- Hi, I'm Jacques Pépin.

- And I'm Claudine Pépin.

- I have to admit, I usually eat a bit too much during the holiday.

- I know at our house I always do.

- After time like this, when I over indulge, I just want to eat something simple and lean.

- Yeah, simple foods, especially fruits and vegetables are what I crave most after the holidays.

Next on Jacques Pépin's Kitchen.

- Cooking with Claudine.

(train whistling) (gentle music continues) I think we eat too much over the holiday, don't you think so?

- Oh, we always eat too much over the holidays.

- So what are we doing today?

- It's time to lighten up a little bit and make something that is nice and light and refreshing.

- And that's what we're going to do.

We're going to do a very simple apple and carrot salad with a yogurt dressing and a little bit of... So very, very lean.

I want to show you a way of cutting the apple.

See this apple here?

Instead of taking the core, what you can do is to cut about four slice.

- Oh.

- You know, before you get to the other side.

And again, do the same thing on the other side.

Three and four.

And again you do now the side three and four.

- Okay.

- You want to do that?

- Yeah.

- Okay so you do it with that knife because after that you have to pile it up and carry it into stick, okay?

Right and then you can pile yourself up.

(knife thudding) See and I cut that into stick.

So we leave the skin here to have a little more- - Is that enough?

- Texture and a little more fiber.

Yes, so you are up to the core now, you see, I mean the core is right there.

And that's basically what you want to avoid.

With the pepper in the middle, you know, the seed.

Okay.

(knife thudding) So here we put this together.

If you cut it ahead, you have to be sure to put a little bit of citric acid on top.

Lemon juice.

Although that it'll tend to discolor it or to discolor rather.

That's it, that's fine.

You can get finer than mine.

You're trying to show off, I know, I know.

Okay, what we are going to do with this is to put yogurt.

I have about 3/4 of a cup of yogurt here.

And this is a non-fat yogurt, so even better.

So a dash of salt, some freshly ground pepper, a fair amount of it.

Are you ready for it?

- Yeah.

- Okay, a little bit of white wine vinegar.

- Do I go?

- Wait a minute.

Let me mix it here.

Like a table spoon of it.

We are mixing it, and then you can put that in there.

Yes, go ahead.

(mixer clangs) Okay, we have about three cup of grated carrot here.

That's a big salad.

- It's a good salad.

- That's another apple.

You can make that and you know what?

We want to put some of those green herbs in it.

You see what I have here?

- You have cilantro, cilantro and cilantro.

- No, no, I have cilantro, which is called coriander, which is called cilantro in Italian, which is called Chinese parsley, Japanese parsley and so forth.

This is chervil.

Claudine, remember that as a taste of a bit of anise we have in the garden and this is flat parsley sometime called Italian parsley, but they tend to look a little bit the same.

All we are going to do here is the cilantro.

And when it's young like this, you see the stem is kind of young so I leave it in there.

It's fine.

Remember the root, even at home, the root, your mother freeze the root and she put it into bin dish.

- Yeah.

- That especially good taste, you know, so I'll make this.

That's a nice refreshing, simple salad.

Put that here.

You want to arrange those a little bit around.

Lettuce, the lettuce will be seasoned with that.

So we can eat this with the- - Oh, this would be nice.

And it'll be a nice change from all the heavy eating of the holidays.

- Yes, absolutely.

So this is what you want to serve on our first course for post holiday menu, right?

- My father's philosophy on food has just been a good fresh, natural.

And don't torture the food.

I mean, you know, make it so that if you close your eyes and you can eat something and you know what you're eating, then it's probably good.

(gentle music) - You know, for our post holiday meal.

Today, we're going to do our main course, a soup, very simple soup with a poached egg.

Actually it's not really a poached egg, it's what we call an oeuf mollet.

That it's soft in the center, it's cooked in a different way, but with the texture of a poached egg.

So what we're going to start right away is to do the soup.

So with that soup- - I'm putting- - Oh and the eggs, okay.

So what are you, oh you're putting a hole there, right.

- Putting the holes like you taught me.

- Did you do all of them?

- I have one left.

- Okay, you go ahead.

- Okay, I have this one.

- Do the hole.

So you do the hole on the round side, go ahead.

- Okay and I have one more.

- [Jacques] This one here.

- [Claudine] And there goes the hole.

- That's it.

So we lower that into boiling water now.

- Okay.

- Which I have here and you can see the air, the air bubble coming out of the eggs here.

And this, we are going to cook that for four to five minutes and it depend on the side of the eggs.

And during that time we're going to start our soup.

So I'm putting a little bit of olive oil here.

- Okay, I just set the timer.

- Like the teaspoon, you put the timer?

- Yeah, because the last time tried to do this, the phone rang and I had hard boiled eggs.

- Oh cool, okay.

Why don't you slice that.

- Okay.

- Very well, fine enough.

- Do you want me keep the green?

- You do everything.

- Okay.

- We use the green and all that.

We're going to do a bit of chopped onion.

- You didn't put any salt in the water with the eggs.

Does it matter?

- No, no, it's true.

I mean sometimes people tell you to put salt.

You know what salt does?

- No.

- Salt is like a bandaid, you know?

And if ever, if you don't make the hole into the eggs, what happen is that there is a lot of pressure and the eggs sometimes crack.

And if you happen to put salt, then the salt act like a bandaid.

It kind of coagulate the egg white, the protein which comes out of it and stop bleeding if you want.

But when we do that little hole in it, there is absolutely no problem.

The eggs is not going to crack at the hole I did.

So I have my onion here, which I'm putting this.

(onion sizzling) How are you doing with the- - [Claudine] I'm almost done.

- Wow, you're doing pretty good.

Faster than me.

You're putting that against your finger.

- Sort of, precariously.

- Precariously, well just be careful.

I don't want you to cut your finger because I need your finger.

Okay.

- For the rest of dinner.

- So I'm cutting the carrot about the same way too.

I mean like in little dice or coursely chopped.

Actually you know what, we could chopped that coursely in the food processor also would be fine.

- Should I put the scallions in the pot or did they wait?

- Or you can put the scallion in the pot too.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- After I put the carrot, you know what?

The carrot is going to give a little bit of sweetness.

Often when you cook tomato you put a little bit of carrot.

Sometimes people put a dash of sugar.

Putting a carrot does the same thing.

So in a classic tomato you want to put your... Right there, that's it.

Good, nice and green, look at the color.

We are beautiful.

So we have like a type of mirepoix here we call, the thing we're cooking together.

You know what we have to do with that?

(pan clangs) We have to cook that for a couple of minutes until it start browning.

So why don't you steer it occasionally.

- Okay.

- Then I'm going to do the tomato with that.

And the tomato here I have fresh cherry tomato that I'm going to put in the food processor.

(tomato thudding) Part of it.

(food processor whirring) Make a puree out of those tomato.

And you could do it only with the fresh tomato.

But I'm putting also a little can of canned tomato, Italian canned tomato in there.

And you can do one and the other.

And we want to make a little bit of a puree out of this.

That's it.

So this is going to be the base of our soup.

And I'm going to put it there.

- Something doesn't smell.

- Did you put any garlic in there?

- Nope, something doesn't smell right.

Let's put some garlic in here.

- Have some chopped garlic, you know.

- [Claudine] Yum.

- [Jacques] Tablespoon of chopped garlic.

- Now it smells right.

- And you know it could cook probably another minute or so, but it's about right.

Why don't you put the flour in it?

- Okay.

- And so we are, the process we call to singe that is to put a little bit of flour, which is going to be used as a thickening agent to put on that for our soup.

So two tablespoon about.

Touch, your tablespoon should be about level, you know.

- [Claudine] That's level.

- Yeah, well, okay, that's good.

Okay, so now you stir it because you want to cook your flour a couple of minutes.

During that time, I'm going to do the croutons that we have here, served with the soup.

So what we have here, it's really a country bread type.

You know, a thick is what you want in that type of soup.

(bread crunching) Here we are, here.

And I think one way of doing that without using too much oil, because if you put it in oil and fry it in a skillet, you're going to use four, five times as much.

So what I have here is really a minimal amount of oil, like a teaspoon and a half or so, which you spread on it.

Then put like four slice of bread into this, turn it on the other side so it's very, very lightly oil.

And that will be enough to brown it into the oven.

Put down onto a 400 degree oven about 10 minute.

And it should come out pretty nice.

(pan clangs) Oh they have some here.

(oven door thuds) And this is the classic croutons that we have here.

And those croutons rather a croûte, we say in France when it's a large one, what we do, we rub it with garlic and you can see that this is like sandpaper.

So you know you rub it on one side and on the other side both with garlic, Claudine, you want to try to do one of those?

- Okay.

- How are we doing?

Okay?

- Yep, I just don't want it to stick.

- Yeah, come, rub this.

And you see my clove of garlic, which was a big clove of garlic.

It's really like sandpaper, you know?

So you rub it, you don't want to rub it too, too much because you can use a whole clove of garlic on it.

Turn it on the other side.

That'll be there.

- I love garlic.

(garlic scratching) - That's good.

- I don't want to be mine.

- You see that?

You use all of this again, the other one and it's about fine.

So this is the garnish for our country soup.

And you can see that this is thickening quite a lot, huh?

With the flour.

So this time now to put, you have some chicken stock there.

- Okay?

- Put some chicken stock in there.

- [Claudine] All of it?

- Yeah, I have a three cup of chicken stock.

You're absolutely right.

Then you stir it, you go to the bottom to take all of the crustacean and get our flour here, you know?

And then I'm going to put the tomato in there.

- [Claudine] Can I keep stirring?

- Yeah, you stir it.

Now then into this up we putting- (timer beeping) - Oh the eggs are done.

- We putting the thyme and the sage, the eggs is done.

- [Claudine] Yep.

- You stopped the thing?

- I did.

(ladle thudding) - Okay, so let's get- - I'm very mechanical.

- You're very mechanical.

So let me get the eggs out of it here.

What we are doing now, pouring the eggs out, pouring the boiling water out and then shake the pan to crack all the shell, you know, so it makes it much easier to peel.

Now and we put that in water and ice so that it cool off.

Unless you would want to serve it right away.

I mean if you're ready to serve it, you shell them and serve them right away.

But if you do them ahead, you want to cool them off and reheat them later on.

So this looks pretty good now.

Did you put any salt in there?

- I didn't, did you?

- No, put some salt and pepper in there.

A dash more.

Okay.

- [Claudine] Pepper?

- And the pepper.

That's it.

Okay and this now ask to cook for like 15, 20 minutes.

Let me put it there.

And during that time we're going to do another dish that we serve with it.

I'm going to do what we call a cheese wafer, you know?

And we're going to do that with Parmesan cheese.

- Okay.

- Yeah there is some Parmesan cheese right there.

And you see what you do there?

It's very simple.

You don't put anything in the pan.

This is a non-stick pan.

I put a little bit of Parmesan cheese right there.

Here do another one right here.

- Okay.

- The better the quality of your Parmesan cheese, the better the result, you know?

So if you have a- - [Claudine] Just like this?

- Yeah, if you have Parmigiano Reggiano grated, you will have a better result.

So we want to spread it out a little bit.

And that should cook, you know, in about a minute, minute and a half without anything like this.

When you see the edge, when the edge starting to get brownish and all that, we are going to turn it with a little spatula and it'll hold together, you know, so that's our cheese cracker.

And during that time I have some of those eggs here, which were cooked before, which are in there.

You want to shell one, I'll shell the other.

See it's important they have been cracked.

Another thing too that you should know about the eggs, frankly it would be easier to do those eggs right under the faucet because you have a membrane under the shell and the water should go between that membrane and the egg itself.

And that will make it easier to peel.

Because otherwise those are quite delicate, you know?

- Is there a question of salmonella or anything that has anything to do with eating raw or not hard boiled eggs?

- Yeah, you shouldn't, you see the way those are soft?

I put them back in there.

Let me turn that thing here.

Because you see the color of those now?

- I think I'm breaking one.

- You see, look at that.

- Yes.

- Turn it on the other side.

and you have a little wafer of thing.

How are we doing?

- I kind of broke one, so why don't you just- - Okay, so you see, I want to show you that one because you see the- - Because I broke it.

- Yeah, but look at consistency of that.

If I break it open, you see this is a poached egg, like a poached egg, but you know what I like that better than poached eggs even because the white doesn't dilute in the water and so forth.

And it's still like this.

So this is the oeuf mollet; So this is what we are going to do.

Let's get those wafer and the soup.

We have more wafer right here.

(plate clangs) See, those are ready now, Claudine.

You see?

Those little wafer?

- [Claudine] Yeah, that's amazing.

- And they're going to get very dry now.

You can do all the thing with this.

You know, you serve that like with a salad.

With a salad and serving cheese.

- Oh that would be so good.

- Yeah, that would be very good.

So you want to get me the plate?

I think we can serve- - The soup?

- The soup now.

Yes, because- - Here's some more cheese.

- It is some more cheese.

- Even if it's after the holidays, we love cheese.

- Right, so this is the soup which has to cook for 20 minutes.

And this one has been cooking for a while.

So it is ready.

As you can see it's pretty thick.

And we don't strain that soup.

We want a kind of very earthy type of soup like this.

Because this is, remember, our main course.

Now you know if you do that ahead, then you have to warm up your eggs.

If your eggs are done at the last minute, you can put them up.

But when the soup is boiling hot like this, what you can do is to put your eggs directly in it.

You know that soft eggs?

- [Claudine] Oh.

- And you leave it like five, six minutes in your soup like that and it would warm up the center without overcooking it.

We putting that on top.

Then we have our large crouton goes on tops also.

- How about some cheese?

- We put a little bit of Swiss cheese on top.

Because I love the Swiss cheese and about a couple of our wafer here, huh?

Boy, those are tender, but they are very crisp.

Now you see with a couple of those, I think that's the one that I just made.

- [Claudine] Oh that.

- And this is a terrific main course for our post holiday dinner, right?

- [Claudine] Looks great.

(gentle music) - I grew up with lots of fruits and vegetables and very little dessert.

We, I mean, there's always a fruit basket, but it's pretty rare that we'll actually have a dessert of any kind.

It's just by that time you're full, you don't want anything else.

- Know what I look for simple dessert?

I always end up with fruit.

We eat a lot of fruit at home, right?

- Yes we do, definitely.

- And I'm going to show you how to make that grata, which is a grata of grapefruit.

I'm going to put that under the broiler now for a couple of minutes and I'm going to show you how to do it.

(pan clangs) And we use those big grapefruit there about a pound each.

And you know, I like to use the red one.

See I've done another, I have done one already here.

And those red ones are for me very... I like them, don't you think so?

So what I'm going to do is to show you how to peel that off, till you use a knife and you cut sometime you have to cut very deep, you see until you see the flesh.

- Oh wow.

- And then you cut this way, making it turn on your finger.

You see what's important here is that you have to move your knife in a jigsaw fashion like this, you know?

- Why?

- Because you see, I'm sawing out without making the grapefruit bleed.

Now if I don't do that, if I do it like this and put my finger, like when I peel a potato or an apple and I press, you know, look what happened here.

I crush the whole thing.

So, gently, I have to saw all around with a sharp knife here.

And you're going to do the same technique if you do a tomato or a lemon or a lime or an orange, you know, any of this, you see these ones get a lot of the red, I mean the white piece underneath, you know?

So we can get rid of this.

And what we want to do with this now is to cut those wedge.

And to cut those wedge, what you do, you cut between the membrane with a knife here and there, that you have a nice clean slice.

Again, you see this way and this way.

Now I would like you to try this.

- Okay.

- You want to try this?

(knife clangs) No, no, no, no, that's it.

You can't use that knife.

- Why?

- You can't use the side of that knife.

- [Claudine] So?

- Well you want a thin knife.

A thin long knife like this one would be good here.

- This?

- Yeah.

- [Claudine] This?

- This one would be very good.

So it's thin, so again, you know, you cut on one side of the membrane, the other side of the membrane for you, okay?

- Okay, you don't have to step away.

I'm not going to... Okay, wait, this side?

- Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

That's good, go to the end and then cut again.

That's it, you know, and it's nice and clean.

- Okay.

- So you keep going on.

I'm going to arrange them in there.

We have two grapefruit here for four people.

You know, can the time in a little grata dish like this?

Are you making a mess now?

- I am making a mess, of course I'm making a mess.

(laughs) - Okay, but look at what you're doing.

Don't look at me.

- I'm looking, I'm looking.

- Okay, you go ahead, you find it?

- Sure.

I think that would be perfect.

- That one is perfect.

You want me to finish it up?

- Sure.

- You see what I have left here?

That membrane there.

Another one.

And you know what you do with this?

Just press this in there.

You can use that for breakfast or for anytime you want some juice.

So we don't really lose anything.

(knife clangs) - It smells good, I love fresh fruit.

- You can also actually eat that piece.

But look what you have here or what you have here is a real mess.

But if you uncrush it, you can see that there is basically only the membrane.

See the membrane left?

That's it.

And then you have the juice here and then you have the flesh there.

And then on top of this, you know, if you want we putting a tablespoon of butter.

- Mm.

- Is that good?

- Yep.

- So a tablespoon of butter.

You put in little dots here.

If you don't want to put the butter, it's fine too.

And then a few tablespoon of brown sugar just on top.

And this is basically what we did.

You know, you get it ready to put into the oven, you know, under the broiler for a couple of minutes, you know that's what you want to do.

(pan clangs) I have that one here.

It should be, and now it comes out, of course you can see that it browned just nicely.

Just the edge, you know, just the edge are brown a little bit.

So you can serve this.

- [Claudine] Oh, that looks wonderful.

- Why don't you get a little spring of mint here.

- Okay.

- If you want to make it a bit fancier and if you like it, I like to put a dash of Cognaco Gras Marnet, you know, on top of it.

This is cognac, so you know, like a teaspoon, two teaspoon at the most, it's about enough.

Then you can put your spring.

Where do you want to put it?

- [Claudine] In the middle.

- Yeah, sure.

Looks good here.

And this is a delightful simple dessert for our post holiday meal.

You know, when I was your age or younger even, I would never have thought of a soup as the main course for a meal.

Although I tell you as I get older, I love soup and you know, we have so much soup at the house and this is thick, heavy, tough crouton, top with cheese, top with eggs, we can break the eggs in it and make it run into the soup, you know?

And that's, you like that soup at the main course, right?

- This is wonderful.

This is a great main course.

- With that stuff too.

- These are great, I am in love with these.

I'm going to make them a lot for friends and stuff because it's elegant, they're light, they're simple.

- The garnish for salad.

- [Claudine] Oh yeah.

- And so forth.

And with that, of course we have our first course is really diet type of thing with a lot of crunchiness.

- Yeah, it's light.

I wouldn't think of it as a diet, but it's light and it's refreshing.

And after the holidays it's perfect.

- Apple, sweet and carrot, sweet also goes well together.

And our grata of grapefruit, I think it's terrific, also.

With or without the cognac, right?

- Yeah.

- Right.

And a bit of... Do you want some cookie with it?

- Actually, after the holidays, I don't really need any more cookies, but I'd love to know what kind of wine we have.

- Oh, good idea.

We're serving a Pinot Grigio with that.

Pinot Grigio from Italy, of course, next to the former Yugoslavia border.

It's a very fruity, nice wine, you know, in France what we call Pinot Grigio, or we used to call (speaking French).

Now it's Pinot Gris.

So I think it's going to go really nice.

It's a very kind of a stringent, fruity, great wine.

And I think it's going to go very, very well with our meal today.

So I hope you're going to cook with your family.

I sure enjoy cooking with Claudine.

(gentle music) (glasses clinking) Happy cooking.

- Happy cooking.

(gentle music)