- Well, the great way of using day-old bread, like baguette or country bread, is to cut them into slice, and into big stick like this.

Put that onto a tray.

Little bit of olive oil, olive oil on top, you mix cheese, grated cheese, paprika, cumin, can be Parmesan or other cheese.

Mix it together, sprinkle it on top.

In the oven, 8-10 minute until it's nice and crusty, like we have here.

Cheesy breadstick, waste not, want not, convenient and economical.

I'm Jacques Pépin, and this is "Fast Food My Way."

(breadstick crunches) Happy cooking.

(gentle music) Today, I'm making bread.

I don't think people think that bread is fast food but really that particular recipe is very, very little work, and I wanna show you how to do that.

And we're gonna serve that with cocotte eggs with a creamy mushroom, a bit of cognac, that's a very elegant first course.

Then a ragu of broccoli, beans, sausage, clam, and that's pretty earthy.

And we end up off a cookie dough raspberry tart.

Nice menu.

So let's start doing the bread.

Very easy, I have about two and a half, about two and a quarter about cup of tepid water, the water should be tepid.

And a couple of teaspoon of salt in there.

Then I put about one teaspoon of yeast.

You know the yeast in it could be a little more, a little less, it's fine.

And this is it.

And then the flour.

So, this is in a pot, and I have four cup of flour, which is about a little more than a pound.

Three cup of flour is a pound of flour.

I know many recipe tell you three and a half cup, but basically if you grab it into the pot as I do and level it up, three cup like that will go between 15 and 17 ounces.

So that's it, you put everything together, stir it with a sturdy spatula like that.

It should be a kind of gooey dough.

This way, you know, thick.

And this is it.

It's about all there is to it.

You put that in there, remember that in that recipe, you mix it in that pot, you proof it in that pot, and then you put the pot in the oven.

So it's pretty easy.

Keep it at room temperature for about an hour, hour and a half depending on the temperature around.

And then we're ready to break it down.

So I might as well have a little more coffee while I'm waiting.

I think it's about it here.

Yep, smells wonderful.

So you can see it's puffy around it start going up.

So, I want to break it, so just stir it a little bit to break the dough that the first rise.

And that's it.

Basically that's what you do, you break it once and you do that at night, or I do it at night and then I put that in the refrigerator overnight, 10 hours, 12 hours, even 14 hours, depending how long you sleep.

It's ready for the refrigerator.

There it is.

I have one here, just been in there for like 12 hours.

So you can see that it's proofed, you have those bubble on top and all that.

And of course here you don't want to deflate it.

All you do now, without the lid, oven 425, 450 degree, about 40 minutes.

And that's about all there is to it.

So I have one here which has been cooked that amount of time.

It is been on the table for a little while to deflate and it shrink a little bit.

So you can see it has a nice crust.

This is a non-stick pan, so.

This is it.

You cannot ask for a bread to be easier to do than that one.

So here we have our bread here, and now time to make dessert.

And the dessert here, again, make your life easier.

I'm doing it with cookie dough, but cookie dough that you buy at the super market, and you use about six, eight ounces of cookie dough.

So I have a piece like this, but you can a rolling pin as well.

About, you know?

When you roll it like this, be careful, because sometime the plastic that you have on top goes underneath and it stops.

So you have to keep it loose on top.

This is about all right.

So, you place that directly on a cookie sheet here, This way.

Here it is.

And then, it's maybe not quite round, you can always take a little piece here to put there and all that.

But what I want to do is to bring back the side up, you know, gently like this.

Type of cookie dough you want is maybe to bring it back twice to have a certain thickness for the edge.

It's about fine here.

Now you can see for example that it's thicker here and I don't have as much dough right here, so what I do, I press like that with my hand in that direction to make it about the same all around, you know?

Like modeling clay, you know, the kid loves to do that.

And after that you can do a design with your finger.

You can have a little bit of flour there and you press with one finger and pinch it like this.

You go all around.

So those store bought dough, of course, make your life easier to do although you can make your own as well.

Okay, so this is about eight inches.

You can prick the center a little bit if you want.

And that's it.

That goes into the oven about 10 minutes.

Here we are.

Good.

So the dough, the bread is made, the dough for the dessert is made.

So it's time to start the first course, and those are very elegant type of little cocotte here, that we call.

We're going to have an eggs in it and a base of mushroom underneath with shallots.

So it's very elegant.

Deglazed with a little bit of cognac.

So, what I have here is a bit of shallots.

I need a little bit of oil there, a dash of oil.

Should be fine.

And you don't want to have too much because those are relatively small.

Those are about about half cup, half cup cocotte, you know?

So, here a little bit of shallots.

There it is.

Some mushroom.

Just slice.

Coarsely chopped like this or slice, I need about a cup of it.

Here we are.

I like anything with eggs, you know?

Okay, this will render a little bit of water, a little bit of liquid.

I need more, I need about, well, that's more than enough.

Okay, salt, pepper in it, and that's it.

Sometime, I put a little bit of water at the beginning in something like this to give moisture to it and it start develop the moisture like that then it evaporate and it start browning a little bit, actually you don't really want that to brown.

I'm going to deglaze with that with a tiny bit of cognac and then some cream.

So it's a very rich mixture, but only, we use only a little bit of it.

Okay.

Maybe a little dash of cognac, can even flambe it.

You know when you put an alcohol in something, alcohol will evaporate around 180 degree or so, and it evaporates in the form of vapor.

If you happen to put a match, you see it.

If you don't put a match it still evaporates.

So it doesn't really changed that much.

It change when you have a piece of lobster or a crab because the flame there itself may caramelize the pieces of lobster or the crab, but when you have a liquid like that, whether you flambe it or not makes no difference.

So now, I wanna put a little bit of cream about a quarter of a cup, or so.

And all I want to do here is for this to reduce on high heat.

I'm going to taste it.

This is a nice mixture that we use with veal, for example, or other in that case with egg.

Very elegant, delicious too.

So we have four little cocotte there, you can do that in ramekin as well, but I mean, something about half a cup here that I have.

And let's see.

See now it's thickened a little bit.

It's about fine.

So, I would put a couple of tablespoon in those in the bottom.

Here we are.

Hmm, smells good.

And you put your eggs on top, that you can do ahead, of course.

But break your eggs on top.

Gently.

Now those type of dishes, certainly in French cooking will rarely be served for, although it could be a brunch or whatever, but that would be an elegant first course for a dinner.

You would serve this.

But we're going to put this to boil gently here.

The lid are there, you don't put the lid at that point because it would prevent the steam from going into it.

But we leave it then uncovered and cover it this way so it can cook it.

And that will take, when it come to a boil, let it boil just gently, and leave it for about five, seven minutes depending how you like your eggs cooked.

I still like it quite creamy in the center.

And while it's cooking, let's start on the next dishes.

And the next dish is going to be a ragu of broccolini, beans, sausage and clam.

And again, to make your life really easy, we are using canned beans, cannellini beans, canned clam, which I always have in my freezer.

I always have sausage.

I mean this in the pantry, I already have a sausage in the freezer.

If someone comes unexpectedly, it's the kind of dish that I can do very, very rapidly, you know?

So a little bit of a dash of olive oil here.

And the sausage, sausage patty like this, I buy at my market sometime they're in patty sometime they're in the form of sausage.

If they're in sausage, make sure that you remove the casing.

And I use this, in little pieces like this.

There we are.

Cook a couple of minute on high heat.

And inside of this we are going to cook to put the broccolini.

Now those broccolini here are quite common at my market now.

They are new, I mean a number of years ago they didn't exist.

You know what I do?

Usually I taste the end of it, the stem, see if they are tender, sometime they are pretty old.

If they're old you're going to have to take the skin out of it.

My wife always does that.

You see, you peel them like this, you come at the end, you grab it.

And of course the center is very tender when they're older.

We don't need to do that with those, although my wife will probably do it too.

Okay, broccolini, we cut them into about couple of inch, inch, inch and a half pieces.

See this.

And when this brown a little bit, I'm gonna put some onion in there.

Do a little piece of onion.

We've got a third of a cup here, or so.

Here it is.

A little bit of garlic, couple of clove of garlic, goes well with it.

There we are.

Good.

Garlic.

And a little bit of flake.

You know, those pepper flake here, pretty potent, so put whatever you think you should, but... Okay, so that basically ready for our broccolini.

Salt.

I won't put any pepper here.

And then I'm going to put the juice of the clam here.

As well as the juice of the beans.

That's it.

And cook this, bring it to a boil and cook it three, four minute before we continue with the recipe.

So let me check on my eggs here.

Still a little more.

I'm gonna check on the cookie dough as well.

Whoop, and this is ready.

Barely took 10 minutes.

And you can see that the dough will spread out a little bit here.

I put that actually on those special, I don't know what they called, but I mean nothing stick to it so they are great.

So let that set up a little bit because it's still soft, and then we can go on with the recipe.

So, I think those eggs, you can see the top of the eggs.

I think this is fine now.

Yep.

So... This is quite an elegant too.

And I cut little pieces of bread here.

You cut little stick of it, you butter it and you put that in the oven.

We call that mollete.

Mollete in front, and that was classic when I was a kid.

Even an arts, soft-boiled egg, my mother would do mollete.

You break the top of the eggs and then you dip them in there, you know?

So that's what I serve with this here.

Whoop, it's hot.

You wanna cover it.

And you see, the color of this here.

Oh, we can take that one, should be beautifully creamy.

The center of the yolk should be nice and creamy and mixed with the mushroom, and then this.

That's heaven.

Don't tell that guy that I ate half of his eggs.

Put that on top, and here it is, the cocotte eggs with creamy mushroom.

And I see my ragu of broccolini is ready, boiling away here, certainly it's cooked.

So here is the time to put the beans in it.

Rest of the beans, you see those broccolini are still bright green, they cook about three, four minutes.

That's fine.

The clam, as well.

Kind of mixture, that you have in Spain, for example, often clams and beans.

And I add a bit of sausage here, that's kind of earthy.

Now this take, we want to bring that to a boil.

I want to taste, always taste.

Yeah, it's fine, and I can taste the flake here.

It's pretty hot.

So I wouldn't add anything to it, certainly no pepper.

Okay.

And this.

Nice portion of this.

Here we are.

And on top of this, I probably would put maybe a little bit of a, a little ripple of a very good olive oil here.

That would go very well with this here, right on top like this.

Okay.

To finish it up, a bit of a parmigiano reggiano on top of this, it will always help.

And here we are, the ragu of broccolini, beans, sausage, and clams.

Now it's time for dessert.

And it's time for wine too, I think a deserve of a glass of wine.

I've done a lot of work already, so I have a nice Merlot here from Napa.

Gonna go well with the meal.

Okay, now this is cold, I mean, cool.

Can go, yes, you see it slide, everything slide on this.

Can put that directly on my serving platter here.

Good.

And of course, we can build it with any type of berry that you want, in that case here I have raspberry.

Start building it up.

Start from the outside, and takes a little bit of time.

So what I do, I put raspberry preserve on top of it and the raspberry preserve, often I put it in the microwave oven to soften it a little bit.

This is seedless raspberry preserve, could be a bit thinner than that actually, you know?

It would glaze better.

That give me, I need that type of sweetener.

Here we are.

And if you want to make it even slightly fancier and if you happen to have a pomegranate here, as I have, then you can put pomegranate on top of it.

What you do with that, I always do it with a fork to break it into segment like this.

I mean this is the first one, then after you can crack it with your hand this way.

And the way to take this out, you can't even have water in your bowl because any of the white filament will stay there.

Take something very sturdy like this, upside down, and just beat it like this, and everything with fall off the membrane here.

That's an easy way of doing it.

Here we are.

That's it.

That's a nice addition to this.

If you wanna do on top of this, and here we are, the cookie dough raspberry tart.

Recipes are just a guide, you know?

And you can make them your own, change them a little bit enough, and that's the whole idea of cooking.

Happy cooking.