- I never throw out my chicken liver.

I cut them in half, drop them in boiling water, and do a sauce with water, garlic, sugar, cilantro, and roasted sesame oil, balsamic vinegar, and soy sauce.

It's a kind of Chinese sauce, and my wife absolutely adore that recipe.

You mix it together, drain your chicken liver.

They are barely cooked.

They should be slightly pink inside.

Add them to the sauce, stir it in.

This is one of the greatest hors d'oeuvres that you can do.

People will love it.

You can even serve it with pasta.

Surprise your friend with easy, tasty recipe.

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

Happy Cooking.

(lively music) Right out of the cellar, a nice bottle of rose.

I have a menu full of surprises today with ingredient that you probably are not used to use in the way I'm going to use them.

First I have a tomato surprise.

The tomato will look whole when in fact it's going to be stuffed inside with something.

Then we have a grill striped bass, or other type of filet, thick filet, with a romesco sauce, which is done with ancho chilies and walnut or sometime almond; a gratin of pumpkin; and cherries in Armagnac sauce or cognac and so forth.

And I'm going to start with the gratin of pumpkin.

When I was a kid, when I came to this country, the only time that we had pumpkin, it was in the type of gratin that I'm going to do today, you know?

It's what my mother used to do.

And then when I came here, my wife showed me how to make pumpkin pie.

Well, I learned it at Howard Johnson before, and I couldn't believe that you would put sugar with pumpkin, which is really considered a vegetable in France, but now I'm used to it.

In any case, it's a mixture of eggs and this and with some Swiss cheese in it.

So I'm going to put a piece of Swiss cheese here to grate it.

You can do it in your machine or you can do it by hand as well, so.

(processor whirring) That's it.

So there's already a piece to take for the chef here.

Here we are.

And I have about 3/4 of a cup to a cup of cheese that I'm going to put in there.

Very easy to do.

This, of course, is pumpkin without any flavoring.

You don't want cinnamon in there or you don't want anything else but just plain puree of pumpkin.

Now if you feel that cooking it yourself, we can do that, but it basically the same thing.

You know, when I use a can, I look at the can.

What do you have in there?

And if I have, like in that case, pure flesh of pumpkin, I have nothing else in front, so I have no problem using it.

I have three eggs in there.

One.

Again, break your eggs on something flat.

Like that you open it (egg shell cracking) as opposed to opening it on something, (egg shell cracking) you know, like this, where the shell go inside and often contaminate the eggs or break the yolk.

Oh, you have this tray of salt, pepper, and about a cup of cream.

Yeah, about that amount, with a rich cotta, which I often do for Thanksgiving, you know?

(processor whirring) So here we mix it together.

In a second, I'm going to add the cheese to it.

At that point, I didn't want to leave it at the beginning.

I don't want it to be too fine in there.

Just mixed, you know?

And that's it.

And then we do that in a gratin dish.

I'm going to butter that gratin dish.

It's about six cup or four cup.

That's gratin.

You see the cast iron type of gratin, you know.

Good.

And we put that in there.

See, the best way really to clean up your food processor when you have something gooey like that is to put it back one second to turn it.

The speed will clean up the blade, will clean up your blade, and you grab the rest with your rubber spatula.

Waste not, want not.

I never waste anything.

Okay, just fill up the bowl.

That's it.

It's even good this way.

And a little bit of Parmesan cheese on top, grated Parmesan cheese, and we are ready for the oven, you know, about 400 degree.

That will take like 30, 35 minutes, 40 minute.

Okay.

Good, now I can concentrate on the main dish, which is going to be a fish because we start with the tomato surprise, and we're going to have that fish with a romesco sauce.

This is a really Spanish type of sauce.

I have ancho chilies here that I add to it.

I love those ancho chilies, the flavor of it, and very conventionally, people are going to take this and soak it and soak it for quite a while.

Sometime I don't soak it at all, and I learned that from Rick Bayless.

We do it this way while it all like this, just having the center.

Like this, and we're gonna put that into a skillet directly with olive oil.

This is in pieces, you can see.

You can tear it apart like this.

Have all kind of other thing in that sauce.

Too hard.

Well, I could use a knife also.

Here we are.

And almond in it.

The type of almond like that you use in Spain are unpeeled almond.

It's an interesting sauce here.

Onion.

About 1/2 a cup of onion that I have here.

(knife thudding) Any old way because we gonna put that in the blender anyway.

So 1/2 a cup of onion.

(oil sizzling) A little bit of jalapeno paper.

And again there, you know, I cut all around the seed, and usually I taste it.

Hmm, not too hot.

(knife thudding) Sometime it's really hot.

I mean, from jalapenos to serrano to and if you take a habaneros, the round one too, or the bonnet, those are really hot.

Okay, the garlic.

(knife thudding) Can slice the garlic this way.

(knife thudding) All right, and I put the garlic in there as well.

(oil sizzling) This is going to go with the fish here, and actually, I could start the fish because it is going to take a little while.

Those filet are quite large.

And I have salt and pepper on it.

I add some.

Just a little bit.

And I'm going to put this on this here.

This is a really nifty, nice grill, you know, that you put directly on top of your stove.

And it's a non-stick, so hopefully it's not going to stick.

You never know.

(oil sizzling) And then, okay, so I have the ancho in it, I have the hot pepper, I have the almond, I have onion, so I have to put tomato, a little bit of vinegar, and a little bit of water.

So I bought a cup, a good cup of tomato.

(oil sizzling) and it's a sauce which, shall I say, is classic in Spain.

Maybe not done exactly the way I'm doing it, but mine is better.

This is what we have in the kitchen at my house.

My wife, it's not even me.

My wife had a sign in the kitchen which says Mine is Better.

(oil sizzling) You have beautiful color, as you can see there.

The vinegar, red wine vinegar, about a couple of tablespoon, and about 1/4 of a cup of water maybe.

(sauce simmering) Or 1/2 a cup.

Okay.

That's gonna cook three, four, five minute, and then we're going to emulsify it into the blender.

And after all that work, I think I deserve to taste my wine.

This is a wine from the south of France.

All the rose like this done with Grenache usually and Syrah.

Those are really good.

Terrific with that fish.

I could have a Spanish wine also, even a red wine like a Tempranillo would go well.

(sauce simmering) I think my fish is almost done.

Hmm, another minute for the six piece here.

So I'm going to cover it with this, give it a little more steam.

And during that time I'll finish the sauce.

So here is the sauce.

(sauce simmering) Stop it there.

We're gonna put that in the blender rather than in the food processor at that point because I really want to emulsify it, and the blender, of course, turn much faster than the food processor.

So here we are.

Good.

This.

(blender whirring) I really want the ancho to be totally emulsified, you know?

I want to taste it too.

Hmm, it could use salt.

Here's salt and a little more olive oil.

Oh, well, let's be generous.

Okay.

(blender whirring) This is it.

Okay.

Here you have a thick, heavy, beautiful sauce here.

Mm, quite different.

Quite different than your conventional sauce.

And let's see, yeah.

(fish sizzling) Cleaning up.

You can, you know, when you're not sure with this, just go with a knife, something, and go inside, you know, and whether you can separate it, and as you can see here, then close it back together.

No one will know you've been there, you know?

Or you can just go through like that.

If it's really tender, and I go through like that, I know it's cooked through.

Okay.

(fish sizzling) Let's see which pieces are nicest, this or this.

Well, it's about the same.

Here.

Those are about six ounces.

Yeah, six ounces filet, you know?

But like that, plenty other filet.

And you could use blackfish, we call the tautog, or black sea bass.

Actually salmon would work quite well also.

(spatula scraping) Boy, that thing is a non-stick pan, so that's why everything sticks to it.

Okay, here.

Well, I was going to serve the sauce separate, but when you see the way it looks, then you put it right on top like this, at least a feel of it, and you can serve more sauce on the side.

A bit of chive.

I put it all over like this.

And you know what I think would be good on this?

A little bit of a fresh, you know, extra virgin olive oil like this.

That never hurt.

Here we are here, a grill bass with the romesco sauce.

(gentle music) And now I'm going to do the first course, which is the tomato surprise, and it is a surprise as the tomato are actually hollowed and stuffed.

And the first thing you want to do with this is to remove the peduncle or the stem here and drop that into bowling water.

That will, you know, in second, depending how ripe the tomato is, that will help you to release the skin.

Another way of releasing the skin is to do it with a knife, to cut all around.

Another way is to burn it on top of the flame, you know, and the skin will come up.

All that are different way.

You can even use a vegetable peeler, especially those which are serrated.

You have serrated edge here, and then it goes quite well, as you can see, to peel up tomato, even when they are ripe because the serrated edge is really good for that.

So maybe we never have to boil water again to clean up tomato.

Here it is.

You can dry this.

Actually, you dry that in the oven too, and we use that as decoration, like dry it, kind of crunchy and all that, on top of something.

I could have done that on this.

Okay, here is my tomato here.

As you can see, often people will put the tomato in ice water.

It really doesn't need to.

I think it takes some of the taste out of it, so out of the water.

It's a bit hot on your finger, but if you clench your teeth, it's okay.

Here it is.

Wow.

So I'm removing all the skin of the tomato that I have there, and that tomato now, we cut the bottom of it, this way, and we are going to hollow the tomato.

So what I use, well, either a melon baller, which cut... I mean, actually at home, you know, very often I use a measuring spoon because I have an old measuring spoon in aluminum, you know?

One of those old one, and they tend to be quite, they tend to be quite sharp and thin, you know?

A bit of the juice.

I can also use one of those spoon.

So basically you remove the inside that you're going to... Here it is, the whole piece here and the whole juice.

And now we have, can even use your finger to pull out the seed.

Okay, and that tomato now is ready to be stuffed again, you know?

And this is the bottom of the tomato that we'll use as a garnish.

So what I do next, I take a little piece of onion, chopped finely, little dice of mushroom, of zucchini.

I spread them out on a tray like this and in the oven about five minutes, just so that they sweat a little bit and they get bit softer.

So this is what I have here.

I thought of leaving them raw because raw... It's not as nice as doing it this way.

Okay, then nuts.

I have nuts here that I can crush or break, walnut that is.

A little bit of, a little bit of garlic, maybe one.

Maybe one small clove of garlic.

You don't want too much garlic here.

I wanna chop it fine.

(hand thudding) (knife chopping) So crush it first.

(knife chopping) I am cleaning up my knife here right on the table to really have a puree of garlic, you know?

Okay, here I have this.

Salt, pepper, a dash of red wine vinegar or balsamic here, one or the other is fine, and a little bit of olive oil.

I have a nice mixture here that I could actually (spoon tapping) use for other thing.

So roast tomato are hollowed.

This one, the one that I made now, so we're going to start stuffing it.

Okay.

You keep them this way for the time being.

You know, one after the other.

So there, of course, you want to put your tomato upside down.

So you may want to put it gently like this because you want that tomato to look like if it's hold, if it's whole rather.

So now the dice of your tomato here, (knife thudding) we're going to use it to do little dice.

Nothing is wasted.

(knife thudding) And that will be sprinkled around the tomato.

We sprinkled a little bit of red onion around the tomato as well.

(knife thudding) Here, here, here, here.

Not too fine, you know?

You could have shallot like this.

Here we are.

And a couple of olive.

The olive, you can leave them whole or cut them in half or in pieces.

Again, give you color, giving you texture, give you some crunchiness.

Like this.

And even chive that you could put around as well.

(knife thudding) You know what I say, when the garden is on, I get crazy with all the herb, but that's a nice surprise, pick, pull.

Have absolutely no idea that this should, of course, start inside.

You can put a nice sprig of of basil, you know, around, if you wanna make a little hole here to make it all together.

A little trickling of an extra olive olive oil on top here.

And here is a first course of a surprise fit for a king, you know?

(gentle music) Put a little bit of fleur de sel, a little bit on top here, add a very special touch.

I'm going to get the gratin.

Now I'm sure it's about ready.

Ah!

This is not a pumpkin pie, a gratin of pumpkin, but look how beautiful it is.

It's about cook.

Now I can see.

I mean, you can even check with your finger a little bit, like a custard, you know?

And this is great dish to go.

So this is going to be trio that will stay hot quite a long time here, you know?

Okay, and then now le dessert, and the dessert is going to be cherries.

And I have (pan clanking) (stove top clicking) a can of those black cherries from the Oregon, and often I use those, you know, to stuff kipe with it or do things like that.

We do something a bit different today.

So what I want to do is to put the juice of the cherries first in there, usually about a cup of juice you're going to have in there.

I want to bring it to a boil.

Bring it to a boil and reduce it by half and thicken it a little bit with a little bit of potato starch or corn starch or whatever, and then finish it with a good cognac or Armagnac, you know?

This happened to be an American cognac.

And served with poundcake, like this.

So, and a little bit of sour cream maybe.

You want a little bit of more cherry on top, and, of course, a fair amount of the juice, with our large, big, so-called Bing cherries, you know?

Okay, and maybe a tiny bit of sour cream on top if you want, so called to gild the lily.

Here it is, and that's a great simple dessert with our menu.

(gentle music) Maybe I put a little bit of mint on top of this.

And with this, I think I should taste the cognac that I put in there.

(cognac trickling) It would be nice.

Life can be a bowl of cherries, and it taste especially good with a little brandy.

Happy cooking.