- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

With all the concern about healthy eating today, people sometimes forget to enjoy food and cooking.

For me, the joy of cooking is making a classic recipe lighter but still delicious.

Asparagus en fete, or Oli de Style, is full of joy and color.

Barley stuffed cabbage roll, made with lean beef, in a new version of the classic entree.

This elegant dessert looks like a banana Napoleon, but it's actually made with baked won ton skins.

Great food that makes you feel happy.

Those are the joys of cooking as we do it here on "Today's Gourmet".

(lighthearted jazzy music) (lighthearted jazzy music continues) Well, today we're going to do the joy of cooking.

I mean, I always have a great time cooking anyway, so it's always the joy of cooking.

But we're going to do old-style type of recipe.

We start with an asparagus, which is very modern, but we're going to do a cabbage, stuffed cabbage, not really in the old style, with the same taste but much less fat in it.

The first thing that I want to do is to start with the asparagus.

And as you can see here, I have different type of asparagus.

When you buy asparagus, buy the biggest asparagus.

Often people want you to choose the smallest.

I'll buy the biggest because it doesn't matter.

When they come out of the ground, they come small or big, they don't get bigger.

But what you want them, it's like here with very tight head.

You can see the bud of a flower here, very tight head.

Those are all the, see those are much thinner, far to be as good, first, very flexible all and the leaves around on top are like petal, which are ready to fall.

Those are much older asparagus.

This is not what you want, you want that type here.

Now as you know, the asparagus are very tender, basically up to here.

Starting from here to there, it's tough fibers.

So people tend to cut and throw this out, which is a waste.

What you have to do is to peel it.

There is different way.

I peel this to bring against my finger and there is no danger really of cutting you with a vegetable peeler.

Two things that you have to remember.

You see you get them at the end like this, then after, break it here.

So the whole thing, now this is just as tender as this now.

So this is good to do it this way.

Remember however, you have to keep the asparagus on the table, make it roll this way, and keep that vegetable peeler, not with your hand underneath 'cause you'll be too high.

Flat on the table, this way.

And you can go around, you can actually do all of your asparagus this way, and when they are all done, then you can break the tip.

And that's it.

So that's saving.

We are going to use both end of the asparagus, this is, you can't use that.

Now I have my asparagus.

What I want to put them directly into a skillet here, put my heat on.

And, with a little bit of water in there, maybe a dash of salt, and the lid and that's it.

This has to cook for about four to five minute.

And while this is cooking, I'm going to show you how to do the cabbage.

And the cabbage that I have here, I have a whole cabbage here, and what I want to do is to show you how to take the leaf from the outside and start the stuffing.

And the stuffing is going to be made of a little bit of oil, which I have here.

Canola oil I think I use for that, which is a monounsaturated oil, which is very good and some chopped onion.

We're going to start with the chopped onion.

(knife clinking) Here we are.

(knife clinking) Maybe half of this would be enough.

We start to saute the onion here.

The heat is on all the way.

Okay, you need high heat for that.

And then the cabbage, you know what you want to do is to break your cabbage all around so that you can separate the outside leaves because we want to keep those outside leaves as the wrapper, you know, which is what I have here.

And basically, take the core of your cabbage to put in the stuffing.

Now those outside leaves, what I want to do is to blanche it.

So I put them in boiling water to get them wilted and soft, and this will have to cook for four, five minutes.

What you want to be, however, as you see what I did, try to separate them without breaking them, you know, to keep them preferably in one piece.

You want to keep them immersed under the water.

What you can do is to take a sieve or something with hole like that, put it on top, it will push it down very gently and like that, they stay under the water instead of coming to the top.

So I have my onions cooking here.

And there, you want to cut the core of your cabbage here to use, as I say, in the stuffing.

So you cut it into about half-inch dice, one-inch dice.

It's really not very important here, but see we want to use everything, even the core, you know the hard part of the cabbage.

If you feel that this is harder here, you cut it into smaller pieces.

Anyway, you should have about two, three cup of that mixture here that I put with the onion, to stuff the cabbage.

The classic cabbage, you know, stuff is done in all different part of Europe, from Russia, to France, to Italy, to any other place, and it's done with different type of stuffing.

So what we have here, I'm going to put a little bit of cider vinegar.

You know, in those things, you do a lot of sweet sour type of things.

And here I have side of vinegar, which is going to give me a little bit of moisture, a dash of salt.

And what I would want to do is to cover this and this should cook for about seven, eight minute until it gets soft, you know.

Okay, here we are here and at that point, I should probably check on my asparagus, which are cooking well and it should be almost cooked.

The asparagus should cook about three minutes, three, four minute.

They could probably stay another minute.

And this is going well.

Now I can see that it's immersed into the water.

What I have to put in there too, it's a bit more garlic.

I forget my garlic here.

And the garlic, you would put it at the end anyway because you don't want it to burn at the beginning, so you put it at the end.

I have a whole clove of garlic.

You can crush it and that will (hand pounding) release the essential oil in the garlic.

And I put quite a lot of garlic because the garlic is going to be cooked a long time.

And the longer you cook garlic, the more, the milder it become.

So let me add my garlic here.

See that's good, it's softening a little bit.

Garlic.

This is going to be a good base.

You know, you could use that as a stuffing also with meat to do a meatloaf, you know, and make that with the meat and do a meatloaf with it.

So let me check.

I think my asparagus are cooked enough now.

Check them, they should be a bit tender.

Some people like them very cooked, I like them a bit crunchy but not too crunchy.

You know what I mean?

They should be cooked and what I want is to put them there and remove them.

Now, in the old style, we use to put the asparagus or the green vegetable directly under cold water.

And you know, it's still done very often but if I can avoid washing it, then I let it cool off.

I have less loss of nutrient.

Another thing that I like to do also is to put just enough water so that by the time I finish cooking, I have basically no water left over.

So again, you get a better nutrient.

See they are beautifully green here, and just with the air outside, they're going to cool off enough, because if you keep them together, they may stand to get a little yellow, you know?

So now while this is cooling off, this is cooking.

Let me show you another stuffing that I add to the cabbage, and this is barley.

Barley is a very old grain, you know.

It used to be used as a currency in ancient Egypt.

Soluble fiber, you know, it tend to decrease cholesterol.

Barley is not used enough, it's quite good.

What I do with there is very simple.

Half a cup of barley, a cup and a half of water.

Bring it to a boil, boil it 20 minute.

And that's basically what you have here.

So this is cooked nice.

We are going now to finish the stuffing with that.

What I want to do, put the barley in there, (spoon clinking) and I have here the rest of the stuffing.

I have a pound of meat here.

But you can see that that meat is about 10 ounce, 10% fat or less.

So, the leanest type of ground beef that you can have.

I have thyme leaves, I have dill, dry, and caraway seed.

So this is my seasoning, caraway seed, thyme leaves, dill.

Going to be good with that.

And, with that of course, we put the center, or our, the center of the cabbage, which has been cooking for a couple of minutes.

Frankly, that could cook a bit longer than that.

It should be a bit softer than that.

But, for our purpose it's fine.

And you should probably let it cool off, you know, let it cool off so that you have more chance of mixing it the right way.

Now, what you do with this, you cool it off, you mix it well and we're going to stuff the cabbage leaf.

Let me check on those cabbage leaves that I have there, which now should be, to be removed from here.

Just wanna show you a couple.

See how beautifully green they're going to be.

And you put them directly into a pot of cold water.

You know, again, those could cook a little longer, but basically that's what you want to do.

I have some which are ready.

You see the idea is to get them wilted so that you can use them after.

I may take this one with me, okay.

Right here.

And then now, I'm going to make that a bit better.

You see the best way to make this is really mix it with your hand now.

And I avoid doing that when I'm going to serve something.

But remember, I'm going to stuff the cabbage here and it's going to cook in the oven for like an hour and a half.

So it's perfectly fine to do it with your hand now and it's a bit easier.

Okay, so I have that stuffing, which maybe the third of it is, the third of it is meat, you know.

But I should have in that is a little bit of pepper.

I have a wet towel here for my hand.

It's always good to rinse your hand.

This is for the stuffing.

And I'm going to put a little bit of pepper in that thing.

I didn't put pepper.

Test it, you know.

And what I want to show you is those leaves that I have ready here.

You see, with the rib like that, you want to cut the end of the rib, which is a bit tough.

If you have time you can chop that off and add it to your stuffing.

Here I have a couple.

And now we're ready to stuff it.

And, one of the best way is really to spread out all of the leaves so that you know you have enough and put your stuffing in it and divide it between your eight leaves.

We are doing eight leaves here, two per person, which is quite generous, I think.

But, you know that type of dish, you can do it ahead, you can cool it off and reheat it and it probably tastes better reheated than before.

I have maybe a bit too much dressing here.

What you do, you fold this, you bring all the side on itself and put it underneath so that the seam, the seam is underneath.

Of course, always a bit in a hurry when you cook on television.

Remember, at home, you are by yourself.

In a corner.

You have more time to do that a bit more carefully than what I do here.

But in any case, those should fit just about eight.

I have three, four, five, six, seven.

Oh, I have one missing.

One missing should have about fill it up, you know, which is what we will support and finish my, basically finish my stuffing.

So what we want to do is a sauce on top of this.

And the sauce that I have here, I have it practically ready.

I have a cup and a half of chicken stock boiling.

I'm going to put some tomato, some regular tomato juice in it.

A little bit, again, of the cider of vinegar, and a bit of brown sugar.

The brown sugar here.

You bring all of this together.

Slice it, I mean mix it nicely, pour it above.

And that's basically your dish.

You want to cook that now for an hour, about an hour and a half.

First, an hour in the oven.

Cover, and then after that, you uncover it and you cook it uncovered so that it browns the top a little bit.

So that's what I'm going to do here.

And I have another one which I have uncovered and which now I've been cooking uncovered for a while.

So it's right here, you can see it's nicely browned.

And what we want to do is to serve it in there directly.

I say we would serve two cabbage per person, which is more than enough, with some of the juice on top.

Don't remember the juice.

The juice is fairly acidic, sweet and acidic because of the sugar and the vinegar.

And you can see the inside of this is going to be nice and stuffed, you know, as you would want to have it the right way.

And this is the main course for today.

And now let's finish the asparagus.

Remember I drained those asparagus directly without so-called refreshing them, that is putting them in cold water.

It's much better this way.

They have the bright green color and they're just about lukewarm.

So what I want to do is a bit of a dressing here with a bit of salt in the bottom, some french mustard, cracked freshly ground pepper, a lot of it and freshly ground like that, this is the best way of doing it.

Then we have lemon juice, about half a lemon.

I would say I have about a tablespoon here, and a little bit of olive oil.

That's going to be our basic type of dressing for this.

So we put that on the side, it's done.

And you see, I could emulsify it to make it all together, but I rather have it separated like this.

The second garnish we put in there is done from the asparagus itself.

You know what you do, you cut, you can align them from the tip here, and you can trim all of the bottom part of it.

This is we're going to use, we're going to use right in the middle, keeping the tip like this to use for the decoration there, for example more.

And that will be mixed into other ingredients.

So I have the asparagus here, I didn't do all of it, but black olive.

Those are oil-cured olive, and you can see, they are kind of shrunken, like those type of olive are.

Those are the pit.

I put the pit in there.

If you wanna remove the pit, it's fine.

I have some diced tomato, a little bit of capers, and this is my mixture here.

I'm going to mix that together.

It's nice and colorful, beautiful looking.

And now, I cut the asparagus right in the center.

Remember this is for the decoration.

So, right into, you could cut them even actually in, in four pieces, but two is fine.

So what I do here, you extend your asparagus around.

You serve two or three asparagus per person, you know, so it makes a beautiful kind frame if you want, you know.

In the middle of that frame we'll put our garnish, of asparagus, tomato and so forth.

And then we can put our dressing on top.

You know, just as much dressing as you like.

This is about the only calorie thing in there, but you can put as much as you want and you can even finish it up with a few leaves of parsley that we have here for another type of green.

So that will be our first course for today.

And now let me show you how to do the dessert for today.

And we have a nice, very easy dessert, done again with those won ton skin.

As you can see, those won ton skin here are three inches in diameter that way.

But we put them in boiling water.

They'll cook like a minute and a half, and believe me, they're going to expand at that point, you know.

So while this is cooking, we're going to do the sauce for the dessert and the sauce is very simply made of peach, a bit of peach preserve.

I have the rind of of the skin of lemon that you can do with this, it's is perfectly fine here.

You can do all around.

I have a little more here.

Then the juice of the lemon.

If you don't have a peach preserve, you can use an apricot preserve or other the type of preserve that you like the best or that you have at hand, but preferably some, some preserve into that type of color, that is that type of color, which is a nice transparent, golden color.

And for a bit of accent in there, I'm putting a dash of dark rum.

If you don't want to put any alcohol in it, it's perfectly fine.

You don't really have to.

And then basically, we are going to have, I cut already a banana here.

What we want to do is to cut those banana.

You cut it, take the peel out of it, cut them in half.

You could actually cut them into slice, it's more conventional.

But to be a bit different there, I was cutting them into long strip like this, which is fine.

You know, about six strip per banana or four depending, you want to serve about, about 3/4 of a banana per person here.

And the sauce, you can marinate the sauce with it.

This you can do ahead, you know, mix it and let it to marinade.

Remember, there is a lemon juice here.

It will prevent discoloration with, it'll prevent discoloration of the banana.

Now let's see whether my thing is done here.

It could cook a little longer, but basically what you want to do is to put it almost right away into cold water, you know, so that it's separate, especially if you have a whole bunch of them.

So what I have here, this one, and as you can see, it has extended considerably from the size that it was before.

And it's still a bit smaller than those because it didn't really cook enough of the time.

Okay, we do it this way.

I brush it with a little bit of canola oil, just a touch on top, you know, very little.

This is on an non-stick pan anyway, then finally, we put a bit of powdered sugar on top of it.

(knife clinking) And I don't really have much powder sugar in here.

I have approximately, I would say maybe half a teaspoon per won ton skin and that's it.

You put that now in an oven for about 16 to 18 minute, 375, 400 degree.

And basically, that's what it looks like when it comes out.

The magic of television.

You put it in the oven, you come out with the cooked one.

And now, all we have to do, this is like a very thin, tiny piece of puff pastry and it's beautiful to serve, to replace a more calorie type of puff pastry.

So what we want to do is to put it right on top here.

We arrange some of the banana on top of it, here in any way you want, some extra sauce.

Then you put another one.

Look at the one which looked good on top.

We can put a bit of powder sugar again on top of this, if you want, even on the plate, you know, sometime you decorate the plate, and maybe finishing it up with an edible flower, which will look beautiful.

The menu we have today, the perfect example of what we're trying to do on "Today's Gourmet".

What we wanna do really is to show you old recipe in a much more modern way of cooking.

And today, the menu that we have really exemplify that.

It is beautiful, but it's relatively low in calorie and very healthy with a lot of different vegetables.

We have first the asparagus.

Asparagus are very colorful, very seasonal even, but always a kind of rich type of things for me.

Then the cabbage, you know, which is terrific reheated.

It's is a good example of what you can do, stretching it with barley, with the inside of the cabbage, and a minimal amount of meat, and almost no fat in it.

And finally, that beautiful dessert that you can do with banana or you can do with any type of fruit that you have in season.

With that, of course, today, we want to serve a special wine.

And the wine we have today is a 1991 Gewurztraminer from Sonoma County.

In the style of the French gave us, from Alsace.

It's very spicy if you want, but very, very dry, and that type of spiciness is going to go well with our menu.

I know that the real aficionado will tell you not to drink wine with your asparagus, especially with a vinegarette.

I drink wine with everything and I will enjoy that wine.

I hope you're going to get into the kitchen and start cooking.

It's a great gift to do to your family.

Happy cooking to you.