(lighthearted music) - This is the shrimp burger from Playa del Carmen Dr.

Taco.

You put cheese in there, American cheese, pepper, then the shrimp around.

(shrimp sizzling) Scallion.

Cook it a couple of minute.

(spatula scraping) And it's ready here.

You put it on top right onto a bun.

A bit of hot salsa.

This is a great lunch.

I am Jacques Pepin and this is "Fast Food My Way."

Happy cooking.

Today, I'm going to cook for you special type of cannelloni or lasagna you can do using those wonton wrapper, the kind of Chinese pasta, and it's very easy to do.

First thing that I do is the sauce.

Take a can of tomato (sauce splashing) directly in there.

(can clatters) A little bit of Italian seasoning.

You can use herbes de Provence, Italian seasoning.

Use a couple of clove of garlic, two, three clove of garlic.

Salt, pepper, and some olive oil.

And that's it.

Sauce is ready.

Emulsify it.

(lid clicks) I use this, actually.

(processor whirring) I use that sauce as a base for soup, also.

It's very easy to make.

So here I have it here.

A lot of sauce.

(bowl clattering) And now the center of your cannelloni.

I have, of course, ricotta cheese here.

We put a couple of eggs in there.

(egg cracking) That's it.

(egg cracking) Some chives.

And I'm going to put some chives right on top of the dish when it's finished.

So I'm gonna chop a little more chive than what I need now.

(knife tapping) Put a little bit in there.

And keep some for later.

And that's all you wanna do here.

And mix it.

There is different type of ricotta, of course, on the market.

You can buy one without fat, one normal.

I like a regular ricotta.

Okay, yeah, that mix quite well.

(whisk tapping) So that really take no time to do.

So first, I put some of the sauce in the bottom here.

And then, as I say, (lips smacking) we use those, and those happen to be quite large.

Sometime they are thinner.

It really doesn't matter.

And they are quite thin, you know?

And this is kind of a fresh pasta.

And I can do, actually, a lasagna by putting this in there, a little layer of that, another one, another one.

Put five or six of that.

Bit of sauce on top, your cheese, and you have lasagna.

This is exactly what I'm doing except I'm rolling up in the shape of cannelloni.

But you can do one or the other.

So here, put that in there.

(bowl tapping) Do it a big cigar, you know?

That's it in there.

And put it seam down underneath.

Again, all you have is to repeat this.

About 1/3 of a cup of the mixture.

Those are large cannelloni, as you can see.

And I have the last one here.

(bowl clanging) I wanna get everything left.

So I did six, six large cannelloni here.

(bowl clattering) That's it.

You put that in there.

More sauce on top.

You want the sauce to go somewhere in between, you know?

Spread it.

Mm.

The sauce should be fairly thin.

Could be even a bit thinner than that.

The reason is that your pasta is soft, but it will still absorb liquid, you know?

So the mozzarella cheese, nice, maybe a cup of it here.

A bit of Parmesan, too.

And that's it.

We're in business.

Well, that's going to go into the oven now.

About 375 for like 30, 40 minute, and that should be ready.

Next, I wanted to do a very easy type of first course that I do often at home with beans.

And in that case here, I use large cannellini beans and you drain them out.

You can use that with black beans as well as cranberry beans, or actually even the smaller pea beans, navy beans, Great Northern beans, all of those are kind of small white beans, because we're going to do a puree with it anyway.

So I put the vinegar, bit of vinegar in there.

A good dash of Tabasco.

I like it hot.

Couple of clove of garlic.

And for that, maybe I'll crush the garlic a little bit to be sure (knife thudding) that it's going to liquefy well.

Well, maybe three clove.

To be sure that it's going to ground well.

Otherwise, sometime the whole clove of garlic like that turn around and you end up having larger pieces.

So here, a bit of olive oil.

And that's it.

(lid clattering) (processor whirring) I have my base.

(processor whirring) (lid clicks) I use that as a first course sometime and sometime for aperitif.

You serve it for aperitif on little toast and it's great.

A kind of hummus, you know?

The hummus which is done with chickpeas in kind of North African country.

It's a bit of the same idea.

That's probably where I get the idea anyway.

So here we are.

Here.

A nice beans puree.

So now we just have to put it together.

And there is a lot of things that I have here.

I have some crouton I put in the oven, some scallion.

I have black olives.

I have anchovies.

I will have smoked oysters.

Smoked oyster, even smoked mussel.

You can use one or the other and it's fine.

But this, maybe I'll cut a bit of that.

(knife tapping) Right there are the garnish or chives.

Okay, so here.

A nice portion here be good.

A few crouton on top.

We have the scallion.

Right away, you have a bit of color there.

And the black olives here.

Look at this.

And if you want then, as I said, a smoked... Smoked oyster is pretty strong, so you may want to put them or you may want to omit it.

Or as I say, a few anchovy fillet on top.

This would be good.

Probably put a dash of olive oil around, though, like this.

And even as the finish, if you want, I put a radish, slice of radish on top.

That look good.

Give you a bit of crunch, different color.

(lighthearted music) And here we are.

This is a great first course and very easy to make.

(lighthearted music continues) (apple crunching) I'm going to do a little Charlotte, Charlotte of apple with granola in it.

And we cook those apple usually in a caramel.

And actually, I have to start my caramel here.

There is different way of doing caramel.

You can do a dry caramel that is just put this into a skillet and let it turn into caramel.

If you do that, however, you have to stir your sugar, otherwise it's going to burn on the outside and not be cooked inside.

If you stir the sugar, however, it probably going to make it crystallized.

Crystallization, it's when the sugar form into block.

We call (speaking in foreign language) in France.

It form a mass.

However, this is only important, really, when you do a sugar like to the bowl stage.

That is when the sugar harden like a caramel, but it's still white.

At that point, if it harden, if it crystallize, then you cannot use it.

(pan clanging) What I'm trying to say that you can't really miss a caramel.

If you leave it long enough, it will turn into caramel one way or the other, you know?

So with this, it's going to take a couple of minutes, so we have time to peel the apple.

Actually, you know what?

Sometime, I peel the apple and sometime I peel half of the apple and leave half of the peel in there.

It gives them chewiness in that dessert, and it's fine, too.

This is a Golden Delicious, which is really a whole-purpose apple.

I love Golden Delicious.

This happen to be a McIntosh.

If you have McIntosh, Rome Beauty, Stayman, Macoun, or Palouse, those are soft apple which tend to break down when it cooked.

Sometime it's important, sometime it's not.

For us, we're doing a Charlotte.

We're packing the apple into a little container here.

So even if they are soft, doesn't really matter that much.

This is, of course, Granny Smith.

So Granny Smith and Pippin are going to be firm.

So here, took the center again.

Realize that the way I use my knife here, it's important, but you have to be very careful when you use your knife this way.

What I do, I put my thumb right in there and the knife goes around.

And I turn in a pivot like this to take that center out as I do here.

But it's very important to put that thumb here.

People forget the thumb, it go right through to your hand.

So put that thumb to stop the knife.

The same thing on this side, you see?

So this is a technique that you learn in professional kitchen.

And as I said, the center is removed in the same way.

So that will be cut into large dice this way.

(knife tapping) And you need about a cup, cup and 1/4 of apple per person.

So here, (pan scraping) I told you not to stir the caramel, only at the beginning a little bit so that you know that the sugar is mixed with the water.

So you keep it uncovered, and you have to cook it probably another couple of minute or so.

You can see that the outside of the caramel, I mean, has a yellow color, which is a caramel color.

Caramel is indicated by a color.

At that point, I can stir it.

I told you not to stir it, but by the time it gets to the caramel stage, it passed the level of crystallization.

So you can stir it at that point.

Nothing will happen.

But again, you can have it as dark as you want.

This is about, it's a light caramel.

Another 10, 15 second, it get darker and darker.

And it depend on your own taste.

I think it's about fine here.

So I'm gonna put a couple of tablespoon of butter, which goes in our recipe here directly in our caramel.

It will melt.

(butter sizzling) (knife tapping) There's a beautiful color here.

(butter sizzling) And my apple.

(caramel sizzling) (apples thudding) Can see that caramel color here, which comes.

And now I have no danger of burning the caramel because now a lot of juice are going to come out of the apple.

And in fact, what you have to do, (lid clangs) you cover it.

So the juice will come out of the apple and it start boiling together.

Then you remove the cover and cook it a little longer, sometime you don't even have to remove the cover depending the amount of moisture in the apple, until the apple are nice and tender and caramelized.

(bread crunching) I wanna check on my apple.

You see?

The apple are fine now.

(pan scraping) (lid clanging) And what you wanna do when they are... I can see that they are soft now and the juice is caramelized.

(pan scraping) (spoon tapping) So what we do in that recipe, I finish it up with some granola, pecan granola, any type of granola that you have.

That will eat a little bit of the moisture there.

That's it.

(pan scraping) (spoon clanging) And that's basically it before we put it in the timbale.

(pan scraping) (spoon tapping) The mixture is basically ready.

I mean, you can actually use this as a brunch or even as a nice breakfast, you know, on a Sunday, like for Mother's Day or Father's Day, wanna do something nice, or for a birthday.

And what we do here, what I do here is kind of crouton to fill up on top of those mold.

We're gonna put it in those mold.

You can use a container, something.

Actually, you can cut it with this, any of those.

Sometime, it's fine enough.

Sometime, it doesn't cut enough, but I mean, it give you the mark of it, and you can trim it a little bit after.

(knife scraping) So here we are.

I have different size.

This is your regular Pyrex bowl.

This is another one.

You can have little of those.

It doesn't really matter.

You're going to unmold it anyway, so.

(pan scraping) (spoon tapping) So let's see.

Divide it into four thing like this.

(spoon scraping) Here, the caramel now is really sticking to the apple, which is what you want.

All right.

(spoon tapping) A little more on that one.

You don't have to worry whether they are nice and flat because what we'll do, we're going to press this with the bread, so.

What I like to do is to put a little bit of butter on that bread.

And keep it butter side up like this.

So that, we can do ahead, of course.

We can even have that done today.

(sucks teeth) That side, I made a mistake, so I have butter on each side.

That will be even better.

I think that Julia would be proud of me using that amount of butter.

Yeah, this way.

And even for a nice caramelization on top, you can even put even a little bit of sugar on top of this, you know?

Okay.

That's ready to go into the oven.

As I said, you can do that ahead, it's great.

I wanna check on my pasta.

Oops.

The pasta is ready here.

(tray clanging) I have my lasagna here.

I have another one that I did here, which is actually just line up like a lasagna, which we can see here.

(utensils clanging) (spatula thudding) You would cut that in four pieces, like I'm going to cut the other one.

Looks good.

A lot of cheese.

I know Claude is going to like that recipe.

There is cheese in it, he loves the recipe.

So here, your lasagna would probably actually be easier, I guess, to serve even if it's nice and soft, you know?

With the ricotta, mm, it's good.

(lips smacking) And this one is my cannelloni.

Now I have to find out where they are separated.

I've lost... Oh, here they are here.

And I have those large cannelloni.

Probably going to make a mess out of it.

No, pick them up this way.

Here.

But one way or the other, it's about the same idea, whether you do them flat or whether you do them piled up like the lasagna.

Maybe a bit of chive on top just for color.

(chives crunching) (knife clanging) This is really home cooking my style.

You're going to like it.

It's nice and delicate, this.

(lighthearted music) (water splashing) My father used to put parsley in all of his salad.

He used to put parsley on his steak, on his vegetable.

We have done that parsley salad named after him.

Or I mean, after his memory.

So be sure to wash it properly.

And this is a great dryer to dry your salad, because if you don't do this, you may have two, three tablespoon sometime of liquid left in your salad, and that destroy your dressing.

See here, I twist it this way, and you can see that right there, you know?

Look at the amount of what I have in there.

That could have been in my dressing and destroy my whole salad.

So what I'm going to do is to serve that on a large toast like this.

And what you wanna do is to cut any type of large country bread like this.

I do a large slice of this like this one.

Here, about 10 inch, no, eight, nine inch across.

See what you do here?

You turn the bread (bread crunching) as you go around.

You do the same thing with a cake, you know?

And then you are back at the place where you started and then you can do the center, you know?

And this, what I do, a little bit of oil on top of that.

You put that in a 400-degree oven and have it nice and roasted to put as a base for the salad.

This is the one that I have here is all nice and roasted.

So not only the parsley we put in it, but carrot.

So about a cup, cup, cup and 1/2 of grated carrot.

(carrot scraping) And my friend, Gloria Zimmerman, does that salad all the time.

And actually, most of the recipe I stole from her, you know?

I'm a recipe stealer.

So I should have about plenty carrot in there.

Then I'm going to put a can of anchovy fillet.

Put the oil in there.

Cut those in two or three piece.

Can break it in there.

That's it.

The rest of the oil and the parsley.

In there, I have about four cup, at least four cup, maybe even a bit more of parsley.

So the salt on top of it.

And you know what?

You wanna do that salad a little bit ahead.

That parsley is quite tough.

I mean, this is, as you see, so-called Italian parsley or flat parsley instead of the curly parsley.

And this is kind of tough, and it takes a little bit of while to soften, you know?

So that's what we have, so that's a very assertive salad.

We have anchovy fillet.

We have a lot of ground pepper, salt, this, and garlic we're gonna put on top.

Now look at that garlic.

This is the big, the big, big elephant garlic.

And sometime I use it in those salads because it's kind of mild, you know?

It's kind of mild.

And I like the flake that it does.

So you wanna remove the shell here, like a regular clove of garlic.

If you see it a bit damaged, you trim it.

Those are really very large.

I mean, sometime, I use them, but I rarely saw those as big as that one.

(peeler whooshing) With the vegetable peeler, again, is great.

Work fine.

But 1/3 of a cup.

And as I said, those are quite mild.

I use those flake, also, I saute it in olive oil sometimes to put it on top of like a fish, in like that.

Or even in a salad.

You fry it, it's good.

So my olive oil now.

And you could put some vinegar in it, but with the anchovy and all that, the garlic is strong enough so I leave it at that.

Gonna mix this.

I keep that salad two, three days.

As I say, it soften, we serve it on toast.

Okay.

And then I serve that on the toast.

I have that large toast here.

So what you wanna do, what like to do is really actually cut that in for four people.

(bread crunching) I cut that in four.

Put it back on my plate so that, (plate clanging) right there, (toast tapping) (plate scraping) so that it's easier to cut it before than after.

So we put the salad right on top of it.

There we are.

So you can take your part of the toast, you know?

And have it here.

Good.

And even as a bit more color on top, we put up hard-cooked eggs.

I have a hard-cooked egg here.

We can cut it with a knife (knife tapping) or with a egg slicer.

(knife tapping) I wanna do it coarsely here.

(knife tapping) And if you want to omit any of this, it's fine.

I mean, this is a type of salad where you can improvise, too.

The base is the parsley, the anchovy, the garlic.

And I even added here some pumpkin seed, which give me a nice crunch, you know?

So here, I have a beautiful salad, which you can use even as a brunch main course.

That would be very nice.

Or as a lunch main course.

So we have a very earthy type of meal today with a puree of white beans, and then that salad, and our cannelloni or lasagna.

And of course, the dessert here.

Let's see how those things are doing.

They're still pretty hot.

Sometime, you may want to run your knife a little bit around to be sure that it's going to unmold.

And then you can turn it on your crouton and shake it a little bit.

That's it, you know?

So it's caramelized.

You can add a little bit of what's left inside, (bowl clanging) put it right there.

Especially my finger are full of garlic, so here it is.

And maybe this is on top of it or on the side.

That's a very earthy type of dessert, too.

(lighthearted music) And with this, we need a glass of wine.

And what else?

I have a beautiful Chianti Classico here, serving with the lasagna and that great salad.

Thank you for spending time in my kitchen with me, and happy cooking.