(hedges rustling) - Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

One of the great thing about cooking is that it can be a group activity, even kids can get into the action.

Today we are going to do some dishes that are fun for the whole family and nutritious as well.

Little pancakes made from potatoes stuffed with mushroom and olives.

Juicy veal chops surrounded by fresh corn and red pepper saute.

And a really fun dessert, bitter sweet chocolates dotted with all kind of fruity surprises.

Whether you are cooking for one, or one bunch, join me on "Today's Gourmet".

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) You know, I like to cook with the family, especially little kid you know, doing type of dishes which involve your finger, that you put together and that's what we're going to do today.

A type of family dinner.

To start with, I'm going to do some potato pancake.

And for the potato pancake, I have a stuffing made of mushroom and onion, and garlic, which I made here, which has to cool off a little bit.

So I'm putting it in there.

And what we are going to do with this, we're going to add some olives to it, and those are oil-cured olives.

And those oil-cured olive, they are kind of shriveled a little bit.

They come from Morocco, they are done in California also.

They're concentrated in taste.

We mix that with the mushroom stuffing, that makes a beautiful stuffing, and that stuffing of course can be used, not only to stuff potato, but you can use that with game bird or other thing like this, which is good.

Now potato, I'm going to put the potato through a food mill, and this is what a food mill is.

You should get one with three different blade like this.

And I'm going to take the middle one, which fit right in there, and there is that thing on top of it.

I use a food mill a great deal, maybe almost as much as a food processor.

If I do a tomato sauce, and I put whole clothes of garlic in it, thyme, and so forth, I put it through that to take the fiber and the skin of the garlic.

I don't peel the garlic or anything like this.

If you do that in a food processor, it would emulsify the skin, you know, so you cannot do it.

Now, here the potato, this potato has been cooked, and the way you peel a potato is by scraping it, as you can see after it's been cooked.

Those are large Idaho type potato, which are very good for what we are doing today.

And you cook them in water.

And one thing that people often do, and you shouldn't do, is to refresh the potato.

That is when they are cooked, you should not put them under water to cool them up.

Just take them out of the water, and let them cool up by themself.

You keep more of the nutrient this way in the potato.

So there, I'm putting my potato in there to do the puree of potato.

Now, you can't really do that in a food processor.

If you put potato in a food processor, it makes kind of a mess out of it.

It get cordy, what we call, that is the potato get too stringy, so they work better in there.

And with one large potato like this, I can do quite a lot of pancake.

So what we are doing here is very simple.

We take little bunch of the potato pancake, about barely one ounce of potato here that we put flat, this way.

Then I take another one about the same amount here that bit going to be the top.

Because remember, we're doing a sandwich here if you want.

And as I say, again, your stuffing could be from spinach to other things, you know.

We put some of the stuffing in the middle here.

Look nice.

You can lift that up, you can use your spatula to put that on top and gather it together.

Now, pressing the edge to have a nice well-formed pancake.

Here, I have some done this way.

And we're going to cook this with a little bit of canola oil, so called canola oil, or puritan oil.

That's a monounsaturated oil, which is quite good.

We use a little bit of it in our skillet here.

And note it that we use a non-stick type of skillet.

So we'll have no problem with this.

We're gonna put that to cook right in there.

This way.

And it's going to fry and cook like that gently in there for about three minutes on each side, so that it's nicely brown.

You can do them a little bit ahead if you want even, providing that you keep them hot after, or you heat them under the broiler or something like this.

So while our potato are cooking, we are going to do the dessert.

And the de dessert is great fun today.

It's really the dessert that the kid loves to do, you know.

I have done that with little kid when my daughter was very small, four, five years old, and I used to bring the kid home, her class, sometime and do that type of dessert with them.

And it is good too.

As you can see, it is made of a very colorful array of dry fruit and nuts.

I have muscat here, and the muscat is a type of, it's a grapes, very large grapes, sweet, those are a dry muscat.

I have sliced almond.

I have beautiful golden raisins here.

I have pecan nuts.

And I have pumpkin seed here and fresh fruit.

So you can have a mixture of dry fruit, nuts, as well as fresh fruit.

And what we are going to do it, is to do them in those little container like this.

I mean you could do it in metal container, but those are easy to come by, inexpensive, and quite colorful.

So I have here some melted chocolate.

Watch out when you melt your chocolate, of course, because you don't want to scorch it.

So we do it in a double boiler, so that we have no problem.

This is where the kid really could help.

So we put a little bit of the chocolate in the bottom of each of those container.

So it's like a type of chocolate nut, you know, you can use that of course as a type of petit four that you will give your guests, you know for special party it's very holiday, it's very shiny, and it's very beautiful looking type of finger food.

So here, while the chocolate is still warm, you know what we have to do with that chocolate while it's still warm, is to embed those things in there.

And that's where the kid loves to do because the combination that you can do is all your own.

I mean, you know, a couple of those nuts, a couple of those, a couple of the dry fruit, maybe you remember, those are dark, those are light, but it will change the color.

And you can push them a little bit to embed them into the chocolate here, you know.

I love those things, you know.

And if you think for a minute, I mean, the possibility are almost endless of what you can do, you know, in term of combination.

Now I put a bit of mint, I love mint leaves, because those mint leaf goes well with chocolate, and it bring another color to it, so that's what's good, you know.

So this is what we have here.

Now if you do, I have strawberry here.

Very simply cut a few wedge of strawberry.

This again is for color, and it give a little bit of acidity, you know in those mix.

Look how beautiful those are, and really very simple to make.

So what we have to do, of course this has to set in the refrigerator.

And in that refrigerator, they can stay a few hours.

In fact you can do them even the day before.

So I'm gonna put this to cool off in our refrigerator.

Then I'm coming back here to look at my potato pancake.

They should be ready to turn now.

Let's see, gently, you know, with a large spatula, you have to go underneath and brown them.

Yeah, they are pretty good.

They could be maybe a bit browner than that, but they are nice.

This is good to do them a little bit ahead.

You do them a little bit ahead, so they have the time for the potato to set up, and they don't break on you as you can see here.

So now what we are going to do is some corn and some red pepper.

You may think that, you know, corn are done only on the cob, or of the cob, you have to buy them.

But I'm gonna show you how to take them off the cob.

So we take the husk up, of course certain time of the year they are better.

That corn looks beautiful.

Small grain, can feel it with my finger.

Very plump, you know, very plump and nice, which is good.

And now I want to take the kernel out of it.

You can cut them this way with a long knife, as I have here.

Or you can, and that's my favorite way, cut them this way.

So I have absolutely no problem, as you see, they cut very nicely here.

Why?

Because I hold my knife in the right position.

A lot of people will put their knife flat and apply pressure, and as you can see here, it is very difficult, and in a sense dangerous to do.

Have the knife front, because you're using only one inch of the knife here.

From that position, if you put your knife this way, and if you start here, and finish here, look how easy it become because all of a sudden you're using the knife, you're slicing with it and that the whole idea.

So we are removing this, you can even scrape a little bit of the flesh left over here.

And that's what we are going to use for our dish today.

Corn and fresh like this, we cut them just a little bit.

I mean we cook them very lightly.

And with that, pepper.

Now look at those red paper, and now they come on the market, green paper, yellow paper, I mean you have five or six different colors.

If you want to peel pepper, people will put them under the broiler or on top of the flame to burn them.

When it's charred on top, you put them in a plastic bag, they steam a little bit than the skin comes out of it.

An easier way and different way of doing it is with a vegetable peeler.

And as you can see, it will work perfectly fine.

I'm going around here, but you have to notice that certain area of the pepper in the recess here, I have no access.

You know, I have no access with my vegetable peeler.

So all I do I peel wherever I can.

And after that with the knife, I cut between those recess, those line right in there.

And now when I take those segment out, I have access now to the side of it that I couldn't reach before.

And I can continue peeling it, either with a vegetable peeler like this, take the rest of the skin, or even with a knife if you want, a little paring knife.

But you can see, I will end up with the pepper completely peeled.

That makes a big difference.

As I say, you know often people say I cannot eat pepper, it comes back to me and so forth.

If you take the skin out of it first, they cook very fast, and they are very delicate in taste.

So I have a pepper here, I'm cutting those into little dice.

You could slice them, keep them sliced like this.

(knife chopping) I'm showing you the technique of doing those pepper.

And today, I'm using them with corn.

But I mean I'm sure you can use them in 20 different way, you know, either garnish, in julienne with fish, I mean people use, they used not to be available at the market, you know.

We used to have only sweet green pepper bell, you know, but now you have about all of the color that you can think of, you know.

So here I have my corn and my pepper here.

We're going to continue at the stove to finish the first dish, which is our potato here.

And I think they have been browning on each side now.

They look quite nice actually.

I can turn them on the other side, see the other side is even more beautiful so put them on the nice side, this way.

See two potato pancake like this, in conventional way with a little bit of oil like that, is going to be about 200 calorie.

I have some nice chives flower here, which would look beautiful on top of it.

And this as I say, will be about 200 calorie.

And conventionally, when you do a potato pancake, fried and all that, it's more like 500 calorie.

Do I think this looks beautiful and it's good for you?

(relaxing music) The main course today are thick, juicy, and tender veal chop that I have here, which I want to start cooking right away.

And for two veal chop, I put like one teaspoon of olive oil, and maybe one teaspoon of butter, just a little bit.

A dash of salt, and freshly ground pepper on top of this, (pepper mill grinds) always use freshly ground pepper, it does make a big difference.

And we start cooking them.

This has to cook approximately three, four minutes on each side, depending on the thickness of your veal.

And as you can see here, those Provimi veal chop, I can even remove some of the fat if I have some around like this.

But otherwise they are quite lean.

They are approximately three quarter of an inch thick, and nice and pink, that indicate quality.

I mean if you go to the fish, to your butcher, you ask him for a milk-fed veal, which is that type of quality, nice and pink, often it is called Provimi veal, P-R-O-V-I-M-I, which stands for protein, vitamin, mineral.

It's a technique called the Dutch technique of raising veal.

Where in addition to the baby, to the mother's milk rather, the baby get a type of baby formula made of protein, vitamin, and mineral.

So this is what we have here, good quality.

Nice and juicy.

It's a bit expensive, but you know a 6, 7 ounce with the bone loin chop like we have here is fine.

Other garnish here, we are going to do shallots that I have, beautiful.

I have garlic, parsley of course, and some mushroom.

So what, see those reddish onion looking thing there are shallots.

And if you don't have it, of course, you can use some onion.

But I'm peeling them, and sometime they come, like this one was, you see in a cluster, sometime two, sometimes three, sometime even more.

The side change, I mean, peel them until you remove all of the thick skin from the outside.

We want to slice them, (knife chopping) chop them very finely like this.

This of course, you can do that ahead.

I have a clove of garlic, again, and the clove of garlic, this one is a bit big.

I will crush it.

(hand pounding) (knife chopping) Chop it a little bit.

Garlic will be put at the end.

And I have some garlic here, and some shallot there.

Okay, and my mushroom.

The mushroom, I just wash them, you know, you don't wanna wash them too much ahead because they will discolor, so you wash them just before you're ready to use them.

You can slice them, you can chop them coarsely and so forth, or dice them.

In my case, I slice them.

And you use about like three mushroom per person.

You want a good cup of mushroom per person.

I use about five cup of mushroom for four veal chop in that recipe, you know.

So you put that here.

So my garnish is basically ready here.

I don't need those anymore.

I have this.

And now I think my veal chop are probably ready to be turned here.

So as you see they have a beautiful brown color, this is what you want, and you want also that type of crystallization and juice around.

That will give a lot of taste to the dish.

So what I want to do now is to continue with a little piece of butter in there, to continue the corn and the red pepper recipe.

So what I do here, I will start with the corn, this way, and we saute the corn a couple of minutes before we put the red pepper.

And during that time, I want check whether my chocolate, remember those tiny chocolate nuts with all the stuff in it.

I want to see whether it's set, so I'm going to get it.

They are beautiful here, the kid really like to do that type of thing, yeah.

And some are already unmolded as you can see there, how colorful and beautiful, attractive they are.

And you know, you may think, that well chocolate is very caloric.

By the way, you see this is really easy to unmold, it just come out very easily out of those little piece of whatever you call this, you know, paper.

As you can see, it comes out nicely.

So that's great to do.

And you must think that those chocolate are very, very caloric, and of course chocolate is caloric.

But in small thing like that, it's about a hundred, 110 calorie or so for those.

And you have a lot of fiber with those dry fruit as well as nuts.

So it's not bad at all, if you don't eat too many of those.

So now what we're going to do, we are going to go back, (food sizzling) see the corn here, (pan clacking) they are cooking nicely.

And I'm going to put now the red pepper in it.

Here that give me a beautiful color, a little dash of salt, and freshly ground pepper that you have here.

And this really doesn't cook very long, it doesn't cook very long for the simple reason that the pepper have been peeled.

If you don't have the skin, it's not tough, it get very tender.

So as soon as those papers stop sweating a little bit and get tender, this is enough.

This makes beautiful garnish for fish also and very nice and tender.

We are going now to finish the veal, which is about, it looks about the way it should be.

So let me put the veal (food sizzling) on those two plates.

You have to watch out, sometime when you have a lot of, the flame comes out of it.

That's what may happen.

And I have in there, nice crystallization of the juice, I'm going a bit fast here.

And I can add to this my garlic.

A little bit of the shallots, I saute this.

Actually, you know, you can even put the garlic, at the end or at the beginning, you know?

And into this, my mushroom.

(food sizzling) Here they are.

You know we have, on the market now, there is a great deal of wild mushroom that you can use.

They are a little more expensive, but sometime it give you a different taste.

Another thing that you can use also, it is dry mushroom, like shiitake, dry shiitake or bolete, often they are called cepes in French or porcini in Italian, they come dry.

Not only do you soak them, and you can use some of it mixed with that, because it has a lot of taste.

But in addition to that, the juice that you soak them in, you can use that to make your sauce, and that's very good.

Very strong, nice flavor.

What we do here, it's put a little bit of white wine in there to deglaze this.

(food sizzling) And this, what you would want to do here, is to cover it, cover this a little bit to let those mushrooms sweat and get soft.

And so the juice come out of it, one or two minutes, it's not that important.

This, remember, could be done ahead, you know, you could have your veal chop done ahead as well as your sauce done ahead, and just reheat them a little bit.

Although it really doesn't take that long really to do it.

So here I have my two veal chop.

First, I think I'm going to put the garnish of pepper and corn on, because it's easier to put it on first.

You see, you put it right in the center of it, with the ball of your spoon, just spread that on the outskirt.

You see, you don't have to worry about dirtying the center, we're going to cover it with the meat anyway, so it doesn't really make any difference.

It's harder to do that if you put your veal first, you know, to arrange that.

If you want to have a border of this on the outside, which really look quite nice, you know, as you can see.

So then with this, we put the corn, the veal chop right there.

I have a bit of juice which came out of my corn here, out of the veal, which I want to keep.

And on top of this now, I have my mushroom, which I can arrange maybe a bit nicer than what I do here.

Mushroom can mix with it.

You can even have bigger, you know, larger plate for that, 'cause the veal chop is quite nice.

A little bit of the juice on top of it, you know the reduction of the wine and the juice.

Remember, I didn't really use munch fat in there.

I had one teaspoon of butter and one teaspoon of olive oil.

And you can, if you want, even eliminate your butter, if you really want to lower that dish even more.

So the veal usually is fairly low, you know, in the calorie and low in fat.

So it's something good to do occasionally, because it is expensive.

But as we can see, we have a beautiful presentation today.

Now the meal is ready, our family meal is ready.

Let's call the kid, whistle, call the dog, the cat everyone come to eat with me in the kitchen.

You know, when my daughter was small, when she didn't like something to eat I always say, "Okay, come and cook with me a little bit."

So I made her cook spinach, whatever, and because she just touched it, then it was terrific, she loved it, you know.

And it's good to have your family sitting with you at least once a day to eat together.

I want to tell you a little bit about our menu today.

I mean, look at that potato pancake here with that mushroom stuffing.

It's nice and juicy.

Looks terrific.

And this is about 200 calorie, as I say, it would be probably be 400 if you fry them in a conventional way.

Look at the chocolate dessert there.

They are beautiful, and they are only 60 calorie each.

You have a lot of fiber in it.

Of course, eat two of them, no more.

This is the hardest part of it.

And of course, we have our veal chop here.

Now, the corn doesn't have to be in cream.

I mean, the corn as well as the pepper, are high in fiber.

They're high in vitamin A, it's good for you.

And the corn, vegetable thing, is about 120 calorie.

I have the veal chop with the wine and the mushroom about 300 calorie.

I have a whole meal here under like 800 calorie, and it's quite diversified in color, and in taste, and all that.

And this is the way I like to cook.

Of course, maybe a little bit of bread, one or two, and of course a beautiful salad.

I always like to have a salad which give you some fiber, taste, clean your palette.

And with that, often, you know, I will have a glass of wine, for you, maybe for the kid, a glass of apple juice, maybe just as good.

I have a Chateauneuf-du-Pape, white here.

The Chateauneuf-du-Pape from the south of France is usually red, so that's a bit unusual.

A very fruity kind of nice, strong taste wine.

And I love that type of wine with that type of food.

I sure hope that you're going to do the meal that we have today, and I'm sure that you will enjoy it with your family.

Happy cooking.