- Hi.

I'm Jacques Pepin.

Simple earthy foods can be wonderfully soothing and satisfying.

What could be more down to earth than creamy polenta topped with a ragu of wild and domestic mushroom, or pork paillard, thinly pounded steak, seasoned with rosemary and quickly grilled.

My version of crispy potato gaufrette will surprise you.

They are baked in the oven with very little fat.

And to finish, a comforting classic apple Charlotte, served my way.

We are bringing nature's bounty right to the table, good food from the earth on "Today's Gourmet."

(lighthearted music) (lighthearted music continues) We're going to do today good food from the earth, you know, the type of comforting food that you want to sit down with friend and eat with a bowl and a spoon, you know, and we are gonna start with polenta.

And this is what I have here.

And polenta, I have two cup of water here, dash of salt, half a cup of polenta.

And what I have here, you know, polenta is actually cornmeal, yellow cornmeal.

Grits is white cornmeal, so it's close.

You want to gently drop it into it and stir it with a whisk.

I always stir it with a whisk to be sure that I don't have any lump.

Then at that point, it start boiling right away.

I want to lower the heat to very low so that it cook very, very slowly and get thickened.

It will cook in about seven, eight minute.

And during that time, the garnish for that polenta is going to be mushroom.

And I'm going to put here a little piece of butter in there and a little dash of oil.

And we're going to start sauteing some onion first.

I have some chopped onion here and mushroom.

As you can see, I have different type of mushroom.

While the onion are cooking here, I'm gonna tell you a little bit about those mushroom.

I have two cup of mushroom that I'm going to saute there, but it's a mixture of different mushroom, which I have on that pan.

The big one here is a portobello mushroom, dark underneath and very flavorful and meaty.

I have the tiny enoki mushroom here, which come in those bunch, which are great in salad.

I have fresh shiitake.

I have the regular white mushroom, which is excellent.

I have the small chanterelle, or girolle we call in France, which are wild mushroom, and finally, those here, which are the oyster mushroom, which are parasite mushroom growing on tree.

So what I want to do here, saute my onion a little bit, then start the mushroom.

The mushroom has been washed.

You wash them just before you cook them, not ahead.

If you wash your mushroom ahead, you have problem; they get dark.

You wash them, cut them, and cook them right away.

And here, the liquid going to come out of the mushroom.

While this is starting cooking here, we're going to move to the next dish, which is pork.

And I have fillet of pork right here.

As you can see, those fillet of pork are kind of a small.

They are available in most market now.

And what people don't realize, even though it is pork, pork has less fat than meat, than chicken.

It has about the same amount of fat and cholesterol than the breast of chicken.

I'm talking about the fillet here, which I have, providing that it is properly cleaned, as I'm doing here, and providing that you use that particular cut, which is the tenderloin, or the fillet, you know.

So I look all around and remove any fat that I can see, any sinew.

And a little fillet like this will be in the area of eight ounces, you know, by the time you finish cleaning it.

So this will be for two people.

So, you know, it's relatively a small portion.

What I do here is to cut that in half.

Each half will become one portion, one steak.

And, again, that half, I will now butterfly it to make it a bit wider as you see here.

Let me see on this side maybe.

And we want to pound it a little bit.

Here it is.

Occasionally, be sure that you are stirring your polenta.

It's nice and smooth.

I can see, that's good.

If it gets too thick, add a little bit of water.

And this.

Now I want to pound this.

And to pound it, you can use plastic wrap.

If you don't want to use plastic wrap, you use a little bit of water.

Why water?

Because if it's dry, the meat is going to tear.

So the water will make it slide, you see, the meat pounder.

And we want that about a quarter of an inch thick.

Here that's a beautiful steak this way.

Here we are, going to grill that.

And before I continue with the seasoning here, I'm going to put the rest of the mixture that I need in my mushroom.

I have some garlic here.

Put the garlic at this point.

It smell really good.

Dash of salt that I didn't put in there, corn, I have a cup of corn which is about, and I have a mixture, I have white corn and yellow corn, tomato.

I'm going to have a very, very colorful dish here.

The corn are taken right off the cob.

And I'm putting approximately half a cup of chicken stock in there to make a little bit of a sauce here.

And what I want to do is to reduce that to low just as I did my polenta, and just simmer it gently for a few minute, maybe a bit of pepper in there.

During that time, the seasoning for that, we're going to put, this is a little coffee grinder.

I use that other spice grinder.

If you use it for coffee, be sure to clean it before you do coffee again.

I have peppercorn here that I'm going to put in there.

I even put a bit of the salt directly here.

And rosemary, as you see, I can put rosemary, thyme.

Any of this is going to be pretty terrific there.

That should be more than enough with this.

And you'll pulverize it.

You see?

(grinder whirring) This is absolutely terrific for that.

I ground peppercorn.

When you have a lot of pepper to ground, perfect for it.

When you do a pate, if you want to do a pate, that's what you use also.

That is if you want to do peppercorn, all kind of seasoning, you put in your pate, bay leaf, you know, any of that stuff, you use that.

And on top of it, see, I have my beautiful seasoning here.

See, this won't work in a food processor.

You need something which goes much faster, like a little coffee grinder like that is perfect.

So, again, we oil it gently on the other side, just a little bit.

I'm using a canola here, a monounsaturated type of oil, which is nice.

The rest of our seasoning on this side, and this is basically ready to be grilled.

Now, what you would want to do normally, you probably would let it marinate for a few hours.

You cover it with plastic wrap, put it in the refrigerator.

But for us, I'm going to cook it right away.

And I have really a splendid grill here.

Be sure you have a good exhaust if you have that type of grill because, of course, it's going to bring a lot of smoke in your house.

But, of course, that type of grill, you can have it on the porch, also, which would be very good.

But if you don't have it on the porch, as I say, make sure that you have a good exhaust inside the, you know, next to the stove, so I leave that here.

This will cook a couple of minutes on each side.

Remember, it's pretty thin and very flavorful, and during that side, I want to show you how to make a good salad dressing, a vraie vinaigrette, a real vinaigrette.

At home, my daughter does a vinaigrette.

And you know what she does?

She does, now she's in a real apartment in Boston, she does jar of vinaigrette like this, very easily.

Here, I chopped some garlic ahead to save a bit of time.

You can put shallot.

Garlic, if you keep it too long, don't even put the garlic in it.

Just do a plain vinaigrette without the garlic and do garlic when you need it.

French mustard, freshly ground, I mean salt, freshly ground pepper.

You want to put vinegar, and approximately a quarter of your vinegar to, a quarter of vinegar to the oil, you know.

You start stirring this together.

Now it's nice mix, and now you go with the oil.

And that would be for a whole bunch of salad.

Of course, you can keep that in your refrigerator for three weeks to a month, and you have a beautiful vinaigrette.

To this, you can add a bit of chopped shallots if you want, sometimes, some of the time garlic.

I mean, I already put the garlic in there.

You shake it, be sure that each time you use it, shake it, because it's going to separate.

But you see, I want it to be separated.

What people don't realize often is that a dressing should not be binded together like a mayonnaise.

Because if it's so, it's going to cling to the salad all over the place, when, in fact, what I want here, it's a dressing which will break down that it separates so that my salad will look absolutely gorgeous, just shiny, with not really any mayonnaise type of sauce showing.

But you want, however, as I said, to shake it before you do it so that you be sure that you don't only put the oil, which is on top.

You want to mix with the vinegar on top.

So this is basically are salad here.

You shake it at the last moment to you stir it.

Because if you do it too early, of course, it's going to get wilted.

Now let me look at my... I should have a spatula here to do this.

Whoops.

It's kind of very hot, as you can see here.

It browned nicely on this side, and I can really smell it, too.

Put it on this side, and you want the meat with that nice marking that you have here.

I just put that a couple of minutes ago, and it's maybe not quite as hot as I would want it to be, but the marking is beautiful here.

So what you want to do now, you want to do the garnish for that.

This has to cook about a minute and a half on this side.

So during that time, I'm going to show you how to make pomme gaufrette, so called, you know, gaufrette potato.

And I'm doing that with a mandolin.

You can slice regular potato chip, but to do the pomme gaufrette, you do a mandolin like this, and there is a guard which fit on top of it.

I don't use the guard, but if you're not used to the machine, I would advise you to use the guard.

You see, I am moving my hand here to create those potato, which we call gaufrette potato, which are actually like waffle potato.

There is a line on top of it here.

So you will turn it, the line, this side to this side.

And you can look from my hand this way, to my hand this way, it's 45-degree angle.

So you go one side, move the other side, this way, this way, this way, this way.

And we do that with sweet potato as well.

And we have really what we call the pomme gaufrette in France, or waffle potato.

And, again, conventionally, you would put that into the fryer and use a great deal of oil.

In a more modern way, what I'm doing here is just brushing a little bit of oil on a cookie sheet.

And what you do, you just arrange your potato on top, this way.

Of course, it takes a little longer.

You can actually do those potato in the microwave oven without any fat at all.

But it's good with a little bit of fat on top.

So you put that.

That's it, up, you brush the top.

Or you know what you can do, if you have enough oil in the bottom, you press it this way, then you turn it on the other side.

And just that minimal amount of oil will be enough really to brown it and make it very crisp in the oven.

And now what I want to do is to check my meat.

It should be about ready.

I want to come back here.

Yeah, I can see that meat is nice and brown now and ready.

And I don't want, of course, to overcook it.

Because it's kind of thin, thin pieces of paillard, so called.

The word paillard refer to very thin pieces of meat that the maitre d' used to do in the dining room, you know.

And that, you know, you can lift those things up here, if you want, and you can see those briquette.

And this is the flair of the juice falling on top of it, will really give you the smell and the taste of what you want.

And on top of that, you can put rosemary.

If you have them close together, that will create a beautiful smoke and flavor your meat also.

Now what we want to do is to finish our dish.

And as you can see here, I have some of the gaufrette potato that we have done in the oven.

I want to arrange my meat on top here, four piece, and as you can see, the meat is quite a lot of meat, satisfying if it's done this way, grilled.

Give it a little bit of color, maybe with a little bunch of watercress on one side, and on the other side here, to prepare.

And with that, we want to finish our polenta.

I mean, our polenta is finished here.

I'm gonna bring it, serve it on that plate like that, on a beautiful plate.

Maybe I'll put the potato right here.

And the thing that you want to do, see, my polenta is perfect here, nice and smooth.

So I want to get that polenta right in the middle here, and on top of it, the stew, that stew of mushroom, corn, and all that, which, going to be absolutely perfect with this.

(lighthearted music) We're going to finish our menu today with a spicy apple Charlotte, in a way which is less caloric than the classic one.

I have a whole array of different apple.

Where I live, I go to farm, I have up to 20 different type of apple.

I have Granny Smith here and Red Delicious.

I'm going to use some of those.

I already have some which are cut right here.

And basically, what you want to do is to take the core of it.

I have also done it without peeling it, but I like to peel it, and that little center, I'm going to keep for decoration.

So you would want to peel it.

You can actually keep the peel of your apple.

If I recall, when I was a child, my grandmother used to make a tea out of that, a tea out of dry apple skin.

Okay, so you keep your skin, or throw it out.

Cut it in half.

You now have cleaned up both end, as you see.

Again, put your thumb in the middle in the same way to remove the center.

This is a good technique.

Needs a little bit of practice, and watch out not to cut your finger.

Again, you know, put your thumb in the middle, cut around to get that nice round thing, that you can put a bit of lemon juice on top.

Use that for decoration.

This one is cut in pieces like this.

And, of course, different type of apple are going to give you different type of texture.

You want a fairly firm apple here.

Cooking apple, if you have a McIntosh for example, the type of apple which is going to break down more, now, if this happen, fine, you can still use it.

You have to cook it longer to be sure that you don't have too much moisture left in it.

Otherwise, that will give you problem in the unmolding of the Charlotte.

So we put a little bit of butter and oil, our apple here.

We want to cook them a long time.

Saute them a little bit.

The juice is going to come out.

And now we're going to put the garnish that I have in there.

I have the classic cinnamon here, then I have allspice.

Allspice is sometimes called Jamaican pepper.

And clove, clove is very strong.

So just put a dash of it.

Then I have some honey for that sweetening, and a little bit of sugar.

So, again, the seasoning there is purely a question of taste.

Some people adore cinnamon, and they want to put a little more, some a little less, you know.

Just a touch of clove.

I'm gonna put my honey in it, a little bit of sugar.

And we want this to cook.

That's it, start cooking now.

Of course, it's going to take a while to cook, 20, 30 minute to cook slowly in the juice.

So I have some which are cooked.

Cover those.

Those are cooked and lukewarm, but I mean, cooling off now.

That's what I'm going to use in mine.

The second step is to show you how to mold.

I have an eight inch or nine inch, I think it's eight inch by two, yes, eight inch by two cake mold here.

Conventionally, the Charlotte is done in a Charlotte mold, which is higher than that, but I'll do it flatter here.

I need less, and it's more than enough big.

What I do first, I cut a strip of paper, and I put it in the bottom here to be sure that it's going to unmold.

I have oiled that bottom gently.

Then after, to measure this, you fold it in four, like this, then into smaller and smaller triangle.

And you'll measure your radius.

The radius to the center is about here, and that's it.

I have a piece of paper which will fit the bottom, which make it easier for me to unmold.

I can turn it.

It's oiled slightly.

And turn it the other way so it stick on both side.

Now, to put the bread here, there is different way of doing the bread.

I wanna show you a couple of different way.

We can do it with those triangle.

You know, you cut triangle like this to mold.

This is the classic way.

And you do that by taking a piece of bread, cutting it in half, and, you know, doing triangle this way, and putting it all around, and it's fine, and keeping that for the top.

Another way of doing it, which is maybe easier, is to take four slice of bread, arrange your bread in the center here.

The bread should be trimmed maybe in the center, a bit better if you trim it here, this way.

And then just put your board on top of it and cut all around, you know.

So that's a way of doing it, which is probably a bit easier, you know, to do it.

Okay, so now you can take all of those piece of bread, and they're going to fit exactly inside.

Here we are.

The center is filled up.

So what you want to do now, as I say, again, keep all of this to put on top.

You want to do the side.

The side, you want to cut your bread in half and put it all around this way.

I should have a bit more bread here that I have.

I can use those pieces.

I can use those pieces around, just have to trim the end of it.

They are fine like that.

And what I have here is my apple, which have been cooked long enough.

So you want to pile it up right in the center, this way.

And press the leftover bread a little bit all over to garnish the top.

You want it to brown anyway.

And that can go directly into the oven.

Want it preferably to put it on a cookie sheet like this.

It's going to brown better.

Put it into the oven.

And I have one here which is cooked.

As you can see, it should rest for a little while.

I'm gonna put it right there.

Bring my plate here.

What you would want to do is to actually turn this, see those pieces of paper on the side, up, upside down.

Pull on the paper.

This way, as you can see that piece will remain, and the Charlotte is absolutely beautiful here.

I'll put it there, putting a couple of those decoration on top, you know, that I have here.

And we do a sauce with it.

And the sauce is very simply done with a preach preserve and Calvados.

Calvados is from Normandy in France, the classic apple brandy, beautiful apple brandy.

So you mix that with your peach preserve, or another type of preserve.

And if you want, glazing the top, a little bit, all over, you could do that, of course, before putting that thing here.

As you can see, it's shiny.

You can serve the sauce separate, which I do very often.

I love the sauce separate, maybe a few little pieces of almond on top.

And we have here a beautiful Charlotte.

I made that apple Charlotte in a cake pan, which is thinner than the classic apple Charlotte, on the higher side, and it's a bit smaller.

And it was developed in the 19th century by French chef in Russia, but serve with the cream, and with creme anglaise and all that.

And we're serving that with a jam, a peach jam.

You can do it with apricot or any other type of jam to make it a bit lighter.

So I think we have a very good food from the earth today in our menu, starting with the polenta, that rich polenta, served with that stew of different mushroom, then that very thin, delicate scaloppine, if you want, like a scaloppine, we call it a paillard of pork, done on the grill, seized with the strong taste of the grill, and served with the those potato waffle, you know, which are really fun to do.

And done this way in the oven with a little bit of oil on top are far to have as much oil as the classic potato chip or French fried potato.

Then we have a salad I show you today how to make your classic vinegarette with garlic that you can do ahead and always enjoy.

I always enjoy a salad, a piece of bread, and finally our apple Charlotte, which is much bigger than we should have done it for four.

You can serve at least eight people with that Charlotte.

So it's even less fattening than the recipe will tell you.

In any case, we're going to serve that with a Pinot noir from the Santa Maria Valley.

It is 100% Pinot noir, and this is kind of spicy full-mouth wine with a berry taste is going to go very well with our meal today.

I enjoy cooking it for you.

Here is to you a toast, and happy cooking.