- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

- And I'm Claudine Pepin.

Papa, where would you go if you wanted a satisfying bistro style meal in a casual setting?

- I'll head straight for my kitchen.

- Why are you tired of eating out?

- No, it's just the kind of food I like to cook at home.

Like tuna steak saute with tapenade, or a light and flavorful stew of duck braised with fennel and olives.

- [Claudine] With noodles and peas, a wonderfully simple combination on the side.

- [Jacques] And rhubarb and berry nectar with mint.

The perfect summertime dessert.

- I'm getting hungry already.

Do you take reservations?

- Yes, we do.

Call your mother.

- Join us for a visit to our own Casual Corner Cafe, next on Jacques Pepin's Kitchen.

- Encore with Claudine.

(cheerful music) (locomotive honking) (cheerful music) (cheerful music) Today we are doing a casual corner cafe meal.

- And we're starting with rhubarb and berry nectar with mint.

- Yes.

You like rhubarb, right?

- I love rhubarb.

- Okay, so we're gonna cut this.

- Okay, now you already have the leaves off.

- [Jacques] Yeah.

- [Claudine] I know there's a deal with the leaves.

- [Jacques] All the green, the deal is that is poisonous.

- [Claudine] Oh, okay.

- Yeah, you don't eat rhubarb leaf.

Yes, it's poisonous.

So you have to be careful.

Some people also peel the rhubarb and as you see, look at that.

It peel very well.

- [Claudine] Oh, see I could peel that.

- But you don't want to peel it.

There is no reason, otherwise it's not red.

No, so we leave it, you can, however, if it's very large cut it in half like this.

- Oh, okay.

- Which you don't have to.

- Was I supposed to do that?

- No.

- No, good.

- Go ahead.

A very simple dish.

I'm going to put some, about half a cup of red wine in there.

That's nice and hot.

So put your rhubarb right in there.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- All of this.

And we have, what do we have here?

- We have jam.

We have cranberry juice too.

- Yeah, a bit of cranberry juice.

And this is the time to use the left over jam that you have.

Preferably, a red jam in there.

You need about half a cup.

And you know what we do here?

I'm taking the yan for decoration, but otherwise I'm taking that bunch of mint again from- - It smells so good.

- From the garden, you know, tying it up into a bundle like this.

We'll put that in there.

- That'll just go in there all tied up like that?

- Yeah, that's it.

- Cool.

- That's fine like this.

This will render a lot of juice, you know.

So here is what we do.

You cover that up, you bring it to a strong boil.

You boil it about seven, eight minute and then you can finish it with berry if you want to.

And I have strawberry here.

We have blackberry, we have blueberry.

And at the end, this one is not ready of course.

But after eight minute you add your berry, bring it back to a boil and that's it.

Cool it off.

- Sounds good.

- Yeah.

- [Claudine] So this is the one that's cooled off.

- Yeah, and that's what we have here.

- Okay.

- [Jacques] As you see, I even left the mint in there, you know.

- Oh, in the cooling process.

- Yeah, in the cooling process.

It's a bit soft.

I like it when it's soft like this, you know?

Okay.

- [Claudine] I love this.

- Here we have our rhubarb.

Look at that.

Put a little bit of the sour cream on top.

- Okay.

- You can serve that with a, and maybe a spring of mint, piece of pound cake.

- Yum.

- Or nothing at all.

We put that right there.

- Should we put pancake under this?

- You can put your pancake right here.

- Oh, that would be nice.

- Or serve it at the table, extra this.

This is a wonderful rhubarb and berry dessert.

And now our main course for the casual cafe corner meal, we're going to do a braised duck with fennel- - And olives.

- And olive, yes.

So let's start.

I have already have a skillet here.

And I put a piece of that fat here to brown in there.

- Oh, that's like the way you do potatoes.

- The neck, we keep it for stock.

This, we may saute that and eat that ourself in the kitchen.

What do I have?

Here I have the gizzard.

And the thing that we're going to add to this, you can take this silver skin if you want or leave it in, it's okay.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- And now this part here, we want to start browning that because we're going to take the skin out of this.

Here's a piece of paper.

And you see the joint here?

- [Claudine] Um-huh.

- Ready that joint right there in two.

And those two piece- - Go right in.

- Go right in.

You see that here?

You wanna pull that and see where it goes.

Yeah.

Pull again down and you can see, you see the articulation where it goes now.

Now you don't want to cut into the breast here.

The articulation is here.

- [Claudine] Oh.

- Can you see it?

Just go on the other side.

Come back up now.

- Come back up.

- And come back up this way with your knife.

That's it.

Right.

Cut that in two.

That there is the articulation.

Yeah, that's it.

- [Claudine] Did you take biology?

- That's it.

Now when you're not quite sure, you know, with your knife out you cut this way, wiggle the knife a little bit.

You'll slide into the articulation.

We're going to take the skin out of this.

And the skin, you could keep it to do crackling or other things.

What we want to do is to cut that in half.

Here you see.

That's another way of doing duck, you know, just stew like that without the skin.

So here is half and all of that till the carcass and all of that.

I want to keep that for stock, you know?

- [Claudine] Hmm.

- And here is the leg.

You can start pulling the skin out of this.

- [Claudine] I know I'm supposed to use a towel.

I don't really know how to use the towel, but I'm just know I'm supposed to.

- Well, this does not come out as easy as a chicken because it's tailed, but you pull it as much as you can.

It really doesn't matter here because we're not going to use it.

And now we want to remove the carcass out of this and then we'll remove the carcass here.

We have to do the same thing on the leg, Claudine.

So... And here is, here the breast.

You know the whole breast right here?

- [Claudine] Uh-huh.

- Let me move this around a little bit.

There you go.

(duck sizzling) Okay, and we can start one breast here.

So we remove basically, you know, most of the calorie there in the skin.

Now all of that has to brown, bit of salt on top of it.

Now it has to brown for 15, 20 minutes.

And I think I'm going to have to rinse my hand.

- Me too.

- Okay.

We need soap there.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Little bit of soap.

For foul free particularly, you know.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- [Jacques] Here you go.

Good, so now this has to cook and it'll sit for about 20 minutes on high.

And we're going to put pasta to cook and I have fettuccine here or tagliatelle.

The fettuccine, either noodle, which is about that size as you can see here.

And if you have a tagliatelle, it'll be the same thing, except it's wider.

- Oh, wow.

I just love pasta in general.

So- - So that will go into our boiling water, let it go in there.

It will take about 7, 8, 8 minutes.

- You want it covered or not covered?

- You could cover it to bring it back to a boil.

But after you will uncover it, you cook pasta uncovered, you know.

- [Claudine] Okay, then we'll just leave it that way.

- Yeah.

So let's see this.

This is doing okay here.

So you know what we could do?

Let's move on and do- - Tuna.

- The tuna, yes.

A beautiful tuna there.

This is- - [Claudine] That's a serious- - Yellowtail.

Yellowtail high tuna.

Very thick skin here that I remove.

- [Claudine] Is this the same thing you would use for sushi?

- Oh, yeah, exactly.

- Really?

Okay.

- But there is a bunch of different type of tuna of course, but the yellowtail, or the bluetail.

See this is like a piece of leather, you know?

- [Claudine] Wow.

- It's very, very thick.

Now you can see that the outside, here, that's what I would use in certain type of dish.

It is a bit more nerve, you know, you have more nerve.

- Yeah.

- And that piece, which is really fatty, I like to grill this.

- Oh, okay.

- Here we are doing little steak, like this.

Maybe a bit smaller than that.

And what we wanna do that, we wanna do that with a tapenade.

You know what tapenade is?

- Tap it used to hit.

But I know- - Tape it, no.

No tap it.

- Yeah?

- Actually it comes from the word tapeno in Provencal which means capers.

So very often people do tapenade without caper.

It should have caper.

So here is olive.

You know, you can crush your olive a little bit like this to remove the seed.

- Okay, that can be my project.

- Okay, there is two or three there.

You do those.

Then we have oil cured olive, all of this, all of this you put that in the little machine.

- Okay.

- One table spoon or two of capric, couple of anchovy fillet.

Two small clove of garlic, let's put there.

- Okay.

- Couple of anchovy fillet.

Give them to you.

This way.

A little bit of the oil from the anchovy, there.

- [Claudine] Hmm.

- [Jacques] Okay, and you're in business.

- Okay, here we go.

(food processor running) - [Jacques] That's it.

- [Claudine] That's it?

- Yeah, I don't want it to get too fine.

You know, you can lift up the whole thing and see what it looks like there.

Well, maybe a little more.

Okay, put this there.

Don't want too much of a puree.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Okay.

I'm going to turn my duck here.

This will brown another five, six minutes on the other side.

Okay, let me put a dash of salt there.

Okay.

And we wanna spread that.

- Is that enough?

- No, no, you wanna put a little more?

- Oh, okay.

- Okay.

Put the tapenade on top.

I mean you could, I know you, you could have that right the way it is.

- On toast.

- On toast as a sushi, right?

- Yeah.

- [Jacques] Okay.

- Oh, I thought you meant the tapenade, the sushi, the fish I could.

- I'm putting a dash of oil in there.

And of course it depends on the thickness of your steak.

Those are a good, good inch.

- And you put it tapenade inside down?

- Tapenade inside down to form like a crust, you know, tapenade.

You can cook it a couple of minutes on each side.

Tell you the truth, with that size you may even cook it on one side until it brown nicely.

Then you cover it.

And just the residual heat will cook it enough, you know?

Thank you, Claudine.

- You're welcome.

- Let's check out our pasta here.

Pasta is not ready, but this I think is brown enough.

- Okay.

- So before let it brown a bit more, we're going to do the fennel here.

- Fennel is like the stuff that grows wild in California on the highway, right?

- It's close.

The same family except the one which grows wild doesn't have a big bulb like this, you know?

- [Claudine] Oh, okay.

- But the top is pretty close.

It's close to Annette.

We call in France (speaking in French) while fennel which is (speaking in French) same family too.

- Do we keep this for anything?

- Yeah, you can keep that for soup.

- Okay.

- Now here I'm cutting one.

You wanna cut one like that, in thin slice, cut it in half first.

All right, while you cut the rest of it.

I'm gonna remove this.

I love duck like this, you know?

You ready with my fennel?

- Almost.

- Okay.

- You'll have to do two trips so that then I'll be done.

- Here we are here.

- There.

- You see what's now important here, I meant to show you.

You look at the crystallization in the pan here.

- [Claudine] Oh, yeah.

- That's a good thick, heavy pan and have the crystallized juice, which you call the glaze.

And the process rather deglazing is to add liquid to that, to release those glaze.

We're going to put some water in there, just about a cup of water.

And I'm going to cover it up until the water, until this get tender and the water disappear and it start browning, then we finish it up.

- Sounds good.

- You want to check on the tuna?

- Check on the tuna?

All righty.

- Yes, let's see the tuna at that point here.

You could see I could turn it on the other side.

- [Claudine] See that's what I was wondering, how are you gonna turn it without it?

Oh, okay.

- No, it's formed a nice dark crust, you know?

- But I would think that if I tried to do that, the tapenade would stay in the pan and the tuna would- - [Jacques] No, no, no, no, no.

- [Claudine] It sticks.

Okay.

- [Jacques] Yeah, it sticks, works out perfectly fine.

- [Claudine] Yeah.

- [Jacques] All right.

- Okay.

- I actually would cover that and leave that like one minute on the side and just the residual sugar, the residual heat rather in there, it would cook it enough because you want to have it a little rare in the middle.

- [Claudine] Oh yeah, definitely.

- Here we are.

Nice clean table.

- Left nice clean table.

- You want to arrange those around a little bit.

You can put any type of green or no green at all.

This happened to be arugula and I like the arugula for that because the arugula we call roquette in French, is kind of very garlicky and all that.

And will go well with that type of thing which, as you know, has garlic in it.

Tapenade of Provence, you know?

Okay, you wanna put that there?

Let me see this.

Where we're now?

That'd be fine.

See the heat is off now.

Let me get, one of those this way.

Can you see that?

- That looks so beautiful.

And that would even, that'll still be rare inside?

- [Jacques] A little bit, yeah.

- [Claudine] Cool.

- It should be.

I'm gonna give you this one.

Put a little bit of the remaining juice on top of it here.

And look, I leave this one right on top of it.

And I will cut it to show you the inside.

You see them?

- [Claudine] Oh, wow.

- [Jacques] It's nice and- - It's nice and rare.

- I mean, if you want it this way and that would be another way- - Oh, I like it that way.

- Of presenting it.

If you want this way, slightly rare, you know I could cut another one.

Sure, it looks fine this way.

- [Claudine] I like that.

- [Jacques] To present it cut like that in half, okay?

- That's really easy.

That's really fun.

- You're gonna do that one.

- I'm gonna do this one.

- Good.

So you know what, let's check on the- - [Claudine] The duck.

- Okay.

And on this, you see this is getting basically tender enough and I want to continue.

Theoretically, you continue cooking it until all of that water evaporate and it start browning.

Let me check on the pasta.

- [Claudine] Looks right.

- The pasta will take a couple of minute more.

You know what we do here?

I have some peas in that pasta.

I soak those already, but you soak those peas here.

- [Claudine] Oh, cool.

- You know?

And I'm gonna put them directly on top of the water here.

- [Claudine] That is a great idea.

- [Jacques] See there is enough water.

- [Claudine] And they'll just steam.

- So it go and just steam a minute or so.

You wanna put the lid back on it?

- I got the lid.

- Partially, you know?

- Well that's all- - It doesn't boil over.

Okay, and look at that here.

- [Claudine] That looks really good.

- It'll continue browning.

You know, I want it to brown a little more and during that time we have to add the rest of it.

- Okay, so we have the liver.

- You know what, we could do also, we have the liver that I wanted to cook here.

And you want to grate a little bit of cheese for the pasta?

- Okay.

- And close to my, the peas could cook of course a little more.

But basically, you know, if it's cooked a couple of minute, two, three minute, especially those are tiny peas.

They are small one, they're cooked pretty fast.

Here we are here.

Maybe I'll finish the pasta now.

I think the pasta is going to be fine.

- Okay.

- [Jacques] You have a bowl?

- I have a bowl.

That's the toss it though.

- You need a big bowl for my pasta.

- Well, this way you don't make a mess.

- Okay, I need some olive oil in there, right?

Salt, pepper, put all of that in there.

Turn in, maybe.

There again.

Here.

And- - Pasta.

- Now, testing those hot peas in there.

You know what I do all the time in the pasta?

I put a little bit of the liquid from the pasta.

- [Claudine] Why?

- Like half a cup, you put in there because by the time the pasta, you know, you drain it out.

It'll absorb a lot of liquid.

So I put that in there.

- Oh, no wonder your pasta... Is that enough by the way?

- Yeah, that's about fine.

- I wasn't paying attention.

- And you let it drain one second here.

So it's really necessary to do it what I'm doing now because I'm using it right away.

But if you let it dry for a minute or so, you need that extra water in there.

- I didn't know that.

No wonder yours always better than mine.

- Why don't you put some cheese in here?

- Okay.

- [Jacques] Go ahead.

- Okay, there we go.

Done.

And this will be for the table.

- [Jacques] You have a bowl for that?

- [Claudine] Yes, I have a pretty bowl.

Hang on.

- I put salt, I put pepper in there, right?

So it's seasoned.

- Yes, you put salt and pepper right now.

- Beautiful, doesn't it?

Fresh fettuccine and peas, okay?

- Okay.

- Now can you hear my fennel cooking?

So when you can hear it like that about ready.

This is the liver.

That's for the cook in the kitchen, right?

- [Claudine] Yes.

- Give me a little bit of white wine.

It's browning now.

- How about red wine?

- Yeah, red wine, I'm sorry.

That's what I want.

- [Claudine] Because that's what I've got.

- Half a cup of red wine, a little bit of red wine vinegar.

A dash of sugar.

Yeah, that's fine.

- [Claudine] Dash of sugar.

- In there.

Good.

And, well, we are putting the duck in there back.

- What about olives?

- And you wanna cook- - Not yet.

Not yet.

You want to cover it?

Here I am.

And you want to cook that for about 30 minutes now before we finish up.

And I have one which has been cooking that amount of time here.

So it's cooked.

Now you can give me your olive.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- And we can put the olive inside.

- I can?

- Yeah, just toss the olive.

- [Claudine] Just toss 'em in.

- [Jacques] Yep, in here.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Ooh, you have a tray for me to prepare this?

- Yeah, hang on.

How's this?

- This is beautiful.

- Isn't that nice?

- Yes.

I'm not arranging it in... See the fennel now is going to be kind of almost candid, you know?

Basically, no juice is leftover.

- And the pot's clean.

All the crystallization is done.

- [Jacques] Yes, all the juice- - [Claudine] I mean, it's not clean but you know what I mean.

- It is clean.

You are absolutely right.

(Claudine laughs) Wanna put little pieces of parsley on top of it?

No, on top like this?

- What do you mean on top like this?

- Yeah, to decorate.

I want to taste the wine.

- I know you do.

- With the liver that was, it was supposed to be.

- Here, have the liver.

- What we do now?

- [Claudine] I was being artistic.

- To have a little piece of the liver and your wine on top of it.

It's good.

And here is our braised duck with fennel and the noodle with peas.

So this is our casual corner cafe meal.

What do you think of it, Claudine?

- I think it's awesome.

I love the tuna with the tapenade.

And, you know, with the greens around it, it kind of gives it a little zip.

The pasta is really easy and I am gonna remember to put water from the pasta into my pasta.

That's a great idea.

So it doesn't stick.

And the duck is wonderful and it really kind of goes well with the tuna because you have the olives.

- Except to take the skin out of it, right?

- That I didn't like that part.

But I'll manage, I'll manage.

- And I'm sure you're going to enjoy that berry rhubarb dessert, you know, with the taste of mint in it.

So what are we drinking with our meal today?

- Well, I chose a red and a white, both from the Alexander Valley.

And I really like the white that I'm gonna have.

It's a Sauvignon Blanc and I like the red that you're gonna have, it's a Cabernet Sauvignon.

- Yes, and I'm going to drink both of them.

- [Claudine] I know.

(laughs) - First with my fish, I'm going to have Sauvignon Blanc is going to go very well.

But with my duck, I need a bolder type wine, you know, that's going to be great.

Well I tell you, it was great cooking with you.

- Well, if I ever open up a cafe, a corner cafe, will you come be the chef?

- No way, you can do it yourself.

To pretend you're eating out.

It's always fun.

And thank you Claudine for cooking with me.

Happy Cooking.

- Happy Cooking.

(bright music)