- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

To make food that's chic and elegant, you don't have to be rich and neither does the food.

Just keep it fresh, light and bold.

Like artichokes with sauce ravigote, an invigorating blend of vinegar, onions, capers and herbs.

Quickly seared calf's liver, finished with lemon and tarragon.

Swiss chard, seasoned with ginger and jalapeno pepper, and classic oeufs a la neige, or snow eggs with a (indistinct) sauce that look like a creme anglaise but actually has no fat.

It's a chic turn out supper and the food is (indistinct) of the setting on Today's Gourmet.

(mellow music) Today we're going to do a very interesting meal, kind of chic townhouse meal, type of thing you do in the city.

Artichokes, it's kind of always a bit fancy for me, very fancyful.

It's high in potassium, in fiber, very, very low in calorie.

We're going to do that with a sauce, ravigote we call, which is a very zesty type of interesting sauce that you can use with fish or with other thing really.

And with that we are going to do calf's liver, calf's liver saute with a caper sauce.

So the first thing that I wanted to show you, the artichoke.

When you get artichokes like this, I would go to the market and probably pay a little less for this one.

As you can see, the end of the leaves are already yellowish a little bit, but it doesn't matter.

We're going to trim it.

In fact, I buy it even yellower than that if I know I'm going to do artichokes bottom, removing all of those leaves.

And then you end up paying it half of the price and you're going to do the bottom anyway or the heart.

What you do here cut approximately a third of the top.

You have to have a very sharp knife on this because it's very tough.

And now on the outside you start at the bottom.

You trim each of the leaf at least halfway down because you don't want to puncture your finger with the pricker at the end of the leaf when you're eating the artichoke.

So this is a nice way to do it.

And artichokes are relatively expensive and all I say, pick them up when the season is right and also look for bargain because all I say, when they start getting a bit darker like that, they tend to lower the price.

And this is the time usually I go and buy artichokes.

So now this is about clean, see all around.

I wanna use the stem also, so I just cut the end of the stem and trim it around.

Remember that it's very fibrous, the outside of the stem, but you trim it this way, then the rest is really edible.

So we can have this one is slightly bigger than the other one, but we have our four artichokes and that of course you can prepare that ahead.

So what we want to do now is to put those to cook.

I have boiling water, a dash of salt in it, you drop them and this will tend to go up to the surface, so what you do put, I have a sieve or something heavy enough to push them down with a bit of weight in it so that it hold that under the water.

And if this is not enough weight, I could put my plate on it or anything just to push that into the water.

You really don't wanna cover the whole thing because they will tend to turn yellow if it's covered.

They have to cook so many minute until they are tender.

You pull out a leaf to find out whether they are tender about 40 minutes for that size.

Then you put them under cold water to cool them off and keep them green enough.

And that's what I have here.

When they are finished (indistinct) this way, you want to press all the water out of it as much as you can that I have done before.

What I've done with this one is to take the center, those are the leaves which cover the heart, remove it and after I take the choke out of it.

This is one way of serving it.

For example, here, if I press those things out so that I can put my finger in the middle, I will take the whole center and try to pull out that whole leaves.

See that whole bunch of small leaves from the center, which I have here and now can use that for garbage.

Here, the center of it, I don't know whether the camera can go right in the center of that thing, but you want to remove the choke, which is those prickly type of a thing.

And this is the classic way of serving.

Now it's totally clean inside.

And what I wanna do with this one now which you would wanna to do is to cut the stem to serve it with the stem.

This goes into the center and that right here and you fill the center with the sauce, the stem, you can cut it into a couple of piece, standard enough and serve it on the outside.

You know that would be one classic way of serving your artichokes.

We're going to do it a slightly different here.

What I want to do, this one I've shown you, it's simply to cut this in actually four pieces with a beautiful center.

Such an interesting looking and with this it actually to remove the choke right here, you see that choke is right there.

Remove it here and arrange that on the plate.

I could have the stem going on the outside that is going this way.

What is it going to be better this way or maybe this way.

I'll cross the center.

See it's an interesting shape so you can do thing with it.

And you know what I could have done also, I could have done just as I did here before I cut it up and I could have removed the center, which would've been even a bit smarter than what I did.

So that I could use that center after like I have this one here and put the sauce into it, in the center right here.

Well we didn't do it, so we leave it at that, that's fine.

And now what I want to do is the ravigote sauce, a very simple type of sauce that we do in France often for poached fish.

So what I have here is red onion, a little bit of red onion like coarsely chopped.

This is not very, very finely, mostly coarsely chopped.

You know.

And I have here, beautiful red onion.

If you think your onion is a bit strong, you know when the onions are strong, the time of the year, you wash them, you wash it, then you drain them.

And that take a lot of the hotness out of it.

Maybe I put a little bit, I have some capers here.

That's what I wanna put the capers.

Then I have a mixture of different type of herb here.

Think I have a bit of, hmm tarragon, yes I can smell it.

And a dash of vinegar about twice at least the amount of the oil.

And I don't want to emulsify that.

I want it to be separated.

Then a dash of salt and freshly ground pepper.

You wanna put that in there, mix it gently.

That's my ravigote sauce.

And you will want to serve that a little bit in the center of the heart here, you know would be very nice and maybe drizzle a little bit on the plate for color and for extra sauce that you will need as you're eating it.

But this one of course you can serve it on the side or put your sauce in there in the center, you know, which would be very nice and maybe a couple of little pieces of parsley there.

Now while we serve the first course, now let's move to our main course and the main course we're going to start with Swiss chard and I have that red, beautiful red Swiss chard here that I'm going to saute for you.

What I want to do first is to saute a little bit of shallot, hot pepper and a bit of ginger.

So I put the shallot directly in there and I want to put maybe a little bit of olive oil in this.

My pan should be hot now, that's it.

I want to saute my, well maybe even a little more shallot.

Here we are.

And the ginger, you can take a piece of ginger, you can crush it, you know like you crush garlic and then chop it finely, put it with the shallots and a little bit of jalapeno paper.

I think I'm going to take the outside without taking the rib and the seed, which may be a little bit too strong for that.

And I want to cut that relatively fine.

You know the stronger it is the finer I want to cut it.

Here we are.

And now I have basically all of my seasoning in it.

I wanna show you those Swiss chard.

You may remove the end of it if they are a bit damaged and the rest cut it coarsely into two inches pieces.

I have washed it already.

It's clean so we can put it to cook directly in there.

You see what I do first, what you can see here, I put a little layer of this.

So why don't you put only a small layer, then toss it so that the garlic which was underneath is now on top so it doesn't burn underneath.

I put a little more here, I don't have to put the whole recipe but enough to show you, a dash of salt in there.

Then I wanna cover it.

There is enough moisture in it, it's going to continue cooking in the moisture.

So what we want to do now, which is the main course, is the liver.

And I have here, as you can see, a beautiful calf's liver.

A lot of people don't like liver.

I love it.

In Europe, it costs a fortune and especially, and it's available mostly they keep it for the hospital.

It's a very, very good, especially the calf's liver, that beautiful pink color.

I have removed some of the nerve and wanted to show you that there is a skin on top, that you want to remove.

You see and if you pull out that skin, it makes it so much more tender.

I don't have to remove all of it.

Then you cut it into nice slice this way.

You want to serve about, of course when you go to the market, you're going to buy all of this done.

You will buy it directly from the butcher.

For me, I wanted to show you how to do it, a little bit of butter and oil here.

I'm gonna put salt and paper on top of this and saute that directly.

Those are about three eight of an inch thin and they want to cook about a minute and a half on each side.

So you want to go pretty fast.

And while this is cooking, I'm gonna show you how to do the sauce with it.

And for that, what we have, we have scallion here, again, we have red onion, which I'm going to do a little bit of the red onion to chop it.

Let me see, that's getting wilted now.

That's what I want.

I want it to get really wilted.

That should cook about four, five minutes.

My liver is going quite fast here.

I want to lower my heat a little bit.

That's it.

And the scallion, the scallion will give me color and I want a bit of acidity in that.

So the liver is rich, the acidity is going to go very well and that's why I have lemon juice.

With the lemon juice of course I want to put tarragon and capers.

So here I have couple of nice color, let me see.

Now this one you see is cooked enough.

I would want to put it here to let it rest for a second.

This one I may cook it another minute or so.

During that time I can cut this in half to create the sauce.

Fresh tarragon, which is beautifully aromatic.

And the capers, my Swiss chard are getting there.

So now let me put the other piece of liver there and I will add directly the scallion, the scallion and onion to the dripping.

You see I want to melt those dripping juice to give me taste, which I have here.

During that time the meat is resting and that's what you want to do.

It's very important for the meat to rest.

So it's practically ready.

I will dilute it with a little bit of water, add a bit of lemon juice, not too much.

You don't want it too acidic, the capers.

And finally I'll put the tarragon directly like this and I think we're ready to serve.

Now it is a fast dish and I will serve that on that stunningly beautiful plate.

Now first maybe serving that Swiss chard and look at the beautiful color of the Swiss chard here that I have.

I'll place it in the center of the plate and from the center of the plate I can always spread it out.

Use one or two (indistinct) to give you the center, the space for the center.

And now in the center of it, I will put my liver, slice of liver about five ounces, five to six ounces.

And finally the sauce on top, the capers, onion.

I have a lot of liquid, smell acidic and for an extra zest, maybe a little bit of a little piece of tarragon on top.

And this is our main course for today's menu.

(upbeat music) Oeufs a la neige, this is the classic French dessert.

I have three egg white here.

Very firm, a quarter of a cup of sugar.

I finished beating that in there and by hand like this, this will whip very, very fast about a minute and a quarter or so to a beautiful egg this way.

So three egg white.

And if they are beaten properly, you should have at least one cup of egg white, per beaten egg white.

So what we do here, we're putting it into four portion for four.

You know we're doing a recipe for four.

So you do four large egg white and my water is approximately 170 degree, 170 degree.

You don't really want it to boil otherwise they're going to expand too much.

And I have four large one this way.

This of course is a good dessert because it's only egg yolk, egg white rather and sugar.

The classic way of course we use to poach those into the milk and with the milk, use the egg yolk to do a very rich creme anglaise which we're not going to do today.

I'm going to lower this because that should now cook slowly, but I say no more than like about 100, 170 degree, yes, right here.

So with this, I have some caramel cooking, water and sugar here, which I want to bring to a caramel.

And it's slightly crystallizing now, you can see that the top forms those type of crystal, most of the time if I were using it for something else to do rolls with sugar, I would have problem.

But for caramel, it doesn't matter.

The sauce that I'm going to do with that is made with peach.

You can have a fresh or frozen peach here and a bit of sugar, a dash of vanilla, a little bit of (indistinct) which is an orange kind of liquor if you want.

And a cup of yogurt, no fat yogurt.

So remember here what I'm going to do, finally, you see that emulsifying this is going to be very nice because it's going to be about the color of a creme anglaise.

You know.

The creme anglaise remember is made with egg yolk, sugar, milk, cream, and it has about that beautiful golden color.

So I'm kind of fooling you here to do a sauce without any calorie, which actually is going to be the same color, not exactly the same taste, but quite good than we would normally do.

So here now this is boiling and I wanna do that lower and they, I've been cooking maybe a minute, I have my caramel, which is getting there.

What I would like to do is to turn those over.

So you know, you slide underneath, you have to be up very careful.

I think they cook better in water actually than they do in milk.

And this has to cook as I say, a couple of minutes on each side.

You don't want them to expand too much.

Okay, here we are now, and you can see my caramel here.

It is not really totally in caramel, but caramel indicate a color.

And look at the color of that mixture.

It's pale, pale yellow, and that already would be considered a light caramel.

And that light caramel, I can shake it.

Now you don't shake it before, when you shake sugar and water together, it make it crystallized.

But crystallization happened when the whole thing form into mass and it happened around 300 degree.

By the time it come to the temperature of caramel, which is 317, even if they crystallize, the whole crystal will melt and turn into caramel.

So when you do caramel, you don't really care whether it crystallize at the beginning because you know that eventually the whole thing will melt into caramel.

Now it is dark enough I think for me.

I'm going to stop it now and cool it off.

What I want to show you is how to make angel hair and what happened here.

This is for the time being way too hot.

So what I want to do is to mix, put my caramel into water like this to cool it off.

There is another trick also that my friend Jean Claude, who is my dearest friend, pastry chef in New York told me, we take a little bit of bee wax like this, edible wax, of course, bee wax that you mix into your caramel and so that the thread, you can do the thread ahead and they don't stick together.

What you want here is a certain viscosity, a certain thickness, which I have approximately here.

As you can see, I'm cooling it off on ice to get the proper technique.

And this is about right this way.

So now you can start doing your angel hair and what you can do, you can do that with two fork like this, lifting up the mixture and letting it go down and spreading it out right on top of a piece of wood here or something else with a little bit of oil on the top.

And you have to go this way.

Now that's one way of doing it.

Another way of doing it, I have cut a little whisk here and this is a little whisk.

I cut the end of it to have those thread, just put it into it turning straight and go this way, it goes a little better again, straight up and this way.

And again, you can continue and can really do quite a lot out of the little bit of sugar and caramel.

Again, as I said before, you have to be absolutely sure to put not only towel, but newspaper and all of that on the floor because you're gonna mess up your whole kitchen.

I only did it once in my house, otherwise I could do it outside.

My wife would kill me.

So here is what we do here.

You have to move this around and you have that beautiful mixture, angel hair, those long hair like this, that you can use as a decoration for your dessert.

And now I can see that my eggs are ready.

So what I have to do is to take this out, you would want to of course let those rest actually, you know, I can put them directly on the sauce.

I would want to dry them out a little bit.

They will deflate slightly and the one which I have taken out here, I will cut it to show you that it's cooked inside.

Here it is your angel hair and this, you see, you may think a couple of minutes is not cooked enough, but if I were to take this and I put it on my hand like this and cut it, you know you can see the center of the egg there, which is very elastic and you can see that it's totally cooked.

I put it back together next to it here.

The classic way of putting the oeufs a la neige now is to put the caramel directly on top of it here, which I'm going to do.

You put some caramel like this, you know it's thicker than what I did before and it would be good now you see to do the angel hair better than what I had before.

The consistency is right now.

And on top of it you have those that I wanted to show you, which have been done four or five days ago.

And because of the wax that I put in it, you see they are separable and so forth.

You see the one that I did today, we'll put them right on top of it for the final touch of the beautiful oeufs a la neige.

You know, you don't really have to put bee wax in your caramel or a regular caramel unless you want to do a caramel that you're going to keep, especially if you do angel hair.

And if you want to keep it, then that will separate the thread.

Otherwise the whole thing form into a block.

We have a very elegant meal tonight, starting of course with the classic artichokes with the ravigote.

Remember you can use that sauce for a lot of other things, but it's fun to eat artichokes and the kids love it.

Then a bit unusual, we're doing the liver and be sure to buy calf's liver, not beef liver, with the Swiss chard around and of course the beautiful oeufs a la neige with a low calorie sauce.

And with that we have a beautiful pinot noir from the Russian River Valley here in California.

And I'm sure you're going to enjoy doing that meal for your friend and as I enjoyed doing it for you.

Happy cooking.