- Hi, I'm Jacques Pépin.

(soft upbeat music) - And I'm Claudine Pépin.

- Tonight I'm going to throw a little surprise party.

- Oh really?

Who are you surprising?

- The guest.

It's a menu that will wake up the palette with an unexpected flavor combination.

We start with the shiitake mushroom stew, served over chewy Chinese rice noodles.

- [Claudine] Then we go to the south of France for mussels (speaking french) They're stuffed with sausage, turnip greens, sauteed with a little bacon, are unusual and delicious.

- [Jacques] And for the dessert, an easy top crust cherry pie.

- Wow, who's gonna help you cook and clean up?

- That's part is a surprise too.

- Somehow, I think I can guess.

Join us for Cuisine surprise next on Jacque's Kitchen.

- Encore with clothing.

Today we are doing cuisine surprise.

- Well, it's gonna be a surprise to me 'cause I don't know what we're making.

- Yes, so this is seal price cuisine.

Right?

But we're gonna start with a top crust cherry pie.

Cherry pie just doing the top crust.

And you can use, I have bing cherry here, which are pitted.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- [Jacques] And the small sour (speaking french) you know.

- Oh wow.

- Remember we have a tree?

- Yeah.

- [Jacques] Never get anything on the tree.

- [Claudine] I know.

- I don't know how it works.

I don't know what I do, but I never get anything on that tree.

A few series.

But anyway, we can make them or have one or the other.

Doesn't really matter.

In there you want to put a little dash of vanilla extract, you know, a little bit of almond extract.

That's strong.

You want to give me - [Claudine] This?

- Yeah, that's a potato starch.

- Okay, just dump it in?

- Go ahead.

Yep, yeah.

The potato starch is going to be used as a thickening agent.

And very often this, you know, people will cook it ahead, but we don't really have to cook it.

We just mix it this way.

How about my sugar.

- Okay.

How much sugar do you want?

- That's it, that's it.

About half a cup, two thirds of a cup, yes.

Okay.

And then you can give me the graten dish.

We put all of that directly in the graten dish.

Ready to go into the oven.

- [Claudine] It's like crystallizing.

- [Jacques] Yes.

- [Claudine] Cool.

- Okay.

That smells good, huh?

You know what smells good like that?

The almond extract.

- Oh, that's what I'm smelling.

- And the vanilla, yeah.

Let's put this, and now we're going to do the dough to put on top.

- Okay, well.

- Are you in charge of the dough?

- I'm in charge of the machine.

- Okay.

- I'm not in charge of the dough.

- So we have three quarter of a cup of flour here.

You can put your ingredient and put this tiny dash of of salt over there.

- Okay.

- Two tablespoon of butter, about two tables, spoon of sugar.

And then what is that?

- It's cottage cheese.

- Cottage cheese.

About, let's put the cottage cheese in it.

- Okay.

- You take a spoon over there, you know, put almost all of it.

I have about five six tablespoon.

reserve one tablespoon.

Just in case a little more.

I know we'll need that.

Let's see.

And let's turn it together and see what happens.

Okay.

(blender whizzing) We need the rest of it.

We need the rest of it.

You know, it depends where you live in the country.

Depending on the amount of moisture you have in your flour, whether you are in a dry area (blender whizzing) or very wet area, you may have a bit more moisture on that.

You see that's better, it takes together now.

- Oh wow.

- And that's about it.

You know, this is a very simple dough.

And this is the dough your mother love the best.

- I know.

- Why did your mother love that dough?

The best?

- I don't know because it's easy and it's quick.

- No, because I don't dirty anything.

- Oh yeah, there you go, definitely.

- I take it, I put it in the food processor - I put it on a piece of plastic wrap.

I put another piece of plastic wrap on top of it.

And you roll it this way.

So not only you don't dirty the table, you don't even dirty the rolling pin.

- Mom's gonna love that.

Definitely.

- Okay, here we are.

So you want to roll it to have it about the side.

You wanna try this, The side of that thing.

Now here is what you have to be careful about when you do it with plastic like this.

Sometime you roll it and the plastic goes underneath and you keep pushing on it.

And of course the plastic is very thin.

So you have to be sure that that plastic is loose.

Okay.

You probably are close to the size in length here.

You gotta go on the side.

- That's good.

- You think that's good?

I mean, look at the shape of that thing.

It's gotta be oval.

- Well, that's like oval.

So you bring some oval here.

You bring some oval there.

Do you think it's big enough?

- Yeah, it's definitely big enough.

I thought it was supposed to be inside, just like.

- Oh, no, no, no, no.

It's on top.

Oh, well I didn't know.

I would've done it completely differently if I'd known.

- Sure, sure.

Let me see that thing here.

See what you do.

You put it there.

It's in between plastic so you can measure it.

- [Claudine] That's good.

- [Jacques] Weather, no.

A little more.

Okay.

- More, okay.

- I think so, dash more.

Okay.

And you know what you can do for me?

Just wet, the side of that graten dish it has to be wet.

- Wet the side.

Okay.

- Yes.

I throw you a curve there.

Okay.

With a bit of water.

Now I'm removing the top part of it.

Of course, it'd probably be nice to let it rest a little bit.

The dough get bigger.

That's it.

- [Claudine] Like this?

- [Jacques] Yeah, just so that it sticks a little bit.

That's fine.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- I'll bring it here.

- Sure.

- [Jacques] The other way, the long way.

All right.

Okay.

And we have to stick it around like this.

You see how easy it is.

- Oh, that's why the water helps.

'cause it makes it stickier.

- It makes it sticky.

Yeah, I mean the dough is really soft there because we just made it.

So yeah, I stick it like this.

- And it's gonna have a really kind of funky shape, actually.

You know, if you have a lot of dough here, you can bring the dough back on itself and thicken it to have more dough there.

But basically that's it.

You know, you give me a knife, - I'm gonna give you a cooking sheet actually.

- We can mark it a little bit like this.

You know, you could do some design but don't really need to.

This is country cooking.

I put it right on top of that.

I'm gonna put it right in the oven.

- And you put that in the oven.

About 350, 375, 45 minute.

Doing the dough this way.

You notice that we have a minimal amount of dough.

So you take a piece of the dough from the top to serve.

So you have probably a third of what a conventional pie you would have.

You know?

So it's another way of doing it.

This is what it looks like.

- Plenty dough.

Yes, right.

Do you have a plate for that Claudine?

- [Claudine] Yes.

- So we can, serve.

- But I couldn't bring them both over at once.

- Alright, here we are.

- And a little bit of sour cream because sour cream and cherries go really well.

I'll cut a piece of that here.

- [Claudine] Mm.

- So try to do the dough.

I don't make a mess underneath.

You know, like you would put the dough.

- Oh, oh, I would've just settled it on top.

- You see the way it's nice and creamy and just oily.

Nicely just because of the thickening that we put.

- [Claudine] Oh, the corn starch.

- [Jacques] It was potato starch.

- Oh wow.

Look at that, I put that here.

You want put a dash of- - Sour cream or creme fresh or something?

- Sour cream on top.

Yes.

- [Claudine] There.

- Little piece of that in there.

And here it is.

The top crust cherry pie.

- Next we're gonna make rice noodle sticks with a dried mushroom stew.

- Yes, and I know you like that stuff.

- I do.

- Here you start.

I'll do some ginger for you.

And garlic.

See I just crush the ginger this way.

- Okay, I'm gonna start with the onions.

- Crush your ginger Crush The whole thing, you know.

Oh, that smell good.

I love that smell.

Yes, I do too.

So tell us what you have there.

- Well, right now I have onions.

Now I have onions and ginger.

This is a rice wine.

- Yes.

- about two tablespoons.

- This is a Chinese wine actually.

- Ooh, it's really fragrant.

- Yeah, it's really nice.

And some oyster sauce.

- Garlic.

Lot of stuff in there.

Then I give you a bit of jalapeno paper.

- This is how I cook at home.

I just find all the stuff that I have and I just put it all in.

You can put whatever you want in it.

- It's fun.

- I don't know if that jalapeno paper is hot.

- Is it a hot one?

Hmm.

Not that hot, this one.

Sometime they are so hot.

Okay, here you are.

- Okay.

- And we have all of those mushrooms here.

I have dry mushroom, which of course you soak them here.

Ad look at this.

This is a shiitaki mushroom.

They are quite inexpensive in Chinese market.

But this is the summer shiitake dry one.

This is the winter shiitake also called chrysanthemum.

You know the top are marbleized like this.

Look at that.

- [Claudine] Oh wow.

- They are much more meaty.

They're really fantastic.

And this is three years three years which blew up like five, six times.

You know what we call that in French?

(both speaking french) - Oh wow, did I put soy sauce in there?

- Did you?

- I don't know.

I gotta put some more in in case I forgot.

I cut a little bit of this.

Give you a whole bunch of those mushrooms.

You know, the shiitake, you have to be careful to take this stem out of it.

This time is really, stem is really tough.

Look at that.

- Oh wow, it's like wood.

- Yeah.

Now if you do a puree, you know.

you can probably use it in because you wont see the difference.

But if you don't do a puree, then I would remove it.

- [Claudine] Hmm.

- And this has to cook, you know, seven, eight minute.

And you know the great advantage of using dry mushroom is to use- - The water.

- The water of the dry mushroom.

- Yeah, definitely.

- I'll give you one more.

Okay?

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Now when you put the water in it, just pour it gently because you may have a little bit of a residual sand in the bottom here.

And I need, like, I bought a cup of it.

- [Claudine] I'm stirring my mushrooms, - [Jacques] Stirring your mushroom.

You can bring it to a boil.

- Do I cover it?

- Bring it to a boil and cover it.

And what I have here is the rice noodle.

They come dry.

These were very inexpensive and they've been soaking for about 20 minutes to half an hour.

And after they've been soaking just in lukewarm water, you drain them out and they're ready to be used.

They'll take a little bit to drain.

And that's great because during that time this has to cook.

You can put that on low.

That's it.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- [Jacques] We cover it.

- And?

- That's it.

And then we move on to- - To mussels.

- Our main course.

(both speaking french) Yes.

Mussel and french fry.

This is what you add in the- - In Brussels.

- When you live in Brussels.

We have beautiful New Zealand mussel here.

But first we're going to do a sauce to go with it.

What are you putting in your sauce?

- Tomatoes.

- Tomato.

- You know your basic sauce stuff.

- Your basic sauce.

- Three cloves of garlic.

- Yes.

- I won't, I won't do too much garlic.

(speaking french).

- [Jacques] Yes.

- And I think this can go over, this sauce can go over anything.

- That's plenty.

Your (speaking french) is of course a mixture of savory margarine, thyme.

There is five or six herbs that you use - And some white wine.

- [Jacques] That's more than enough.

- Salt and pepper.

- Maybe a bit of salt and pepper in there.

Go ahead.

Good.

And that's an easy thing to do.

(blender whizzing) - [Claudine] Okay.

- That's fine, I'm taking the skin outta your sausage here while you are working.

- [Claudine] Okay, I'm gonna pour it into the pan.

- You want me to do that?

- Oh, good.

- Okay, put that directly in there.

And you see it very white.

I mean very white because you put a lot of air in it.

But that will turn red again.

Okay, so this, we're going to cook the mussel on top of this.

What I want you to do in there, you have the sausage, - I have the sausage, breadcrumbs.

- Breadcrumbs.

- Should I finish this first?

- You put everything together.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Put three quarter of a cup fresh breadcrumb, chopped onion, an egg.

- [Claudine] An egg.

- A dash of salt pepper, some chives.

Chives, You see your grandmother always of shive with a scissors.

- I know, it's easy.

I like that.

- Yes, a nice way of doing it.

Okay, I'll give you a little bit of this.

- Yeah, I'm going.

I'm mixing.

- You are?

- Yep.

- Okay.

- Here we are.

- It's the best mixer I have.

- And this is the best mix mixer, it's your hand, yes.

This is actually a type of Patti mixture that you can use, you know, in different way.

Those have been open.

And look at that muscle is up here.

If I touch it a little bit, if I bang it.

You'll see it close.

Oh, it close, you see?

I know it's alive.

The muscle will come like that.

Sometime, you have those crustacean, you can clean them up.

Or sometime you have the beard like this or the encrustation.

We have open several ones here.

What we want to do is to, with a knife like that, want to go in between the shell.

I think you should put a little bit of garlic in there.

Okay, here you are.

Those are really available now all over those New Zealand mussel.

And they are quite flavorful, you know, and very large.

So we are going to stuff them with the pate mixture.

Okay.

So that's it.

Now we want to do a little bowl of that You have salt and pepper in there, right?

- Yep.

- Okay.

So in this, the mixture would be about, oh, the value of, oh, maybe barely this, you know, so you do little package and I put them in.

Ah, we'll close them again.

That's maybe a bit too much.

You know, if we were smart, what you do is that you do all of your package first.

Because otherwise you say, Hmm, I have six muscle left, I have no more.

Or you say I have only one muscle left and half of it is still here.

So it's a good idea to just portion it, you know, as you go along.

Then we put them directly on top of the sauce here.

It's an interesting combination, bit different.

The shellfish with the meat, you know.

Here.

- That's gonna be a garlicy one.

- Yes.

And all you have to do is to stuff them and put them in there.

- [Claudine] There.

- Okay, this one, this one is finished.

This one, this one, this one, this one is stuffed.

That's it.

- Oh, okay.

- I have all of it.

- Oh, this one's empty, but that's okay.

Oh, I'll put it empty and won't say anything to anyone.

Okay.

What you wanna do at that point here is to bring it to a boil, cover it, and cook it gently for 18 to 20 minutes.

- I have to wash my hands.

- And I have one here, which is cooked this way.

Right.

Your hand is clean now.

So you can give me that.

- Yep.

You got that here.

- Oh, that looks awesome.

- So I want to arrange those.

Maybe this way can put that bunch of parsley, you know, in the middle.

But they're hot.

- Yep.

Ooh, the sauce.

- You, you remember having those at home once?

- At home?

Yeah.

- Yeah.

Well that was just after your mother came back from vacation.

- Right?

- In France.

And she had that with the, with your aunt, you know, somewhere.

- I just didn't know where they were from.

- Well, I didn't either.

Okay, I'm putting a little bit of remaining of the sauce in the center here.

- Mm.

- Or maybe they put some chive leaves in.

Okay.

- Oh, that looks lovely.

(cheerful music) - And this is New Zealand green mushroom stuffed (speaking french).

- And now let's finish the noodles.

- Good idea.

Let's see where it's at, there.

Okay.

Oh that looks good.

It smells good.

Put it a little higher because it should really be reducing a little more here.

- Oh.

- But no, leave it without the lid.

That's the point, you want evaporation there surely.

Would like to taste this a little bit.

- I hope it's good.

- Yeah, it's good.

You gotta get your own spoon.

It's fairly highly seasoned, you know?

- Well, yeah.

- You wanna taste it first?

- Yeah.

But if you say it's good, you can put the noodles in.

- [Jacques] You sure?

- Yes.

- All right.

(Claudine laughing) You wanna do this - It's the dueling tongs.

I wouldn't have done this, I just would've done the tongs.

Or I'll get a bowl.

- They have to warm up a minute or so, you know?

- Oh, okay.

- They can bring the bowl.

- Oh, here.

- Okay, what do we have here?

- [Claudine] Turnip greens.

- Turnip greens.

I'm done with a little piece of bacon.

- Yes.

- Couple of slices of bacon.

Salt paper, A dash of water.

You cook them and you braise them 20, 30 minutes.

And they're really good specialty of the south.

Do you want to serve this or you want me to serve it?

You serve it.

I give you a little bit of cilantro on top.

- Okay, do I serve it?

Do you want me to just pour it?

It's too much for the bowl though.

- Oh, okay.

So serve it this way.

- I was gonna do that.

That's what I was gonna do.

- You don't like noodles already?

I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

- I think so.

- This is really so many, this is why I did a cuisine surprise today, because look at the different taste that we have.

You know, quite different in the taste.

Even in those two dishes, you know, a lot of different taste.

- This would be like a great soup too.

- Yes, so this is a rice stick with a dry mushroom stew - And turnip greens sauted with bacon.

Papa, I love it when you do greens really fast, like broccoli, they frappe and lettuce and stuff.

- That's very good.

We do that often at home.

But you know, very often the green are cooked a long time.

For example, those are turnip green.

- How long does this have to cook?

- Well, 15, 20, 30 minute.

- Oh wow.

- Kale.

You know, the kale or the curly thing like this, you can see it's a darker color to - [Claudine] People use it as ornaments on food.

- This is mustard green.

This is also mustard out green.

- [Claudine] Oh wow.

- [Jacques] One curly, one not curly, you know, different.

And that again, those cooked about 20 minutes, 25 minute we get to dandelion.

- [Claudine] Those are huge.

I've never seen dandelions that big.

- Yes.

You don't cook them as long.

10 minutes is enough for that.

And here you have the colored green.

The colored green again, also have to be cooked 20, 30 minutes.

- Wow.

- You know, the way they are tough.

And then you have the, you know those Swiss chard?

- [Claudine] Yeah.

- [Jacques] In Leon.

- [Claudine] That's like a Leon right.

- [Jacques] Your grandmother take only the rib, sometime very large rib, thick.

- [Claudine[ Yeah.

And do a graten with that (indistinct).

The leave or cook, separate the leave don't take that long to cook.

Five, 10 minutes is fine with this.

Oh, okay.

- But very often, as I say, you have to differentiate them in the market, you know, from the tonic green, the mustard green and all that.

Those do have to cook for a while.

So Claudine, are you surprised?

- I'm very surprised.

- This is cuisine surprise, right?

- Yeah, definitely.

I'm always surprised when I cook with you.

I always learn something.

- I have some sir prize when I cook with you too.

- (laughing) Good.

- Sometimes that I don't expect.

But this is really a eclectic mishmash.

But I like to eat this way.

- Yeah, me too.

I like to eat What's good.

- Would you start in that menu with the rice noodle stick there?

- I guess so.

- Yeah.

- It's in front of me, I'll start with it.

If not, I'd start with the mussels.

- Yeah, the mussels are great.

And you know, those are very good cold too.

It's like a pate too, you could have that with a salad.

- [Claudine] Mm-hmm.

- And the turnip greens, you know, which are braised or stew or saute, you know?

I mean it's a mixture.

- Yeah, that's nice.

- And our cherry pie, our top cherry pie.

Only a little bit of crust and a lot of beautiful fruit, you know.

- I love it.

And with that, we're gonna have an Alsatian wine.

That's a good choice for that.

- And I love Alsatian wines.

- Yes.

- So.

- Do you have the Pinot Blanc or gewurz?

- Pinot blanc, - A pinot blanc from Alsace, the Northeast part of France.

And we have a red muskidel here.

She a very deep wine with a taste of molasses, you know, and that come from South Africa.

So can you bake a cherry pie?

- Well, I think so.

I hope so.

- Well, you'll never know until you try.

So when you cook together, there are always surprises.

It's fun.

It's delicious too.

And thank you for cooking with me, Claudine.

- Thank you Papa.

(glasses chinking) - Happy cooking.

- Happy cooking.

(cheerful music)