- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

I love slowly braised veil, cooked in a casserole.

The meat is tender and delicious, and it fill the house with wonderful smell, and you can cook it ahead, so it gives some time to relax.

We'll start by poaching a little known fish, called skate, and serve it on a fresh beet salad, sprinkled with flavorful oil.

Our main course, breast of veil, is braised until fork tender and garnished with carrot, onion, and garlic.

Then for the third, blueberry crumble, easy and delicious.

So join me for a make-ahead dinner that you and your family can enjoy together on "Today's Gourmet."

(carefree music) (carefree music continues) You know, in our busy society, it's good to have menus sometime that you can do so that you can relax at your own dinner party.

And that's what I like to do sometimes, something very earthy too, but that you can do ahead, do most of it ahead.

And we have that today with the breast of veil, particularly, which is the center part, I mean the piece de resistance in our menu today.

The veal is very concentrated, you know, those breast of veil are very inexpensive.

They are long, and you can see this one is quite thick, and more of the center, and you can see here, those part which are cartilaginous.

And that part here, when I was the kid, that the piece that my brother and I used to chew on, that we like.

This is thicker and there is two rib.

The end of the rib here is going to be, rather this way, several rib, and it gets thinner.

And I think we'll use that piece like that, which is about three and a half pound, you know.

So what you want to do is to clean it, already.

It's pretty lean, I mean, veal is lean, but it still need to be cleaned a little bit.

So what we do here, taking the visible fat from the top, it's going to cook a long time and the fat is going to melt.

Still remember, that most of this is not really fat.

There is really not that much fat on top.

There is the skin and all that, so take what's visible because a lot of it is cartilage, you know, those white things which are not really, and what we do is to put it to cook in what we call a cocotte, like this.

That's why we call it dutch oven, cocotte, or veal cocotte, you know, the name is, and we start browning it on this side.

So what you do, you put it in there, we put some herb, we have the herbs de provence here, a mixture, you know, similar to Italian seasoning.

Put a good deal of it on top.

Then a bit of salt.

You know, I put a little dash of oil.

You need practically no oil, actually, in the bottom of the pan, like a teaspoon or so, so that it doesn't stick.

And then what we do, I put water here, like half a cup of water.

The idea is that I'm going to cover it, (lid clanks) and you boil that for like 15 minutes.

By then the water is evaporated.

However, some of the fat has already come out of the meat, so it start roasting, browning, without any liquid, and that's what we have on this side here.

I have one, which, as you can see, there is no liquid.

Has been cooking 15, 20 minutes, nice and beautifully brown, as you can see, with the natural juice.

(utensil clanks) And this is the time, at that point, that I put some white wine in it.

We put a glass of a dry fruity wine.

Here I'm using an Italian wine here, dry and fruity.

I put a cup of that in there, and then in that juice, you want to lower the heat and cook that for a good hour there.

Slowly, slowly cooking, you know, and it's going to get tender and so forth.

So let's pretend that this has been cooking for an hour.

Most of the liquid will have been evaporated, and then after we put our garnish, and here you see I have garlic, you know, head of garlic, you can separate by banging it on the side.

Then we cut the end of it, you know, so that you can bang it slightly with a bigger knife and that release the skin.

And be sure, you know, if you have any damaged part, like this, I have damaged part on top to cut it off.

So we have like 15, 20 clove of garlic.

We put a lot of garlic in it, and those tiny onion that we call pearl onion, which again, you have to peel in the same way.

I always like to have someone else peeling the onion because make me cry.

My wife actually peeled the onion without crying because she's got contact in her eye, and that very good.

But for me I cry, so.

So I have all those tiny baby carrot, and this is our garish here.

So let's say this has been cooking an hour.

What you do, you just put carrot, onion, your garlic, so you have a lot of vegetables, as you can see, on top.

And that's it.

(lid clanks) And at that point, you can re-cook that for like 20, 25 minutes at the most for the carrot, even less if the carrots are really small, but you don't want to have a type of nouveau cuisine, uncooked thing.

You want it well cooked here.

And I have one, of course, which is finished right here, as you can see, with all the juice, now which are braised, and that's what we are going to present now.

So it is not a complicated thing.

Those things are very earthy, you know, very good.

The type of food that we do at home, you know, on a Sunday party, you invite people, you braise that, you can smell it right through the house, you know, it's terrific.

And you can see that this is well cooked actually, you know.

I could show you that it's cooked if I take one of those rib here and twist it, this will come out of it.

See?

That indication is totally cooked.

So you could, if you want, actually remove all your bone.

This is when the dog is around, you know, when you see those bone, and those are nice and tender, although my wife refuse to give bone to the dog.

So, and you can cut it, and then slice it.

It is hot, so maybe you wanna hold it with a fork, you know?

Remember that we still have tiny pieces of bone because we have those cartilage in the middle.

Look how nice and tender this is going to be, you know?

So this is not a fancy cut of meat.

You have to realize that this is going to be very inexpensive, actually, the veal.

So here, about the three pound piece that we have here is actually much less if you can't hold the bone, the cartilage in it, and so forth.

But we serve this.

You have all of that beautiful garnish on top of it, you know, that I can spread out.

In fact, I don't even have to spread it out.

The best bet is just to pour it on top of it.

This is what we do in the kitchen, you know?

And this is very earthly, you know.

Remember that I put carrot, onion, and so forth.

Here you can add other things.

I mean I use sweet potato, I use turnips, I use peas on top.

All of those different type of color are going to be beautiful there.

Let's put a bit of parsley on top and I would like to put the whole leaves of parsley.

See this is a flat parsley.

Put the whole leaf like that, look very colorful like that, and this is a terrific dish that you can make ahead.

And for our first course, we're going to make skate, poached skate, and we're gonna flavor it with flavored oil.

This is a new thing now that we do in nouveau cuisine.

A lot of the young chef do that.

It's very versatile.

You can use it to flavor fish, meat, different type of salad, and it's very beautiful to look at.

Relatively easy to do.

Here I have a green oil, as you see, and this is an oil of cilantro, coriander, Japanese parsley, Chinese parsley.

This is what we have here.

And here, that yellow one is an oil of curry, powdered curry.

I have an oil of cumin here, which I haven't filtered yet, so all of the deposit is in the bottom.

And finally here, that red one is an oil of red pepper.

Those, you can put in jar or in bottle, and you can keep them, you know, for a couple of weeks.

Usually in restaurant, they use them over and over again as coloring, but especially as flavored.

You have, for example, truffle oil.

That would be very expensive, but then a little bit on a salad is fantastic.

Sometimes they even use sprayer, you know, to put on your salad so you can smell the truffle.

You know, for that cilantro or coriander oil, what I have done here is to take some of that cilantro and dip it in boiling water, you know, so that it get wilted.

Put a little bit of water on top of this, and what you do after you make a puree there, with this, you know.

(processor rumbling) And there is different way of using it, you know.

I can actually, at that point, keep it and put it into a jar, like this, and put usually on those, you don't put a very expensive olive oil, or anything like this.

What I have here, as you see, it's a clear oil.

This is a very low saturated type of oil that we call a canola, or grape seed oil, and that's what you do there.

You know, you put your oil with the flavoring, and then you shake it.

Now this is with the herb, so it's fresh.

So what happened is that I have a little bit of water in it.

That will flavor the oil.

In that form, you can't keep it too long, two, three days, because it will eventually fermentate.

But I keep it with the paste of the green itself.

If you don't wanna do that, after a few hours, a day, or overnight, the oil will come back to the top, and that's what we have here, the oil from the top that I picked up, and it's clear.

So that can last, you know, a much longer time.

Now to do a curry oil, and that apply to curry, cumin, any of those oil where you use spice rather than using fresh herbs.

We just put the spice in there and the oil on top.

Remember that the curry itself is a mixture.

There is nothing which is called curry.

I mean actually there are a plant which is called curry, but the curry powder itself is a mixture of a whole bunch of different spice, you know, that we call curry.

That's why you have some which are almost totally green, some very yellow, and so forth.

All you do is this, and as you see, it's cloudy here, but it's going to clear up.

And with this, you know, this is what we do now in those thing, you know, you have different type of dishes, you know, that you may use, and you see, you're going to have different type of colored oil.

Like I have one slightly green, one slightly green.

And often, you know, this is the effect that you see in nouveau cuisine around certain time of dish.

We are things that are kinda mixed together now in a beautiful pattern.

And that, of course, is not only beautiful, but it's good also.

So now let's see, we need those oil to work on our skate.

And here is skate.

I don't know if you've used skate.

Skate is a very, very inexpensive fish, one of the best.

This is uncleaned, as you can see, and it has skin on each side.

The skin has to be removed, and the skin, and you watch out because there is those little hook on top of it which you can really catch yourself with it.

So we have to use that technique, but I'm showing you the technique of removing the skin here.

Although as you go to the market, you know, those skates are going to be clean.

As you can see, the flesh is beautifully pink underneath, the very fleshy and firm type of flesh that you cannot really overcook.

This has to be cooked.

It's not the type of fish that you do rare, you know?

The classic way of cooking this, it's vinegar and water, and I have here bowling water.

You put vinegar in it, a fair amount, and a dash of salt in it.

And what we are going to do with this is just taking our skate, and those two pieces of skate, by the way, are about a pound and a half.

Those are small wing, you know?

And that's it.

Bring that to a boil, and you would want to poach that.

Boil it gently.

Those are thin.

I would say that it would take a good 10 minute to do it on those, you know?

So what we want to do now is to get rid of that.

And, I want to clean my hand probably a bit, after the fish.

And the counter, this is the very, the skin, you know, is going to be fairly gooey, you know, and it'll catch.

But as I said, the skin has to be removed on both side, even do I only remove one side.

What we are going to do underneath here, it's a salad of beets, you know.

That salad of beets, those beets have been cooked, and of course, when you cook beets, you know, you do discolorate your finger.

Notice also that it's cooked with the root here.

Nutritionally wise, it's much better to cook it with the root because otherwise, a lot of it will seep into the water.

I don't really have to do that at home, but very often, if you want to be careful, or if you're going to a party at night, you don't want to discolorate your finger.

You may want to use a piece of gloves, or something like this, you know, to peel your beets, as I'm doing here.

Even one more.

I'm going to cut those into a julienne, and your board get really discolorated also.

So it's a good idea to use a piece of plastic wrap, or a little bit like this to put that on top, and cut it into what we call a julienne, you know?

Which I have here, nice and beautifully red, as you can see.

You see, the center is stunning.

So this again, we cut it into what we call a julienne, a long thin strip, you know?

(knife tapping) You know, the beet can be cooked in the oven.

It's very good too.

You know, you put them in a piece of aluminum foil, like potato, you know, like baked potato?

And you cook them in the oven.

If you get dirty, you know right away, you clean it, and they bake, and are very strong, concentrated in taste, you know.

So what we have here is red wine vinegar, you know?

Salt, (grinder rattling) pepper, (grinder rattling) and I put a little dash of sugar in there, just to sweeten it, and that's it.

We put no oil in there because later on, we're going to use the oil that I brought back there.

So this will go here.

I have some extra one which are already cut, that I can mix.

And you know, even that liquid here, this is the cooking liquid, I can use later on, just like a cooking oil, if you want.

So that we'll stir.

(spoon tapping) Stir it nicely.

I love the beet in summer, you know, and they go so well, also, put with sour cream or yogurt, or that type of a thing.

So I didn't really make too much of a mess, and I'm really proud of myself, because as I said, this really discolor it.

So I have those two oil here, plus this one, which is the same one this, but before it's been filtered, you know what I showed you before, and we are going to look at the skate now.

So the skate, we put some to cook here, and I have some which is cooked right here.

As I say, it's quite easy, it's just plain poached vinegar, a dash of salt, and water.

So we wanna remove this from the hot liquid.

And now the skin, as I said, they are quite firm.

You know on those small skate like this, I remember eating the whole thing with the bone in the center.

I'm gonna show you that bone in the center.

Here.

With another plate here.

This is an interesting way to remove the top.

You see this will slide off the central bone.

There is a central bone here, and this will just slide off the bone.

You see, and that bone is that small, very small cartilage here that you have but if I turn it on the other side after, I can again, scrape that part here.

And what I was saying before is that that cartilage in the center is very soft, and very often people eat that too.

I mean I like it too.

So we are going to cut it in half.

It makes it a bit easier to carve it.

I follow the bone here, you see.

On each side.

It's a bit hot.

Because those here, I wanted to show you, will separate into those segment here.

On top of this, this is boiling hot now, we are going to do a sauce for that.

And the sauce I have here.

Again, more color, I have some capers, red paper, and scallion.

You see the red paper is, the caper are here, and you know the caper are the bud of little flowers which go, it's preserved, usually in vinegar, or a mixture of vinegar, salt and water.

Here we want to put a bit of red onion.

I may have the red onion.

(knife taps) Dice this way.

Again color here.

And some green, and the green is from the scallion, at the end here.

Cut the scallion in half.

This way.

You know, all those sauce, all of this can be done ahead, and let's say the skate, you know, is not the type of fish that you do rare.

It has to be cooked.

In fact, interestingly enough, in all cookbook, I find that the skate, as the skate was used many century ago, that was the only fish, which is recommended in all cookbook, should be aged.

You know, I've never heard of a fish which could be aged, and this is indicated there.

I actually did it both way, age and not age, and I would rather have it not aged.

What we have here, instead of putting regular oil in there, I'm putting the curried oil in that sauce on top, which will flavor it too.

So now it's time to put our plate together, which I want to do here.

So a bit of red pepper, the red bits in the center of it.

And you know, as a first course, you would probably want to serve (indistinct) of this.

Now a little bit of our skate, which as you can see, separate into those kind of flake here.

This is a very, very moist, probably the most moist of all fish that I can think of.

You know?

Here it is, that would be... You know, it's a rich fish too.

So around this, on top of it rather, we are putting our curried oil, with different capers and all this, you know.

That looks good.

And now for a bit of drama, you know.

We want to put our flavored oil around.

So a little bit of the curried oil, we already have, you know, but I mean I may put a bit more around.

Then a bit of the green one, which if I had left longer, would be probably greener than that.

But I can use, you know, the pulp there, and the pulp will, of course, be very green, you know, as you can see here.

Then a little bit of the beet juice.

I mean this is not an oil, it's just the juice.

But again, you are going to have beautiful red color, you know, of this coming inside, as you see here.

So if you start mixing those color together, it's going to be an absolutely stunning first course.

And now what we want to do is to move to our dessert, and the dessert is very, very simple, and very, very good.

I have two cup of blueberry here, some orange juice, you know, and some apricot preserve.

Move the apricot preserve in there, and just stir it together.

Now I'm using here fresh blueberry, but you could use a frozen blueberry.

Very often in the dessert, you cannot use frozen blueberry because it bleed all over the place.

In that case here, we are cooking it, so it doesn't really matter that much.

So this could be served, actually, by itself, just as it is now, you know, it's terrific.

But what we do here are the extra thing.

Now it's flavored with... We take a piece of pound cake.

Leftover pound cake is the type of thing that I do a lot in restaurant, you know?

Because to use leftover stuff, you know, terrific.

Cookie leftover, cake leftover, and so forth, croissant, brioche, and all that.

I go to the kitchen in the morning, pick up blueberry, or whatever fruit, any other type of fruit, don't have to be this, just crumble it on top.

You do it in individual thing like that, and this is absolutely terrific.

That goes into the oven about 20, 25 minutes, 275 degree.

And here we are, now a beautiful gratin, which is a terrific finish for our menu today.

And this is a great finish for the make-ahead meal that we have today.

Remember that when you're at home and when you want to cook, and sometime you want to sit with your guest, then you have to plan your menu, and that become very important.

It doesn't have to be expensive either.

We have a very budget meal here.

I mean the skate used to be a trash fish, which was selling for basically nothing in New York, and in other part of the country, years ago.

It may be a bit difficult to find, depending on where you live in the country.

You really have to go in New York, I know I go to Chinatown, or on the West coast, very inexpensive, very good, always fresh.

You know, there is other type of trash fish, you know, which now have become very expansive like monk fish.

You know, I remember years ago was for nothing, and now it's quite expensive.

Done this way, however, the technique of doing it with a beet salad, the different oil, bring it to another level of sophistication, make it quite nice and very elegant.

I'm sure if you never had skate, you'll try it.

You're going to love it because it's a very mild, mild tasting fish.

Then our breast of veal.

Remember that there, the breast of veal, you can find it basically in any supermarket.

It's very inexpensive, and braised slowly in a cocotte, as we say, that where the most taste, basically that we have the taste of the veal comes out the best, and the braised onion, carrot, and all that at the end.

We have a salad with this, and of course, our blueberry crumble here, which is absolutely great also for leftover, because you see, you can use not only the blueberry, but you can use any type of berry, any type of fruit for that matter.

Can put a little bit of cream if you want.

In that case, I use yogurt.

It's a bit less caloric.

That makes a great finish, inexpensive, and with that, we have a wine from the lower part of (indistinct) from down the Rhone valley, down the Rhone River.

And at that point here, it's a very, very strong (speaks French) so called.

It's like (speaks French) with a mixture of eight, 10 different type of grape, very fruity and terrific with our meal.

I hope you're going to enjoy making the meal today.

I enjoy making it for you.

Happy cooking.