- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

When the days grow shorter and summers turn to fall, I look forward to the flavors and colors of the season.

Today, I'll prepare flakes of tender cod fish simmered in white wine with a bouquet of diced, sauteed vegetable.

Steaks of venison in a classic sweet and sour sauce made right in the pan, served with a sweet potato and a cool and spicy relish of grapefruit and peaches.

For dessert, slice of mango and plum in a honey rum sauce.

Fish and game, earthy vegetables and savory relishes, these are the flavors of autumn I love best.

Join me for a classic fall feast next on "Today's Gourmet."

(lively jazz music) (lively jazz music) (knife tapping) Today we're going to do a classic fall feast, you know.

A menu, a type of food, you know, when start getting cold, you want to have comfort food, nice color.

I mean there is a certain type of relaxing and soothing way, you know, to fall food.

What we're going to start is a fish dish.

I'm going to do a cod, cod fish dish and after that we're going to do venison.

And the first thing that I wanted to do was starting sauteing a little bit of onion for the cod fish.

So I'm putting a dash of oil here and maybe a tiny bit of butter.

Let's put half a teaspoon of that, half a tablespoon, and we put that to saute.

Saute for about a minute or so, just to soften the onion a little bit.

And while this is working, I'm going to show you my fish.

And here, you can tell I have a beautiful filet of cod.

This is lean cod and you can see the skin, can recognize the yellow mark.

And this is very cold water type of fish, and, actually, one of my favorite.

It has a different reason for that.

I don't need all of this today.

And there is a line of bone here, so I'm cutting next to the line of bone.

I think it's a very versatile type of fish.

You would not want to use the skin however here.

And basically, the back filet, which I call this one, the thickest one, is what I prefer personally.

So I'm going to use a piece of this.

Removing the skin.

And, as I say, it had a great deal of versatility and very mild fish.

When people say, "Oh, I'm not crazy about fish," start with that type of fish, very mild.

This is totally boneless now.

And I will do pieces of about that size for five ounces.

Start cooking them here, a little dash of salt on top of it.

Here we are, starting them, sauteing them first.

Then I'll change, clean up my board.

And with this now, we are going to put some, we have tomato, we have zucchini, we have olives.

We have different type of olive, actually.

So I'm gonna start with the zucchini and show you how to cut this.

We cut that in approximately 1/2 inch pieces.

So there are nice zucchini, firm.

You know, when you chew that zucchini, look at the color, look at the texture of it.

It's very nice and firm, and that will cook relatively fast.

I have more than enough here.

So I will put this to cook.

Now, around with a little bit of white wine, about half a cup.

I'm using a Semillon here.

And that type of Semillon wine is actually, this one, is actually quite flavorful and will go well with it.

It has a certain acidity.

And with that, after we're going to have tomato and olives.

I have two type of olives here.

I have those olive, which are oil cured olive, which we can press directly and the pit will come out very easily, pressing it this way.

You see those are oil cured olive, are very concentrated in taste, stronger than the other.

I can put them whole this way.

And those are Kalamata olive, Greek one.

Those you would want to crack them a little bit.

You can crack them this way, and they will break open to remove the pit, and cut them into small pieces.

This way is the way I do it at home when I want to eat a couple of olives.

Here we are, easiest way of doing it.

And then we cut them into small pieces.

That will be for the garnish that I have right here.

Actually, I can put that with my tomato right there.

And some tarragon, a beautiful tarragon from the garden here, fresh.

We can chop that tarragon coarsely and add it directly to our tomato.

This is what will go in the end to finish the dish.

This is not quite cooked yet.

They will flake beautifully when they are cooked.

That's one of the advantage of that fish, the way it flakes.

While this is cooking, I wanna start on the second dish and show you what I'm doing here.

I'm going to peel a red pepper.

I have a good vegetable peeler here.

Get that, any good vegetable peeler will work.

What you want to do is to cut as much of the skin as you can.

That's one way of peeling it.

And if in some area like here in the pleat you could not get, you know, you couldn't get the skin there, so you peel, you cut it and remove the skin after.

I have enough of a peel, what I am doing actually here, I am doing a relish, and I will put a little bit, a little piece of jalapeno pepper also.

And that relish is going to be used for the venison.

So here we are.

I'll cut that into tiny dice.

This way it's a nice color.

It does make a big difference if you remove the skin because it tend to be tough or people say, "I don't digest it well with the peel."

Since it's going to be raw, uncooked in that relish, I think it's a good idea to remove it.

Putting a bit of jalapeno pepper.

You can put more or less depending on your tolerance for it.

I'm gonna use that in a minute.

Meanwhile, let me check on the how the fish, looks about done to me.

Remove it to a plate.

Yeah, it's starting to flake.

Oh, it still need a little longer.

This is a thick filet.

Oh, it needs longer than that.

I have to leave it longer, and I can continue cooking it with the rest of the mixture in there.

Actually, bring the whole thing to a boil and finish the fish this way.

We want to add maybe a tiny pieces of butter to finish it just at the end.

Bring it to a boil.

I can smell the tarragon.

They're very fresh.

And what we're going to do is to serve it directly in there.

I will choose one piece, this is a bit softer, and use that one here with the different garnish that I have on top.

And this is going to be the first course for today's venue with a piece of tarragon maybe on top this way.

And then with that I wanted to show you how to make that relish that I discussed before, which I have already the red pepper and the jalapeno.

I'll use here peach, you know, and you can peel your peach with a vegetable peeler as you do other thing, especially that peach is a bit firm.

I don't really need all of it.

We'll just cut a piece of it that you can separate this way.

And remember this is going to be a relish for a game.

So you want it a bit spicy, a bit sweet, and that's what we are going to have.

We have peach here.

You can use tangerine.

You can use, of course, any other type of fruit that you have.

I would avoid banana.

Banana will tend to break down more.

And grapefruit here.

And the grapefruit, I have a red grapefruit.

Remember the red grapefruit have even more vitamin A than the other one.

The darker or the fruit, the more vitamin A. And what I do here, with a knife, I'm actually cutting right through the flesh through the core to remove all of this.

I could take the segment out of it or actually just cut it with the segment.

This is a seedless one, so it's perfectly fine to do it without leaving the membrane in between.

I'm cutting it into little dice here.

Okay, which will be added to it.

Beautiful color.

Then, mint.

I will have the coolness of the mint mixed with the hotness of the jalapeno.

That's going to go well.

This is the type of relish that you can keep for a couple of days, you know.

Vinegar, I have in it.

Sugar.

I'm putting a dash of cumin here.

Cumin powder.

And a tiny dash of salt and a tiny dash of pepper.

We mix that together.

And within an hour it's going to be ready and, as I say, you can keep it up to, I would say, a week in the refrigerator and use it for game or other type of, it's going to get softer than it is now, but it'll be excellent with game.

And now, I'm gonna put that relish on the side for a while.

It's better if it marinates, and move on to the venison.

And the first thing that I want to do is to show you the venison that I have here.

Those come now Cryovac.

I opened that package.

Directly we get it either from Scotland, a great deal from New Zealand as well as Australia.

As you can see that piece of meat is about perfect.

It's totally, totally clean of anything.

This is the loin and this is the filet.

The tenderloin, the loin.

You can use either one.

Tend to use, I'm going to use this way.

And you want to do those steak approximately four ounces, four, five ounces, little steak like this.

And pound them a little bit.

I can use a piece of plastic wrap here to pound it.

Make it all equal size so it's better to cook.

This is a very, very lean meat, as I say.

It's very, very low in cholesterol and all that, so (mallet thudding) it is a meat of choice now, you know.

Except that it's a bit expensive, but you really don't need such large pieces.

You know, I say four, four, five ounces would be more than enough for an elegant dinner, kind of Christmas and so forth.

(mallet thudding) Okay, here we are.

And I can even have a piece of the filet here, which at that point would be cut directly this way, you know.

That's it.

Small portion is important for that.

We want to put a little bit of oil in there to cook it, a dash of butter.

And what you want to do with this, you know, is to season it with salt and pepper, of course, but also with maybe a little bit of thyme leaves.

I have fresh thyme leaves.

And if you were doing it ahead to keep it, I'm going to cook it right away so it's slightly different.

But if I were going to cook it ahead, I will put some thyme in it, a little bit of oil to oil it.

But I would not put the salt now.

Only the salt when you're ready to cook it.

Because if you put the salt now, what does salt do?

It cure the meat.

What does it mean?

Well, it drains the meat out of liquid.

You know, this is what you do when you do a prosciutto or when you do something like that.

You put salt on top of the meat at the curing process and the salt draw out the moisture and deprive the bacteria actually of a necessary living condition for the curing effect.

We want to cook those a couple of minutes on each side.

You don't want to cook them too much because you want to have them slightly rare.

I would like those medium rare.

Some people may like it very rare and some actually may like it very well done.

It's fine.

So with the sauce, while this is cooking, I'm going to get a little bit of shallot.

Those red onion we call shallot, a classic accompaniment to deglaze it with, and I will eventually deglaze the pan with, saute shallot first, and deglaze the pan with vinegar.

Acidic agent.

Very often in those type of dishes, particularly in venison, we tend to do a sweet sour type of sauce.

And that we have here with the vinegar and the shallot.

To finish the sauce, in a professional kitchen we have demi-glace, which is a reduction of stock, which I don't have here, often you don't have at home.

So I create one by putting a little bit of ketchup here, some soy sauce, some water and current jelly.

I could use current jelly or another type of jelly, actually.

But the current jelly is classic, you know.

It goes well sweet and sour.

The vinegar and the current jelly.

So this will be the mixture that I'm going to use for my sauce when I finish it later on.

In the meantime, I'm going to check soon on my venison because I think that I could turn it on the other side.

Yes, it's perfectly fine here.

Looks good.

(pan sizzling) It's going to be ready.

This is a very good part, thick, heavy.

It'll give me crystallization in the bottom of the pan so I can create a sauce with it.

If you have a pan which burn a lot, you have black spots, you burn the juice of the meat and you cannot create a sauce.

So it's important.

With this we're going to serve a sweet potato, which goes well with it, which I have here.

And it's a very simple recipe.

Quite good.

I'm cutting the sweet potato in a approximately 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch slice.

Whoop.

Watch your finger here.

That's it.

And I'm going to cook that in a very simple way, which I love, which is just putting them flat into a skillet.

I have more than that, of course.

I want to serve at least three slice for person.

You put them flat in a skillet.

You put water barely to cover, a tiny bit of oil.

And if you want, a tiny little pieces of butter.

What happened is that it stopped boiling.

You cover it, the water evaporate and eventually you are left with that little bit of butter and oil, and it start browning nicely.

A dash of salt also I need here.

So it's an easy way to do, which is what basically I have here.

As you can see, it has been reducing now.

There is no more water, and maybe the time to turn them.

Let me see the other side.

Yes.

And I know they are tender, you see?

If you don't put any water, it's not going to cook.

Remember, the water there is purely an agent.

It's purely a vehicle if you want, which permits you to cook it.

The water eventually evaporates.

And when you have no more water, you are left with a little bit of the fat, you continue browning it, but it's very moist and soft.

This is what you want.

So let me see, my steaks I think are basically ready now.

Yeah, they are perfect.

You see, what I would want to do is to let them rest now, and by this I mean I put them on the side.

You can have even a lid on top of it.

Create a bit of moisture, and they will continue cooking in their own heat, you know.

Now in the bottom part here, I will clear the shallot.

Cook the shallot and the vinegar.

Don't throw on top of it because the acidic agent, you know, the acidic, wow, the vinegar reduction like this, oof, will cut your breath.

What happen is that you want to reduce that to practically nothing, why?

Because the reduction itself will get rid of that very astringent, very strong acidic taste of the vinegar and make it much milder.

So you reduce it to what we call a glaze.

Again, you bring it to a glaze, which is about close to now.

That's it.

And then I can put the rest of my sauce in it, the rest of the mixture.

I wanna bring that to a boil now.

And you could serve it as such, but the classic way is really to strain it, so I think that I'm going to strain it.

I'm going to look, also my sweet potato are fine.

So let me bring that plate right here, and I'm going to serve.

This will come to a boil in a minute.

Meanwhile, maybe I can stop by putting the sweet potato right on my plate here.

I love the sweet potato this way.

Yam or sweet potato, they are called different way.

I'm putting four little slice here.

Here we are.

And then my venison steak.

I can see that it's cooked just because of the liquid which has accumulated into the pan that I put here, that the meat has relaxed and that's inside there.

This one would be the best for me.

I'm putting it here.

Straining the rest of the sauce there.

I have a beautiful dark rich sauce here.

And this will be served up directly on top of your venison, maybe with a little spring of thyme on top.

And this will be the main course for today.

Now, moving on to the dessert, which is a relatively very easy dessert.

What I'm going to do is to show you how to slice a plum like this.

Those large plum, you know.

And I'm going to do a type of salad with it.

What you try to do is to cut it next to the central pit here, which is what I did.

And we're removing the other one this way.

Again, slicing this.

This is going to be a type of salad mixed with the mango.

So with that I want a little bit of dark rum and some honey with it.

I would do a little more.

You wanna mix this to let it marinade or macerate, you know, as you want to call it.

And I have a beautiful mango here.

You want to be sure that it's ripe.

Peel it this way.

We could arrange it actually in a bowl, you know, doing the whole thing.

But you could arrange it also directly on the plate by putting little sliver of mango in this way.

And it shows your mango, it has to have a nice, rich, golden color.

As you can see, you go up to the central pit, which is right here.

And I could gently arrange this in a periphery around my plate.

Or maybe another, maybe another piece of mango here again.

Yeah, I'm up to the pit, basically.

That's it.

And in the middle of this I will put my plum, my plum with the sauce.

this is really what's going to season the rest of the dessert.

This may be a little bit of the rum and juice on top of the mango all around.

I can finish it with an edible flower, like fresh oregano or something like this.

Like this one's a bit too long.

And have a nice cool refreshing dessert with our venison menu.

In our classic fall feast tonight we are featuring venison, and it's a bit unusual.

People are afraid of venison.

I don't know why.

But it is available now all over the country.

It is expensive.

You serve small portion.

It's very good meat, usually very low in the cholesterol.

Good for you, and you know, you can get boar, and we have venison today, which is deer meat, of course.

But you can have boar, you can have pheasant, you can have quail, you can have et cetera, in many, many firms throughout the country or mail order.

So be a bit, you know, adventurous and try that with your friend and try the menu that we did today.

We have that cod with the little brunoise of vegetable all around with a little bit of white wine in it.

It's nice and spicy, you know, rich and so forth.

Then, the venison with the sweet potato, the sweet and sour type of sauce that I did with it.

And finally, our mango symphony without forgetting that relish that I did with the venison.

And because it is a real special menu today we have two wine.

We have a Chateau Buscaut, which is actually a wine from Bordeaux in France, a white wine which will go well with the fish.

And, of course, with the venison, something more complex too.

We have a classic private reserve pinot noir from Santa Maria Valley, which is going to be very, very full and will go absolutely perfect with the venison, maybe a little piece of cheese at the end, and, of course, the dessert.

I hope you enjoy the menu that I did for you today.

Be adventurous.

The fall season is coming.

Do that for your friend, and happy cooking!