- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

I love to take familiar ingredients, and give them an exotic touch with unexpected seasonings.

Today, I'll show you how to cure your own salmon in less than an hour.

It's served over a salad of fennel and mustard seed.

Halibut sauteed in an edible rice paper wrapper, with a sauce of shallot and soy, inspired by the flavor of Asia.

Gratin of eggplant and tomato is bursting with flavor.

And berry in a creamy, low-calorie sauce, make a refreshing finish.

Cooking in a lighter way, doesn't mean learning to cook all over again.

It just mean keeping a light touch, and adding a touch of the exotic.

Next, on "Today's Gourmet."

(bright music) This morning, we're going to do a touch of the exotic, a menu which is really centered around fish.

And to start with, in this menu, we're going to do a salad also with fennel.

The first thing that I'm going to do, is to do the dressing for the fennel.

And what I have here is a little bit of vinegar, white wine vinegar, a bit of olive oil.

No actually those, this is peanut oil, and a touch of sesame oil.

Remember that that sesame here is done with, with roasted sesame, and that's why it's very dark and very strong in taste.

And we put mustard out seed in there.

The black mustard seed.

We have black mustard seed, and the white one.

The black one tend to look very nice.

A little dash of salt, pepper on top of that, that's our dressing.

What I wanna do with that fennel here is to cut it.

I have a small bowl of fennel.

Some of this you can keep for decoration, and you can also keep it to cure different type of meat with it.

I'll cut it in half.

And what I have done here, it's a very thin, very thin slicer.

So you'll put that directly in there.

(food processor grinding) And that's about all it takes.

Because at that point, what happened is that this is the one millimeter slicer, so I want it to be quite thin.

And that salad could marinate for a little while, you know.

You can do that a couple of hours ahead to soften.

The vinegar will soften the fennel slightly, you know.

So, here is mixing it together.

This way it's a bit easier.

I'm making a mess on the board here.

Then I'll put that on the side while I'm working on the salmon.

I have that nice piece of salmon here, and I'm going to put that plastic wrap here, because I use that for my curing.

So here I have a whole filet of salmon, Removing the skin from that.

You want to move your knife in that kind of jacksaw, you know, jigsaw rather, direction.

Okay, here we are.

And that, sometime I do crackling with it.

And this, what you wanna buy, it's really a piece of salmon about that size, which is about 12 ounces to a pound.

And we cut those thing about close to half inch tied.

So I have three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven.

I need 12 slice, so another piece right here.

So I have 12 slice here to give three percent of those.

And what we want to do now, is to bring that here, and do a curing out of this.

And the curing very simply is going to be done with salt.

I'm using a kosher type salt, more of a granulated type of salt here.

And a little bit of sugar, and some freshly ground black pepper.

So what you wanna do is to put it on top.

All of those thing we call gravlax, carpaccio of fish, you cure the fish with salt, and a bit of sugar sometimes.

Now very often it's going to take overnight to cure, but in our case here it's going to go very fast.

And the reason that it's going to go very fast, it is because the fish is cut into relatively small piece.

So the salt is going to go through it very, very fast.

So there, I finish covering it up.

I have salt, remember in the bottom, and some of that, make sure that I finish on top.

All you want to do is to wrap it in your plastic wrap tightly, and refrigerate that.

This would be ready in about an hour, an hour and a half.

Just the time that it's going to take for this all to melt.

So what I'm going to do is to refrigerate this.

I have another one here, which shall have been cured.

And you will see here at that point that there is no more salt.

There will be some liquid in there.

And what we want to do is to arrange our salad on a beautiful plate like this.

And the salad as I said, will get slightly more soft if you give it a chance of marinating a bit longer, you know.

This is, mm, it's quite good.

It have the kind of a fennel, or (indistinct) taste, you know, that I like.

So now this is cured.

We want to arrange this on top.

This will be beautiful for a buffet, you know.

You don't even have to put the whole, the whole quantity that I have here.

I have 12 slice.

Maybe I'll stop there.

I think it's enough.

You could have a little bit of olive oil on top.

You can decorate that with a few capers.

The capers is going to go well with it.

If you wanna be a bit more lavish, a tiny bit of oil on top, and maybe one of those springs of fennel which are there, since it come from the fennel.

I have some here, maybe on top here and there for decoration.

And this is our first course for today.

So what we wanna do is to continue the same menu with fish.

Again, and I wanna show you here, the fish that I have, which are going to be wrapped into what we call rice paper.

That rice paper is very dry.

You can see it crumble like nothing.

So you have to get it wet.

And this is dry in the bottom of bamboo, bamboo basket, and it has the shape of the bamboo basket.

All you have to do is to water it very generously on each side.

It's still hard as you see, but within three, four minutes it's going to look like this.

And you can do it ahead, and do as I did here, cover them with a bit of plastic wrap so they don't dry out.

And you have your wrapper here.

Those are really nice wrapper.

And what we are going to do with that, is to put that fish, you can use different type of fish.

Very often I use haddock, you know, or a white filet.

And this happened to be halibut, you know.

So I put salt and pepper on top, and I have some tarragon leaves that I'm going to put in there.

Give it truly a bit of an exotic taste.

The tarragon is going to go well with the first course, which was a fennel as you remember.

So we put that on top here.

And maybe a little more of a tarragon on top.

So you can have it on each side.

You can shuck your tarragon of course, but I like it in leaf like that, especially fresh from the garden here.

And what we want to do is just to wrap it up.

You're going to be able to see the fish right through the mixture, because it is very thin and transparent, you know.

Okay, this one.

See it stopped drying already.

I can see.

It stick a little bit on the paper.

So you really have to keep it wet.

Keep it wet all the time.

Okay, this one is drying on the side a little bit.

So you know, if you have a bit more time than I have, just put a little bit of water on top, and it will soften it again.

And now we're ready to cook it.

The fish cook pretty fast.

So you don't want to cook it too much ahead.

Couple of minutes on each side, it's more than enough.

It also of course depend on the thickness of the fish.

What I'm going to do here is to put a tiny bit of olive oil, and I'll put those to cook.

They splatter a little bit to start because they have been wet, you know.

But you want to keep them wet, because if you don't keep them wet, the rice paper is going to dry out and stick, stick to one another or stick to the plate.

So keep it wet.

And we really have a minimum amount of oil there, because we're using a non-stick pan.

So you know, you don't really have to have really much oil.

It's just to brown the top.

With that, we're going to do an interesting sauce, kind of very seasoned, a bit esoteric and spicy.

And what I have here, I have some soy sauce.

Put a little bit of that, some rice vinegar.

So that's a very lean sauce.

There is no fat in it.

A bit more.

I'm gonna put a bit of Tabasco there.

I like it hot.

And that's optional of course.

You can put more or you can put less.

I think for four I may even be need a little more than what I have here.

And then of course, I have some sugar, you know, maybe a half a teaspoon here.

I'm putting some garlic, one garlic.

All of the Mise en place is done.

What we call the Mise en place in the kitchen, when we start preparing things ahead.

There is a chef cook coming in the morning to do the Mise en place, we call that is the preparation, which is two different work, you know, doing the Mise en place and working at the stove, and the pressure of service time, it's a different feeling.

Okay, what I have here, that is my sauce ready.

Which can be used with you know, other type of fish, or with other type of grilled meat like chicken, or stuff like that would be very good with it.

So I can put that on the side here, and now work to the next dish.

I wanna show you how to make au gratin, of eggplant and tomato, and that's a very interesting way of doing it.

Check your fish occasionally.

It's doing okay.

Want to brown it on both sides.

You can see actually the tarragon leaves right through the paper, you know.

So what I have here are eggplant.

And there are different type of eggplant in different type of the country.

I like those narrow, long eggplant because they tend to have less seed in there.

And if they have less seed they absorb less oil.

In any case, you get the one that you can find wherever you live.

And we cut them in slice about half inch, half inch thick, you know, for au gratin.

As you see, those are quite nice in terms of the inside.

Not having too much, too much seed, not too much absorption.

Yet, now we to put that into a skillet and start cooking it.

I bet you I have three small eggplant.

About a pound here.

I bet you that this will absorb over a cup of oil, which then drain after.

So another way of doing it is to take just a little bit of oil as I'm going to do here.

Brush the bottom of a pan with it, and you can use the technique you know, for all the type of of eggplant recipe that you, you do.

And all you do is to arrange a whole tray of this underneath.

You can even put the outside, the outside cut is perfectly fine.

I like to use the skin.

And you can see this will fill up about that amount.

A little bit of salt.

You can fine salt on this.

And again, brushing one a little bit on top.

Actually what you could do to put slightly more oil as I did in the bottom, and you can press it this way, and turn it into the oil directly.

You know that's another way even of using even less oil.

But I mean that's a minimum.

I don't even have one cup, one table square of oil here.

This has to go into the oven now, about 400 degree.

It's going to cook for a while.

And before that, I wanna check on my fish to see whether it will be time to turn it.

(pan sizzling) Fish are browning nicely.

And now, remember what I did there?

I put the, the hand-cut, you know, the seam if you want.

I put the seam cooking first.

So now it's really sealed into it because those piece will glue together.

So they're doing fine.

What I have here, as I said, again in the oven, about 15, 20 minutes, you can turn them on the other side, or cook them straightforward 20, 25 minutes.

And that's basically what you get here.

I have one which has been in the oven, and is cooled off now because I wanted to have it cool.

So, we are going with that to build a whole gratin.

With the gratin, I have tomato.

I have three tomato here.

Take the bottom part again using your thumb, you know, to remove that piece, and we cut that across into slice.

Again, about the same thickness in the eggplant, you know?

So this is a classic dish also from the South of France, where you do zucchini, eggplant, tomato, garlic.

All of those are part of the area, you know.

So what we'll do here, building that up, start with eggplant that you can arrange there.

Couple of slice of tomato on top of it, more egg plant.

You know, it's a fun, fun thing to build together.

And you know what, you can do that ahead.

It'd be perfectly fine to, if I have smaller piece here, maybe I put two piece here, to build up your gratin this way, and put them in the oven when you're ready.

Remember also that you could do individual gratin.

You know, it'd be perfectly fine.

Sometime it's nice when I do a dinner, to have those tiny gratin dish, and build them up and individually, you know.

But you can see those are kind of soft now, soft and nice.

Maybe I'll keep this one for the end.

I'm gonna put another piece here.

I want to use everything that I have over there.

Okay.

More of this.

(pan sizzling) More tomato, maybe another layer of this at the end, maybe the black one there, to look good.

And that basically, I'm ready with the gratin here.

I used basically the three tomato, and three little eggplant, you know?

So now what we want to do, is to do a topping for this.

Remember, it's basically cooked, except for the tomato, but the tomato is going to cook much faster than the eggplant.

See, the eggplant will need the 20 minute of cooking first to get soft, then back in the oven again.

So what I have here, I have two-third of a cup of fresh bread crumbs.

This is one slice of bread crumb trimmed, and put into the food processor for seconds.

And you have fresh bread crumbs.

Remember, I used fresh bread crumbs, and I insist on that.

It makes a big difference.

That cup of bread, that is, that slice of bread in the food processor make two-third of breadcrumbs.

If I take that slice of bread and make a little cube out of it, a little crouton, put them in the oven to have dried crouton, and if I put them into the food processor after, I get about three tablespoons, between two and three tablespoons with the same pieces of bread that I have here, if one is dry, and if the other one is fresh.

So it makes a difference.

So you have a recipe which said, two-third of a cup of breadcrumb, like I have here.

And instead of using the fresh one, you use the dry one.

You put it on top.

You're not putting one slice of bread in there.

You're putting about four, five slice of bread or more because you're doing, you're using dry breadcrumbs.

So you have to be very careful of this.

So you have fresh thyme here, beautiful thyme.

I'm putting a little bit of Parmesan cheese there.

Two tablespoon also.

And what we want to do to make it brown, a little bit of oil.

I don't use much oil here.

Maybe when two teaspoon just enough so that you can rub it together.

And the eggplant, the bread will get slightly moistened with the oil.

You see if you don't do that, it tend to burn.

If it's slightly moistened like this, it will brown beautifully.

If you put too much, then it become like glue, and you don't want that.

You still want to have it pretty loose, as I have it here loose, you see.

Look beautiful.

So again, that type of dish, I could prepare that ahead up to that point.

I could prepare it ahead for, I don't know the day before, but certainly many hours ahead.

So all it has to go now is to go into the broiler.

If you put it in the broiler, you did it as it's cold, put it quite low.

Because you want it to brown slowly and get hot.

If it's still hot, then you can put it a bit higher.

What I have here, I have one ready, which (indistinct) under the broiler.

(pan sizzling) As you can see, which is beautiful here.

And now what we want to do, my fish.

Oop.

Yeah, I can feel it that it's just cooked enough.

For me, I don't want to over cook it.

We want to put it there.

Maybe a little bit of that interesting sauce underneath.

(pan sizzling) And now I want to turn it again now to have the, the seam side underneath.

So I want to bring it back to this side.

Underneath the other one, I stop it.

I can leave them in there.

But you can see that the other side is going to be beautifully browned.

Maybe a tiny bit of this on top.

That's it.

And here we have our main course for today.

So with this, now what I would like to show you is a very simple and very excellent dessert.

Berry.

When berry is in season, I take advantage of it.

You have berry all over the country.

I know in Connecticut where I live, we have beautiful berries, and we go pick them up ourself.

I have some behind my house.

Those are those large blackberry, sometime called olallieberry berry, or boysenberry most of the time.

You can serve them just, just by themself, you know?

Sprinkle a little bit of sugar on top.

And by the time the sugar start mixing with the juice, they start bleeding and mixing, and that's perfectly fine by itself.

If you want to do the type of sauce I'm doing here, I have some yogurt here.

No fat yogurt.

I'm going to put a bit of orange juice in it.

Fresh orange juice.

I put in the yogurt, and it give it a nice golden color, you know.

And for sweetening, I'm going to put a little bit of honey in there, and that's an interesting sauce as I said, that you can use for other things.

It's nice and smooth, and it has, because of the golden, the yellow color of the orange juice, it has a beautiful golden color, almost imitating a Crème Anglaise, you know, the custard sauce, which is made with of course, egg yolk, cream, and so forth, much richer and that.

But there, I have a beautiful smooth sauce that you can spread here.

And on top of that, you can arrange your berry.

I don't want, I wouldn't want to mix it with them.

It would get a bit too bleeding, you know?

Around.

In a little while, it will look even better, because those berries are going to bleed a little bit in the sauce.

And with this now, maybe I could decorate the top.

I have some nice spearmint here.

Again, and we can now put that on top.

Give it the finishing touch.

And this is a light dessert for today's exotic menu.

We can see that the dessert now is going to be not only luscious, but I can look at it and see that the berry have bleeded a little bit into the sauce, and that's basically what I want.

So the menu today that we have is a very kind of exotic menu.

Interesting.

This is the time, you know, when you are with the family to try to introduce the children to food, which is a little bit different.

We have the cured salmon on fennel here, with black mustard seed in it.

I think it's interesting.

A dash of sesame oil.

Remember the salmon is very high in Omega-3.

Good for you.

You have the benefits of the fish oil, anti-inflammatory.

Then a second fish.

We have two fish in this menu.

And that fish are used to the filler of halibut.

But you can use any type of white filler from haddock to crud, to Pollack, that type of thing.

And it is done in a kind of Asian influence.

If you want, we have those, those rice paper that you have to wet and wrap it in it.

I think it makes it very interesting.

It protected on the other side.

It's the moist inside, with a sauce which has no fat in it, a dish of vinegar in it, some soy, garlic and so forth.

You're going to love that dish.

And then we have au gratin of, au gratin of tomato here, and eggplant.

And as you can see, this is beautifully colorful, nice, and I can smell it there.

And finally, that beautiful berry dessert.

With that, we're going to serve today, a Meritage.

A Meritage white.

Meritage is a name relating to Bordeaux.

And any of the blend in Bordeaux, you have the Meritage Rouge of Cabernet de Sauvignon, Cabernet de France, Malbec, Petit Verdot, all of those are red grapes from the Bordeaux area.

This is a Meritage White.

And that Meritage White from from Lake County here in California is made with again, varietal of Bordeaux, the Sauvignon Blanc and the Sémillon This is a great kind of spicy one, eclectic, to go with our exotic menu today.

I hope you enjoy looking at me cooking for you.

I enjoy cooking for you.

Happy cooking.