(gentle music) - Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

- And I'm Claudine Pepin.

- You know, when I was growing up in France, I loved the simplicity of cuisine bon marche.

- Meaning budget cooking, right Papa?

- Yes.

But it's not just about saving money, it's almost a matter of personal pride, using every bit and making the most of what you have.

- Sounds like the kind of cooking my budget could use.

- Well, how about a very affordable cranberry beans and tuna salad, or mackerel, one of the greatest seafood bargains, baked on a bed of potato flavored with herbs and wine.

- [Claudine] A simple side dish of glazed carrots with olives and capers.

- [Jacques] And an apricot compote with honey and pine nuts, a desert that won't break the bank.

- Wow Papa, that meal sure doesn't look cheap.

- Money has nothing to do with food taste.

- Join us for a taste of cuisine bon marche next on "Jacques Pepin's Kitchen".

- "Encore with Claudine".

(train horn hoots) Today we are doing very simple, everyday type of cooking, cuisine bon marche, right.

- Bon marche.

- Tell us what bon marche is.

- Bon marche is good market, which would be inexpensive food.

- Right.

- For the most part, right?

- Yes, it is, bon marche.

- Okay.

- So we start with beans and we thought we were going to cook some cranberry beans.

You wanna show those one, Claudine?

- I was confused, 'cause cranberry beans, I thought, were the beans of cranberries, which are cranberries, which is what we have at Thanksgiving.

- No, no, no, no.

No, this is just the color here, cranberry, and you see that beautiful cranberry color eventually disappeared as it cooked.

Those are dry one, and those dry one have been soaked, about half a pound, as you can see, they at least double in size and- - The nice color.

- The color disappeared.

In addition to that, those are the fresh one.

But as you see, you have some fresh one.

You open them here as we do, as you open the peas, you know, the pod, and there is nothing inside.

- Oh.

- You see, so those are very immature.

When they are very immature like that, you can cook them like string beans.

You know, you take the end of it like this because what do you think a string bean is?

A string beans, eventually if you let it grow, you're going to have a beans inside and so forth.

- [Claudine] Right.

- And eventually I cook those.

You see, those have been boiled in water.

But you can see again- - The color's- - The color has disappeared.

Here, taste one.

- Is there any kind of bean you can still have cool color with?

- Well, only those disappears.

Most of the other one keep their color.

- Oh, okay.

- So those, it's about half a pound and you want to put, you soak them, you want to put at least three cup of water in it.

We put a couple of bay leaf, you know, put a bit of herb de Provence.

- [Claudine] Herb de Provence is something that I always find at home.

Well I know lavender's in it, I know- - Actually lavender, very often in Provence, they don't put it.

You know, what we usually have in it, it's always thyme, oregano, savory and marjoram.

But in addition to that, in this one we have some fennel seed and some of those little flowers, the blue flowers, the lavender flowers.

- I love lavender.

- [Jacques] So I have an onion in there.

You cover it.

- Have salt, pepper.

- Yes, a bit of salt, of course.

Some people say you don't salt the beans at the beginning.

It toughen them.

Frankly, I've tried both way and I've never seen much difference.

- But there's a hot water, cold water thing.

- Oh yes, that's, always try the, oh yes, you start them with cold water.

Good point.

Otherwise they toughen, that's true.

- So it's salt doesn't matter, it's just the cold water.

- Right, so you want to have at least three cup of water.

What happen is that you cook them until they are tender.

If you have to add a little bit water, add water.

I am for cooking them with a minimal amount of water so that at the end, those are still lukewarm, and you see I have a little bit of water left here, but almost none.

I can leave them in.

If I have too much water, I'm going to drain it out.

So here, let's put some olive oil in there.

Salt, pepper.

Well you want to put the tuna in it?

- Okay.

- Yeah, we're gonna put tuna in there.

Come here, turn it on that plate.

There is too much liquid.

So, okay, it's not, it's fine.

- It's not that much.

- No, that would be fine.

We're gonna do garlic.

We can even put, you want a bit of mustard in it?

- Ooh yeah, definitely.

- Alright, we put a little bit of mustard.

- Should I put this in now?

- Yeah, you go ahead.

And we put the two can of it.

Parsley.

Put them directly in there, it's okay.

- Okay.

- And we need garlic too.

So why don't you toss that gently while I'm cutting some garlic.

- Okay.

- Unless you want to do the garlic.

- No, you can do the garlic.

I'll do the tossing.

- Okay.

- Everybody should do what they do best.

- Well, you know what we could put in it?

You can cut a couple of those also.

You see?

- Okay.

- Those are perfectly fine.

You give me a knife, a big knife.

These are nice and tender.

They're almost like wax bean, you know, this way looking, - [Claudine] This looks like the perfect lunch.

- [Jacques] Well, we have two clove.

- Two cloves, three cloves, whatever.

- Okay, we can- - Garlic is good.

- We cut this to remove the skin.

Crush it a little bit here.

Crush this one here to remove the skin.

Don't break it into a paste, huh?

- Okay.

- Okay.

- [Claudine] All right, I'm probably at paste point so I'll stop.

- Alright.

We crush it.

(knife thumps) Again.

(knife thumps) And... (knife thumping) Coarsely, you know, up, garlic in there.

- Put this in here.

I'm gonna go get the plate to serve it on.

- Well first, before you have the plate, what else should you do?

- Taste it.

- Good point.

- Oh good, I was right.

(laughs) - All right, always taste to see if you have enough salt, pepper in it.

- It needs salt.

- Needs salt.

I was right.

See?

Pepper.

- Pepper, actually I got a bit of a zing.

- Oh, okay.

- It's good.

- Okay, so- - Oh, the mustard.

That's right.

- I put the mustard in there.

- Yeah, no, the mustard is good.

- You wanna put it here?

- Yeah.

- That's good.

We can divide those big leaves around to do like a... - Like a big border thing.

- Yeah.

Press the center.

- You want me to hold it while you, (laughs).

- Yeah, put your hand there.

All right.

This is nice, I mean this is a lot of- - This is awesome.

- I think it would go for six, eight people, easy.

That's a great lunch meal.

Stop eating it, we have to have some left.

(Claudine laughs) Here we are, this is cranberry beans and tuna salad for our bon marche meal.

- I'm fortunate enough to be here with Jeff Dawson and he's gonna help me taste wine, which is great.

(both laugh) - One thing we love to do.

When thinking about pairing wine with food, it's really important to be able to understand the flavors and aromas that you taste in the wine, because those are the two things that are in common with food and wine.

They both have flavors and aromas and that's how we achieve that pleasure.

- That sounds wonderful.

I don't really understand how to taste wine for its own sake.

I understand wine that goes with food and I can say, "Wow, that tastes great with that", but I can never quite figure out how or why.

- Well, what's really important is being able to taste the wine, which we're gonna do right now.

- [Claudine] Sounds good.

- At our winery, what we've done is we've gone to the garden to find the components in the wine we find in the garden.

There's comparisons here.

Okay, we're gonna try a sauvignon blanc today.

- Sounds wonderful.

- And first you smell the wine to see what kind of aromas you find.

I pick up herbal flavors, aromas, and maybe a little pear.

- See, I only pick it up if you say it.

(laughs) - Okay.

- I wouldn't just pick it up.

- Okay, well then we'll have you taste it and you can, you know, let us know what you taste.

- Hmm.

Hmm, I taste good.

(laughs) It tastes really good.

I do pick up a very kind of fruit and acidic taste to it.

I guess, just an overall citrusy kind of taste.

- Okay.

Sauvignon blanc is a wine that has a high acidity.

- Okay.

- And the flavors that you're tasting would relate to citrus.

- Oh, good, okay.

- Such as grapefruit, or lemon is a very strong component in sauvignon blanc.

And the other quality of fruit is melon.

- [Claudine] Oh wow.

Okay.

So this is honeydew.

- This is honeydew, now smell the honeydew and then take a taste of wine and see whether there's some relationship there.

- Oh, that's wild, (chuckles) that's really wild because I definitely would never have picked this up by myself.

This is wonderful.

- Well, the more you taste the wine and you think in terms of of food flavors and aromas, you can learn, you know, those components that are in the wine.

- Okay.

- And with that knowledge, you can use that for pairing the wine with food.

- Wow.

- Now, one of the most important components when pairing a sauvignon blanc, which has a high acidity, is pairing it with a food that has high acidity.

So something like a citrus sauce, a lemon sauce.

We also have a lot of herbal flavors in sauvignon blanc.

So any kind of dish that has a lot of herbs.

- Oh wow.

- Pairs really well with this wine.

- Well this has been a lot of fun, so happy eating, - Happy drinking.

(glasses clink) (upbeat music) - And now for our cuisine bon marche we're going to do what?

- We're gonna do mackerel Marie Louise, which is my aunt in France.

- Yes.

- She does this.

- Yeah, she does a dish similar to that.

We have beautiful mackerel.

Those are very inexpensive fish, whiting, mackerel.

Those are pretty fatty fish too.

And fresh is the best, especially in fatty fish because they get very strong like the bluefish.

Remember when we had bluefish in Connecticut?

When they are fresh, they are really good, but when they are not fresh, they get strong very fast.

So here we remove the head.

Those haven't been eviscerated as you can see, and rinse it under cold water to get all of that bloody element out of it here.

- Okay.

- Here, you don't have to dirty your finger, I'll do it.

- Your fingers are already dirty, so.

- Yeah, that's it.

So you really want to have it clean.

But they are very nice and plump.

You know, it's like a miniature tuna.

- Yeah, it smells really good.

- And what we want to do here, here, rinse this also.

We want to do an incision here, three incision this way so that helps in the cooking.

- [Claudine] Oh.

- We are going to do that right on top of a gratin of potato.

So let's take this over there.

- Okay.

- Okay.

And now we're going to prepare our gratin.

So we have the potato here.

- We have potatoes.

- Okay.

- All right.

Let's go.

- What are those?

- Those are Yukon Gold.

- Yukon Gold, I think that's what we are using.

And those are Red Bliss.

Either one will fine, even larger potato would be perfectly fine.

And this actually, you know, you could even leave the skin on if you're a skin lover.

- I like leaving the skin on.

- All right.

- I'm an anti peeler more than a skin lover.

Oh, wait a minute.

You know, you're like the human machine.

But I think I'm gonna use the the machine machine because- - Oh, yes.

- It's gonna make my life a little easier.

- You're gonna go faster than me.

- Well, if you'd stop just for a second, I could go faster than you.

Gimme these.

- Okay.

And I'll give you the onion also then.

So we have about a pound and a quarter of potato here, about half a pound of onion.

(machine whirring) We can leave that on.

- Okay.

- You're right.

- Okay.

- You go faster than me.

- 'Cause I know you'll help me.

(laughs) - Okay, so let's put those in there.

We're going to season them first, all our potato, potato and onion.

That's a nice gratin, And we going to do a gratin, which is often what we call, bon marche in French.

There is a lot left in there.

You are losing a lot of stuff.

Here, put in your hand here and clean that up.

This is not the way you were raised.

- I know, I'm being lazy.

- Okay, good.

- Here.

- So we're going to put a little bit of some salt and pepper in there.

- [Claudine] Do you want me to get a dish to put this in?

- Yeah.

And some savory.

I have dry savory here, which is perfectly fine.

I have fresh one.

If you don't have savory, I mean, any of the same family, for example, oregano, marjoram, would be perfectly fine in it.

But I think that's about all I have in there.

You know, I'm seasoning it.

It's easier to mix it in there to season it.

Boy, the onion are strong, hey?

- [Claudine] Yeah.

- [Jacques] Okay.

- [Claudine] I'm glad we did 'em in the machine.

- And then put that in a gratin dish.

Good, and we're gonna put tomato on top of it.

- Mm.

- So I'm gonna slice tomato and then we're going to cook that in the oven.

We also put a little bit of stock in there, so you can pour that stock.

About half a cup, I don't know, maybe?

We can put most of it, actually.

So cut your tomato into fairly thick slice, like this.

And, of course, we are going to cook the fish on top of it later on.

If you want to do it without the fish, it's perfectly fine, you know.

We are covering the whole thing with tomato here.

- Mm.

- Like this.

- [Claudine] They look beautiful.

Look at these great tomatoes.

- Right.

Okay.

- Okay.

- Oh, I have another piece here.

- Okay, so- - Be a bit more.

Okay, you wanna put that in there?

Let me put a dash of salt on top of it here.

- Okay.

- That's it.

- In the oven?

- Yep.

- All right.

- And there is another one which should be cooked by now.

You can bring it back to me.

And at that point, after it's cooked, it takes about 70 minute, a good hour and 10 minute, hour and 15 minute.

You can feel it if your potato are tender, good, like they are here.

We are going to put our fish on top of it.

So you know, sometime fish- - Just like that?

- Yeah.

Sometime if you get your fish, which is bigger, sometime you have a bigger fish than that, so what you do, cut it in half.

You have the space?

Yeah, this way, you see?

- Yeah.

- So we're gonna put a little bit of olive oil on top of it here.

- Mm.

- And you can put your olive oil in your potato also.

And then herb de Provence, some salt.

Here you have some herb de Provence.

- I love that.

- Why don't you do this?

That's why we have the slit, it's going to, because now we're going to put that under the broiler to finish it up, you know.

- So the fish doesn't really take that long to cook?

- No, no.

- Ultimately.

Okay.

- Salt, pepper, season.

And now that goes under the broiler.

Why don't you open the door for me?

Good.

And you wanna put that not too far, I mean not too close, because you want it to cook and it's going to take 8, 10 minute to cook.

So if they are really close to the broiler, it burn on top.

Okay?

- All right.

- So, while this is cooking, let's do some carrot here.

- Okay.

- We have a carrot dish.

- Oh, I love carrots.

- You love carrot?

- Yeah, well you know I love carrots.

- Okay, so what you can do, you know, with your carrot, you can either scrape them like this with a knife, you see.

My mother always scraped carrot, she never peel it.

"Takes too much out of it", she said.

Well, we left the top part here.

- Oh well I didn't.

- You didn't?

Okay.

Well anyway, I have them cooked here.

- Okay.

- You put your carrot in there with a little bit of water, a dash of butter, a dash of sugar, dash of salt.

And they are cooked when basically there is nothing left in it.

If they are glazing, they are glazing in the remaining a little bit of butter and the sugar in there.

So, we can serve them.

- Can we do something like a little zippier to go with the fish?

- Well fine.

You want to get something?

- Lemme go see what's in the fridge.

- Okay, go get what's in the fridge.

You want to be imaginative or creative in your cooking to a certain extent.

I mean- - Well, yeah, not disastrous.

- What do we have here?

- Here, this is dirty.

- Okay.

- That.

- What is that?

- I got olives.

- Pimento.

- Olive be a good idea, maybe.

Yeah, there is a dish like that we do with olive and those, especially those olive, are in... Hmm, yeah, we don't have to take the pit out of it.

- Here are some capers, pimentos.

- Capers is good too.

Maybe we put some olives in there?

Okay, and a bit of capers.

Capers are nice also.

And we drain- - Some sardines.

No, maybe not, huh?

I don't know.

- Anchovies, no.

- Anchovies rather.

- No, maybe some.- - Oh, here we go.

- Yeah, look good.

- Thank you.

- I think that's what we have enough and maybe some chives.

Yeah, the chive would look good in there.

- Mm.

- Do you have a plate to prepare this?

- [Claudine] Yeah.

- All right.

We put the plate in there.

You can warm them up if you want, a little bit.

It looks actually looks very good.

- It looks a little zippier.

Zippy might not be a real food word, but I like it.

It looks really elegant.

- And, wanna put a little bit of that on top, maybe?

Your decoration.

No, leave it up.

Now it's a mess.

Take it out.

(Claudine laughs) Okay, so let's check the- - The mackerel?

- The mackerel.

Oh no, those mackerel will it take a few more minutes.

- Okay, let's make some dessert then.

- Let's make the dessert.

Okay.

What do we have?

We have apricot here.

We're going to do a simple apricot compote.

And usually, of course in full summer, if I have at the market, beautiful apricot, in fact I have an apricot tree, I use them.

Those are frozen, and the frozen one are pretty good too.

- Yeah.

- You know?

Those are starting to defrost, so all you do is to put your apricot in there.

And what we want to put is some orange juice in there.

We have some orange juice here.

Maybe a little more.

This is a good... - That's great.

- [Jacques] Yes.

Works very well.

I think we have enough, anyway.

I need like maybe three quarter of a cup or whatever.

- [Claudine] It's okay, I'll drink whatever's left over.

- Oh, that should be more than enough.

Good.

- And that's it?

- Yeah, you process it.

What we are going to do with this, to put it in there.

(machine whirs) - Is that good?

- With honey.

That's enough, yes, with honey, some pine nuts, you know, a bit of honey and some dry apricot.

We have different type of dry apricot here.

Those are Turkish apricot, you know, they are a bit plumper and all that.

Those are from California.

Those are from California also, and they're actually quite flavorful, maybe the best here.

Those also from California, but without the sulfur.

And that's why they get dark as they dry out.

A little bit of honey.

- Hmm.

- This.

- That's gonna be so good.

I love apricots.

- Yeah.

And what you want to do is to bring that to a boil here.

You wanna simmer it 5, 6, 8 minute.

Then we let it cool off and serve it on the compote in a nice dish, you know?

- Here you go.

- Okay.

- Let me get a dish and some stuff.

- Okay.

- Right.

- Yeah, this thickened quite a lot as you can see.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- You wanna put that in there?

- Big spoon.

This is quite concentrated, you know.

That may be a lot here in a bowl, in a glass like this.

That's plenty.

Now, just a piece of that in the middle.

Here we are.

- Ta-da.

- And this is a delightful dessert for our cuisine bon marche.

(upbeat music) Shall we check on the fish now?

- [Claudine] Okay, sounds good.

Let's go.

I think it looks good.

- Well here they are.

And you can see that the fish at that point should be relatively tender here and crusty on top.

We don't turn them, you cook them right through.

So you can, if you want, serve them just like this, or, of course, carve them at the table.

And this is our main course for- - [Claudine] Cuisine bon marche.

I forget to put a bit of wine.

Before I put them in the oven, usually I sprinkle it with a little bit of wine so I can put a dash at the end like this.

They are ready to be served.

Look at those, they're beautiful.

- [Claudine] Oh, wow.

- [Jacques] Nice and crusty on top.

So, you want a whole fish?

- Yeah, you're gonna take the bones out, right?

- Well no, I don't take the bone usually out on those, but I mean- - Please.

- All right, fine.

- Thank you.

- This is gonna be, I love the fish.

This is gonna be perfect with what we have to start.

And the carrots with the capers and the olives really add a lot of zing and zip.

And the compote for dessert is very intense apricot flavor.

So this is definitely gonna be a great dinner.

I'm very excited.

- Look at the- - Ah, wow.

- [Jacques] Potato like this and the tomato.

- [Claudine] This is gonna be wonderful.

- Here we are.

I'm taking mine with the bone.

- Okay.

- [Jacques] Okay.

- And I'm gonna serve you some white wine.

We have a sauvignon blanc from California.

Does that sound good?

- Yeah, you go ahead, take a little bit of a, you have a sauvignon blanc from the Lake County here.

Yeah, it's beautiful.

- Yeah.

Do you want white or red?

- I think I'm going to have the red.

- Okay.

- With a fatty fish like this, we have a wine from Australia here, the GSM means which is a mixture of grenache, syrah, and mourvedre, in the start of the Cote du Rhone valley.

So we're going to enjoy this.

(speaks French) - This is awesome.

- Until next time.

- Thank you.

- Happy cooking.

- Happy cooking.

(upbeat music)