- When you get a piece of really fresh salmon, it is the perfect time to make cured salmon (indistinct).

And what you do, you cut it into dice like this, I mean, cube rather, here in a second.

Okay, you put that to cure.

You put salt on it, a dash of sugar, a fair amount of cracked pepper.

You stir it, and this is going to cure within 20, 20, 30 minutes.

And after, you can take those pieces and roll them into different type of herbs, chopped parsley, chives and all that.

And you have this, you can enjoy it even if it take only a minute to make.

I am Jacques Pepin and this is fast food my way.

Happy cooking.

I love to cook probably because I'm always hungry.

So cooking is great, and today's menu is the type of menu that I will do for me at home and my family.

We're gonna start with a seafood chowder as we do in New England with shellfish and fish in it, and a crusty chicken leg with the mushroom sauce.

Finally, a quick efficacy of Brussels sprout with bacon that is great for Thanksgiving.

And finally a divine trial which is cheese, nuts, fruit and of course wine with it.

So that's great with even four.

So I'm going to start with the chicken.

And that chicken here, the thigh.

I like thigh better than any other part of the chicken.

And those thigh are about about seven ounce.

And you may say it's not that much of a main course, but in the context of a menu, remember that the shadow is going to be quite consistent with a lot of stuff.

So we tend to have a smaller main course.

Now to help that cook, what I do, I cut on each side of that central bone a little bit here, just like this, just to increase the cooking because it the place where it usually always stay a little bit red, you know?

So here we go.

And there, since I leave the skin on that particular chicken, we'll start without any fat in there.

Directly in there.

(pan sizzling) This is a non-stick pan, so it should work fast.

I can see that it doesn't stick.

I want to start frying it, and of course I'm putting salt on this and freshly ground black pepper.

So wash your hand after you do the chicken.

(cutting board clattering) Here we are.

(sink splashing) And this is gonna cook a couple of minutes.

When it's really sizzling like this, I want to be sure that it's not sticking.

And I will cook that chicken for like 16, 18 minutes completely on the skin, you know, so to get a really crusty skin.

I'm going to transfer it to that one because I want to put it on low heat here.

Okay, and cover it up.

Here we are.

(lid clattering) That's it, so about 16, 18 minutes.

And now I'm gonna start on the chowder.

Okay, so olive oil, good olive oil in there, and leak.

And this I probably have a good cup, cup and a half of of the leak.

(knife tapping) So you cut your leak always like this except when you want a so-called Julienne of leak, which is not the case today, but if you want a Julienne of leak, then you take that part of the leak and you keep it together because this is being organized by mother nature.

So you leave it like that, fold it in half.

(knife tapping) And cut it this way.

(knife tapping) This is what we call a Julienne, you know, very thin thread like that that are often done in nouvelle cuisine.

It's fine, I can put that in there as well.

(pan sizzling) Good, so I want to fry that for a couple of minutes.

Garlic and the mushroom as well.

Now those mushroom, I just washed them a second ago because you should not do it ahead.

(knife tapping) It is not that you don't wash mushroom, it's that you don't wash mushroom ahead, otherwise they get yellowish on top.

The tub get all sticky like and the discolor.

(knife tapping) But if they are the dirty, of course, at the moment that you are ready to use them, put them in the water, wash them and take them out.

This is it.

Okay, so I have that in there.

Let's see, it's already smelling wonderful.

(pan sizzling) (pot clattering) Okay, this is a thick, heavy, thick, heavy cast iron pan and it is the type of dish which is great.

You can do a stew with that too, the type of dish that you bring to the table and serve like that because it looks good.

So with this, we're going to put lime juice, which I'm adding here.

That will be the base, And a bit of water as well with a cup of water.

You could use chicken stock.

But basically this is fine here.

So we wanna bring that to a boil and cook it, well, a minute, couple of minute, you know, at the most.

And then we are going to add zucchini to this and thicken it with a potato flake like that.

It's an easy way of doing it and it works beautifully.

So there you can prepare ahead.

This doesn't really have to cook that long.

(knife tapping) So that I'll cook, cut it into a pieces, hmm, about a inc.

Yyou want to put about... See when you do those type of soup, you can use other thing that you have in your refrigerator.

You know, if you have a piece of some scallion in there or even salad, I shred the salad and put it in there.

And then we are going to serve the fish later on here.

I have cod, it's cud.

We use very often cod (indistinct).

I mean, you could use salmon for that matter here.

You could use catfish for that matter or all kind of, you know, a white type of filet of fish like that that you want to cut into maybe one inch, one inch or quarter of an inch pieces.

Okay, I can see that it's boiling now very nicely.

So I let it boil for a couple of minutes, turn this upside down so the steam doesn't run all over the place.

I finish cutting this.

(knife tapping) So there you see for four people there probably would have four, five little piece of fish per person.

(knife tapping) And that will cook quite fast, you know.

So I think that now cooked a couple of minutes, it's enough so I can add my zucchini.

Here we are.

And I can sprinkle the potato flake on top.

When I do that, I always like to use the point of a whisk, you know, just to stir it on top so that I'm sure that it doesn't form into a big lump, you know?

So those are very handy, you know, to thicken soup.

That's it.

And by the time it come back to a boil, basically it's cooked.

So I have it.

I'm gonna cut those shrimp.

I'm gonna cut that into a, well, inch pieces like this.

Okay.

So you know, if you wanna buy smaller shrimp, even they're small one, then you can leave them whole.

But I like that size.

That size is about what they call 20, 24.

That is 24 shrimp per pound, that's how it comes.

So now the thickening agent of the potato flake has worked, so I have just a little bit of thickening.

I can put my fish.

This is of course, as I say, what you would do at the last moment.

You know, like say if you have a party, you do everything except the fish.

And at the time when people sit down, you bring it to a boil and you put all that stuff in it.

A little bit of half and half that I will put here, about half a cup or so.

And by the time this come to a boil, it is basically cooked.

You know, it's a great soup.

Quite satisfying, you know?

So I want it to come back to a boil.

We have it ready, beautiful soup with the mushroom.

A bit of cleaning up right there.

I have the French flag, (speaking in French), or the American flag.

Red, white, blue.

And then you want of course to sprinkle a little bit of crab on top of this, little pieces of crab.

You know, crab is expensive, but it's so delicious.

And you serve that maybe with oyster cracker and you have the first dish of that meal, which is a perfect dish for winter, summer, anytime.

Always is good.

So I'm going to start another dish that we are doing, which is Brussels sprout.

When Claudine was small, Claudine is my daughter.

We never gave her a choice of what to eat.

We said that's what we're eating today.

And finally when she was older, it ended up that her best vegetable was Brussels sprout, spinach and artichokes.

Still now that's what she liked the best.

So it's good to do that when you have kid, you just do it, you put it on the table and don't reward the kid when he eat the spinach otherwise he's going to ask for something.

Okay, we have four slice of bacon here.

I have about a pound, a good pound of the Brussels sprout and here is my Brussels sprout.

What you want to do is to remove that part here when it's all like this and any of the leaf which are damaged around, a little bit of that, of the stem.

And you know, I used to cook them in water, boil them or cut them in half.

Now I cook them raw, much easier, and I slice them with the food processor so it makes it even easier.

So here I have, right into the tube.

(food processor whirring) I don't even have to push them down.

(food processor whirring) With machine really make your life easier.

(food processor whirring) That's it.

So there is different size blade, you know, this is about like four millimeter or whatever and it's fine.

That's what I use.

And those you see are cut into nice thin slice here.

It's gonna work perfect for that.

And my bacon, as you can see, they're really getting crusty and nice now, and this is what I want.

So the Brussels sprout, I have about a pound, close to a pound and a half here.

I'm going to go directly in there.

(pan sizzling) Dash of salt.

Remember, the bacon is salty but it still needs salt, pepper, a fair amount of cracked pepper.

(pan sizzling) And then I'm going to make it sweat.

So that lid, I'm going to cover it and the steam is going to sweat it.

Couple of minutes, remove the lid, and continue cooking it until whatever moisture is gone.

Saute, and that's it.

So now let's check on the chicken, which I think is really crusty and I think ready.

So remember that that chicken was cooked only om one side, but they want the cover.

I can test it.

See, I can see that pretty tender.

And now it's cooked.

(pan sizzling) Just look how crusty the chicken is.

(pan sizzling) Here we are, here we are.

Here we are.

Okay.

Onion and garlic and the chicken.

We are moving here.

Okay.

And then the mushroom.

Now those so-called mini bella mushroom like Porto Bella with the small one, I wanna wash them.

The best way is to keep them just the way they are when they come out of the supermarket.

And as soon as you're ready to use them, wash them and slice them.

In that case here, I'm going to dice those in little square to make a mushroom sauce with the chicken.

The chicken by the way, you could keep it warm in a 150 degree oven or so.

I'm going to lower this.

That's it.

Let's check on that, can hear it sizzling.

(pan sizzling) Ooh, tough, need to soften a little more.

If you feel that it's too dry and it doesn't soften enough, put a bit of water in it, you know, can always add a little bit of moisture.

That's it.

This is the trick of the trade.

The (speaking in French) we say in French.

Okay, so square dice on this.

(knife tapping) All right.

(knife tapping) The recipe is only the expression of one moment in time, which is what happened the day that I did this.

In fact, when I did that recipe before, it probably was different than it is now.

Always different.

Okay, let's see that.

(pan sizzling) That's it.

I think those are cooked enough.

Hmm.

Nice crunch here.

Dash of salt more, will be a little dash of olive oil.

Can never go wrong with a good olive oil, and I'm gonna serve this just like this.

(pan sizzling) You have to do that.

I mean, Brussels sprout is classic for Thanksgiving, you know, and often I do it this way.

Okay.

(pan clattering) This is going a bit faster here and I don't know if I have enough mushroom here.

I'm gonna glaze with a bit of wine.

(pan sizzling) One tablespoon, maybe two.

Remember that theoretically, your chicken would probably be in the oven just warming up.

140, 150 degree oven.

That's how I would keep it.

And here we are, maybe a bit of green for the top.

(knife tapping) If I had, you know, I was left on an island and nothing to eat, I think chicken, eggs would probably be what I would choose first.

Eggs, I love eggs in any form and chicken in any form also.

So let's see, this is cooked enough and the chicken here, you can see that.

I can hear it.

I mean, you can hear this even how crusty the top is cooking it the way I did.

So you have four of those, of course, don't throw out the juice, she's going to be there.

(bowl clattering) And that's about it for our dish here.

A little bit of the juice actually.

I don't wanna hide all of my chicken here.

A little bit of it.

Move the juice around the chives on top and this is it.

Simple dish, elegant and delicious.

(gentle music) And now our dessert, sort of dessert.

But at home, usually I finish the meal with a piece of cheese, my wife and very often a piece of fruit sometimes.

So this is one of the best combination that you can have.

So here I'm taking the apple.

You can actually keep this, you know, the nice decoration here on the other side as well.

And then you don't have to peel the apple, we cut it in half.

Look at how beautiful that apple is inside.

And again, the same technique here.

Put it your thumb in the center.

Make sure that your thumbis the center because your thumb is protecting you.

If you don't have your thumb here, that goes into your arm.

So your hands.

So we cut that into wedge, you know, I mean, you can have different type of apple.

Of course, I have a granny smith here.

Again, the same idea.

I like to do the apple ahead like that.

Sometime I do pear, you know, and cut it.

Lemon juice on top because I like the taste of lemon juice.

And so it prevent the discoloration.

So the lemon juice on top, and we have here and that's enough.

And then it's a bit wet now.

So the thing that I do, I put crackd paper on it and this is either Mulata or cherry pepper.

You take a good quality and we crack the paper.

And you crack it with a little skillet or something like this, you can hear it crack.

(pepper cracking) This is basically in the kitchen what we call mignonette.

Sometime you read a recipe and say put a teaspoon of mignonette.

This is what mignonette is, cracked paper and black paper.

You don't want to do the white one, you want the black one.

You can crack it a couple of times to have it finer.

You know, this is what you use when you do a (indistinct).

You spread that out, you dip your steak in it and on the other side how you do it.

But there we are sprinkling that on the apple.

And it's really an interesting taste, you know, that goes there.

And on my tray here, white one, dark one, you want to be too fancy with this.

That's it, get that.

And the cheese, I love blue cheese, I love gorgonzola.

I really love stilton as well, and I have a stilton here.

I can cut it into pieces.

Sometime, I like the rind.

And this is what people will have for dessert and the combination of the nuts and those are toasted pecan nuts.

You can have walnut of course, or for does matter, almond or another nut.

And with this a little bit of those cracker, I like to break them in that a little bit like this.

And of course nothing goes better than that than a great port.

This is a vintage port and I have a 20 years old port over there.

Either one would be absolutely scrumptious with that.

A simple, elegant end into a comfortable home-cooked American meal.

Happy cooking.