- Everyone loves bacon.

I learned this one from my wife.

She put them on those tray, which is the best to cook your bacon.

And then for an extra step to make it really special, you brush it with maple syrup, or a bit of honey if you want.

You do that on both side, with the other side the same way.

And you put them for 4 1/2 minute in the microwave oven, depending how thick it is, and it is absolutely wonderful.

Nice and crisp.

Sweet, crisp bacon.

Surprise your friend with a clever one-minute recipe.

I'm Jacques Pepin.

This is "Fast Food My Way."

Happy cooking.

I think as I get older, I love seafood more and more.

And I buy a lot of seafood.

I live on the shoreline of Connecticut, and I buy it from a legal fisherwoman there, which supply me with great oyster and mussel and clam.

And today, we're going to do a pilaf of mussel picante to start, then after an onion-crusted sole with an anchovy butter, which is really classic, and finally an apricot clafoutis.

The clafoutis are always made with apricot or cherries in France.

So I will start with the rice for the mussel.

So a little bit of olive oil in there, a good tablespoon.

You want about quarter of a cup or so of chopped onion.

(knife tapping) Finely chopped onion, a little more, a little less.

Here we are.

And that you wanna saute that in your olive oil.

You can, of course, do it with butter, but I tend to use more fish as I'm getting older, and also more olive oil for some reason, so.

Okay.

You want that onion to soften a little bit in the olive oil, then we add the rice.

What you want to do is to stir it so that the rice is coated with the oil a little bit, like this.

(pan clanking) That's it.

Then you can put chicken stock.

I'm putting water in this because the mussel are pretty strong taste.

Salt with that, and pepper.

This is it.

So you wanna bring that to a boil, about 17 minutes or so.

Your rice should be perfect.

So this is your standard rice.

And next, I think we are going to do the dessert, the clafoutis, the apricot clafoutis.

We have a can of apricot here in heavy syrup, so-called, and that's about half a cup of heavy syrup, and that's what I want.

Sometime in those can, you have more apricot.

They are smaller, they are bigger.

It's a bit hard, but whatever there is, you take it.

I have about three tablespoon of butter here, melting.

So to this I'm going to put two tablespoon of sugar, a quarter of a cup of flour.

You want to mix this carefully so the flour doesn't lump.

(whisk rattling) So it's a bit of a crepe batter, you know?

Not exactly a crepe batter but close to.

Then I have three eggs, in there.

Always break your egg on something flat and then open it, rather on something with an edge like that, which push the shell into the eggs and introduce bacteria.

So three eggs.

(whisk clinking) Mix it.

(whisk rattling) So those are very fast dessert.

I'm putting about a quarter of a cup of sour cream in there.

Here we are.

Mix it.

(whisk rattling) I have my butter here.

Like half of it, at least, you put in the batter, and in the rest of it, you put your clafoutis mixture.

Okay.

Put that right on top of the stove.

You wanna start cooking it here, and it's probably a minute, minute and a half, and then you can arrange your apricot on top now.

You know, when we do the cherry, of course, you put the cherry in the bottom and pour your batter on top of it.

So here I have about, I don't know, seven, eight of those.

(boiling water crackles) There we are.

One more.

So this is going full blast now.

I think my rice is boiling a lot too, but I want to lower that rice to very low.

As low as it goes.

And this is going to be ready, basically, to go into the oven.

When you see it starting bubbling around a little bit, that's it.

You can put it into the oven.

About 400 degrees, that's gonna take about 20 minutes.

Here we are.

That's it.

Good.

Our dessert is finished, almost.

The rice is cooking.

I can see it here.

And now then we can do the mussel, which goes into the rice.

And I have mussel here, about three pound of mussel.

You can see that sometime there is a beard attached to it, so you wanna pull that beard, you know?

It used to be that mussel had a lot of sand into it.

Now it's kind of rare because they are grown on wire, you know, so they don't touch the soil.

You see your mussel opening like this, you can touch the inside a little bit, you know, to tickle it.

And you see that make it close, so you know it's alive.

Oh, here, another one.

You can bang it like this too, and you see it close right away.

So it's not because it's open, you throw it out.

It's still alive, you know.

So in there, I'm gonna put some onion too.

Or I can put that first.

(pan crackles) My pan is hot.

(pan crackles) And this is the secret ingredient here.

I am putting about a cup, cup and a half- (pan sizzles) of Bloody Mary mix.

Very spicy, you know?

And that's going to open those and give me all of flavoring that I need.

In fact, I'm going to add even a little more of Tabasco because I like it really spicy.

Here.

Then some onion.

(knife tapping) About have a cup, that should be finished here.

(knife tapping) This is a sharp knife.

It's a pleasure to cook with a sharp knife.

Okay, let's see here.

And we want to put a little bit of olive oil in there, and maybe we'll even finish some at the end.

The salt, we'll probably need some salt.

It's a bit hard to know with the mussel, you know?

(mussels rattling) As you see, they have a beautiful color.

I wanna cover this.

And this should open as soon as it come to a boil.

I think it's practically cooked now.

You can see that they're opening a bit.

All of them, maybe another minute or so.

So we're gonna serve them in this, so I want to oil a little bit of those.

Put a bit of oil here.

I will have plenty here for.... One of those per person is more than enough.

Other main course.

In fact, when you want to do a first course, those are ideal, you know?

Those are about half cup.

The other one may be a bit big, so.

(bowl clinking) Okay.

(bowl clinking) Okay.

Now, I think the mussels are cooked enough.

(water bubbling) We will drain them here.

(water bubbling) (mussels rattling) There we are.

Those are really large mussel Beautiful actually inside.

So for that particular recipe, we take the mussel.

I mean, look at the size of those mussel.

Inside, take them out.

They're a bit warm now.

You know, when I was, my Claudine was in Belgium, in Belgium they eat a lot of mussel, so she showed me how to eat mussel this way.

You're supposed to take one of those mussel and empty that this one here and use that as a pincher, you know?

And that's how you eat your mussel.

You see?

You grab them one after the other out of this with that.

Those are particularly large mussel.

Another thing that you should know with mussel also, sometime when you do them in a salad, you may want to take the outside of the mussel here.

You can see that part here.

There is the mantle here on the outside.

You grab it here, and that's it will come out as a string, you know, around.

And some people think that this is a bit tough.

I think it's fine.

For now, I have to clean all of those.

Oh, I also have to reduce the juice here, so I'll put my pot back.

And actually all that sauce, (sauce trickling) I want it to reduce while I'm cleaning up the mussel.

So now let me see that rice.

You can see that all of the water has disappeared.

In fact, the onion come to the top.

And I can move it, take even a little bit of the rice.

It's about 18 minute.

(blows) That's cooked.

That's cooked.

(sauce bubbling) (pan scraping) Okay, well this is reduced enough.

I think I would emulsify a little bit of olive oil in there still.

Bring it to a good boil.

Give a bit of a unctuosity, you know, richness to the mixture.

And that's it.

I can shut it off.

And now the pilaf.

So what you do with the pilaf, you take about the value of, how about half a cup of rice, at the most, around, and you wanna press it.

You wanna press it to the side to create like a nest, you know?

So you can prepare those ahead.

If you have 10 guests, you prepare your plate.

So how many of those shall I put in there?

Probably five, six, eight.

Those are quite large.

I rarely see mussel as beautiful as those.

And then I'll put more rice on top, and you wanna press it to keep it into shape, you know, into place.

And basically, you know, when I had a small restaurant, I would prepare that, eight or a dozen of those, and have them ready to go.

Have them ready to go.

I'm gonna put this here to show you.

This there.

Put a bit of parsley on top, on the top.

What you could do is really put your plate first on top of it, leave this, and basically you leave them this way to keep warm, you know, somewhere, so you don't disturb it.

When you're ready to serve them, that you would want to remove this around and serve your sauce.

The sauce would be served all around That's it.

Maybe another mussel on top like this.

Couple of little pieces of parsley here for decoration.

And here we are, the pilaf of mussel picante.

(gentle music) I think the apricot clafoutis must be ready.

I'm gonna take it out of the oven.

Ah, beautiful.

I can see it now.

It's really hot, but, you know, it slide in my pan.

I could unmold it.

I'm going to let it cool off a little bit, but already put a bit of a layer of sugar on top of it.

(spoon clinking) Here, we put a bit more sugar later on.

And while it cool off a little bit, I'm going to do the main course, which is the sole, you know, the onion crusted sole with anchovy butter.

We're gonna saute that in a skillet like this, this, and a little bit of butter.

(pan scraping) Here.

And the sole are here, and those are half a filet.

That is half a fish, that is the top or the bottom of the filet.

You can see that this part is the part which is under the skin, and this part is the part which is touching the bone.

But our beautiful white sole called differently in different part of the country.

You know, in the East, we call that usually, I mean, they are lemon sole, fluke, you know, flounder, and so forth.

There is a whole bunch of them.

And here, you have petrale sole, we have anothers.

One idea that I do here, I use french fried onion rings as a- (food processor grinding and whirring) as a coating.

It certainly make it quite fluffy and all that.

And if you're onion ring end up being too wet, sometime they are wet, just put a couple of piece of bread in it and that will make it drier.

So what we'll do there is we doing what we call an anglaise, which is breaking an egg.

I probably have enough with one egg for two people.

And there I put salt, pepper, a little dash of oil in there.

Sometime we put a dash of vinegar even in there or a dash of water.

And then I will beat that.

(egg sloshing) (fork whisking) You know what?

I have done that also with nuts like hazelnut, you know, any of those nut that you ground or mix with bread also, and it's very good.

Okay, so this is cooking.

(butter crackling) I need another one of those.

And now I'm ready to do the sole.

Sometime you even go to a third step, and the third step is wrap it in flour, then in eggs, and sometime in breadcrumb, or the type of crumb that I have here today.

So I'm gonna put a little bit of salt on top of it, at least on one side, dip it in there, clean it up of not too much, and bring that on top.

Press it a little bit.

I forget where I saw that.

I know I saw that somewhere or something similar.

I say, "That's a good idea."

It really tastes good too.

So here is my sole, one sole like that, of course for one person, you know?

And a second one.

(sole squelches) You can even have that, you know, in restaurants, you would want to have these breaded ahead, whether you use bread or that special coating that I'm putting on.

Okay, here we are.

(sole crackling) Okay (sole sizzles) Okay.

That's it.

This has to cook a couple of minutes on each side, (sole sizzles) (water swishing) and continue with the classic anchovy butter that we put on top, you know?

Make sure that it go a bit fast here.

Maybe I'll reduce it a bit.

And the anchovy butter, I use it for chicken as well as for fish.

It's a great mixture which is done with garlic, anchovies, and butter.

I do the same thing with different type of herb, you know, and often when I have it in the garden.

And what I do in winter, I freeze it.

I put those butter in a piece of plastic wrap, like a little tube like this, and keep that in my freezer.

Yeah.

And then when I do a steak, instead of doing a hollandaise sauce or, you know, a sauce with tarragon, bearnaise, then all you do is to slice a piece of that butter still frozen, and it's great to... So let me turn this because I think, (sole crackling) yeah, it's ready.

Wow, it's very fast.

That's good.

So in there I have garlic, I'm gonna put the anchovies filet, with actually the oil.

And I have here, with a can of anchovies, a lot.

And about a third of a cup, or not even, what do I put about here, half a stick of butter, something like that.

And I could put in there, actually, (sole crackling) there it is, maybe a dash of white wine.

And certainly a good dash of ground black pepper.

(sole crackling) So this is a very assertive type of butter.

So maybe a couple of tablespoon of wine here.

And when I use wine, I will tend to taste it because you never know.

I have friend in the kitchen, they're trying to sneak something in my wine, but I'm never sure.

(sole crackling) Ah, this one is fine.

And here we go.

(food processor whirring) And that type of small food processor, you know, is really a spice grinder, and it reduce the thing to really a total puree, you know?

This is great for, certainly when I do black peppercorn, you know, and all that, that's what I use.

You can use it on this side, and you can bring the blade on this side.

And it does a different type of cut.

One crushed more and the other one chopped more.

(sole crackling) That butter, as I say, is very assertive and it's classic.

A sole Colbert, we call in France, where we have a sole which is fried and serve with that butter.

There we are.

(sole crackling) Nice butter.

Maybe I put a little piece of, I don't know, couple of pieces of chives in it.

Give it a little bit of a distinction here.

Now let me serve my sole.

I would certainly put some lemon juice on top.

And maybe a little bit, maybe a couple of drop of the butter, (indistinct).

This on the side.

And maybe a little lump of the Colbert butter to melt on top of it.

Here, it will melt.

We can put more in the dining room.

And this is it, the onion-crusted sole with anchovy butter.

(gentle music) We're ready to serve the clafoutis.

So you can see that the clafoutis cool off.

I mean, it's still pretty warm, but goes down a little bit, and it's fine that the way it should be.

And here, it should come out of the pan.

If not, you put it back on the stove a little bit, you know?

Come on.

(plate clanking) Okay.

And that we serve that in a wedge.

Clafoutis always served in a wedge.

It's a very spongy, you know, type of... That's a very delicate actually, you know?

The clafoutis is wet.

With maybe a little more, a little more sugar on top.

(spoon ticking) On this one too.

And with that, a little glass of wine always help to finish the meal.

Remember that the food you share always tastes better than the food you eat alone.

Happy cooking!