- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

- And I'm Claudine Pepin.

- You know even when you're alone, you should cook a nice meal just for yourself.

- When I cook, just for me, I usually end up with a ton of leftovers, because recipes are usually for about six people.

- Well, that's crazy.

Cooking for one can be done quickly with little effort.

- Could you show me what to do when I have a piece of chicken and some leftover veggies?

- Sure, today we are cooking for one.

- Next on, "Jacques Pepin's Kitchen."

- Cooking with Claudine.

It is not easy to cook for one at home.

Do you cook a lot for one when you're by yourself?

- No, 'cause I get home at nine o'clock.

I had karate practice and I'm tired and I wanna go to sleep and I get pizza.

- I want you to cook for one, get in the kitchen.

I'm gonna show you how to cook.

- Okay.

- When you're by yourself.

And you know what we're going to do, to start, we're going to start with a salad.

We often start with a salad at home.

The menu itself.

So, you know, look at that piece of escarole here.

You know, all you want to do is maybe cut a little bit of those leaves if they are really drained.

If you happen to be doing a soup at that point, you can even use that in there.

And you cut that into two inches, you know, pieces like this and you put it into there.

You know, you can wash it into there, transfer it into here, and don't forget to spin it because as you know, if you don't do it, you get a lot of water in your dressing and you kill the dressing.

Now why don't you get that in a bowl for this, and we're gonna do a dressing here, - Okay.

- Okay.

So we're going to put garlic, we're going to put anchovy filet that I have here.

I'll start with the anchovy fillet even.

And I'm gonna show you, see if you have a can of anchovy fillet like that, you use one like that.

We are doing a kinda mock you know, a kinda Caesar salad, you know, a little bit.

- Okay.

- You can use even a little bit of that oil, but frankly, you know, you can put that back in a little jar, put more oil on it and keep it in your refrigerator.

See what I want to do here, just crush it like this.

You know, you crush this in there with your fork and that's fine, you know, part of your dressing core.

And then for the garlic, you know the way your grandmother does it by putting at the end like that and rubbing the end of it.

- Yeah.

- Why don't you rub a little bit of this here to keep, that's it.

You go to the end of it.

Yeah, put your things a bit flatter even.

That's it.

And you can choose as much garlic as you want to crush this, where you are actually crushing the end of the garlic on the tin, on the point of the fork.

You know you have plenty here, right?

Garlic on, that's a lot of garlic.

- Okay.

- Okay.

For one, remember you have about half of that, half of a clove garlic.

- And that.

- Okay.

Why don't you then put a little bit of cracked pepper in it.

We'll put a bit of salt.

- Oops, sorry.

- Put a little bit of oil in there and I'll give you a little bit of lemon juice.

That's it.

Maybe a little more.

That's it.

Lemon juice, just put it through your finger.

You know, you want about a third or half of your lemon juice.

(spoon scraping) See cooking for one like that, you can do that directly in your bowl also.

It's just as well, you know.

- Yeah.

- And why don't you put your salad?

Is it spinned?

- Yes, it has been spun.

- Spun.

It has been spun.

Okay.

And we can, whoop, mix this together.

You wanna mix it with your bowl there?

That's good.

See, that type of salad, which is a escarole can be mixed even a little bit ahead because it's a fairly tough salad and it'll take a little bit to get wilted.

If you were watercress for example, or even Boston lettuce and it will get wilted faster.

And on top of this we can have crouton, but you see, you have any bread?

- Well what I do, I buy bread, but then I just kind of put it in a Ziploc bag and- - It hangs around.

- It hangs around.

(cooks laugh) - So let's oil this a little bit.

We put it on top, we can put that in the oven.

You can do crouton with this.

- Okay.

- So either you brush it with a brush or either you put a little bit of oil on that if you don't wanna wash your brush, it's easier.

- [Claudine] Yeah, I like this better.

- [Jacques] So then you spread it a little bit like this and the other one, and then mix it on the other side.

That's my oil.

Okay.

No.

Yeah.

- And then you can put it in the oven like this.

It'll take a good 10 minute.

And you have nice crouton, even with the bread which is left over for a day, day and a half, two days.

And it's fine.

And I think we can put some cheese in this.

You have cheese left over here?

- I always have leftover cheese.

- I see that.

- Like I have leftover everything else.

- [Jacques] You have a lot of leftover, I mean you have blue cheese, you have whatever is that, grated cheese, some type of cheese that you have.

- Some type of cheese.

- This is what, slice of like cheddar cheese.

- Cheddar.

- A piece of Swiss cheese, piece of Brie or something.

Well, any of those cheese, you can put a little bit in the salad.

You know, crumble it in top like this.

- I always buy it with the intention of eating it.

- I know - I do.

- [Jacques] And you have all that leftover.

So I'm gonna show you what to do with leftover cheese, which a great recipe that my father used to do in France, not with a food processor because it didn't existed, but by hand, we do what we call a fromage fort, fromage fort translate as strong cheese and we use all of the leftover that we have, including we need to put a little bit of, yeah, put that in there.

Cut the end of it.

Here.

You know, you can scrape this a little bit.

You can cut your, any type, if you have a little bit of mouldy things, you just cut it off and it's fine.

You know that often that what cheese are made of, you know, a fermentation, a cheese, a mould fermentation in the blue cheese and so forth.

And this is what, Swiss, type of Swiss cheese, it's already grated.

- Yeah, well some of it.

- Okay, so Claudine in there we put some garlic, as you know.

- Okay.

There's two cloves right over there.

- Yes.

- Is that enough?

- Oh yes.

One large clove of garlic is plenty in there.

- Okay, - Let me put that in pieces like this.

You can put it on.

We put a bit of white wine.

You want a dry white wine in this, garlic, a lot of cracked pepper.

(pepper grinding) Lot of cracked paper in there.

Usually you don't need salt because the cheese have plenty salt in it.

And you do what we call our fromage fort, you know, we'll try.

- Oh, okay.

- Try this way.

- That'll work too.

- Right.

(machine whizzing) Put that on high.

(machine whizzing) Maybe a little more white wine.

(machine whizzing) And within second you can have a great cheese leftover.

You can do crouton with it.

You can put the crouton in the oven under the broiler, make beautiful toast that you can serve with a salad.

Or then you can serve it just as is here.

That's fine.

Can run little bit.

I think that's fine.

- Wow.

That smells good.

Let me get a, are you gonna put it in little bowls?

- Yeah, we can put them or in a bigger bowl or in a little bowl.

- Well I have- - Yeah, you wanna put that in there so it doesn't get dirty, if I dirty the counter, I'm going to get yelled at.

- [Claudine] By me.

- [Jacques] Okay.

You see the amount of cheese that you have here, you could have a party, is great when you have a party of 10, 15 people, you know.

- [Claudine] Definitely.

- [Jacques] You do the fromage fort, you do big crouton to serve with your salad.

And this is not only a saver, but it's really terrific to taste, here.

- Whoa.

- Taste this one.

Is it strong?

- I wouldn't have it for breakfast.

- Well, you would.

(cooks laugh) Okay, but in any case, you have quite a lot here and I love it.

- Wow.

I can't believe there must be 30 kinds of rice.

- 30, let's say a hundred, you know.

I mean, look at this one.

This is Wehani rice, this is very, very chewy.

And the type of rice here that I love to chew on.

I mean, look at those Basmati.

You've heard the word, Basmati?

- Oh yeah.

- There is the brown Basmati and white Basmati.

Different type.

Now, smell it.

You will recognize the white.

- Oh, they smells so good.

- Right, it smell nutty, almost like Jasmine, you say.

- Yeah.

- [Jacques] You have a sushi rice.

Look how beautiful, it's like pearl this one.

This is what you do the sticky rice with.

This is what your mother cooked.

- Yeah.

- In the Japanese cooking, you know the sushi rice, the sweet rice, you know you have organic brown rice, short grained, round.

You see in Italy, you know when you do the risotto and it has small round rice, similar to that one, white of course.

But this is really great.

I do pudding with that.

And we have short grained, long grained, brown, semi long grained.

Actually, even one like this one, they are the wild rice.

Look at the size of those kernel.

They are long.

- [Claudine] Oh, it's really long and thin.

- But you know what, this is not even rice.

It's a wild seed, you know, which grows.

Now it's grown organically.

And finally, of course, the one use the most and the one that you cook often in your recipe.

You love rice, is your regular white rice, you know.

But today we are using short grained brown rice.

(lively music) - I've always cooked for myself.

I learned as an only child to take very, very good care of myself.

And when I'm home alone, I will open up a bottle of wine and I will set a place mat down and I will have a civilized dinner.

- Now we are going to continue with the main course, - Okay.

- And we are going to do chicken.

- Sounds good.

- So let's do it.

- Okay.

- I have chicken right here.

I have one leg of chicken.

Remember you're by yourself, - Right.

- One leg of chicken.

We want to take the skin out of it, because there is a lot of fat in there and maybe you want to remove it.

Let's get the end of the, and to remove the skin, you know, why don't you take a towel like this?

You grab it with a towel?

Yes, a towel like this and pull out the skin, you know it's going to be easier.

That's it.

That's it.

Okay.

- Okay.

_ Put that out.

And you know what you do?

Trim a little bit of that fat here.

- All right.

We're gonna start sauteing that right in there with that little dash of olive oil.

Oh, this is really hot so that's good.

That's it, you know.

- Knife isn't bad.

- You basically remove all visible fat, yes.

That knife is not sharp.

- No.

- But I'm going to show you how to sharpen your knife.

How is this here?

A little bit on this side.

That's it.

Do I start putting it in there?

We want to brown this for about seven, eight minutes.

So it's really brown all around.

You better get rid of that board.

When you do chicken, usually it's a good idea to (indistinct) your finger and get rid of this.

We'll put a dash of salt on top of it for the time being and we let it brown.

Okay?

So far so good.

- Yep.

And we've got rice.

- And with that we're going to do rice, because I know you like rice.

And we're going to do brown rice.

See, this is a short brown rice.

I have a third of a cup for one.

It's more than enough.

And I'm going to put a little bit of chopped onion.

Maybe saute the chopped onion a little bit to serve it with the rice.

- That sounds great.

- Okay.

So we always, most of the time put onion with the rice.

Again, you know, a little dash of oil here, a teaspoon or so.

(pan sizzling) And we saute this.

Okay?

Now you know the brown rice is going to cook longer than the white rice, you know?

So we have to- - Oh really?

- Do a little longer.

Oh yes.

That will take a good like 45 minutes.

- Oh, okay.

- So here is what we do.

We put this first.

(pan sizzling) We stir it around and you put the liquid.

On a normal white rice, which cooks less time, usually you put two to one.

That is a cup of rice, two cup of liquid, water, chicken stock.

Here we go like three times.

I have a cup of chicken stock here.

(pan sizzling) And the chicken stock has no salt or anything in it because it's fresh.

So I'll put a dash of salt, we cover it.

And that has to cook for like 30 minutes.

See, what you have to realize here, is that if you don't have chicken stock, you can put half chicken stock, half water.

You can put a canned chicken stock and you can even put the stuff you have in your closet here.

- Yeah, the little- - [Claudine] The bouillon cube.

- [Jacques] The little bouillon cube.

The bouillon cube tend to be pretty salted and done with vegetable protein.

So when I use it, I use really in there.

I would use a little piece of this with water.

That's it.

Or plain water would be fine.

You know, this is browning.

I'm gonna turn it around like this.

It has to cook to brown nicely for about 10 minutes.

And you know what we are going to do with your rice?

- What?

- [Jacques] Green vegetables?

- I need green vegetables.

I love vegetables.

- All right.

Broccoli.

- Oh good.

- I know you like broccoli.

- I do, very much.

- You see, you have an old piece of broccoli left over here too.

- Yeah.

- So what you want to do with this, you usually want to peel it, you know, a little bit like this.

- Oh, you don't use a vegetable peeler or could you?

- Well, you could, but you see, if you peel it like this, usually you take it around the stem.

- Oh, okay.

- Take it like this with the point of your hand.

That's it and pull.

- [Claudine] Oh.

- [Jacques] See that peel like this?

Now you can do the vegetable peeler also.

- And if you leave a few little pieces, - [Jacques] Well it's fine, especially around the flower.

It's more the stem.

The stem is tough.

So you know, this would be very tough to eat.

So that's fine here.

- Okay.

- Just put it in half like this and we put it in our rice.

Now after rice has been cooking for like 30 minutes and I have one here, which has been cooking for like 30 minutes.

See it's particularly, you see a bit tough.

We put that right on top of it.

- Oh, so it's like steaming.

Yeah, you steam it right on top of your rice.

- One less pan to wash.

I like that.

- One less pan to wash.

See, this is a good thing.

I know you would like that one.

- Yes.

- Okay, so we are going to do the garnish for the chicken.

Now see it's browning nicely.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- [Jacques] Again, on the other side.

And what we want to put in it, a skin of orange.

Just a peel of orange.

A peel of lemon.

You have a vegetable peeler.

Just do one straight.

- Okay.

- You know I have one.

- Oh, that's fantastic.

- So you don't have to, there is one.

There is one over there.

Just get one for me.

- Okay.

- One underneath so we can do it with the knife too.

Can do it very thin like that with the knife.

It'd be perfectly fine.

That's it.

- I'm gonna use a knife for that too, I don't know how.

- See you would have to cut it so that, to try to get only the surface part of the skin without too much of the white underneath.

A little bit is okay.

This will give you flavor and that's all, we have enough with one fish, you know, you want try it.

Okay, fine with this in my rice, by the way, did I put pepper in there?

- No.

- I have those pepper flake.

You see, I wanna put a little bit of pepper flake in the rice.

- Oh, yum.

Not much of it because this is very, very- - I got less white than you.

- Just a little bit of it.

You did, you did?

Yes.

Oh, that's pretty good.

- Very dexterous.

- Okay then now we want to put a little piece of- - Oh, ginger.

- Ginger and you know.

- [Claudine] I love ginger.

- [Jacques] You know, if it's pretty clean like this, you don't really have to do anything to it.

You don't even have to peel it.

- Oh, okay.

- Yeah, I could use the back of my knife here.

This is your knife.

I'm gonna use this one, which is bigger.

Hit the back of the knife like this and break it like this.

Crush it.

- [Claudine] Oh wow.

I love ginger.

- In fact, you know, I have plenty with that for one person.

- Okay.

- And then a little bit of garlic.

About the same amount of garlic.

So we are doing a very spicy type of- (knife banging) A spicy type of chicken here.

You think it's going a bit too fast?

- No - The chicken.

- Okay.

I'm reducing it here.

- Okay.

- Okay.

Then we crush the garlic also.

And altogether garlic and ginger, I'm gonna chop it.

(knife chopping) You know how to chop like this.

Now put your hand here again.

See, you're doing very good.

(cooks laugh) Okay, so we have this, this is going to go in it.

This is going to go in it.

- Do you cut this at all?

- No, we're going to leave it whole just to flavor it.

And this, you wanna bring that little plate here and then see what we have in their, seasoning?

We have thyme here, fresh thyme.

We have cumin.

- Oh, okay.

- This is cayenne, you know, that's very, very, very hot.

And just a bit of chili.

So a pinch of that.

Very, very little of that one.

- Really good.

- And then, you know what, a tiny bit of flour also, because we're going to use the flour to create a sauce.

The one we think that it's brown enough and it's really, yeah, beautiful.

Now brown enough so we can add all of that stuff to it.

(pan sizzles) - Oh, this is wonderful.

Still cooking for one, A little bit of flour.

Like half a teaspoon, you know, they're a little to it, and on those now, dash of thyme, dash of cumin, dash of chili pepper and a very small dash of cayenne.

And you know, if you don't wanna put any cayenne, it's fine.

- I love cayenne.

- So we stir it a little bit.

And in this, you know, the liquid, we wanna put a little bit of cider and water.

So why don't you put about no, no, a little more about a quarter of a cup to see, yeah, that's good.

and a little bit of water.

(pan sizzling) The same thing.

Okay, and now it's been cooking for 10, 12 minutes.

Just brown it.

You want to cover it now, salt, a dash of salt you put in there.

You want to bring it to a boil.

Lower the heat, lower the heat to low, you know, after it boil.

And you wanna cook it for about 10, 12 minutes.

And by then it should be nice and tender and it should be reduced, which is what hopefully I have here.

Yes, it's about cooked.

So why don't we prepare our plate.

I wanna show you how to do a plate just for yourself right here.

- Okay.

- And you know what we can do, we have some cheese.

Yes, bring some cheese, sometime with the rice I like a little bit of cheese.

- I'm gonna put this here.

- Let arrange this here.

Okay, so as you can see, you want to cook for yourself.

It's a little bit of work, but not that much work.

Now look at that chicken, now you see it's- - Oh yeah, that smells great.

- Yeah and it's tender.

Go with this here.

Go into it.

- Oh yeah.

- Yes.

It's tender.

So we have a large leg of chicken here with a lot of sauce.

You need that sauce.

This is the skin of the lemon and the orange, if you like it.

Yes and no, you can leave it over there, Claudine.

We are going to bring this over there.

Now look at the broccoli.

The broccoli is steamed down just a bit tender on top of it.

So what you want to do is to arrange your broccoli maybe in this manner here.

If you wanna serve all of the broccoli.

And maybe we put the rice- - There you go.

- In the center.

What do you think?

- That sounds really good.

Well, I- - [Jacques] So I have the rice right there.

I mean you have a big plate here, right?

- Yeah, I mean this might be cooking for one, but I really think I would make this menu for my friends too, because it looks really good.

- [Jacques] Yes.

Do you think your plate is big enough?

- Yes.

(foreign language) - Slowly, we put it there.

And you know what, I think the crouton are probably cooking in the oven, why don't you get the crouton to serve with our salad here.

And you see that salad has been dressed for a little while, but it's fine.

It gets slightly wilted and often that the way I like it.

So here is our crouton, up, thank you.

The one crouton or two, just break it on top or serve it with it.

And actually, you know what, you could serve that with your fromage fort, it really would be good with it.

And with your salad, chicken, the whole thing.

That is a great meal for you, cooking for one.

- Thank you.

Well papa, I don't know about you, but I'm all set for dinner.

Are you going out for pizza?

- Yeah, I guess you're going to eat a whole meal today, I mean it's fine because I cook it especially for you.

In fact, I'm doing a dessert for you here.

See what I'm doing here?

Nuts, roasted nut with a pear.

Just a pear, roasted nut.

Those nuts, I have different type of nuts.

I have walnut, I have hazel nut, I have peanuts, I have almond.

All of that, you put them, we do that particularly around Christmas.

You put it on that tray, 375 degree oven.

Cook them for 20, 25 minute.

And what happened?

They get roasted inside.

So they have that delicious taste and they don't get rancid because they are protected by the shell.

So three months later they're still very good.

A good thing to do.

- It sounds great.

- And it's great with pear.

- Yeah, and the fromage fort is wonderful.

The salad is great.

Salad is always a must.

And I'm very excited.

I mean, I love all of this.

I love broccoli and- - [Jacques] It's a big plate of food here.

- Yes.

And I'm very hungry.

- Good.

- I'm very happy.

- You have your rice, you have your green vegetable, you have your protein there, you have everything.

- I have all my food groups represented (chuckles).

- Good.

- But you opened a bottle of wine, which is great because you're here and we can have some, but- - I hope so.

- When I'm by myself, I don't know if I would open a bottle of wine, because I would really only drink one glass.

- Well, I tell you, I'm going to show you what to do.

I brought you a wine here.

This is a Cabernet Sauvignon from Chili, near Santiago Chili.

And it's a very deep reddish brown, almost a violet color.

Extremely, extremely well priced.

You see what you do when you're just by yourself.

I brought you a little pump here.

- Oh.

- And what you do, you put that on top.

And when you pour out wine, wherever the wine is gone here, I mean the space is replaced by air oxygen and it start the process of oxidation and the wine turn into vinegar.

So what you do, you pump the air out with this.

- Oh wow.

- And now that air is not there anymore.

It won't oxidize and you can keep that for another couple of months.

So it's great to have that at home.

And the thing, I'm sure you're going to use it, and I'm sure you should use it too, even if you're alone at home, don't send out for food.

Open your refrigerator, cook a little dinner for yourself, have a glass of wine.

You're going to enjoy it and enjoy doing it for yourself.

Happy cooking.

- Happy cooking.