- You can find smoked salmon in any supermarket.

You can even find it in pieces less expensive than that.

For a party, you know, you put cream cheese in there or ricotta or sour cream and you put your salmon in there, a little bit of salt, pepper and lemon juice and that's it.

You process it into a beautiful mousse (food processor whizzes) and when it's nice and smooth, you press it into a container like that.

Then you garnish it with a little bit of chopped red onion, bit on top, maybe some capers and chives and then a little thing of olive oil on top and you have a dish fit for a king.

Absolutely beautiful.

You can have any type of toast along.

Those are very nice to put around and this is the way you do a party in no time at all.

I am Jack Pepin and this is, "Fast Food My Way."

Happy cooking.

I have a really nice little menu for you today.

I'm going to do a cream of leek and the cream of leek and potato is really the essential soup, I'm adding mushroom to that, but I'm doing it in a way makes it very easy to do.

Then a little filet of pork which are going to be stuffed with spinach and with cheese and serve with a tomato, a little tomato around and then a mini cake, a mini almond cake that I'm doing with a raspberry sauce here.

Great food, easy to do.

And that's what I'm going to start with the cake.

And that's pretty simple.

A quarter of a cup of sugar, a quarter of a cup of flour, a quarter of a cup of almond, whole almond, a quarter of a teaspoon or half of a teaspoon of baking powder.

How much do I put?

Yes, quarter of a teaspoon is enough.

And then you want to process this in a small processor like this.

(processor whizzing) You really want to have the almond in powder so you can check it out.

And then we add one egg to it, that's it.

And then couple of tablespoon of melted butter, a dash of rum if you want, the rum is great in there, you know, a tablespoon or so, and process it again a second.

(processor whizzes) I mean you know this takes second to make.

Yeah, it's a kind of Financier, so called that is a kind of almond cake that is really done in France.

You do even that type of cake for wedding cake, you know, so I'm putting that here in those tiny muffin pan, they are lined up with parchment paper and so they are very handy.

That's it.

And that now goes into the oven for about 15 minutes, cooked pretty fast and you can do that ahead, of course there is nothing wrong about having that done even the day before.

Then the soup, the soup is, as I say, the quintessential french soup is leek and potato and that's what I'm going to do in there.

A little bit of peanut oil or you can have olive oil and I'm gonna saute some leek in there as well as some mushroom.

So take the bottom of the leek out, you know, that part is useless and maybe the first slice, even sometime the second one, this one is fine.

And then we start cleaning around without taking too much of the leek out.

And as you can see, as it get a bit more tender in color, a lighter green, that's what I keep.

So that's what I would want to use.

This is a large leek and I split it in half this way or maybe even in three.

But to open the leek entirely, that's when you really can clean it and you need to do that.

So let me wash it.

(water splashing) The leek is one of the greatest vegetable for me in the family of the onion.

Okay, now this I often use, freeze it to use it for stock.

And this is great, you know, I freeze it and I have it.

Whenever I do stock, I take it out of the freezer, drop it in the stock pot.

So now we are going to slice this, it can be coarsely done.

(knife chopping) You can really use scallion as well, but it doesn't have the taste of the leek, you know.

Scallion onion, cut it in half again.

(knife chopping) And I have about here, I would say a good two cup, two and a half cup of of leek, you know, so that goes in there.

(pan sizzles) We want to sweat the vegetable.

What we call that is make them soften a little bit.

(pan sizzles) So here we are and mushroom.

Now those mushroom are just out of the supermarket.

They are not washed or anything.

You don't wash mushroom, you don't wipe mushroom, you don't touch mushroom just out of the supermarket.

However, when you're ready to use them, you wash them.

So it's not a question of not washing mushroom, it's a question of not doing it ahead, 'cause you do it ahead, then it change the texture on top and all that.

That's why you do it at the last moment and use them before they have a chance to start discoloring, you know?

So this where you can cut them in dice or slice.

This is that kind of rough country soup, you know.

(knife chopping) You have a couple of wild mushroom, which sometime I pick up in the wood, then it will add taste to it without any question, but frankly those regular white button mushroom from the market are (indistinct) a great deal in my opinion because they often have more taste than the so-called wild mushroom that you buy in the supermarket and cost a fortune.

So this is about sweating off, you know, if it goes for a minute or so, which it did here.

So now I can add the chicken stock and some water to it.

You can use only chicken stock if you want.

(pan sizzles) Chicken stock is very mild actually this one.

So I'm going to put all chicken stock.

So I have two cup, you have about four cup of liquid.

You can put two cup of chicken stock and two cup of water or a quart of chicken stock, it's fine.

Okay, so this has to come to a boil.

So here we are, this goes and in that pot here, I am going to start another recipe, which is the pork recipe that we are doing today.

And in that pork recipe we are going to do a stuffing with onion and spinach.

So again, a little bit of oil here and my onion, chopped an onion.

Finally chop.

(knife chopping) Again, you know, I have a very good knife here.

Why is the knife good?

Because it's sharp.

What is a good knife, it's a sharp one for me.

Here we are.

Saute that a second, you could add some garlic to it, you could add other things but I think it's going to be fine this way.

I'm gonna put the spinach in there.

I have plenty of spinach here.

That's it.

Dash of salt on top, dash of pepper, I cover it and that's it, is going to cook for a couple of minutes.

Now let me check on my soup.

See if the leek are cut fine enough, you know, two, three minutes will be enough, that's about fine and for me so I can continue with the soup and I'm using an instant mashed potato here and other potato flake that you put directly in there and it give you the thickening, the richness of it, and that's what you want.

So gently, you know you put that in your soup (soup bubbling) and this is it.

Time it comes back to a boil, basically it is cooked.

Very easy soup when you come from work, you're in a hurry, you do that, it's great.

The soup is, at home I very often finish, you don't have to, but I finish it with milk.

While my mother, when we were a kid, always finish most of the soup with milk.

But we have about a cup, a good cup and a half of milk or something like that because the potato quite thick and you can see now you bring that back to a boil if you want.

You have a beautiful soup.

You can even put skim milk if you want.

But frankly we taste it.

Always taste, my friend Julia always tell me taste it, taste it again, no.

Okay, let's look at the spinach here.

(pan sizzling) Spinach are basically ready.

(spoon banging) (pan sizzling) So we'll do, the soup is coming back to a boil so it's fine.

The spinach should cool off a little bit.

So I'm going to put them in there to cool.

Spinach and mushroom, that will be used to stuff the pork filet that we're going to do in a couple of minutes.

So that should be cool off a little bit.

And now I can serve my very fast soup here.

There we have some toast here to serve with it.

Here we are.

You can serve it just like this.

You can have a little bit of grated Swiss cheese on top if you want.

Often at home we use grated Swiss cheese or maybe a little sprig of in that case chervil, the type of herb, I love chervil and that's a beautiful soup.

Now let's go and stuff the filet of pork.

This is still a bit warm but, you know, you should let it cool in the refrigerator but otherwise it's fine to use it lukewarm.

So what we have here, I have a filet, which I try to get as big as I can.

It should be a good pound, pound and a quarter, you know.

And what you want to do is to remove that so-called silver skin.

See the technique here, actually run it against it so that there is no meat left on that kind of tendon.

I mean this is tough but you want to remove this and what we want to do after, it's really kind of a butterfly it and so you can have it on the side like that, take the top of it and cut to get almost to the end to open it.

Now I didn't cut it quite in the center, I cut it maybe a third of the way down.

So what I do, I'll turn it this way, you can see now this is thinner, this is much thicker.

So I do the same thing on this side eventually to open this further and get as large a rectangle as I can, you know at least like 10, 12, 14 inch by eight, 10 inch.

And we can even pound it a little bit with your plastic wrap here.

(mallet banging) So here we are, I'm gonna put a bit of salt and pepper on top of it, turn it on the other side, the same thing too.

And we start the stuffing, as I said, probably better if it was a bit cooler.

But take about half of your spinach here to put in the center and on top of it we are putting some, either cheddar or moderate jack or Gruyere or any cheese that you would want to have.

You can put it on top here like this.

And then a little bit more of the spinach to cover the cheese.

Here we are.

That's a nice garnish, that you don't have to worry about that type of garnish, where understand that if you were to stuff, often in the stuffing you put ground pork or sausage or whatever.

So you have to be sure that the inside is cooked.

Here it is a precooked stuffing if you want, you don't have to worry too much about this.

We'll wrap that around, bring that around to get it as tight as you can, you can even fold the end of it like this.

That's it.

And then you can attach that with, I mean with tooth pick actually or even with, you know, with a twine, a regular twine or you can do it with a little piece of aluminum foil.

You know you fold it, I mean you get it this way (indistinct) and put it around like this to attach it so it hold together.

And another piece here.

And what we want to do, we want to saute this to brown it all around before we put it into the oven.

If ever you know the end of it is oozing too much or it's happening, you can always put a little piece, this is not even the case here, but a little piece of aluminum foil, 'cause what you want to do is to sear it in your skillet until it's nice and brown around.

And after that you remove that to put it into the oven or you leave it into the oven and remove it at the end, one or the other.

It's fine.

Doesn't really matter.

So I'm gonna put a bit of olive oil there again, brown it and dash of olive oil because we need the bottom part of the crystallization because we are going to finish it with tomato.

So that's good.

So here it is, start browning it here and it'll take about three, four, five minutes, you know, to brown it nicely all around and sear it to get the kind of crystallization you want on top and the sear that you want on top.

(pan sizzling) Okay, now it's nice and brown all around.

What you want to do, I'm gonna remove this now and well I say you can cook it with it, doesn't really matter but- (pan sizzles) Good.

And now you wanna put that in the oven about 10 minutes and let it rest there.

That's what I'm going to do.

Yeah, looks terrific.

Nice and stuffed.

Look at that.

So we'll cut it on top of this, whoop it's hot.

And in this of course we are going to put tomato.

I have those tiny grape tomato here which are really going to be just in there like this.

They're going to kind of melt a little bit and create a bit of a sauce, parsley on top.

And that's basically it.

This you would want to serve it, I mean cut it rather in like eight medallion to serve two medallion per person for four people.

It's a beautiful little dishes.

So this will saute until your tomato get melting a little bit to and that's minute, minute and a half, two minute, we're gonna put some parsley on top of it.

Have nice flat parsley here, gather it together.

(knife chopping) Good this and maybe I can start cutting this now.

And you can see I want it just slightly pink, how we have it here, you know, inside.

And that's the way it would be done about 10 minutes into the oven.

So here we are and remember that, you know, I did that type of stuffing, but you can do any type of stuffing that you would want to do, entirely up to you.

I won't even have to cut the whole thing.

I can leave a piece here.

This is cut.

(pan sizzling) And this is uncut, that's it.

Tomato, ah, slightly browning now, softening, that's good.

I put my parsley on top of it.

If I feel that it should be a little more liquid, I could put one or two tablespoon of water in it, you know, or chicken stock or even wine.

(pan sizzling) That's it.

You can also of course serve it individually, you know, that's nice to serve as well.

Okay, now we're ready.

(pan sizzling) We can put some on top.

You want to hide all of it because it does look good.

But then need some of the liquid here and you can always serve the rest on the side.

So this is it, our stuffed filet of pork with spinach and cheese and of course tomato garnish around.

And now the dessert we have to finish.

We have my little cake here.

They cook really fast, you know, about 10, 15 minutes and with the parchment paper inside is great and you can see, texture of that cake is quite nice.

I mean I've done a wedding cake with this, you know?

Hmm, it's delicious.

We can do it with hazel nut of course, or other type of nuts.

But here we're going to do with the raspberry sauce.

And usually when I do raspberry sauce, I like to do it in a regular food mill like this with the finest grain.

Now remember that side is very rough and all that, but this is the inside.

Often people put it on this side because this is smooth, it doesn't work.

It gotta go on this side.

And it fit right there.

You use a lot of things.

I do a lot of thing in there.

There is a larger blade with large hole.

I even do guacamole or stuff like that in there.

This fits, okay?

And in there I put those frozen raspberry.

Now this is IQF, that is individually quick frozen.

There is no sugar, there is nothing in it.

So it's just individually frozen.

This one is defrosted so I put it with the natural juice and other sweetening agent, you could put sugar of course, but I like to put jam.

So you could put raspberry jam, in that case here I'm putting a strawberry jam.

You know, you push that through and it is the same way you do a sherbet, you do that mixture and that mixture you put in the freezer or on an ice cream machine or even directly in the freezer to do either a granita what we call or a sherbet.

So in there we want to put one of those little cake, I can actually even dip the cake in it or sometime just put it there.

And a few blueberry around.

Any berry that you have, I like to put some strawberry in it.

You can cut a strawberry in two or three pieces around.

I like the mixture of berry.

And in the summer most of the dessert that I do are going to be berry based, you know.

Here we are that's actually more than enough, okay?

And we put the sauce a little bit on top and of course a lot of the sauce around on the fruit.

Here we are.

And maybe with that a little sprig of mint for color and for taste as well, you know, and this is a beautiful, elegant dessert.

You know you can do it as a large cake and cut it into slice.

But somehow I like those tiny muffin like this.

It looks great.

And that's a very elegant dinner, which I hope you're going to do for your friend.

I did enjoy making it for you.

And please sit down with the family around the table and enjoy your food.

Happy cooking.