laughing) That's good.

Okay, I think it's about ready now.

So why don't you put the olive in there.

(pan sizzling) Okay, beautiful color.

The peas, we have peas.

Those are tiny baby frozen peas.

Fresh one of course are terrific.

But we have those which are very, yeah, put that in there also.

Great.

(spoon banging) Now what I want to do in there is pepper, salt.

(pan sizzling) And I think we're ready to have our pasta.

Our pasta should be about ready now.

Yep.

But you know what I do?

I put a little bit of the, like one little of the juice of the pasta in my sauce.

And you know what for?

Because otherwise when you put the pasta, there is still a lot.

A lot of it the pasta is going to absorb at that point.

It will absorb, it will make it too dry.

So I always finish by putting a little bit of this in there.

Look at that tray of pasta.

- That looks so good and it smells great.

- [Jacques] Look at that.

- Oh that looks.

- I mean this is for like six, eight people easy.

So you wanna put a little bit of cheese on top of this.

Have that at the last moment.

Oh, what are you doing nice?

- I'm doing little swirls.

- And here now I'm gonna grate some on top.

How you doing with your swirl?

- I'm doing pretty good.

- Okay.

- Not as good as I'd like to but.

- [Jacques] And try, this one is bigger.

- [Claudine] You do it.

- You see if you do.

If you want put that in decoration on top.

It's crumbly.

Now you eat the olive.

I'm going to have the Parmigiano Reggiano.

The best.

Let's toss it a little bit.

- [Claudine] Mm.

- And put the swirl on top.

This is going to be a great dish to start our menu tonight.

(gentle music) I hope we've all learned how to cook like a pro today.

What did you learn?

- I learned a lot.

I learned about the pasta and how long to cook it.

- [Jacques] And the potatoes.

- And the potatoes, I would make actually, I would use the potatoes and make like a little pizza.

Put some.

- That's a good idea.

A piece of tomato and maybe some mozzarella cheese.

- Mozzarella.

- Put it there, that'd be great.

- Yeah, and the fish looks really, really wonderful.

- Yes.

And I think, with that fish we should have a Pouilly Fuisse.

A Pouilly Fuisse from the Macon area.

She's good, but if you learn how to cook like a pro, you should learn how to open champagne like a pro.

And hold it in the bottom with a towel.

See there is that little twister here.

You have to untwist this.

And then up and take, remove this.

And you see what you do here.

You grab the cork away from your guest preferably, and you turn the bottle.

You don't turn the cork, you turn the bottle until, and slowly you release it like this.

- Wow.

- This is the proper way of opening champagne.

I don't have to teach you how to drink it, right?

- Nope, I'm very good at that, thank you.

(Claudine laughing) - And this is going to be a great party for us.

I'm so happy that you cook with me today.

- Thank you.

- And you learn how to cook like a pro.

I hope you're going to get together with your family, cook together, cook like pro, enjoy it.

I enjoy cooking it for you.

Happy cooking.

- Happy cooking.

(upbeat music)