- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

Preparing food that's both light and tasty, that's what "Today's Gourmet" is all about.

One secret is to make fruits and vegetables the star of the show, seasoning them well, and using only a moderate amount of fat.

Here is a perfect example, a refreshing cream of pea soup with fresh mint, finished with a little yogurt.

I'll show you how turn wonton skins into delicate crab ravioli in red pepper sauce.

And spinach seasoned with nutmeg is a classic French pairing.

This apricot delice, fresh apricot poached in white wine with basil, is proof that dessert can be light and still be delightful.

Join me for a light and tasty supper next on "Today's Gourmet."

(upbeat jazz music) Today, we are going to do a light and tasty supper.

And you will see that it's really light and tasty and beautiful-looking.

And what I wanna do first is a pea soup.

Peas, very good for you.

It's very colorful.

Not only that, it has a lot of soluble fiber, which is very good for you.

So the first thing that I start, a little bit of olive oil in this.

I'm going to put an onion.

I have an onion here that I'm going to chop (knife chopping) to put into the soup, sliced thinly.

Doesn't really matter how you slice it because we are going to emulsify it into the food processor.

So I have more than enough here.

So we put that to cook slightly.

Onion, a little bit of olive oil, about a tablespoon.

And after that, we put the peas.

As you can see, I have fresh peas here, I have frozen peas here.

Those tend to be bigger.

The fresh peas, if you have them from your garden, is perfectly fine.

They are very good.

But beware of peas which are quite a number of days old and which are very large, because they're going to be difficult to emulsify in the food processor.

But the fresh peas, of course, are fine.

But you can see in the pod of the peas, some of them are smaller, like this one is smaller.

This is what those frozen, tiny baby peas are.

You know, they are picked up on the pod, and only the small one are pick up, so the skin is very thin and it emulsify nicely.

So what I do in there.

Well, we'll do this one with the fresh peas, as long as we have them here.

The mint, I have quite a lot of mint, and beautiful mint, as you see.

And it goes so well with the peas.

We're putting that, saute one second, and the chicken stock.

I have a very light chicken stock here.

No salt in it.

No salt in it, and as fat free as possible.

That's what I have here.

So you wanna bring that to a boil and cook it six, seven minute, which is what I have here.

This has been cooking for a little while, and it probably would be better if you keep it a bit colder than this is now when you emulsify it.

So what I'm going to do here is to put it into that blender.

And that blender is very good for that because it goes faster than a food processor.

So what we'll do here is to put it directly into there.

You could actually drain the solid, if you want, and just only put the solid, and add the liquid after, which tend to emulsify it nicely also.

But that what we'll do here.

(blender whirs) And as you see, we'll have that beautiful green color.

(blender whirs) That should be about fine.

As you can see, that soup that we are doing today is going to be served cold.

(liquid splashes) Beautiful color here.

I'm gonna put another batch.

It's going to be served cold, but, of course, you could serve it hot.

But we want to serve it, for our recipe, it's a summer type of soup, and we serve it cold.

(metal clanging) Okay, I may not put all of it.

I think I have more than the recipe here.

Put a little more.

(lid clinks) And, of course, it helps a lot.

You can, if you want, after you put it through that, put it through a food mill if you think there is some fiber left or if you don't have the type of blender that I have here.

(blender whirs) If you have a coarser blender and you decide there is still quite a lot of fiber, then just put that through a food mill or through a sieve.

But as you can see, this is beautifully smooth.

So what we do in there is to put some yogurt.

And you would not want to put the yogurt too early.

Remember that if I do that, because I could do that soup the day before if I am going to... If I serve it cold, I would want to do it the day before, actually.

But if you do it the day before and if you put this in there, you may have problem because the acidity in the yogurt is going to turn the color from a bright green to lightly yellowish, you know?

Now, what I put in there was a bit of Tabasco and a dash of sugar, and that basically what we want.

At that point here, we wanna bring that, you can serve it like that to your dining room, or directly ladle it into your individual.

See, that soup is still lukewarm, of course, as it is, but I love it cold.

So, remember, if you wanna do it cold, keep it in the refrigerator, and when you're ready to serve it or maybe an hour before, put the yogurt in it.

And here we are, a light, delightful summer soup.

And now, after the first course, we're going to move on to the ravioli that I'm going to do.

And the ravioli is actually a ravioli done, as you will see, very simply.

And it's stuffed with crab meat.

So the first thing we want to do is the stuffing.

And I have a skillet here.

I'm gonna put, again, a dash of olive oil, about two teaspoon, a tablespoon.

And what I have here is shallots, as you can see, garlic, and a red pepper.

So let's put first some shallot in there to saute.

(knife chopping) I have some shallot here.

I'm not slicing.

I am not (knife chopping) chopping the dressing.

So you should really chop it nicely, maybe a bit better than what I'm doing here.

(knife chopping) So I have those beautiful, tiny red onion we call shallots, you know, which are very good.

We put that in there.

I have a bit of extra one here.

And garlic.

The garlic, here, you want a couple of cloves of garlic, depending on the size.

And using a large knife, of course, you wanna crush your garlic (knife clangs) and chop it (knife chopping) into a puree.

(knife chopping) You know, if you wanna use a garlic press, (knife chopping) it's perfectly fine, but if you're used to use a knife, you'll probably do this.

So this is what I'm doing here, shallots, garlic.

Now, the third thing that I have is that beautiful red pepper here.

And that beautiful red pepper, I'm going to peel it a little bit, a piece to put in there.

Now, as you see, it has a nice, thick wall, and that's what I want for that.

Notice also that when I peel this, there is area of the pepper in the pleat where I cannot reach with the vegetable peeler.

So what you do, you cut it, you cut wherever you can, and after that, you cut it so that you expose that part that you couldn't reach before in the pleat, you know,, if you want.

So that by the time you finish it up here, what you do, you can peel the rest of it and add it.

This is about what we need here for.

And the rest of it, the rest of that pepper, I'm going to do the sauce with it.

So here it is.

I'm taking the seed out of it, (pepper tapping) the seed here, and I'm going to cut it coarsely into pieces.

This will be for the sauce.

(knife chopping) This will be for the sauce, and that for the garnish.

So (knife chopping) let me put that into the garnish.

My onion are really cooking, maybe slightly too fast.

So I will add this to there.

I don't want (metal clanging) to burn.

(pan sizzling and clanging) I'm gonna stop the heat on that now and put the mixture for the sauce.

So, remember, for the sauce, as I told you, we put the rest of the red pepper.

I put some water, about a cup, cup and 1/4, a cup and 1/2 of water.

Onion, sliced onion (pan sizzles) in there, and a clove of garlic, a whole clove of garlic.

I want, of course, to put the dash, a little dash of salt in there because there is nothing in the water.

I wanna cover it, bring it to a boil.

And this should boil six, seven, eight minute, in those area, so the thing is really soft so you can make a sauce with it.

During that time, we are going to finish our dressing here.

What I have here is crab meat, as you can see.

Be sure to test it with your finger to be sure that there is no bone in it, or shell, rather, because they tend to have.

And if they are clean, (spoon clangs) mix that mixture in it.

(spoon clangs) And now we're ready to stuff our crab meat.

And with that, I'm gonna show you how to stuff those crab meat with, what I have here, a wonton wrapper.

And as you can see, I have different type of wonton wrapper.

I have the square one, those are three inches, and this is basically what I'm going to use.

So I'm gonna put them right here.

I'm gonna use six of those, just to show you.

Six will, of course, give you three because you need two, one on top, one in the bottom.

They come square, they come much bigger.

They come round.

As you can see here, I have a big one.

I'll put it here to show you what to do with it, too.

Those are round and they come this way.

Some come very thick, some medium thick, and some thin.

And I tend to use the thin one.

Those are three inches.

The big one, for example, here, what you would wanna do, again, you always wet that a little bit so that thing sticks in it.

You could put a little bit of garnish right in there if you wanna do big one.

And those are spring roll, really.

Then you put one of those this way, you bring the two side on, and you roll it gently until it sticks.

The water will make it stick at the end.

And this is basically what I have here, you see?

Now, the other one here, you wanna water at least the top one, or one of the two, so that it glue to the other.

Those are water and flour made.

There is no eggs in this, you know, so it's pretty good.

And you can do a lot with those.

You can cut them and do lasagna with it.

It's really terrific.

Make a great lasagna mixture, you know, put in the, especially in the big one.

So we put the other one on top.

And you see you wanna glue the side this way.

You can, if you want, do it with one of those things to press it around, you know?

You can also do a container like this and actually cut it.

You know, you want to have a sharp one so that you know that it's cut all around, as I'm doing here.

And keep that mixture here.

You keep that mixture here for soup, you know?

It's very good for soup, all the mixture of the pasta.

I mean, take your time when you do that.

I'm being a bit fast here, as you know.

You can also trim it with your knife, just to trim the corner, like this, and that would be perfectly fine.

And, basically, you know, all of those, again, you are going to use that for soup or whatever.

So be sure they are glued together.

We put them, this is the one that I'm going to cook later, so I'll put them here.

I have one kind of round one.

You see this one, maybe stuff a little too much.

You really have to be sure that they are glued together.

And, basically, that's it.

Now they are ready to be cooked.

You know, you can do those things ahead, but you really have to time yourself because this takes about two minutes, two, three minutes to cook.

So I'm going to put them here for a minute before we start cooking them.

I'm boiling water here.

And what I wanna do is to do some spinach.

Spinach is very good.

Remember, this is the skillet that I used for the stuffing with the crab meat, you know?

So you can use the same skillet.

Just wipe it up with a little piece of paper in it.

And what we're going to do is to put a little bit of olive oil, again, in there and a dash of butter.

Remember that I was supposed, in the recipe, I was looking at the recipe here, realized that I was supposed to put a little bit of butter in the pea soup, and I didn't, and it's perfectly fine.

Actually, on this one, also, you can do it only with oil.

It's perfectly fine.

Spinach, spinach are great.

Extremely, the highest food in iron, more than any other food.

Very rich in folacin.

So those are very good for expecting mother.

And we used to blanche it, you know, in boiling water, and then press it, and then cook it.

In a more modern cooking, we don't do that.

We put them directly with the moisture.

Those have been washed, so they're still a bit wet.

And those are young, you know?

I can get only, the leaf like that is perfectly fine.

If they are old, you know, you would want to go behind the rib here and pull this, to put that piece of rib, if you feel that it is fibrous and tough.

This is not the case here, but sometime it is the case.

In any case, you can put that in soup also.

That's perfectly fine.

So what I wanna do here (pan sizzles)is to start cooking it in there.

(pan sizzles) As you see, you have a lot of volume here, but believe me, the thing is going to go down to nothing at all.

(pan sizzles) So I press it in it, like that.

Just be careful not to burn your finger or clench your teeth a lot.

(pan sizzles) Actually, what I do, you know, I only pick up the cold part of it here.

What we put in there is a little bit of salt.

I'm gonna put a dash of freshly ground pepper.

And classic seasoning for nutmeg, for spinach, is nutmeg.

And I have nutmeg here.

As you can see, the nutmeg, this is the whole nut here.

You can hear it inside.

And when you break the nuts, inside, you have the piece we call the nutmeg, you know?

On the outside of that shell here, you have that beautiful lacy membrane, which, when you have it fresh, is bright red.

And this is mace, so called.

For us, we taking one of the inside there, and you can grate it with this (nutmeg scratching) (indistinct) on top of this, (nutmeg scratching) like that.

I could do that, as you can see, either on a piece of paper, or without.

And then, or do it with a knife.

In the professional kitchen, I'm used to do it with a knife.

Just scrape the knife around it, and you have basically the same effect, you know, that we have.

So this is our seasoning, the nutmeg, the ground nutmeg, for the spinach here.

This is classic seasoning.

Just spread it out inside.

Okay, what I wanna do now is cover it.

Maybe turn it again a little bit.

This really going to take no time at all.

And there is enough moisture left in it.

I'll put that on top.

And look at my sauce here.

This is the sauce with the red pepper.

And the sauce with the red pepper, I can look at it here, it's a little bit liquid, so I wanna season it, thicken it just lightly.

So to thicken that, I'm going to use a bit of potato starch.

Why potato starch?

You could use cornstarch, also, or arrowroot, but potato starch is very inexpensive and it thicken nicely without getting too gooey.

Like corn starch will tend to get a bit more gooey.

So what you do, you want to stir that water and the starch together, (spoon clinks) and just pour it directly into the sauce.

You will see that as I pour it in, it thicken on contact, you know?

So I put a little more.

I have about a teaspoon here.

That's about fine.

You bring that back to a boil, and that basically, you know, it's done enough.

So what we want to do here now is to put it through the food mill.

But maybe before I put that through the food mill, let me start cooking my wonton, because it's going to be finished soon.

I put them one next to the other.

You don't want to pile them up too much because they'll tend to stick together, you know?

So you want to put them this way, which is perfectly fine.

I can lower my water a little bit here.

And now, this, I'm gonna strain that through the food mill here.

The food mill is very good for that, you know?

And why do I put it through the food mill?

Because, remember, I have the skin of the red pepper.

If I had removed the skin, like I did in the, (mill scrapes) you know, in the garnish for the wonton, remember, in the stuffing, then you wouldn't have to do that, but it's fine.

(mill scrapes) So I have that here.

They have a beautiful red color here.

And if you really want to be even a little fancier, you can emulsify that, if you want, you know, with that hand immerse blender, (blender whirs) if you really want it smooth.

(blender whirs) This will be very good with it, you know?

And, of course, that sauce, you can serve with a lot of different thing, not necessarily that.

We put a little bit of cream in there.

You know, about three tablespoon of cream, two, three tablespoon of cream.

We can put a little more, a little less, but it'll give you some richness and a beautiful pink color there.

Let me test it now for seasoning.

I think that's good.

So what we have to do now is to finish them because they are ready.

I'm going to bring... You can see those wonton are floating to the top.

And you can see that the skin around is transparent, you know?

So you want to drain them, of course, nicely.

What I have done here, as you can see, I have done half of the recipe, eight wonton, because you would have problem poaching the whole thing together, you know?

It will tend to stick together if you have too much.

So be sure that you do about eight, 10 at a time.

Some are square and some are round here because I was showing you the different way of doing it.

But you can see the garnish right through it, you know?

So I wanna put this now here.

And here is my sauce, a beautiful pink.

We could call that (speaks in French) you know, which is a (indistinct).

We have a special sauce in France, we call it that name when it has that beautiful pink color.

I do only half of the recipe, so I kept half of it here.

You could decorate that, if you want, with a bit of chives around, you know, to put them around the side of your dish for a striking effect and all that, or on top.

And I have chive, and I like to use garnish, you know, from the herb, from my garden.

And now, this is ready to be served.

So the thing that I would wanna do is to show you the dessert that we're going to have today.

Oh, but before that, yeah, let me serve the spinach, because the spinach are ready, also.

I have stopped the spinach anyway.

They are here.

Let me put the spinach right there.

As you can see, it cooked very, very fast, those spinach.

So they are well-seasoned.

I can really smell the nutmeg, which is very strong here.

And this is what we want to serve today.

But, for the dessert, let me show you those beautiful apricot that I have here.

I have apricot.

And very simply, what you do, I'm using a very sweet wine.

This is a Sauternes from the southwest of France.

And you put about 3/4 of a cup in there.

Remember that by cooking the alcohol, by cooking the wine, you know, most of the alcohol disappeared with the cooking.

And with it, a great deal of the calorie, for that matter.

(spoon clangs) And I put some apricot jam in it.

I put a whole bunch of fresh basil.

You know, the basil have a beautiful taste with it.

And you can see that beautiful color there.

So all you have to do here, we put two per person, so that's what we have.

You wanna cover it, bring it to a boil, cover it, and cook it about five minutes, and this is what I have here.

You can see those are nicely beautiful color on the other side.

Also, they change a little bit while cooking.

What we'll do is to put a couple of those here.

Here we are.

We can put some of the sauce directly on top.

And what I have for me here, I add a kiwi to give a bit of color, and another taste to it, if you want.

So I'll put a little bit of kiwi in it, dice of kiwi, you know, (knife chopping) or even the slice, for that matter, or even a julienne.

You can serve it any way you want.

Maybe I'll cut it just this way.

Put a bit of kiwi around.

Just give it some interesting pattern and taste.

And with that, maybe I could even put a little bit of decoration.

I have my jardiniere here, and this happened to be basil, also, a pineapple basil.

You put it on top, give it the finishing touch.

Best part of the day is to sit down in the dining room with your family or your friend.

And today, we really have a delightful menu, very light and delicate.

The surgeon general tell us with five serving of fruit and vegetable a day, and we have all of it in that menu, so it's a nice menu, starting with that beautiful pea soup.

Remember, very high in soluble fiber, the peas.

And then we have beautiful sauce there with our crab meat of little ravioli.

And there is only two ounces of crab meat per person.

Then we have the spinach.

The spinach, as I say, very high in iron.

We have a salad.

And, finally, the beautiful dessert here, which are those apricot done with a special wine, with a sweet wine.

You could do it with a port wine or anything else with it.

You know, we have a salad always going with our menu.

We have bread.

I can't eat without bread.

And, of course, with that tonight, we're going to have a pinot gris, what they call tokay in Alsace.

The tokay d'Alsace is the pinot gris or pinot gris in Italy.

It's kind of very full, it's a bit spicy.

It's going to go very well with it for that type of eclectic meal.

Very light.

I hope you're going to enjoy doing it.

I really enjoyed doing it for you.

Happy cooking.