- I am always looking for a small order to serve with aperitif.

This is a great one and it's easy with a vegetable peel you could strip of zucchini, a little bit of smoked salmon.

I have smoked salmon at my supermarket, a little bit of cream cheese in the center.

You spread it here and there and then you roll it into a tight roll.

This way, you can serve it this way, but it even better if you cut it in half.

More impressive this way and put it right on cracker, or with a little spring of thyme in the center.

Looks can be deceiving.

This is really at one time minute recipe.

I'm Jacques Pepin and this is Fast Food My Way.

Happy cooking.

I have a very light, luscious and eclectic menu today for you.

A meal which we are less in essence is more and all the flavor are shining through.

We're gonna start with a rigatoni with lettuce, an eggplant, anchovy filet, garlic, then a steam basket of fish and shellfish, very lean and beautifully fresh with two different type of sauce and pan fry on dive in a julienne.

And finally some roasted fig and blueberry for dessert.

So the first things is to start with the eggplant.

Sometime I peel the eggplant, sometime I don't, but in that case I think I will peel the eggplant.

This is a male eggplant, and the male egg plant, which is a long line here rather than at that it tends to have much less seed than the female eggplant.

So I tend to prefer that one.

So we are gonna peel it with our large vegetable peeler.

I often also use those either Japanese or Chinese eggplant, the thin one, long one.

And sometime as I say, I don't peel them and I cut them in thin slice again and put them in the oven in the same way.

So this is cut in about good inch thin.

You see this one is pretty good with the seed here.

Must be a male and this way across.

You know when you cook this directly into a skillet with the oil, this can absorb like a cup and a half of oil.

So that's why I do it in the oven.

It's a bit leaner with less oil.

So we're gonna put that in there.

I have about four or five cup here and it'll cook in about the same amount of time than the pasta cook.

I want it in the oven, you know, a good 400 degree oven for like a good 14, 15 minutes, you know.

But I'm gonna put some salt on it.

Bit of salt and a trickling of a good olive oil there would go.

That's it.

So that will go into my oven for like 14, 15 minutes.

Okay, (clap) good.

Now cleaning up, always cleaning up.

That my wife told me I was well-trained.

So I think I can start on the pasta now because it will take that amount of time before my eggplant is finished.

This is a rigatoni and I have three quarter of a pound here, and the water is boiling.

Let's check if the water has salt.

The water is salted, which is good.

Now I don't need the the lid anymore, and I can start the rest of the sauce.

Now the rest of the sauce is going to be made of a lot of garlic, anchovies filet, pepper flake and lettuce.

Now, I can use any type of lettuce.

I cook a lot of lettuce, especially when I have in my garden sometimes all the green of the lettuce I cook.

This happened to be escarole, a bit tougher too, slight bitter of taste to it.

I like that type of lettuce very much.

Well I like all lettuce, so here we are, olive oil.

You can be generous with your olive oil because it's going to flavor the pasta.

And the garlic in that case is going to be sliced.

Very often I crush it, but in that case here we are going to slice it.

A considerable amount of garlic here, which is going to fry the pepper flake.

The pepper flake, it's a bit up to you, you know, but I'll put that much.

I'm going to use the oil of the anchovies as well later on.

So I just want to brown this a little bit.

Okay, the lettuce.

Now the lettuce, very course.

You see very often I buy lettuce in the market and often I serve more of the center part it, which is wider and more tender.

But all the green one there, I do a soup with it or pasta or thing like this.

Now in that case I don't wanna burn the garlic, I'll put this in there.

Not all the lettuce.

And then I twist, I turn it around like this, put it, you can do it with the pincher so that your garlic is kind of on top so it doesn't burn underneath, you know.

So here it is.

You're going to add the eggplant to that later on.

So let's see.

The oil from the anchovy, I have about one and a half cup, one and a half can rather of anchovies here, which is about three, three and a half ounces anchovies filet.

Okay, now you cut that into small piece.

No the anchovy will have a tendency anyway to melt.

It's going to melt with the oil and you don't really see the pieces of anchovy by the time it's finished cooking.

So you can see that that type of sauce or garnish is quite assertive because I have anchovy.

I have a lot of garlic.

I have the pepper flake there.

So that's going to flavor not only the pasta but the eggplant as well.

Okay, this, I'll put a lid on top of this, and there is enough moisture here so that is going to melt down.

I'm going to lower the heat for this and that's fine.

My pasta is doing fine too.

Good.

And now I'm going to work on the dessert.

It's a bit of a different type of dessert.

I like to work with fig, especially dry fig.

Some people like my friend, John Claude, loves fig.

The fresh one, I do too, but I actually, I think I like the dry fig even better than the fresh one.

So there we have a couple of tablespoon of butter in there and what I want to do is to actually cut those fig.

You could use the black mission fig as well, you know, but those are nice.

And what you put, you put half a walnut and you embed it directly into the flesh here, you know.

That's it.

So the sauce that I have that I'm making here is done with some butter.

And I am going to put some honey in there.

How about a third of a cup of honey.

I could actually pour it in it, but I'd like to use that thing here.

That should be about a third of a cup.

And white wine.

Now I have a Gewürztraminer in there here, which is not a very spicy delicate wine.

So about a half a cup make a sauce out of this.

And we put, we put the fig in it, going to soften them, and that cook pretty fast.

I mean three, four minute the juice will be reduced and we'll have a sauce.

Okay.

The last one is for the chef.

Cover it.

And with the fig here, I love to serve a Madeira.

And the Malmsey that you have, the very, very sweet wine that you have dessert, very chocolatey.

Let's see, this is cooking and it's reducing now.

The sauce with the honey will get thicker, you know, as it cool off and I'm gonna test it.

We can't miss with butter and honey and a bit of white wine.

That's good.

Of course you want to cool that off.

I mean cool that off.

I like to serve it at room temperature.

I wouldn't serve it ice cold but certainly at room temperature.

So let's see that.

This is a nice little dessert.

You have this and you can serve what about four or five?

You know it's interesting because when you look at it close up like this, you think actually then the nuts is in the shell.

You know the shell of the nut itself when in fact of course it is the half, the half fig, you know, but it look a little bit.

So this as I say, will thicken as it cools off.

And what we are going to serve with this is some blueberry that we can pile up some in the center with some blueberry here and a couple of blueberry on the outside.

Okay.

A very simple dessert.

Delicious with a glass of Madeira.

Now let me check.

This is ready.

So I'm gonna shut it off.

Okay, I think the pasta is cooked now.

I'm gonna drain it out right in there.

I may use a little bit of the pasta water, and I'm going to check on the eggplant.

Okay.

It's fine.

Now you see, So eggplant will have a tendency to stick, you know, so it's really nice on those, on those silicone type of liner, you know, nothing stick to it.

So it's great.

Here it goes in there.

I'm going to need a little bit of the pasta water, so I'm gonna put it this way.

I always use probably at at least half a cup of the pasta.

So here is the rest of it.

I think be better to use that.

Toss it around.

Okay.

Here, all of the good stuff on top here.

Hmm, looks good.

I'm gonna put some cheese in there and maybe an extra cheese on top.

I have parmigiano reggiano here and a grater can go directly on top of your pasta.

I will put some inside and a little more on top.

This is a nice one because this one does little flake.

Well the other doesn't really matter but.

Remember I haven't really put any salt in there because of the anchovy.

I'm gonna test it.

Mm that's fine, there is enough salt.

And of course in the pepper, I put the pepper flake, which fine.

(cookware clattering) Okay here we are, big bowl of pasta.

(utensils scraping) Oh this looks great and hot.

A bit more cheese on top.

You see it melt as it touch it, which is beautiful.

And maybe a little bit of extra virgin olive oil on top.

It never hurt, you know, that's it.

Okay, here is the rigatoni with the lettuce in there we add anchovy filet, and we have the eggplant and pepper flake, and a lot of garlic.

(acoustic guitar) Okay, and now another vegetable dish which I could actually use with the pasta are endive, Belgian endive, which I love to cook and I cook in many different way.

Those are just going to be julienne and sauteed, and they are great to serve also with the pasta even mixed into the pasta, they are fine.

So what I do there, I just slice them into thin slice with the root attach, you know, so I want to cut them thin, piece of butter to saute them.

I think I'll put a little bit of a, a good olive oil on top.

And endive, you know, called Belgian endive very often.

But when you're in Belgium, those are called chicon, like chicory, you know, the Belgian call them.

And on the other end what we call chicory here, you know, which is a salad, like the salad that I used before in the pasta, in Belgium, this is called endive.

So it's a bit confusing but this is actually the root.

The root of the chicory, which is bitter, which is plant in the cellar in the dark, in sand, covered.

So there is no, there is absolutely no photosynthesis coming from the sun, and it comes out of the ground just beautifully white like this.

There is some liquid which will come out of your endive.

So add this here, I'm putting some salt on top and a good dash of sugar, you know, which will help not only in the caramelization but it standard with endive to put a dash of sugar to counteract, you know, the bitter taste of the endive.

(cookware clattering) So here they will get wilted after I cover them.

Good, going to lower the heat a little bit.

And now a very simple, very elegant type of shellfish dish I have here.

Beautiful cut.

You can use croute cut, any type of filet.

I have those large sea scallop.

I have the shrimp with the shell on, but the shell should be off, so this is the way you remove it, back and forth.

And in that particular case, we can leave the tail.

So I'm going to use those Chinese bamboo steamer and using a little bit of that seaweed.

I use that when I do clam bake in Connecticut.

This is a specific seaweed which I always forget the name so I forget it again.

But I mean you can recognize it.

This is considered the best when you do clam bake because if you look at it very closely here, you have those bubble here, and those bubble are soft and they are full of water.

I mean the water is spilled out when you do that.

And this release moisture, you know, when you do your clam bake or cook something that I'm doing here.

So we line up four basket with this.

You can smell the sea right there, you know.

And on top of this we are putting one piece of fish for each up here, couple of scallop.

Two scallops, so that would be of course be enough.

Couple of shrimp.

Here we are.

We'll stuck this in the seaweed as well.

Like two, three, three, four muscle per person.

Another piece and that's it.

Now we don't put any salt or anything on it.

I'm gonna put that directly this way and steam it with of course the lid on literally in a pot of water.

And that would take about seven, eight minute.

So I'm going to do a couple of different sauces with that.

So olive oil and another one with butter.

Both of them with lemon, a little bit of the rind even to put in it.

So I'll use that plane here and you can see that really give you a lot of, so I put a little bit in the butter, a little bit for the oil.

Let me check on this.

(dish sizzling) You can see that the endive are being caramelized now.

You can see the bottom part of it, especially with the dash of sugar.

So that's great.

Now we'll leave it open like that to caramelize them a little more.

(cookware clanks) So lemon juice in there, in the melted butter.

A good one, one and a half, two tablespoon of lemon juice.

I have about two three tablespoon of butter there.

A good dash of salt.

This is of course unsalted butter.

A good dash of cracked pepper.

Emulsify it together.

Keep it there.

It's a bit warm.

And I'm going to do the same thing with then the olive oil, an emulsion of olive oil.

And when you have a great quality also in the oil, you will see that the emulsion, especially if the oil is unfiltered, (whisk clinking) it'll bind together.

Okay, I should have a tablespoon, a good tablespoon of each of the sauce per person.

In addition to this, a little bit of chive.

(chopping sound) I'm gonna add my chive here.

Here we are.

Nice taste.

A great way of doing endive.

A little different, but great.

Okay, here's my.

I think the basket are ready now.

Here is the butter sauce.

You bring that here.

Yeah, that's it.

You can see it's happen and all that.

Beautiful.

So you would wanna serve that directly in there.

Maybe with the thing on the side.

You can put probably a little bit.

Add probably with the olive oil sauce on top.

You know, a little bit like this and the fleur de sel here.

Remember we didn't put anything there.

So that would be right there with the sauce.

This is the oil.

This is the butter.

And this is the fleur de sel that we have there.

And this is it, you know, a very simple, straightforward, but the quality of the fish is absolutely imperative here.

I think I'm going to bring my endive with the pasta because you can eat it on the side as well, but you can really actually mix it.

There is already another type of endive in it, which we call, you know, the escarole.

So here it is, a flavorful, very simple meal.

You do have to remember the simple pleasure of the table.

That what make life so great, happy cooking.