- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

I live here in Connecticut and as beautiful as the scenery is, we do have some pretty nasty winters.

When the weather turns cold, there is nothing better than making a hearty supper.

Here is what I mean.

We start with clam croquette, little spicy cake served on salad greens, a truly heartwarming roast loin of pork with ginger and sun dried tomato.

And for the dessert, caramelized apple timbale with a hint of lemon.

It's a hearty supper to keep you warm, no matter what the season, on "Today's Gourmet."

(smooth jazz music) (smooth jazz music continues) We have a good hearty supper for you, something you know very comforting type of food with pork and pasta and so forth.

And you may think that pork, which is what I'm going to start cooking of course, because it braise for a long time and you may think that it's not healthy to cook too much.

And it is true, unless you know to trim it the right way.

To start with here, I have a center cut, you know, a beautiful center cut, which as you can see, very lean here.

I'm removing that layer from the top, even though it will come like this from the butcher are the trim piece of meat.

I go further and remove that layer of fat and that layer of sinew from the top.

And at that point the pork is quite eatable, actually quite nutritious, you know?

So it is important to use the right cut, especially in fatty fish, like in fatty meat like pork, you know?

So this is clean, basically, the top.

Remember that there is not only fat but those sinew, which have gelatin in it, which I like to use some time to give more taste to the meat.

What we want to do is to use clove of garlic, which I cut like wedge, like this.

You make little hole in it and push that in, you know?

So this really flavor the meat, especially for a piece of braised pork.

You know, I love pork and look at the color of it.

This one is nice, it's nice and pink, and it particularly goes well in braising it.

So on each side of it I can put clove of garlic, bottom and top.

And what we want to do with that, a little bit of olive oil to have just enough to cover the bottom of the pan and I want to put a dash of salt here, some cracked pepper.

And we want to start browning this on each side.

This is a nice little type of Kook.

And with this we are going to do a garnish here of ginger that I have here, of hot pepper, jalapeno pepper.

I have some onion, carrot, and those are dried tomato, which are soaking in water to reconstitute them.

We're going to use all of this.

And we cut that in pieces, like this way.

Large pieces doesn't really matter because you have to realize that this is going to cook a long time, you know?

So, when it cooks a long time it will melt, in a sense, and we are going to use that as a sauce, you know?

Makes a nice sauce with the juice of the pork and all the carrot, the onion and so forth.

So that's what I'm doing here.

And we put that back on top of it.

Key, those carrot, onion always make the best juice, you know?

So I will turn that on the other side.

It should brown on each side.

As you can see starting browning nice.

It should really brown for like 8, 10 minutes, you know?

To have it nicely crusted on each side.

And after that, we put our vegetable here.

This is not quite brown enough, but it's all right.

Then I add chopped ginger, which of course is going to give a lot of flavor to it.

The jalapeno pepper, again chopped, depending on your tolerance, whether you like it hot or not.

And I'm putting those dried tomato with the juice of the tomato.

I want to cover it very tight.

So this is a nice Dutch oven where it cooks slowly in it, and that now you can reduce your heat because that type of dish is cooked very slowly and that will take like an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half, you know, before it finish cooking.

And while this is cooking, we want to do the second dish which goes with it.

And this is pasta and vegetable.

I like to cook pasta and vegetable because it goes well together and that prevent me from making a sauce when it was too much oil and so forth.

The sauce we are going to do today is done with zucchini and the garlic, you know?

So I'm going to cut a zucchini into what we call a julienne.

You know, cutting it into slice, then cutting the slice into little match stick that we call a julienne.

Like that actually, you know, if you cut it in dice or if you cut it in slice, doesn't really matter that much.

But I like the julienne for a different look.

Now the sauce, there is a famous pasta dish now, you know, we call pasta la primavera, that is spring style, you know, in Italian, and you have all kind of vegetables.

But here we are using two type of vegetables.

So I put a little bit of olive oil in a large skillet here and with that we are going to put the zucchini to saute, first and then the garlic.

So first I put my zucchini here to saute and the pasta here are actually what you call farfalle, which are like those bow tie, and they've been cooking a couple of minutes here.

They take about eight minutes to cook.

You know, and especially in the new style, you want to have them a little bit so-called al dente, that is, a little hard to the teeth, you know?

To the way you bite it.

A little bit undercooked.

And what we do with that sliced garlic, sliced garlic is going to be different than the crushed garlic that I do very often.

I put a lot of garlic as you can see here.

Garlic is very good for you.

I remember when I was in France my father had high blood pressure and he used to take garlic pill, you know, that people give you for high blood pressure.

So we're going to add this to our zucchini here.

The zucchini should cook a couple of minutes, maybe a bit more than what I'm doing.

I add the garlic to it.

Continue sauteing a couple of minutes.

And the pasta is close to be cooked now.

So what I'm doing, first I will take a little bit of the water from the pasta.

I cooked that pasta without any salt in it.

I know that conventionally you always put salt, but I have cooked it with and without and don't really see the difference.

Maybe a bit of cheese, Parmesan cheese in that liquid.

Then I drain the pasta.

I use a little bit of that water because after you drain the pasta it tend to clump together, you know?

So what I do is to put it back in a little bit of that reserve water, land my vegetable on top of it.

Remember I have in the vegetable, I have all of the olive oil that I need to toss it together nicely.

Maybe a little bit of cheese on top of it.

And that's it, ready to be served.

Next I'm going to be frying some clam, little clam croquettes for you and there is a lot of misunderstanding about frying oil, saturated fats.

So I want to discuss it a little bit with you from the point of view of the cook.

So there are for the polyunsaturated oil, then you have saturated fat, which is usually animal fat like butter, although sometime you can have oil, palm oil, or cocoa which can be saturated even in your vegetable.

But this is butter.

And of course the monounsaturated oil.

All of the fat have basically the same amount of calorie.

In term of calorie, actually butter have less calorie than oil.

A little less because it has some amount of water in it.

The polyunsaturated oil are like safflower oil, corn oil and so forth.

Even vegetable oil.

I tend not to buy vegetable oil because I don't know where they come from.

I used to buy an oil with a name on top, and those can withstand, particularly like grape seed oil, very high temperature without burning.

So it's good to fry.

Now they tend, they are good for cholesterol.

No oil has cholesterol to start with.

The monounsaturated oil, such as peanut oil and rapeseed oil we call canola, tend to lower cholesterol and that's why we use a lot of olive oil now.

As well as a matter of walnut oil.

You know those are cold pressed oil, that if the fruit is pressed in a cold process, there is less than 1% acidity in an extra virgin olive oil and you have all the taste, all of what you want in it, the taste not only and it's monosaturated.

So that's why we use them a great deal.

And with those oil now what chef are doing, they are putting herbs in it.

Clam, different type of herb, thyme, as well as nuts as well as hot pepper or garlic to flavor the oil.

And now we are going to fry with a little bit of oil.

I'm going to use a canola oil which is the rapeseed oil, which is the least saturated of all oil to do our clam croquettes here.

And to start with, I'm going to saute an onion and a scallion, a little bit of it to put in the recipe.

It is a mixture.

You can use different type of clams, you know?

We have usually different clam on the west coast that we have on the east coast, you know?

But any clam is going to be perfectly fine.

A piece of onion.

Chop it.

Nicely chopped.

Cut across and this way.

And we start by sauteing this to put into our mixture here that I have on top of the stove, and that will take about, maybe a minute of sauteing.

During that time I'll show you how to open clams.

I have those small clams here, you know, which are nice but you can use the larger one, like Quahog or Cherrystone.

Those are little neck.

I use a knife for that.

Put the knife this way and press in the middle, preferably.

If you can find the middle here, and you press on the knife to open both side.

Then after, you can scrape it out with the point of the knife.

This is the way you open your clam when you want them on the half shell.

But if I do a croquette or a soup, I also open them on top of a bowl because I would like to keep the juice.

Now I can empty the clam in there, you see?

If the clam are too large, you cut them, you can cut them with a scissor or chop them with a knife, you know, to have little pieces.

I have a whole bunch which are open here, which I'll put in there with their juice.

And with that we're going to flavor that with some jalapeno papers.

And of course, I'm going to use also that onion and scallion mixture that I have here.

Putting that back on the stove.

And with this we are putting a bit of Tabasco.

I like that well season, you know?

A little bit of mayonnaise.

I have a couple of tablespoon of mayonnaise here.

You can even lower that, you know, if you want to put a bit less.

And fresh bread crumb.

Fresh bread crumb is very important here.

Your dried bread crumb, you know, it's like a lot different than the fresh one.

You see here, I have about three slice of bread.

It will be give me that amount of breadcrumb, fresh breadcrumb.

Those three slice of bread, if I do a little crouton with it, and if I put them in the food processor after to do breadcrumb, it's going to be about one to four.

That is I have half a cup of breadcrumb with one slice of bread.

If I do a little crouton and do breadcrumb with dry bread, I have about two tablespoon out of it.

So it's not that you cannot use dry breadcrumb, but you have to be aware of it because if you put the same amount you're going to have four times as much bread.

So we toss that very gently.

You don't want to make the bread gooey and you may need a bit more bread than recipe says sometime.

It depends the amount of moisture that you're going to have.

You know, the amount of moisture that you're going to have in the clam.

So what we do with that, we do a little croquette.

About one ounce.

One, maybe, one and a quarter, one and a half ounces.

And that we're going to fry this, again, with a little bit of canola oil.

Put in the bottom.

Just enough to cover the top.

Again here, you know, we use a non-stick thing, then the non-stick help a great deal in term of frying.

You know, you don't have to put as much oil with the non-stick as you will put if you didn't have that type of (indistinct) So we put that to cook, and it has to cook a couple of minutes on each side.

And while it is cooking, I think I'm going to check to see where my pork is.

First I clean up my table.

So the pork here has been cooking on the side for quite a while, and it's nice and warm.

So I'm going to bring it on the side.

Those Kook Dutch searing are really good, you know, to braise in it because things are so enclosed in, and even like to bring that on the table sometime directly.

I think it looks great.

So, I'm going to take the pork out.

See my roast are of course diminish a great deal because it dries out, but I still love it.

And before I finish that up, I'm going to turn, I'm going to turn my little croquette here.

They are nice and brown.

You don't want to ever cook them.

A bit like this.

I lower the heat further.

And I pour that directly the juice.

Remember, I add that dry tomato here.

All of the dry tomato, carrot, onion, ginger, all of that in the middle that make a terrific juice.

Garlic.

Mmm, tastes good.

And then you can start slicing your pork, which now of course is going to be very tender.

You know you can slice a few piece and place the whole thing in the middle to show like this.

Cover with fresh herbs.

You know, and this is really earthy, country type of cooking that I love to eat.

Now, I wanna finish the salad.

I have different type of salad here.

Curly endive, red ruby and so forth.

I have some in there.

I'm going to season it with a little bit of peanut oil, just a touch of it.

Little touch of wine vinegar, pepper, dash of salt if you want.

Then I'll toss the salad.

And this, see that salad is very tender.

You are not going to be able to season that too much ahead, you know?

Sometime I do salad with cabbage and sometime I cook it for a while because the cabbage need to cook for a while, but not this.

Here is a bit of salad in the bottom to give me some color, which, a bit too much.

There, I spread it out like this.

And on top of that we can put our clams, which are nice and beautifully brown like this.

Now I think I would serve in our recipe, like three clam croquette per portion.

And this is our first course.

(smooth jazz music) And now for our earthy menu, apple.

Apple for me is winter, winter fruit.

You know, I love the taste of apple in tart, in anything.

And remember that one apple a day keep the doctor away, that it says, but it give you one fifth of your daily fiber requirement in the apple.

That dessert actually had 170 calorie, which is quite low with the sour cream in it.

Without the sour cream with yogurt, it's going to be even less.

I'm leaving the skin of the apple on top, more fiber.

First, put your thumb this way, you turn around to have a nice round thing that you can keep.

With a little bit of lemon juice we are going to keep that to use that as a decoration.

You know?

Only on one side, the side with the stem, of course right here.

That's nice.

And as I say, if you want to keep it ahead, then put a bit of lemon juice on it to keep, you know?

Cut it in half.

Again, now this is clean here.

This is clean here.

Put my thumb again with the knife and remove that center apart, you know?

This is the classic way of cleaning an apple.

In our recipe we have four apple.

I have wash those apple of course because we are not peeling them.

So fruit that you don't peel, I think it's probably a bit better if you wash them.

Cut them in half and cut them in fairly large slice or pieces.

Doesn't really matter because they're going to cook a long time with the caramel.

And I have on top of the stove a caramel which is about ready.

In fact, it is ready now.

So I'm going to put that in it.

And the caramel of course is done with sugar and a little bit of water, just enough water to moisten the sugar.

So even if you don't put any water at all, it'll turn into caramel.

It should have that deep strong color of what we call caramel now.

So we pour that into the caramel.

Here.

And that, saute it.

You can see the brown color of the caramel on top, and we want to flavor that with lemon.

And lemon, we're going to do a julienne of lemon.

Again, notice that I'm using a vegetable peeler here, which is falling apart, but it's all right.

I can use a knife the same way.

And what we do with that is what we call a little julienne.

That is you pile this together and cut it into a fine little strip like this.

You could use just grated, grated rind, you know, would be the same thing.

I have some here, you see?

We put that again on top of it.

A little bit of the juice, maybe.

We can press it directly through your finger.

And a bit of water.

The water is so that at the beginning, at the beginning, if I put a water on top of it that melts my caramel underneath more and I know it's not going to burn.

So at that point what I do, I cover it.

You know you can cover it with something and you continue cooking it slowly.

What happen at the beginning of cooking with the juice in the bottom is going to release all the juice of the apple.

And that's important.

You continue cooking it cover until you can lift it up and touch.

And you know that the apple are tender.

When the apple are tender, you relieve the lid, then you cook it open, continue cooking in it until all the juice has been disappeared.

And I have one ready here.

And this is what it looks.

By the time I remove the lid, I start boiling it full boil and it's reduce.

At the end when it's reduced, it's going to continue cooking and getting browner and browner and caramelizing again.

And that's what I want.

At that point you let it cool off.

This is a bit lukewarm still, and you can mold it.

And this is what we are going to do now.

Now I use that technique to mold here, which is very easy in my opinion.

Good, I put a little container like this, this is about half cup, three quarter of a cup and I put a piece of plastic wrap inside.

I do that for ice cream or for bombe sometime.

You put your dessert here directly in there and pack it, you know, nicely here.

And all you have to do, you can do that of course, the day before.

It's perfectly fine.

Press it, bring back the side on top of it to really have it nice and tight, you know, so it doesn't pick up any taste in your refrigerator, no taste in your refrigerator.

And of course you have the advantage of being able very easily to unmold it.

There is no problem right there.

So I have some cold in the refrigerator and I'm going to get it now to show you how easy it is to unmold it.

Bring it in the refrigerator.

You know, you can also do that in a large one.

Sometime I do that in a kind of loaf pan.

Press all of the apple.

You can do that with pear also.

It's very good.

And do it in a, and just scoop it out or cut it, you know, it doesn't cut really nicely.

Now here, another decoration that we can do with the skin of the lemon or lime.

Actually you take a little bit of the skin and you could, if you want, cut that, pointed in another type of shape here, okay, to imitate a leaves, you know?

What I say, you can do it with lime.

It will be green, but since we have used lemon here, I might as well use this and that for decoration.

So take one of those.

They are easy to unmold.

You know, just unwrap it and have that strong.

Turn it upside down.

Pull on this.

So it's nicely molded as you can see.

Then I put one of those in the center.

Maybe a little leaves through a hole there to put it in on one side.

One maybe on the other side.

That just dress it up a little bit, you know?

And as I say in our recipe, we put a little bit of sour cream.

Actually what I'm doing here is yogurt.

So the yogurt will be even less caloric.

You know, you can put a little bit on each side here if you want, just to decorate.

And it goes well with it.

Can even put a bit of mint in it for color.

I mean, you know, can use your imagination here.

And that's it.

Our menu is now completed.

I'll bring it here.

We have that type of earthy type of taste and that type of menu.

I have my clam here, croquette, that you've seen with the salad on top.

Now I have the roast of veil, and that roast of pork rather, with all the garish is about 250 calorie, which is really not much because it's completely clean.

It's important.

The vegetable again, with the zucchini and pasta.

This is very good.

And finally, our apple dessert that I just finished for you.

We serve that usually with a strong earthy wine.

I have a Barolo here from Italy and this is a very deep, intense fruity wine, which I think will go terrific with that.

I hope you're going to enjoy it and make it at home.

Happy cooking.