- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

- And I'm Claudine Pepin.

I can't tell you how many times friends have dropped by and I've wanted to cook dinner for them, but it's difficult to put together a good meal at the last minute.

- Well, you'd be amazed at what you can do with ordinary food that you probably have right in your refrigerator.

- So, will you show me?

- Sure.

You can create inspirational dishes from simple foods if you combine them in interesting ways.

Join us for cuisine d'opportunite.

- Next on "Jacques Pepin's Kitchen".

- "Cooking with Claudine".

(music ends) What do we have here?

- Well, I just realized I have some friends coming over for dinner and I emptied out the fridge and it's either we use this, and you help me please, or I order pizza.

So, I think we have to do something.

- I think we can do something with that.

In fact, this is cuisine d'opportunite.

When you clear out your refrigerator, you get inspirational with dishes, you know, with simple food and all that.

I think you can always do something with whatever you have in your refrigerator.

So, what do we have here?

You have kale here, you have a collard green and those are kale crinkled.

There is other type like that and you can use those, all of those type of green to do soup, to stew, to put them with meat, you can do a lot with it.

So, maybe, I think you have some chicken stock here.

Well, we can do a soup with this and that to start with.

You have carrot, those are peeled, those are not peeled.

Well, maybe we do, well, maybe we do carrots with, we do a soup with this and that, with the chicken stock.

What else do we have here?

You have eggs so we can do an omelet, right?

- Yes.

- So, we have some chives here, let's put that for the omelet, that'd be good.

- Okay.

- What is this here?

- That is an old cooked potato.

- It's cooked?

- Yeah.

- [Jacques] Oh, yeah, it's cooked, yes.

All right, well, maybe we put that in the omelet too.

- [Claudine] Oh, okay.

- [Jacques] How long has it been cooked?

Not two weeks I hope.

- No, like three days, maybe two.

- Okay, and this, what is that?

- Tomato.

- Tomato?

- Tomato going-- - So, maybe we put that in the soup or... - No, well, no, how about in the omelet?

- Yeah, well, fine, okay, we put it in the omelet.

Give it some color.

What else do we have?

We have, we have more carrot.

- Carrots.

- Maybe we do a salad with that.

Right, so let's do a salad.

I put it here for the salad.

- How about with zucchini?

- Yeah, we'll put that in the soup?

- No, in the salad.

- [Jacques] The salad, okay, fine.

In the salad also, I mean, the salad, a raw zucchini actually very good in the salad.

We have radish, that should go in the salad, right?

- Yup.

- Okay.

Radish in there, onion.

- Onions go everywhere.

- You can put it in the soup, you can put it in the omelet.

We can put it in the, where you want it?

- I think probably in the omelet.

- In the omelet, okay, fine, so we put it in the omelet.

This, well, we can put that in your salad if you want.

In your salad, so we're ready to cook.

- Okay, we've divvied up.

- [Jacques] We have basically a whole meal here.

So, let's start on the soup.

- Okay.

- Can you bring the chicken stock?

- Yup.

- Okay.

Cool.

Carrot, this.

You can put it over there.

See, this will cook, get wilted.

So, let me put a little bit of oil in there.

Maybe a tablespoon of the olive oil.

Why don't you peel the carrot here?

You have a vegetable peeler?

- Yeah.

All right.

- Okay.

Peel the carrot and I'll cut that into, trying to get it wilted first, you know, the green.

They need to be cooked, you know, this wouldn't be good in a salad.

This is tough, you know.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Okay, so we'll put that in there to get them wilted.

Okay, let's see what you're doing with the salad.

See, when you peel your carrot, that's not bad, but it's really, I like to peel, cut that first.

This and that.

People will take a carrot and go like this and then go like this, and then cut the end of it, and then peel it up, no.

You cut the end first and that set up like a platform.

That platform you can do one streak, you see?

- [Claudine] Towards you?

- One streak.

Well, toward you, you can do the other way because you have another platform here if you want.

It's flat here, it's flat here, so you do this.

Okay.

- This into chunks?

- No, no, no, we're gonna cut it into, like a, half-inch dice, you know, maybe big like this.

Watch your finger, because the carrot are round and it has a tendency, yes, to turn in toward you.

This is it, I'll do it with a big knife.

(Claudine laughs) Do this one, cut those like this.

- [Claudine] Okay, I can do that.

- [Jacques] You can do that.

- [Claudine] I could've done that.

- I know you could have done that.

First, you cut your finger.

Okay, this is... Getting a bit wilted, that's what you want here.

Okay.

Good, so now, we can put the chicken stock in there.

You wanna pour that in there?

So, how much we have?

It's quite lean, you have a quart of chicken stock.

Go ahead, yes, I think we'll need a bit more than that.

Just pour it in.

So, we want that to come to a strong boil.

Then boil like 10 minute, I think, you know what we have to do, I'm gonna add some water to that.

Yeah, because you want it, you want about seven cup of liquid, it's going to reduce a bit.

And then we wanna bring that to a boil.

And we'll put a bit of salt in there.

There is no salt in your chicken stock?

- [Claudine] No, I made the chicken stock.

- Okay, that's going to take like, I don't know, five minute to cook, you know.

- Okay.

- So, let's put it this way and now, maybe we could go to our salad?

- Okay.

- Let's go to do the salad now.

Okay, so what I have here is, why don't you shred those things?

You can cut it like that a knife to put them about that size to put it in there.

And I'm going to cut little dice of this.

Cut that in the little strip like this.

- [Claudine] Oh.

Oh, that's gonna look really pretty.

- Mm-hmm.

That's good.

Why don't you put all of the, your carrot into that bowl here.

All right, you can put your zucchini on top of it.

That looks pretty good.

- [Claudine] I think it looks wonderful.

- [Jacques] And I have some of those radish already sliced.

Some more slice too.

Why don't you cut this one and that one.

I'm going to do the dressing and you can add it to it.

So, the dressing is going to be very simple in this.

You have a little bit of mayonnaise I see here.

So, I'll put a little bit of that mayonnaise.

It doesn't have to be in slice, if it's in pieces, it doesn't really matter.

Put like, how about a quarter of a cup for this.

You add them both, maybe three, four tablespoon.

And we put, again, a dash of salt, cracked pepper.

And this vinegar.

- Can I put the-- - This is cider vinegar right?

- [Claudine] Yes it is.

- [Jacques] Yeah.

All right, so you want it a little bit acidic, you know.

Okay, so we do that and we are about ready to test it, you know.

We can put it together.

- Okay, so I can put this.

I didn't do this radish yet.

- Put that in there.

- I think I'll eat that one.

- Well, maybe you'll eat that one, yes?

- This one too.

- [Jacques] Okay, so here we are.

You know, I have that dressing on top.

While you're testing that, I'm going to get the bowl to prepare this.

Okay, so maybe we'll arrange it in there.

So, let's see here.

I'll put that in there, I'll arrange that salad in there.

That will become part of the salad, you know.

And it's fine you decorate a bit, or you could put that directly in your salad too, but it might get a bit wilted.

And if that's all you have, that's all we use, you know.

This is what cuisine d'opportunite is really, so let's put it in there.

Gently, we're ready for that salad there.

But this is a big salad, you know.

- [Claudine] Yeah.

- [Jacques] A lot of thing.

- [Claudine] It's really nice.

- A lot of green.

Want you to eat your green.

- It looks like I planned it.

- In your salad, yes.

- Beautiful.

- So, we could put that there.

That looks great.

And now let's see where the soup is at.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- I see it's boiling.

It's boiling nicely, which is the way it should be.

That's nice.

It could cook a few more minute, but it's fine.

And you see what we are going to do?

You see the grits here?

This is white grits, white hominy, you know.

And we're going to put about a third of a cup.

- This is like polenta, it's like grits?

- Yeah, yeah.

- It's all the same thing.

- Well, yes, polenta is the yellow grits, you know.

But you can have that, very ordinary, that's what it is, yes, absolutely.

So, we have about a third of a cup, two half a cup, depending how thick you want it.

I put salt in there, didn't I?

- I think so.

- Yeah, I did, yes.

Mm, like the taste of the collard green.

We put that there, that's boiling nicely.

I'm going to reduce it and maybe now, while I'm doing that, why don't you get the stuff for the omelet.

- Okay.

- We're going to do the main course now, which is our omelette de campagne.

That is the country omelet with all the stuff left over here.

There, your potato, the eggs.

Maybe I'll start with the, putting a little bit of oil in there.

And for that, we'll put maybe a dash of butter, like a teaspoon of butter in there.

And we are going to, you know, when you peel it, you don't peel it like that.

You scrape it to remove the skin of a peeled potato.

You scrape it like this-- - [Claudine] Oh, it's easy.

- Yeah.

- Oh, okay well then we can-- - Maybe you remove half of it, so you have the other half.

- No, no, this is a lot easier.

- [Jacques] Cut it into, yeah, scrape it like this.

That's how it work.

- [Claudine] Oh this is easy.

- [Jacques] Okay.

So, I'm putting your... Yeah, put your, put your thumb like this.

No, take the knife, don't take the knife here.

Take the knife here and it's okay, you're not going to cut yourself.

Your thumb, you know, you push with your thumb like this.

Okay?

So, a lot of onion.

What did you have that potato for?

I mean, what did you do with that potato?

- [Claudine] Oh, I just did some boiled potatoes and I just made too many, I was making mashed potatoes with the skin on because I hate peeling potatoes.

So, I just had, I had too much as usual.

- [Jacques] Okay, so here we saute, I'm sauteing the onion there until they get slightly wilted.

And, uh, potato are really good in potassium.

This is great, so here, slice your potato this way.

That potato is cooked, but for me, I would have it slightly more cooked.

Even if it's falling apart a little bit.

But this is, I know, you see the color of those potato, I know what those potato are, this is the one you like, yeah?

- [Claudine] Yes.

- [Jacques] What are those?

- Yukon Gold.

- [Jacques] That's the Yukon Gold.

- That's my potato.

- [Jacques] Yeah.

- [Claudine] Love Yukon Gold.

- [Jacques] Okay.

We have this on top here, maybe you can, you can cut that into slice, we'll put it on top.

I have the herb there, we can put in there also.

Here it is.

It's nice of you to have chives.

So, what do we have, six eggs?

You have how many people?

- Four.

- Four people, six egg, that's one and a half eggs per person and that's perfectly fine for that.

No, but it's good, you don't need more than that.

All right, so... - All right.

- All right, it's starting to brown nicely.

The onion and the potato.

I have to put maybe a little bit of pepper on top.

- [Claudine] Mm-hmm.

- [Jacques] A little bit of salt.

Here it is, so you wanna beat that up?

- Yup, I wanna beat this up.

- With this.

No, first, you break.

First, when you beat it, you always break the yolk.

(Claudine laughs) And then, go ahead.

And we put that in there.

See, you have to be careful when you do that, not to stay in the center and just turning around like this because then it's like a wet mop which goes around and the whites stay and you have long piece of white in it.

You really have to break it from one hand of the bowl to the other hand of the bowl to really... Okay?

- Yes.

- So, what we are going to do, we put some tomato on top, this is a real mixture, you know, of whatever we have left, but this is what good cooking is about, you know.

Someone who knows how to cook... Mm, have a piece of tomato.

I have a piece too many, see.

Just cover the top.

- That's good.

- And then maybe I put that on top.

And what you wanna do here, just... You see with the tin of my fork, I let the eggs go the inside to solidify all the egg.

You know.

So, it cook pretty fast this way.

So now, looks good, it's going to continue.

When it cooks a little bit underneath, I get a little brown, which is what I want.

I may even put a tiny bit of olive oil on the edge here, maybe like the value of a teaspoon, you know, just to brown the top nicely.

Let's put that under the broiler.

Right here?

- Yup.

- You wanna cook that about three minute, two, three minute just to brown the top nicely form a bit of a crust on top.

Let's see what happened to the soup now.

- Okay.

- Okay.

- [Claudine] Oh, looking great.

- I think that's, could cook maybe a couple of minute more, but basically it's cooked.

Now, you know, I could have put a little more, a little more grits in there with the question of taste, but that's fine.

Remove the, the thing so... See, I have a lot of, a lot of solid here.

You know, that is good, you want to, you want me to serve a portion?

- Yeah.

- Like this here.

You see, I like when it's thick and it even could be even slightly thicker than that.

I like that type of thing.

And you can put this on top.

Or parsley if you have leftover, that's great.

Okay, so let's see whether our omelet is finished now.

Yeah, they could, we have it underneath.

- Oh, that looks so good.

- We see it's, it's going up, it's going up the side a little bit.

And it's going up the side and I see it's all solid.

You know, so I could either flip it, or turn it on top of this.

- Turn it on top of this.

- [Jacques] You want me to flip it?

- No.

(laughing) - Okay.

It's good with this, this is not quite flat.

It's even if better if you have a lid which is totally flat.

But then you can turn it upside down like that to have your omelet ready.

- [Claudine] Oh wow, wait, let me get you a plate.

Wait, are you gonna flip it back onto the plate?

Is that the idea or?

- No, I'm gonna slide it into this now.

Okay.

- [Claudine] Oh, that looks so nice.

- Okay, we put it there.

Put it on the table there and, because this you would want to cut for your guest in a wedge.

Those are big wedge.

See, I cut this one in eighth.

And you see, nice wedge you have here.

- Oh, that looks nice.

- We can put that on top.

Maybe a little bit of green leftover here.

And this is our omelette de campagne, country cooking, yeah.

- [Claudine] Having had this experience, I think that my friends will force me to order takeout less and I'll have to cook a lot more at home.

Everybody's gonna make me cook (laughing) because now, everybody's convinced I know how.

- So, we're going to use your banana.

- My very old bananas.

- [Jacques] Yes.

Well, this is how to do a dessert for four or more.

When you have almost nothing left, with a couple of banana, we say we're going to do a fritter.

So, let's start by doing the batter.

And what we wanna do, you have an egg here, just break the eggs in there.

I have my flour.

(Claudine yelps) Oh, that's good, that's good.

- [Claudine] Oh, man.

- [Jacques] Okay, here, here is what you do here.

Leave it there, bring it on the side.

- Now that's cuisine d'opportunite, here you go.

- Okay, why don't you mix it with this and we need about, what about three quarter of a cup of flour here.

So, here is your flour.

In this, you need like a cup of water.

And as you can see, I have a cup of ice cold water.

We have ice water.

- Why?

- Now here is what happened there that I wanna say.

You see, I only put a little bit of water.

You know what, you see the way it looks now?

It's pretty thick, it's pretty thick.

And if I stir it with the whisk like this, it make it smooth.

You see the way it's smooth?

- [Claudine] Mm-hmm.

Those that don't have any lump like this.

If you put all of the liquid into there, the protein will coagulate in the flour and you have nice little dumpling all over the place.

You don't want little dumplings.

So, you put only part of the flour until it's smooth and now I can put the rest, it has no chance now of lumping.

Okay, and you want it to be very smooth like this, that's good.

So, I put like a good cup because, see, it's a very light, a very light batter.

Yeah, as you can see.

Okay, so now here, I'm gonna put a banana in there.

And I'm cutting this in there.

- [Claudine] Oh.

- Okay.

Now, I have oil here, I put oil and you want, of course, an oil which doesn't have any taste like a canola type of oil that you want here.

And you can take a tablespoon of this and put it to cook, to do here.

There, you do your batter.

And, as you can see, in that type of situation, you could use anything you want.

You see how you do like practically four with one banana.

So why don't you, no, wait a minute, why don't you, why don't you cut the other banana too first.

- Okay.

- What are you doing here?

- I'm getting so that you can drain it.

And I'll cut the banana.

- No, no, no, no, that's no good.

I don't drain it, people drain it on paper towel, this is a mistake because what happen, you put it on top, there is no air underneath, it gets soggy, it gets soft underneath.

I learned that with the Korean people.

And the Korean, you put a wire rack on top of it.

You put a wire rack so there is air underneath, it can drain, there is air underneath and that's really what you wanna do.

So we put it, let's see what you're doing there.

You're doing okay?

- I think so.

- [Jacques] Okay.

See, you can do this, this is more of a tempura batter type and the tempura batter is done with ice cold water, that's very important.

- Sounds good.

- [Jacques] Let's see what this looks like now.

I think it'll hold together pretty good.

Yeah, you see there is little hole like this and that's what you want.

See, sometimes it touch together so just cut them, you know.

You wanna try to turn one?

That's it, it's not a big deal.

Okay.

- [Claudine] Can I do the other one?

- [Jacques] Yeah, go ahead.

You can probably even do it with a fork, you know.

Okay, see the oil there has to be hot.

The oil has to be 375 degree at least when you put it in.

You can use a thermometer to look in it.

Sometimes, people do one drop of water to see the way it sparkle, thermometer is very accurate.

Or you can also take a chopstick like this and the chopstick usually there is already a little bit of water left in it, and if you put it in there, you will see that it's, it's bubbling, you see the way it's bubbling?

It's bubbling around the chopstick.

And the way it's bubbling like that tell you, a little bit some water, it tell you that it's, it's pretty hot.

You see now it's hard enough, you could turn it even with a fork.

See the way it's brown on the other side?

Brown even more, you know.

Okay, I turned them again, for this, you may remove them now.

- Oh, and drain them.

- Yeah.

See, you want to drain them in that and if you do them ahead, what you wanna do is to put them back in the oven a little bit but you don't want to put a towel underneath, as I said, because they get soggy underneath.

And you want them very crisp.

I mean, crisp enough.

And, dear, give me that bowl there.

And give me a rubber spatula there.

Okay, just put the amount of oil, if you have it very crisp and all this, a little bit of oil that I put there, I have about, what do I have here, Claudine?

I started with half a cup of oil.

- Well, you still have a half a cup of oil.

- Yeah, pretty close, maybe one tablespoon less.

If your batter is really ice cold water and all that, it really doesn't absorb much oil at all, which is very important.

- Oh, wow.

- So, basically, what we wanna do here is to put it there.

And you wanna serve this, see we can have another batter here.

And see, they are pretty crisp.

Nice, and you wanna put powdered sugar on top of it.

So, you can do either powdered sugar or granulated sugar.

I like the powdered sugar on this.

Okay, you go.

Bang it more.

Can I help you bang?

And that look good, that look good.

You could have a little sprinkle of something, but that looks terrific.

And this is our banana fritter for our cuisine d'opportunite.

So, you think your friend are going to be ready with our menu?

- Oh, my friends are gonna love this, this is wonderful.

- Well, I think we did a good menu with what we had and it's pretty well-balanced.

We have a lot of vegetable.

We have the soup with the green and the green could be leftover cabbage, leftover salad, leftover anything with a bit of thickening agent.

In that case, we used couscous, no?

- No, grits.

- Grits, okay.

We can use couscous, grit, oatmeal, whatever you want to have a nice hearty soup with a piece of bread.

And a great salad, again, with a lot of vegetable, radish, what else, zucchini and so forth.

And then our omelette de campagne.

In there, we have one and a half eggs per person, not that much, one potato, a lot of onion, so I think it's a well-balanced menu finishing with our banana fritter.

And, as you see here, done very crisp if you have really, your ice cold water, you use really a minimum amount of oil and that's what's important.

And with that, you wanna serve that wine?

- Yes.

- I think I should taste it because you never know.

- Yeah, I think you should taste it too.

- I don't think you should have wine, you broke an egg on the table.

Oh well, I'll give you a little bit of wine anyway.

- Thank you.

- So, this is a Beaujolais, of course, where I come from.

A chateau chez, this is actually a, a brouille, one of the Cru de Beaujolais and this goes with anything.

I'm sure I'm going to enjoy having it.

I hope you have enjoy Claudine and I cooking together.

Happy cooking.

- Happy cooking.

(cheerful music)