- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

On summer evenings I like to keep things cool and simple in the kitchen.

That means lot of cold soup and food grilled out of door.

Spanish style gazpacho is quick to make and bursting with summer flavors.

I serve grilled lamb chop, as they do on the French Riviera, with spinach, tomato and grilled eggplant.

Ice cream napoleon made with flaky phyllo dough makes an elegant, warm weather finale.

It's cool cooking for a hot midsummer night, a special meal for a tete-a-tete with my favorite person in the world.

Please join me on, "Today's Gourmet".

(upbeat jazzy music) We're going to do, "A Midsummer Night's Tete-A-Tete".

And for our midsummer night tete-a-tete, we're going to do a great menu, and particularly starting with a soup, which is the ultimate summer soup.

Actually it is like a liquid salad, you know?

The gazpacho.

I love gazpacho.

And in summer, there is nothing better than a gazpacho when it's really hot.

What I'm trying to do here, to start with, doing a little crouton to serve with the gazpacho.

I mean very often, you know, we'll do those crouton and what we'll do, we'll put the bread with a little bit of oil or a little bit of butter and saute and so forth, and this is fine.

But here you see what I did, I just toasted some country bread and we used the bread toasted this way, which makes it of course much less calorie because there is no fat in it.

And the second garnish for this, we're going to do black olive, which is a bit different for a gazpacho.

And this is an oil cured olive, you know?

And that oil cured olive, if I press it like this, the pit will come out.

It come in jar like that, all shriveled and oil.

And that, I cut it into two or three pieces, you know?

That will be again, the garnish.

That doesn't go in the soup, that's simply for the garnish.

Now all of this is for the soup and for the garnish.

The first thing we do here, the red pepper, what I do, removing the seed and the top, you know?

I mean the front stem if you want.

And what we do with all of this, I'm keeping a little bit of it to serve as a garnish in those (indistinct), about as much as this for four people, I would say is more than enough.

You don't have to worry if it's not cut exactly the way you want it.

Well the pieces, you can always put them in the soup.

And then I'll put this one here.

This is the red pepper.

And then the rest of the red pepper, we'll put them right here.

This is going to go in the soup so you can break it any old way because we're going to put it in the food processor anyway.

The next thing is the onion.

The onion, again, (quick chopping) we're going to chop the onion coarsely, or rather finely because this is for the garnish.

And the rest, very coarsely.

Again to go in there.

So this is a fun soup to do.

The onion however, should go into water.

The one that you're going to serve in your dining room, because those onion should be washed in water.

And that wash, a compound of sulfuric acid.

That compound of sulfuric acid will tend to discolor and get strong, you know?

So you do it this way.

And again, put your onion in there for the garnish.

That's it.

And now we have tomato.

Again, I'll take best of the tomato, press the juice out of it to keep my garnish, to do my garnish with this.

You can cut it in any old way.

Remember that we left the skin here.

If you wanted, you could remove the skin for that.

But I feel that it's perfectly fine to leave the skin in.

Here we are our diced tomato.

The rest of the tomato go in there.

Coarsely chopped this way.

Whoops.

This is where you really know when your knife is sharp, when it cut the top of the tomato without any effort, you know?

This one could be sharpened a little bit, really.

So here we are.

And then cucumber.

Cucumber is mostly the body of the recipe.

What you do, you cut the end of the cucumber.

When you have something long like that, always cut the end of it and use your vegetable peeler in one strip like this.

See the side of it is like a platform.

So that goes right on it like that, it makes it easy to peel.

Then cut in half.

All of those are cut in half.

What we're going to do is to empty it.

Don't try to go with your spoon this way, it break it.

Edge of the spoon, follow the edge of the seed, turn around and follow the other edge of the seed.

That again, we'll put in our soup.

You know?

So I can do all of that here.

Actually, all I have to do is one, maybe a little more than one because this is the one that I want to use for garish.

The other one, I don't really need to empty it because I put everything in it.

So this go coarsely into there.

This.

(quick chopping) This, I think I'm going to put maybe half of that for my garnish.

All of that now can go in the food processor.

And I have a large food processor, I can put everything in it here this way.

Put my lid on top.

(food processor whirring) And start it.

While I'm cutting that, (food processor whirring) we need... (food processor whirring) Turning nicely.

(food processor whirring) Okay I can fill that up.

(food processor whirring) And the rest of my cucumber in there.

A little bit of water there.

(food processor whirring) And in there I put garlic.

I have three clove of garlic.

I'm going to put a little bit of paprika for color.

The paprika is very mild, it's a mild pepper.

Remember, a dash of cayenne.

(food processor whirring) (food processor stops) Don't confuse your paprika and your cayenne because you'll have serious problem.

The paprika, as I say, is a very mild red pepper, the cayenne is a very, very hot one.

So what we are going to do here is to put that through the food mill, because of the skin of the tomato and all that.

You don't really have to, frankly, sometime I don't at home, but it makes it a little more elegant if you put it through the food mill.

And actually it's not a big deal, it makes it a bit creamier, you know?

So that's what I'm doing here.

A little more.

Put on top.

This is a great, great summer soup, a salad if you want.

What we need in this after that is a tiny bit of olive oil.

You want to put vinegar or acidity.

Here I have about everything that I need there.

So a bit of vinegar, red wine vinegar.

A bit of olive oil in there.

Salt of course in there to season it well.

And basically my soup is finished, although you should really let it, it's very nice if you have a chance of letting it, you know, mature if you want, or rest a little bit.

So all of the garnish goes around a beautiful tray like this for the people to help themself.

And the tomato go right in the center of it.

Beautiful.

You serve that nice and cold, not too ice cold but nice and cold.

Maybe with a little sprig of parsley on top for garnish.

(gentle music) (gentle music ends) And now for the main course, I'm going to do grilled lamb chop.

My wife loves grilled lamb chop, so we do them home.

Actually she doesn't eat that much meat, but when she eat meat, she like lamb chop.

Now I'm removing as much fat as I can out of this, you know, especially out of the whole body of meat.

And even inside along the filet, those are loin chop.

I don't really remove all of that little triangle of fat here because it's holding the thing together, so you can leave it to hold the thing together, you don't have to eat it.

But basically it about as clean as it could be here.

It's one lamb chop per person.

So what we are going to do here, put a little bit of salt, pepper on top.

You know?

And this one.

And maybe brush at least one side a little bit with oil because we are going to put it on the grill and I don't want it to stick to start with, but really a minimal amount here.

So we're gonna start this.

I have preheated, of course, my grill, you know?

Which is what you would want to do because those, depending on the thickness of it, they're about one inch, they would have to go at least three, four minutes on each side, you know?

And then the second ingredient we have in the recipe is eggplant.

And then I have my eggplant here.

I'm gonna cut that into about three quarter of an inch to an inch a slice, you know?

It's going to be used as a bed, you know?

I have too much here.

As a bed for, like a cushion, you know, to put the eggplant on.

To put the lamb chop.

So here it go again.

I will oil it at least on the one side to make it start so it doesn't stick.

This of course, way is a much easier way or better way if you want then sauteing those eggplant, because those eggplant will absorb an enormous amount of oil.

So again, here they go here.

Two, three and four And I can increase my heat a little bit.

So now this has to cook for a few minutes.

Dash of salt maybe on the other side here.

And that's it.

While this is cooking, now I'm going to saute some spinach here.

And what I have is a little bit of olive oil.

This is the garnish again, we call that Riviera, lamb chop Riviera, in the side of the Riviera, the south of France.

In (indistinct), you know, those ingredient tomato and onion and all the good stuff that we have here in the south of France.

So what I want to do is to chop a little bit of onion.

Cut it across again.

(quick chopping) Then this way, this is a proper technique to properly chop onion.

(quick chopping) You want to keep the little stem here.

And you know, the sharper your knife, the less you're going to cry.

Because the compound of sulfuric acid, which is what make you cry, if the knife is very sharp, then it won't crush it.

You know, it cut nicely.

The more it crush, the more it release that type of juice, the more you cry.

So this will saute for, you know, a minute or so.

And during that time, what I could do is to do some garlic.

I have some garlic right here.

To add, I will add this at the end.

After the onion are sauteed, you know?

Not at the beginning, you don't want to burn it.

Again, put the clove of garlic flat, crush it to release the essential oil and chop it in a rocking motion like that.

Clean your knife directly on it this way.

Then we can add this now.

So.

So take this.

And now I think I may want to check on my lamb chop.

Yeah, here they are.

(eggplants and lamb chops sizzling) They look beautiful there.

(eggplants and lamb chops sizzling) Leave them on the side here.

Okay.

And add my spinach.

The spinach are wet, they are still wet from being washed, you know?

And what I like to do very often is to put a little bit of the spinach in the bottom, whoop, even with fall on the stove.

And kind of toss it around, you know, you can toss it with that or with your finger.

What you want to do is to try to bring the onion underneath on top so they don't really burn underneath, you know?

The onion, the garlic and so forth.

So bring it around.

A little bit of salt and seasoning in there.

I'll put the rest of my spinach in there.

And now I can cover it.

And I want it to steam a little bit.

Here we are.

So let me see whether my eggplant are cooking on this side.

Yes, they are browning nicely as you can see here.

(eggplant and lamb chops sizzling) Yes.

And then you wanna continue cooking them.

This is going well now.

You can actually, you know, when it's cooked enough on (indistinct), stand them on the back like this to cook the back a little bit.

But it's fine, those are a good inch thick.

And with this now, while this is cooking... Whoop.

We jump it a little bit.

That.

And you see the onion are on top now and that's what I want.

What I want to do with that now is to prepare the tomato to go with it and I have tomato there.

So the tomato have been blanched, for example, this one has been blanched and after it's been blanched you can take the skin.

When I say blanched, it mean that it has been dropped in boiling water for about 10, 15 second and then taken out.

I don't need to refresh it.

Remove the skin then press the juice out of it.

Can use this.

(plastic clangs) Op.

Press the juice here.

And the juice, the seed of the tomato, as well as the skin, you can freeze it and keep it for stock, you know?

This is good.

So here is what I have here.

Again, I cut that into little dice.

This is going to be a garnish for the lamb chop.

Remember that the lamb chop at that time, you know, you cook them long enough on the grill to get the taste of what you want.

And when you have the taste of what you want, you can keep them in a warm oven to continue cooking them in their own juice.

That the idea, you know?

So here I can see that they're doing pretty well on this side.

On this side here.

This one has cooked.

Yeah, so you turn them around.

This is a... A good grill will retain a lot of heat.

And if you have a grill like that, of course inside your house, you want to have a good exhaust.

If you don't have a good exhaust, you may have problem, you know?

So that's good.

Let me see here.

Those are getting soft, as you can see.

I can turn the side.

And basically, let me look at this, this is about fine.

See those are wilted.

So what I would want to do is to put them on the side, put them here.

Ready to be served, you know?

That's fine there.

So now... Op.

In the same pan, actually I need that pan because I want to heat up those tomato.

And the tomato, I just want to heat them very casually.

When I say very casually, a dash of salt, I want them to soften a little bit and get lukewarm, but I don't really want them to cook.

I like the taste of the raw tomato going with it, you know?

So we are about ready to serve.

This is soft, as I can see.

Op, my finger can go right through.

It still could cook a little longer.

Yet however, I'm sure you get the idea of what I did.

What we would want to do here is to take your bed, the whole bed of spinach.

Then in the middle of the bed of spinach, you want to put... This one look more cooked, soft enough here.

Right in the center here.

And a nice lamb chop.

Woo.

You want to get it as, you know, a shell on top of it like this.

A little bit of our tomato, which now are warm enough to put around here, there.

And to finish the touch from the south of France, we are putting some olive oil, some olive, rather.

And those black olives, which are oil cured, a few all around to finish that bright and cheerful dish.

And now I want to do an ice cream phyllo napoleon.

You can use a low calorie ice cream.

You can even use a frozen yogurt if you want.

You know, when you defrost phyllo, and come in box like that frozen usually, you have to defrost it very slowly.

Keep it, I put a piece of paper on top and a wet towel because that get dry very, very easily.

In fact, this one kind of dry out a little bit on me.

And I'm putting it and it's kind of broken, the sheet is usually slightly bigger than that.

What I have here is a mixture of melted butter and oil in equal quantity.

Of course, you wouldn't want to use an olive oil or something strong like this, like a canola oil with almost no taste.

And you put this on top and powder sugar, that you want to put on this.

And we do two layer here.

Now the second layer, again, you know, I'm going to use one of those which are a little bit broken, but it's okay.

Put it on top, press it out gently.

And again, very gently rub it with the butter.

Usually, you know, very conventionally for baklava you may put four layer.

I feel two layer is enough, it's a bit less caloric and so forth.

So here I have again powdered sugar.

And now you want put that in the oven at about 400 degree for about 10, 12 minute.

So op... What I could do also is actually cut it.

You can do that before or after.

If you wanna cut it, you know, you with your knife directly on your tray, don't use a non-stick pan.

And you make your square like this on top of it.

And it's fine, it'll be all done.

Or you can do it after.

But then you have to use a special knife, you know, a knife with teeth, you know?

A serrated edge knife.

If you do it after, that is.

I have one ready, as you can see here.

Those are very, very thin, very brittle.

So what you want to do is to put one piece here.

I have that ice cream here, which is relatively, this is the low calorie type of ice cream.

I put another one on top.

You can put it kitty corner here.

Another little piece of ice cream.

We are building like a napoleon type of thing there.

And finally, the third piece on top.

Choose the best one for the end.

I have one here which seems to be nice.

I'm putting it this way.

A little bit of powdered sugar on top all over.

And maybe a little flower, eatable flowers to decorate the top.

(gentle music) (gentle music fades) (cork pops) Ooh.

This is a very special menu to now the midsummer night tete-a-tete, because I have my wife here.

Hi Gloria.

- Hi.

- I'm giving you a little bit of champagne.

You love it.

And you always pour the champagne in twice.

This way.

And I'm going to take some for myself, so.

Why don't you tell them what we're going to eat tonight.

- Yeah we're starting with a beautiful gazpacho, which is a chilled, basically vegetable and lots of cucumbers the way I like it, soup.

And we have a tomato garnish and we have olives and croutons.

Jacques does it exactly the way I love it and the way I showed him how I liked it.

- Oh, you showed it to me.

- Well pretty much, yeah.

- When?

30 years ago?

- Easy.

- It's a long time ago to remember.

- Yeah I know, I know, I know.

And then we are having a beautiful lamb chop, grilled with eggplant, one of my favorite vegetables, also grilled in spinach, which, I mean, this really was designed for me because everything, the diced tomatoes, the olive, the eggplant, the lamb chop is... - All the stuff you like.

- Everything that I love.

- 'Cause I always cook for you.

- Yeah, yeah.

It's a serious act of love.

- Yes.

And what else?

And what else do we have in that menu?

- And then we have a lovely green salad.

- Salad, we always have.

- Yeah.

- [Jacque] If we don't have salad, Claudine doesn't eat home, right?

- Exactly.

Exactly.

- She loves salad.

- And I wasn't around when you did the dessert, so you have to explain that to me.

- Okay well, the dessert I did it with the phyllo dough, you know, very, very thin and a low calorie ice cream.

You can have a regular one, we can even have frozen yogurt if you want, it's perfectly fine.

But it's layered in a type of napoleon three layer like that.

I think it's very crunchy.

Not too much calorie in it.

I think it's very good.

- Yeah, yeah.

- You're proud of me?

- I'm super proud of you.

- Okay.

- Yes.

- Well you know, after the champagne, which really smelled good, tiny bubble and so forth, you know, for the lamb chop, I know that you like your red wine.

- Yes.

- We have a (speaking french) here from the Cote de Nuits of Upper Burgundy.

And I know you love the (speaking French) Cote de Nuits of Upper Burgundy.

So we're going to enjoy that with our lamb chop.

It's always nice.

This is a special dinner, so we have champagne and we have red wine.

But a little bit of it, it's great.

You used to drink milk with your meal, right?

- Oh yes.

But that was 30 years ago again.

- That was 30 years ago.

I truly enjoyed cooking that meal for my wife, Gloria.

I hope you're going to do it for your wife or your husband or your kid.

And (glasses clang) (gentle music) happy cooking.

- Happy cooking.