- Hi, I'm Jacques Pépin.

When the summer heats up, dishes you can make ahead and serve at room temperature are easy on the cook and a welcome treat for the guest.

Our summer menu starts with a salad of braised shiitake mushroom, and bitter greens in a garlicky vinaigrette.

Poached salmon in aspic served with strips of fresh horseradish is a classic do-ahead summer entree.

And for dessert, a colorful cherry pudding with mango sauce.

With a little planning, you don't have to spend a hot night slaving over the stove.

Join me for cool and tasty hot weather fare, next on "Today's Gourmet".

(smooth uplifting jazz music) (smooth uplifting jazz music continues) Today we're going to do an interesting menu, hot weather fare.

All the stuff that you would want to do ahead, a great summertime menu, you wanna do ahead in summer.

And I'm going to start, we're going to do a salmon, and I want to start with mushroom here, which are going to be added to the aspic of the salmon.

When you do mushroom like this, you wash them at the last moment, you know, at the last moment, I put them under water, wash them and cut them.

Don't wash them ahead, because they discolor.

What we want to do here is to put that, I have a cup of water here.

That's just a cup of water and a dash of salt and we wanna bring that to a boil.

Next, what I want to do is to poach the salmon.

And first, I want to do a stock with this, with onion.

Do I put a little bit of sliced onion.

(knife chops) Thinly sliced onion.

What we are doing actually is a vegetable stock, you know?

Which I put in there, and that vegetable stock to flavor the salmon that we are going to cook in it later.

So I have some Herbes de Provence here, which is a mixture of different type of herbs.

I'm putting that on top of this water.

I have three cup of water here.

Salt in there.

A dash of pepper.

And a dry, fruity type of wine, that I need about a cup.

This is the base of our salmon.

We want to cook this, bring it to a boil, and you want to cook that for about five, six minutes, to really develop the taste.

And after that, add your salmon to it.

I have a pound of salmon here, which is totally clean, and you can cut it in half in two strip, either this way or this way.

Maybe I'll cut it this way and actually bring it together to make a type of sausage, if you want this way.

And next, I want, this hasn't been cooking long enough, but by the time it bring to a boil, boil four, five minutes, you add your salmon to it, bring it to a boil, and shut off the heat and let it 10, 12 minutes into that hot liquid, and that's going to be enough.

And this is what you get at the end.

I have one here, which is totally cooked now.

And what we want to do is to remove it from the hot water.

The hot liquid, rather, the hot stock, drain it a little bit.

And we want to use that liquid now to do what we call a clarification, and to do an aspic with this.

And the process of clarification is a very interesting process by which with egg white, usually, you're going to clarify liquid to have it crystal clear.

I see that my mushroom are boiling nicely now.

They should be about cooked enough, and I need the liquid of those mushroom, also, to add to the clarification.

So I'm going to add the liquid in there.

And keep my mushroom, the mushroom are going to go in the, in the salmon, on top of the salmon itself.

Remember, all there is here is water.

So it's nice and clean.

There is no fat or anything like that here.

So I can put that on the side.

And the clarification is going to be done with those different vegetable.

The green, you use only the green of leek, the green of celery, the green of anything, and here I have about a cup of the green of leek.

You don't use the white.

The white will tend to cloudy the aspic.

See, a clarification basically, is a flavoring agent.

You have a stock, and the stock has to be clarified and flavored.

So it's almost like doing tea, you know?

All the green like that, which going to give me flavor very fast.

I have tarragon, I have parsley.

All of the type of green that I will put in there.

A carrot, again for flavor.

Cut into small pieces.

(knife chops) You know, it doesn't have to cook long at all.

Although sometime, I have one egg white here, because this is the process of clarification, as I say, with the egg white.

I have some crushed black pepper and an envelope of gelatin, which is about two teaspoon of plain gelatin which finish what we call the clarification.

What I add to it a little bit, it's maybe a teaspoon or two of soy sauce to give me a little bit of color in the clarification that is in the juice, so, this, what I want to do, I have the liquid which is boiling here, is to mix that to it.

You don't want to put it directly in it, you don't want to cook the egg white, you see?

You want to mix this first together this way before combining the whole thing.

Now it's about combined enough, so I can add the whole thing to it.

And as you will see, the thing will get very cloudy right away.

The reason is that, the reason is that the egg white in it is going to start cooking.

So you want to stir it, because you don't want it to come to burn, and it can burn.

You want to stir it until it comes to a boil.

And as soon as it comes to a boil, the egg white is going to hold all of the ingredient together into a type of crust, through which the liquid is going to filter and get crystal clear, you know?

Even though now, it doesn't look that it's going to get crystal clear, it will.

So you want to stir it.

Maybe another minute or so, and during that time, I wanted to show you that the salmon that I have here, what you do, you want to take your salmon, clean up a little bit the pieces of onion on top, arrange it on a piece of plastic wrap like this.

Clean it up a little bit.

This way, and we want to wrap it together into a type of sausage.

And you want to cool it off this way, you know?

Op, now my clarification is coming to a boil.

So I let it come to a strong boil, and I shut it off.

At that point you don't want to disturb that crust.

Now what happened here, at that point also, you should let it rest for about 10 minutes.

Develop the taste, again, and to let it settle a little bit, then you strain it.

What I have here is a piece of paper towel into a strainer, and that's what you strain it through.

It's one of the finest way, you know?

Very thin to strain it.

So what we're going to do is to put it right through.

Maybe I should have my ladle here, be better.

And we start putting it right through here.

In fact, I can pour it directly in it if I'm very careful, although I don't want to mess it up, after you go through all of this.

So you can do a clarification with meat juice, you know?

With chicken stock, beef stock.

This one is done with fish stock.

And you'll see in a second when it go through, it's purely clarified.

Now what happened is that, this has to cool off.

You put it into ice, and I have some here in the ice, which is cooling off, until it start getting hard.

And I can see that this one is setting up already.

So what you have next to you, you have a bit of aspic, a bit warmer to add it to it in case it set up too fast, you see?

But you see, it's absolutely crystal clear, as you can see.

This one will be crystal clear, also.

Doesn't finish straining yet.

But that's the same idea.

So now, we can build it up together.

What you do.

First, you put about a cup of aspic in the bottom of a pan and let it set.

And this is what you get by the time it's set.

That thing is going to get hard, as you can see here.

Next, I have that salmon.

One similar, this one of course hasn't had time to cool off.

The mushroom the same way.

I have the same thing here, cold.

So you want to unwrap.

Maybe I move a little bit out of the way here to give me some space.

You want to unwrap your salmon and grab it together.

It's like a sausage.

And place it directly on top of your aspic here.

The aspic is now hard.

You want to put some mushroom on top of it, and around.

Add some more mushroom if you want to, your aspic in there, and now that the as aspic is really setting, you can see that it's setting, then you pour it on top of it to finish.

More mushroom.

Just to fill up the, to fill that up.

And in addition to that, I had done here, maybe even a few leaves of fresh tarragon, because we have tarragon in it, that we put on top.

I would want to put a few, a bit more aspic on top.

This is a beautiful summer dish, crystal clear, you know?

And with a strong intensity of the vegetable in the stock.

What you want to do now is to put that into the refrigerator until it's set.

You know, you cover it.

I have one right there.

And take another one, which have been setting for about an hour.

As you can see, this one, I could move it around.

It is set.

Here.

So I want to serve this, and with this I wanted to also serve some fresh horseradish, and the fresh horseradish that I have here, as you can see, it's very, very strong.

You can peel it with a vegetable peeler.

Take the dirt out of it.

See, this is a mess.

And with this now, take those tiny strip of vegetable peeler, strip of fresh horseradish.

This is very, very pungent, you know?

It goes so well with it.

So this is what we want to do now.

I wanna serve some of this separate, I can put some in there, you know?

You wanna serve that on your table.

And to cut this, you will want to go directly into it this way, you know, to cut a piece of the salmon and serve it with your aspic, you know?

A little bit like that, glistening.

Whoop!

Beautifully glistening like this.

You could put a little bit of green salad around.

And a little bit of the horseradish on top of it, here and there, those flake, as I say, are very pungent.

As a first course for our summer menu, we're going to do a braised shiitake mushroom with bitter salad.

Have different type of shiitake here.

Those are fresh shiitake.

Those are dry shiitake.

Those are also dry shiitake, those are chrysanthemum shiitake, by far the best.

Much more expensive than those, but truly worth the difference of price.

I have them soaking in liquid here.

What you want to do is to remove the stem.

The stem is extremely tough, you know?

And you can use the stem in stock.

And after that, what we've done here is to put them flat into a large skillet, like this, and use the liquid from the mushroom.

You know, you use the liquid, you pour it gently in case there is a little bit of dirt, yup, in the bottom.

We use a little bit of olive oil on top, just a dash.

Dash of salt.

A little more water if you want, because I like them to cook a long time.

Bring that to a boil, and you cook it until there is no more liquid.

As I have here, there is no liquid, and now they have been browning for a while, so I have nice crystallization of the mushroom here, which is what I want.

Very chewy, almost like meat.

And we're going to serve that on the bitter green.

I'll put that to the time being here.

And, as you see, I have a whole bunch of bitter green here.

I have what we call the frisée, you know?

The French word for curly endive.

This is the curly endive, except this one is about five times the price than this one.

This is an escarole.

Try to get it with the white center like this.

And those, of course, are the radicchio.

This is another type of radicchio, chicory di treviso.

And this is the regular endive.

So we're going to use that type, and that type for us today.

Maybe two of those.

And I'm going to do a vinegarette in there first.

For the vinegarette, I want to put a clove of garlic, a vinegarette with garlic, you know?

So I crush the garlic here.

(knife chops) Chop it very fine.

There is other way, of course, of grounding garlic, but I like to do it this way.

Salt, pepper, oil and vinegar in the proportion of about, hmm, maybe three times the amount of oil for the amount of vinegar.

You could have a little bit of mustard in there too.

But this is fine this way.

And now our endives, those are the Belgium endive, which of course, in Belgium, it's called chicon.

And what is called endive in Belgium is actually, it's actually what we call escarole here.

That's what the Belgian call endives, so I mix this in there.

And the green, you see, the advantage of that, as I say, we use a bitter green here, and the bitter green gets really a very specific chewiness and texture to that salad.

So what we want to do is to mix that up.

And you can do that a little bit ahead, remember, because this is pretty tough as a salad, so.

(utensils clang) I would want to arrange a bit of the salad on top here.

Maybe all around, maybe the endive.

You know, you can choose however you want to present it, and spend a little more time on it, and maybe the red one in the center here, for us.

And finally, of course, I'm gonna bring that back here.

Put the mushroom on top, those large, chewy, elastic mushroom, you know?

Which as I say are really a delicacy.

That on top, and maybe you could have a couple of leaves or a little piece of fresh basil on top for color.

And this is the first course for our menu today.

And now to finish our summer menu, the classic British dessert, summer pudding.

We're going to do it with cherry.

And as you see, I have a bunch of different cherries here.

You pit them.

You can pit them, of course, with the regular cherry pitter to remove this.

You can also use a knife.

Using a knife, what you want to do is to go through the little hole here, put you thing, and press, press to get the pit soft, you know?

And get it out this way.

And actually, my mother even used that type of thing, that type of safety pin, you know, to go inside again and pull out your pit.

One of the other is going to work.

And what we wanna do is to cook it now.

We put that in there.

We have a pound and a half of cherries here.

About four tablespoon of sugar and half a cup of red wine.

You have a dry, fruity red wine on this.

Bring it to a boil.

Cook it for about six, seven minutes.

Then let it cool off in the liquid.

And this is what I have here.

That mixture has been cooled off in the liquid.

So what I want to do now is to prepare the pudding.

So you take a bowl like this, and I place a couple of pieces of paper around because you need to, to be sure that it's going to come out, you know?

And you start with pound cake.

You have 10 ounce pound cake here.

You can put it right across here.

Then cut your pound cake in half, put a piece here.

There is no real rule, you know, to arrange that.

You can arrange it in any way you like.

Now I need some triangle for the corner here.

You know, that you can do here and there.

So I would put one here, try to make it fit a little bit, but it's not that absolutely essential, you know?

Now as you see, I have a piece that I can put there.

I can break it, so it fit about.

And another piece here.

And that's basically it, you know?

You fill up the whole center.

So now you start putting your cherry in it.

Actually, you know what you do?

To be sure that the bottom is going to soak even better, take all of the trimming, some of the trimming already, and put it in there, you know?

The whole liquid and all that have to be absorbed.

So you want to put it this way.

And again, alternating it with some of those trimming here, that I have.

You want to keep the nicest piece for the top, of course.

But I mean, I'll have plenty here.

Maybe a little more.

You can see basically I can put the whole thing in there.

Or maybe I'll keep one for me.

A couple.

But I put all the juice.

And on top of this now, you want to put the rest of your pound cake.

Arrange it in any way there, it doesn't really matter.

No one is going to see the bottom.

This way here and there, you know?

And I have about all of the pound cake is going to be placed on that.

You want to press it a little bit.

And what I want to do with that is to put a piece of plastic wrap on top, and you really press it around to tighten it, because you want to do that at least, at least overnight.

At least overnight, so it really get together.

You can even leave it longer, you know?

And with that, what we want to do is a sauce.

And what I have here is a mango, mango sauce.

I have that mango that I peeled here.

It's nice and fresh and ripe, which is what you want.

And a couple of tablespoon of honey with that.

Here.

Then with the honey, we put a little bit of water.

And maybe a tablespoon of dark rum for taste.

If you object to the rum, then you can eliminate it, or put another alcohol.

Then we emulsify it.

(mixer whirs) Into a puree.

You could even strain it after, if you want it absolutely smooth, you know?

Maybe a bit more water.

And a fresh mango sauce, this way.

And all you have to do, you can refrigerate that, of course, is to unmold your dessert now.

And I have one which is done here, as you can see.

So this one, I didn't even put press, I didn't even press anything, and it's what I did, I put it, whoop.

Is it going to come out?

Yes, about.

If it stick a little bit in the bottom, doesn't matter.

After all, it's the paper here.

You see this one, I could put it upside down, and it will press by itself this way.

So I have it here.

And of course those little pieces of paper on the side, which are going to help, hopefully, to unmold it.

So what you want to do is first to put this against it.

And use those, pull on this.

There is always a certain element of suspense to this.

Here we go.

Whoo.

Okay.

Put that on top.

Looks great.

We put a little bit of the mango sauce all around.

You can have, put some extra one that you serve at the table.

You know, you wanna spread it out.

And maybe decorating the top with some fresh cherries.

We have some fresh cherries around also, to decorate.

I have in addition, those tiny little champagne grapes, you know?

Which are going to look good in the sauce all around for your final decoration.

This is a terrific finish for a great summer meal.

All type of fresh stuff, fruit, a lot of vegetables, salad and so forth.

And all of that can be done ahead, you know?

Which is great for summer, if you have friends coming, you can start with that shiitake salad, and be sure again to buy the chrysanthemum, if you can afford it.

Actually, you can buy any type of wild mushroom, or if you're in an area which has wild mushroom and you know how to pick them up, you can use that of course, which is what I do very often with friends.

But with the bitter green and that strong dressing, it goes so well together.

Then of course, we have a salmon in aspic with horseradish flake.

The aspic, I know it's a little complicated, it may seem a bit intimidating, but if you really follow a straight method, it's relatively easy.

You don't want the salmon to be overcooked inside, just slightly moist, and the very flavorful vegetable aspic is great.

And finally, that great summer pudding, which is a treat, which you can do with any type of berry.

I mean in England, conventionally, it's going to be done with boysenberry and what we call ballon in France, which is a type of gooseberry, and red berry and so forth.

Oh, and a mixture of all of this.

Here, we did it only with beautiful cherries.

And with that, we're going to serve a Pouilly-Fuissé, a Pouilly-Fuissé is a Chardonnay from the lower part of Burgundy, a next type of Beaujolais.

It's a very fragrant, very fragrant, spicy type of wine, which is going to go absolutely perfect with our meal tonight.

Nice and cold for a hot weather fare, and a light summer menu.

I hope you enjoy our menu that I made for you today.

See you next time, and happy cooking.