(relaxing music) - This is the headiest pizza you ever made.

I take a piece of lavish bread, fresh tomato on top, any type of Gucci that you like on top, anchovy, filet, ground pepper, a bit of olive oil, 10 minutes in the oven, 425.

And here you have a beautiful pizza.

Finish it up with a little bit of fresh basil on top here and there.

(relaxing music continues) And you have a great pizza.

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

Happy cooking.

You know, one of my favorite, very fast, easy dessert to do, A hasty pudding.

Which is what my mother used to do when I was a kid.

And what I have here is milk boiling.

You can use half and half or milk, one or the other.

How rich you want it.

And we put semolina in it.

A third of a cup of semolina.

Semolina is course a wheat product.

Nothing to do with polenta, it's like cream of wheat but more granulated, you know?

So we wanna bring that to a boil.

It's coming now.

And then I wanna reduce the heat.

This is going to cook in about two or three minutes.

Cook very fast.

So what we do with it is a nice sauce.

And the sauce we're going to do is with apricot.

A good apricot jam, the best apricot jam you can get.

Make the best sauce, you know?

And in this, I don't care about the pieces, there is pieces in it, it's great, doesn't really matter, but we'll put lemon juice in it.

I'm straining that through my perfectly clean finger.

A little bit of cognac.

You can put cognac, you can put Armagnac, you can put scotch, any liquor that you want.

Or if you don't want to use any liquor, it's fine too.

It's going to be very good.

With or without, huh?

I like a little bit of liquor in it.

It's a good cognac.

And then I have some almond here.

You can use other type of nut, but I mean those are slice almond, which I baked into the oven.

You can keep some to put on top of the pudding even if you want to.

You stir that together.

And this makes a great mixture.

That mixture, actually I use it at a base for fruit salad.

You cut some fruit salad, some pear apple in there, toss that in there.

Then finish it with beer.

It's a great fruit salad.

Let's see this now.

As you can see, (whisk clanging) it's doing quite well.

It's going to take (calming music plays) I think a couple of minutes more to really thicken.

(calming music stops) Well, I think it's, but again, you know, be sure that with your whisk, I use the pull of my hand.

I really go in the corner like this.

That type of part is like 90 degree angle.

So that corner tend to burn a little bit.

So you know, drive it around like this.

This is perfectly cooked now, nice and smooth.

Often this is done with whipped cream, you know, at the end.

But in our case here, if I do it with half and half, I really, it's plenty rich enough.

So I have no seasoning now.

So what I do is the sugar I put now half a cup of sugar about in there.

Then some vanilla, a pure vanilla extract here.

I want a good teaspoon.

(whisk clangs) That's it.

And I put a little bit of sour cream in there.

(spoon clangs) Now you can omit that if you don't want to put that either, but I like it.

See now it's thickened with the sour cream.

It's very nice.

And what I should do in it too is put a little bit of lemon zest.

So I have this one here.

I use that little zester.

I mean you could actually take a vegetable peeler and cut strip of lemon and slice it, you know, cut it with a knife or chop it off, but this is very nice.

You can do it of course with orange, tangerine.

Any of those will give you a beautiful flavor.

So here we are.

The pudding is finished.

So you, doesn't take more than like five, six minutes all together.

So now we wanna cool it off.

And (spoon clangs) that's it.

But it's smooth on top.

I like to have it full, because we're going to put that sauce on top of it later on.

All the time being covered with plastic wrap.

Nicely.

And now it can get refrigerated.

Next I want to do a soup.

And that soup is still one of my favorite soup.

This is a fridge soup.

My wife called that a fridge soup, whatever is left over in the refrigerator.

When I get home, I put the first thing that I do is to put water on the stove or chicken stock.

In that case here I have chicken stock to bring it to boil.

By the time this boil, basically my vegetable are ready.

I started those.

I use a box grater.

I add some, some mushroom and half onion an left in the refrigerator.

I grated it and I continue.

I'm going to put a carrot here first.

I'll peel that carrot, (peeler scrapes) do it in one strip like this, and then cut the end.

Actually you can cut the end first.

And this, you use it to put it in the recycle.

And the carrot now.

Now if I don't have a carrot, I open the refrigerator.

I will always find (carrot grating) either zucchini, carrot, salad leftover, eggplant, broccoli, you name it.

Whatever vegetable are on, I do this.

See the fact of cutting it with the a box grater or like that, grating it, make it that basically by the time it comes to a boil, it basically cooked.

So that goes fast.

What I say, if you start with the cold water or cold stock and you open your refrigerator with your box grater, it'll be by the time it come to a bowl, you're ready to go on.

So here if I have here piece of carrot for me.

I have all of those vegetables, I'm putting that in.

On high, I still have zucchini to put in there.

This has to come back to a boil.

I have that zucchini.

(zucchini grating) Watch your finger here, try to use that.

As you see, my hand is flat and after I put the palm of my hand here, with the palm of my hand, I can go basically to the end of it without really hurting myself.

Okay, this goes in there, we stir it.

And this has to come back to a boil.

Not going to take long, but a minute or so.

During that time I can chop some scallion because we're gonna put scallion in there.

So here is my scallion.

Scallion, you really cannot do it on the grater.

What you're really going to grate, your finger with it.

So scallion, leak, whatever I have around.

So the fridge soup is what we do at home when we're in a hurry.

So with this, as soon as it's coming to a bowl, I'm going to put a little bit of cream of wheat.

You can have cream of wheat, you can get oatmeal, you can have couscous, you can have any of this.

A little bit of it will give it the thickening agent that you want and that cooked in a couple of minutes.

In addition to that, I always finish that soup with Gruyère.

Swiss cheese, mont d'or, Gruyère, Jarlsberg, any of those.

I have some here.

And you can use your same grater here.

When I was a kid, certainly we used much more Gruyère than we used Parmesan cheese.

Now I'm used to use Parmesan cheese more, but I used one of the other.

But I like the long string that you do with your Gruyère, you know?

When we were a kid, that was very important to have long string in the soup when we eat it.

Okay, should be plenty here.

But for later on, (upbeat music) let's see.

That still need about a minute or so to come to a boil.

Now it's boiling.

(upbeat music ends) (pots clanging) It's time to put the scallion in there.

And our cream of wheat here.

About three or four tablespoon.

And that cooks pretty fast too.

Sometime I put instant polenta or stuff like that.

So now it's thickening.

You can use oatmeal.

It's great too.

One thing that I always have, it's wilted salad.

You know, hanging around in the refrigerator that start throwing it out.

You cook it in one way or the other.

And I love to have it in the soup.

That's always good up.

I put all of it.

The proportion are not very important in that soup.

You know, one cup, two cup.

Can always add a little bit of water.

And now with the cream of wheat, it will take two, three minutes to cook.

Gently.

So lower the heat.

Cover it, and boil it for a couple of minutes.

Now it's ready.

By the time it come to a boil, your vegetable stock, or your water, or your chicken succumb to a bowl.

That soup takes less than 10 minutes to make, you know?

It's hot.

And now Gruyère.

Always we put the Gruyère in the bottom.

Ah, three.

four table spoons of Gruyère per person.

The soup on top is really remind me of the soup when I was a kid.

Another thing that my brother and I would do most of the time was to put milk in there.

Milk.

We often finish the soup with milk like that in front.

And this is really nice too.

That's another way of doing it.

If you don't do it often.

If I finish it with milk, my wife doesn't like it.

Finish with milk, she finish it with a little piece of butter on top, you know?

That she melt there.

Or maybe a little dash of olive oil on top that very good too.

Now you know this is a whole meal, especially if you have it with a piece of bread here, a piece of baguette, or a piece of AP there.

This is the way we would have it when I was a kid.

And often that was the whole meal.

This is a great soup.

(relaxing piano music) Okay, this is a stringy soup.

That's how I like it.

That's how we had it when we were a kid.

With a piece of bread sometimes.

That was the whole meal that we have and a very good meal at that.

Mm, delicious.

And now we're going to do broad bean or string beans with shallot, saute and some fish.

(relaxing piano music ends) The first thing that I'm going to do is to put some shallot in the butter that I have here.

You can actually, you know, chop the scallop, the shallot that I'm doing here.

or maybe even simpler, just slice them like this.

I like them sliced.

Actually, very often it's a bit bigger.

And the string beans, I like them cooked.

So here I have plenty of shallots that I'm putting there to saute.

And string beans.

Now those are string beans and when I was a kid we string the beans from one hand here we would go one going completely down there would be a long string attached and you twist it over and do the same thing on the other side.

That doesn't exist anymore, but still out of habit I take it out and certainly out of the end here it's a bit tough.

So I would at least remove that hand.

I remember as a kid, my brother and I one time we had all of those to do.

We took them in package and with a big scissor, you know, we cut the hand here in the end here thinking that my mother or my father would not know about it.

Of course the thing was uneatable, stringy, and I think we get a good beating on that one.

But here is my shallots.

The beans here have been cooking and I like them cooked.

Often I feel young chef don't cook them enough, Have them tried crunchy, but they have to be cooked and that need 5, 6, 7 minutes depending on the side.

And after that we saute them at the last moment.

I have them here.

(food sizzles) And I'm going to put some salt on it and some freshly ground pepper.

And that's sautes, a minute and a half or two so they're hot.

Put more than that so that all of the moisture into the string beans is evaporated.

They have a nice taste of butter.

Then I can put the fish to cook.

And that fish here though they are small, beautiful fillet of halibut as you can see.

And those are about four ounces.

They will take no time at all to cook.

A couple of minutes.

They are about, oh about one inch, one inch thick, you know?

And that's what you want.

(food sizzles) And with this they can actually poach in the water just like this.

(pots clanging) What we want to do with that is a red pepper sauce.

And the red pepper sauce I do with a fresh pepper like this.

Sometime you can peel it by putting it under the broiler.

It get blistery and you put it after in a bag.

So it's steam and then the the skin slide.

And it give a good taste, a taste of roasted.

But you can also do it with a, a good vegetable peeler if you have a good one like I have here.

So I go around and then after in strip all around.

Now you notice that in some area, like here I have a pleat, like here I have a pleat.

Like here I have a pleat.

I have no access with the vegetable peeler here.

So what you do, you peel them as much as you can and you cut right in the middle of those pleats here, here and there.

So that by the time you open it.

Now if you look to the side, now I have access to that little bit of skin which is left over.

Okay, going to put this here.

The same thing here.

(food sizzles) Same thing there.

And of course you want to remove a little bit of the center here, you know the, the mushy part of it.

Or the cottony part rather of it like this.

This is a nice thing to do.

You do it of course with green pepper as well, as yellow one, or red one.

Okay.

Put that in the recycling bin, you know?

For the compost in the garden.

And we cut that into pieces.

(food continues sizzling) I can see that my string beans are getting there.

(food sizzles) So maybe I'm going to lower the heat just to keep it on warm here.

This hasn't even come back to a boil, and I can test it.

No, not quite.

For the time being, what I want to do is to put the red pepper in there here and emulsify it.

We are going to put a little bit of olive oil in there.

(blender whirs) So I'll put some olive oil in there, a dash of salt on pepper also.

And here we go.

(blender whirs) And now I have a beautiful red puree of pepper.

So we're going to bring that to a boil, cook it as the garnish.

(sauce sizzles) Okay, this is just going to cook for a not even a minute or so.

And it's fine, just to get it hot.

So we let it cook here.

(pans clang) Season, and with this, with the fish, we're gonna serve that beautiful puree of corn.

It's really like a fresh polenta.

It's a very easy puree to do.

And what I did, very simple.

(upbeat music) I husked the corn and with a knife, cut the corner off.

About two cup, two, three cup of kernel.

Put them in the blender.

You need the blender.

The food processor doesn't turn fast enough.

And also if you have young corn, they will liquefy easier.

Then you liquefy it.

It may take up to a minute.

Make sure that when it's liquified, lift it up to make sure with your finger.

Taste it to see that there is any grain in it.

It should be quite smooth.

Then put it in a sauce pan, a little piece of butter melted.

(upbeat music continues) Add the puree, then season with salt and pepper.

You'll stirring the mixture going into the corner to make sure that it doesn't stick in the corner.

And you will notice as soon as it come to a boil, it thickened the starch in the corn itself will thicken.

Boil it about 30 seconds to thicken and then finish it with a little piece of butter.

And now we're going to serve that fresh polenta.

or fresh corn puree with the fish.

So put it directly right at the little cushion of polenta underneath here.

That's good.

You want to have a piece of fish without just barely cooked.

Make sure that you use a towel or maybe even a paper towel, you know, to drain out a bit of the water.

Put it on top like this.

And now let's look at our, this is our puree of red pepper.

Maybe I'll add a little more olive oil in there.

That's good.

And then we place that around or on top.

Maybe even a little bit around.

That's it.

Then some chives.

That I have here.

Can cut some chives directly on the top.

And that's it.

Our fish is ready to serve with that.

I wanna serve my string beans.

I have with the shallots.

Nice and hot.

Those are simple dish.

Simpler the dish, the better it is.

Maybe because my palette is changing but as I get older and older.

I like it simpler and simpler, you know?

That's it.

And here we are.

This is a poached halibut on the fresh polenta, and red pepper sauce and the string beans.

(relaxing music) And now I wanna check on the dessert.

My pudding should be ready.

Yes.

I mean you can look at it.

So this is what I want to do.

At least three hours in the refrigerator.

Although, you can do it the day before if you want.

For the time being, my pudding is ready so I can remove it.

Remove the the plastic wrap rather and spread the top with the sauce that we did, the apricot sauce with the, the liquor in it or the cognac.

This is great.

I love that sauce on top of it.

That's it.

You could even put a little bit of mint or a fresh flowers on top that would look great.

So this is plenty, you serve it.

You can serve it with a scoop, like this scoop of pudding.

Maybe you can even put a little more sauce on top of it.

And of course that would be plenty.

And now I'm ready to eat.

Eat and enjoy a glass of wine.

A beautiful Sauvignon Blanc here from Napa Valley.

I'm going to enjoy it with my fish and even with my dessert.

I hope you're all going to join me and do that dish for your friend.

Happy cooking.