(bright music) (gentle music) - Hello everybody.

I'm Madeleine Carmen.

And as you can see today, I'm wearing my best red blouse, the color of passion.

The reason is that we're going to cook a celebration dinner and for two people just like that.

You know, you want to have this with your friend, your best pal, your husband, your Valentine, whoever you feel like having it to, anybody that you haven't seen for years.

It's a little celebration so you can have a good time together, drink a lovely bottle of wine and enjoy yourself.

You enjoy yourself only if you know how to do the dinner a little bit ahead of time so that you don't have to keep cooking and perspiring over the stove while he or she is drinking the champagne on the other side of the room.

That is not quite recommended.

So I have put together some little dishes there that are really quite pleasant and can be done ahead of time, completely for the first course and the dessert, and almost completely ahead of time for the main course.

I'm going to start by cooking asparagus and mixing them with two types of salmon to make a very nice salad.

In the mean time, you know what I'm going to do is to show you the techniques that my call in life says that I should teach you as a cooking teacher.

So here's asparagus and they are quite lovely asparagus.

When you have an asparagus like this, in order to find out whether the asparagus' fibers are edible or not, just bend it like this.

And where this is a little tough to chew, it will be usable for a soup.

And then we cut it at an angle like this, keep all that, it's precious.

And then you peel your asparagus like this with your little knife.

Some of you may prefer to do it, see, I use my little knife and I pass it like this 'cause I've done it like this for years, go from the bottom of the asparagus toward the tip of it.

The reason you peel it is very simply because if you were to not peel it, this is much softer than that.

And the skins prevents the heat from penetrating to the stem, and you would find yourself with this already mushing up while this is still hot, and that's not necessary.

So it cooks more evenly.

Some of you may like to use that little thing here and sometimes it does give you a better job.

Do what you please, use the one you like the best.

Now, there's another way to do it.

I'm going to use today very small tips like this.

So you can either cook the asparagus this length or cook it in pieces like this.

If you cook it in pieces like this, these go in first and those go in second.

Now, let me go to the other side of the room.

Not before I show you something that's interesting.

See, we're taping right now at a time where there is no fresh asparagus, those that we had here was a miracle of God coming to us from the South.

But these were frozen asparagus.

All I have done to these frozen asparagus is take them all frozen and peel them while they were still frozen, they peel very well, then cut them.

And then, by all means they cannot be as good as the fresh ones, but they are definitely usable, especially if you do not put them in the water and eat them cold.

They already have been cooked and blanched for you.

So we'll use them a little later to do our plate.

Meanwhile, how do you cook asparagus?

Or you have a great big pot of water like this that you see boiling absolutely wildly.

And you put salt in there quite abundantly and in go your asparagus tied with a little string like this, okay?

So let them go in this and you'll see them come wide green quite quickly.

You want a large amount of water because you realize that all the stems, you may not use them, and you keep that water to make either a vegetable soup, I've shown you at other times how to make my so-called garbage soup.

Or you want to make even a cream of asparagus soup if there is a large amount of asparagus stems.

Now what I'm gonna do now is put a pan to heat while this asparagus is cooking, because I want to show you how to do the salmon.

What you see here is a wonderful side of salmon that I have.

And that side of salmon, I have spent my lovely time there, removing all the little bones that are in there.

If you can bring yourself to do it, I think it would be merciful if you did.

This is a hemostat.

It looks funny on the lens, I know, but if you can get one, it's a wonderful thing to have because it works very efficiently.

Look at me holding a little bone here from the ribcage of this salmon, and pinching it with that and pulling on it until it comes all by itself.

You can see it, it mercifully did come for me so I could show you.

What you have here is a slight opening of the tissue; pass your knife over it so the tissue is very simply closed afterwards.

Then you're going to cook a scallop.

Look here I have here some cold smoked salmon in Nova Scotia, and I'm going to alternate two pieces of this one with one piece of this one and make a salad with the asparagus.

So when you cook, when you cut the salmon, this is the way you go at an angle like this.

Flatten where about a third of an inch wide like this, see?

Like that, okay?

And if you had the little bones, you know, ask the person that sells you this salmon if maybe they would like to bone it for you.

It would be nice of them to do that.

Now what you do is push on this and flatten it nicely, gently, and gently.

You're not going to go and do a lot of troubles there.

And then put this in a medium high pan.

I have a little bit of oil in it and you put it to cook and it will cook one, two, three, four, five, six.

There won't be any problem cooking this, believe me.

It cooks in just a minute.

You notice that I have a Silverstone pan to do that.

And I'm going to turn them over very, very quickly.

Now this one broke see?

I went too fast and I went too not delicately enough to make sure... Look, gently, okay?

Good.

There we are.

You can see them.

Go and turn it over like this now.

Very quickly.

Have a little color if you want, don't have it if you don't want, that's perfectly all right.

I left the brown tissues on, but not everybody likes the brown tissue.

So if you don't like them, remove them.

Here we are.

The salmon is done.

It takes just a few minutes to do it.

And don't worry about it being still soft in the center, because if it is soft...

This one broke, I don't want it anymore.

All right, we have little pieces.

They break easily because it's such a nice young fish.

You would find out that an older fish that would be larger wouldn't break as much as that.

As you will see, I have done a few ahead of time.

And I can show them to you because this is what you should do.

See, if you don't mind, already done and ready to decorate a plate.

So I'm going to put them there as well as this one looks absolutely splendid.

And then we'll keep the other ones for launch.

That's what you do.

Now, keep this and you can do other things.

I've showed you how to do other things with salmon and don't hesitate to keep it.

Now for this, we need a little sauce, and that sauce is going to be a mayonnaise.

To make it lighter than the mayonnaise in the classic cuisine is, I'm going to use the good old American blender.

As usual, remember to break your egg in a little dish so that you have no problems with the purity of the egg when you put it in the machine.

Here comes some egg, here comes a tiny bit of lemon juice, maybe a teaspoon to a tablespoon.

Leave it there, you may use it later.

Here comes some mustard.

My dish of mustard, without which I could not leave.

Here we go about a teaspoon and I'm gonna keep the spoon in there because you're going to see me do other things with it.

Now what we're gonna do is take about a quarter cup of oil, put it there.

And also we don't want to forget to put some salt.

And some pepper, okay?

There we are.

Okay, now this being done, we're going to stir this nicely so as to bring the emulsion together, okay.

Now put it on blend.

And then go ahead stir it up.

(blender motor whirling) I didn't bother to speak while I was doing this because it really was not worth speaking, I have too much competition there.

This being well blended, I'm going to not put this on again and add the oil as I go along.

So remember, one egg, about a quarter cup of oil, salt, pepper, mustard, lemon juice, and then you add the rest of your oil as you go along and pretty soon you'll see the mayonnaise do itself all by itself, okay?

(blender motor whirling) There we go.

That's it, mayonnaise is done.

Okay.

So I'm going to empty it.

It's a nice mayonnaise, you'll see it very, very, pretty.

Very light, not as yellow as the other one.

I got some mayonnaise on my eyebrows, how do you like that?

Not as pretty as the one that you make as yellow, I mean, as the one that you make usually with egg yolks and the oil directly into the egg yolks, but this is one that's a little healthier than the one you have.

And here's what I'm going to do with it.

You can see it nice and thick.

This is very, very good mayonnaise.

So I'm gonna flavor it now.

First, I'm going to put some of my dish of mustard in larger quantity because I'm simply a slave to it as a taster.

I really love it.

Then I'm gonna put another mustard that you may not know very well, everybody, but which I also like.

This is the famous Maille mustard that has the seeds of the mustard in it.

Then I'm going to put some of dill here, a little bit of dill, and I'm gonna mix this very, very well together, okay?

Let's mix it like this.

And then you're going to see something.

If you want, if you like it thick like this, put it into a bowl now.

I would like you however, to do something a little different.

Remember my asparagus that is cooking over there.

I'm going to take some of that asparagus water and gradually add some water to lighten my mayonnaise until I have it like a very light liquid sauce rather than a thickish sauce, because it's much more adapted to a piece of salmon that's very rich.

Look at this, you see?

It's somewhat liquid.

I'm gonna pass through a little whisk so you can see the work being done much more efficiently.

There we are, see?

Now this is about the texture of the sauce of a gravlax, okay?

Now, to make it a sweet sour sauce, look what I'm going to do.

I'm gonna take a droplet of little honey there.

You don't have to do this if you don't want to, that's not necessary.

But I rather like a droplet of honey.

And let's pepper it really solidly.

And this being done, you're going to start building your lovely little plate for two people.

So what you do is very simple.

You just put a little sauce here, at the bottom of your plate like this.

Don't put too much, just put a little bit so there is some on the bottom of the plate.

There.

You can always serve more in a little dish afterwards like this.

Okay.

There.

There we go.

All right, good.

This being done, we're going to put one slice of that cooked salmon.

One slice of that smoked salmon here.

Cover this smoked salmon with another slice of the cooked salmon, preferably one that's cold, that is not gonna fall apart on you.

There we are.

Okay.

So you can see the two colors interchange.

We'll put two asparagus here, two asparagus there like this.

And we're going to put a little bit of dill weeds like this because it's kind of pretty and happy looking.

What you do is very simple.

You put this in the refrigerator under a saran wrap.

You put the rest of your sauce.

No, that's not good enough.

There, this is a lot better.

So let's remove all these so you can see the finished plate rather than all the preparation.

You see how long it has taken me to do this.

There we are.

Maybe a droplet of green on the top in the center here to make a little opposition.

And you put your dish, your mayonnaise into a nice glass dish like this.

And here you are, your first course is finished.

This all goes in your refrigerator until you sit at the table.

I'll be back in just a few minutes to show you how to make a main course that goes almost as fast as that.

(gentle music) You see me here with a nice, big tenderloin, I have showed you how to do this before.

It's not a mystery for you anymore.

You don't want to buy a piece like this, was this, make tenderloins or make a chateaubriand of the center and stroganoff out of the end.

You just go to the store and buy yourself a couple of tenderloin steaks.

Now this is the thickness that I would like you to cut them.

It's essential that you remember that nowadays one does not eat a tenderloin as high as the Eiffel Tower.

It's not absolutely necessary for the good of your arteries, even if you're having a good time.

So this tenderloin is cut ahead of time and all prepared and you start cooking it there while we are doing something else.

You put on top of the tenderloin, that can be done ahead of time.

Namely, this is a Roquefort butter that I have made with some walnuts that you see here.

These walnuts have been sauteed in a bit of butter, the butter is cold.

And in my dish here, you can see that I added beside the blue cheese.

You could be having any other blue cheese, some butter and the walnut.

And this is going to be mixed altogether very simply like this.

Okay.

Very, very simply.

You can see it come together without any problem.

And what has happened is that, you remember I showed you before that you always in a saran and put it in your freezer and you obtain a piece of butter like that.

Okay.

Now this piece of butter would be cut and put on top of the steak.

Now I'm going to turn my steak over now.

You see nice and brown.

Do it till the texture that you would like, rare or medium rare.

Salt it after you simmer, pepper it after you simmer and turn the heat down a little bit and let it cook while you do your vegetables.

The vegetables, this is done ahead of time.

Look what I'm doing.

I'm taking a zucchini and I'm scrapping like this.

Okay.

Same thing with a yellow squash, same thing with the carrot.

Leave the carrot on the table.

And when this has been done, you can see them all prepared here.

You take your vegetable and you cut it this time in spaghettini like this.

Really small and tiny.

Would you take a look how I hold my knife?

I'm not going like this with a fickle in your feet.

I'm holding my knife so it's safe and I'm not gonna go and cut my finger in public.

You don't want to do this.

Look at my finger here.

Giving your caliber and my knife going.

Meanwhile, you put this here in your pan.

And this is what you are going to do.

Very simply put the little spaghettini in a bit of butter in a pan that is not too hot and stir-fry it very, very quickly like this so it does not lose any of its fluffiness, And so it just heats through in essence.

Put the salt and pepper at the last minute.

You're going to see me bring this right here to the floor there where nothing is going to happen to it.

Now I do have my tenderloins ready and they are going to go right on the hot plate.

I do have a bit of oil that has given me a bit of troubles because it burn, so with a paper towel, I'm removing this because there's no need to leave it there.

And in that pan, I'm going to put a little bit of stock that you see.

(pot simmering) There we go.

And a droplet of port.

Okay.

Put these to the side.

This is enough for two persons, you don't need anything anymore beside that.

This is the way you put your plate together.

Put your little vegetables at the edges like this delicately.

Okay.

Like this.

Like a little nest, a sweet little nest of things.

This is awfully pretty.

A love nest since we're talking about a special occasion.

And we're going to put one of the steaks in the center.

Let's take the prettiest here.

There.

On this will come a little piece of butter.

If I have my knife here, it will come faster.

There we are, like that.

See in the center, and you're going to see that butter immediately melt.

There we are.

There is your butter melting.

And on top of this, you put a little bit of port.

Make sure that it is very, very little.

Just a tiny little thing like this.

Have you seen how long it has taken me?

Almost no time.

Do remember, everything gets done ahead of time.

The trimming of your tenderloin, your butter, your vegetables, and then at the last minute, it takes you just a few minutes to put this together.

Make sure he or she is not in the dining room drinking all the red wine by himself or by herself.

Let me get back to you in a few minutes with a little different dessert.

(gentle music) Now let me talk to you about two extremely quickly prepared dessert that I have here for you, that I think you will like very much.

These are dried apricots.

You buy them in a box and you make sure that they are not prepared with sulfite, that's very important.

And here is a jar of apricot jam.

And with those two, you're going to make an apricot sorbet.

This is what happened to the apricot after you soak them overnight in water.

And then you make sure that you drain and rinse them and have them ready to go into the blender.

And you can see here the apricot jam melted and slightly brown.

The first thing to do is to put in your blender approximately a tablespoon of lemon juice and a quarter of your jam right there.

Then approximately a quarter of your apricots.

Alright, and you blend all that very, very, very smooth until there is no more (blender noise drowns out speech).

(blender motor roaring) It is going to be....I want you to look at it in here, and I want you to look at it in the dish.

Both of them will be different.

In here it is imperfectly done, okay?

Look at it, very, very rough.

Okay.

You strain it through this so as to obtain it very, very smooth.

If you blend longer than I did, I don't have the material time to do it here.

It takes two minutes, you get that very, very smooth puree.

All you have to do is put that dish in the freezer for overnight, a minimum of four hours, let's say, and then you have your apricot jam all ready, and it will give you a sorbet when you are finished.

The next one is also quite interesting because this one is even less work.

This is apple butter.

Take your apple butter alright, and pour it inside of a big bowl like this.

And to the apple butter, add melted apple jelly.

You can see it in the worst state here, and I'm putting it in the melted state, straight into the apple butter.

Now, if you like a little bit of apple jack, it doesn't hurt anything, I'll tell you.

You can be sure that it will be just nice and pleasant if you do that.

You may want a drop of lemon juice also there, it wouldn't hurt anybody whatsoever.

Again, you pour this into a dish like this, and here we are.

You put this in your freezer overnight and you have a wonderful sorbet of a different manner that you are going to enjoy.

Now, let's get back and see how we can decorate this a little bit.

I do have the finished sorbet here.

You can see the apricot coming right out.

Let me exchange dishes there, so you're not confused between the raw stage and the finished stage.

There we are.

This one is right there, okay?

So what you do, you get yourself one of those not fancy, this is not a fancy one really, but just get a nice, nice digger like this.

Now dig, dig, dig nicely and then flatten it here so you can make a nice, flat serving of the apricot sorbet right here.

Let's turn it this way, that's better.

Turn by a third here and do the same on this side.

Okay, flatten it nicely.

You have to try to have it clean all around so it doesn't look raggedy and all around.

That's not exactly what you want.

See, they tend to jump on you like this.

I will put another one in the center.

Do this with your finger.

Smooth it with your finger.

There we are.

Okay, let's continue and do it.

You see, it's a little tough because it just came out of the freezer.

What you do is make sure that you let it mellow in your refrigerator for approximately 20 minutes and you'll be in better shape.

Okay, let's do it again.

All right, now we can do the purification job.

And this is how you present that.

You're going to put raspberry puree all around, okay?

There we are.

There's raspberry puree.

This is wonderful things.

You know, just take raspberries frozen or fresh and you just put them in the blender and puree them.

And this way you'll have something perfectly delicious.

Okay.

Now on top of the sorbet, we're going to put a little bit of chopped pistachio there.

There we go.

And in the center, a few of those raspberries tumbling around like this, which will be just wonderful to look at and to see.

Same thing, clean up your plate here, you don't want this to happen, it's not nice now.

Same thing with the other sorbet.

Let me show it to you.

It will be quickly done.

First rinse your little spoon.

This is hot water that I have here.

And here comes another nice plate.

You're going to take some of that sorbet here.

This one is a little more mellow, see?

Pull it this way.

And another piece in the other direction like that.

See, this one melts a little more than the first one.

There we go.

It falls all by itself.

Then we're gonna put a cookie that's like a leaf here, a cookie that's like a leaf there, and a tiny bit of mint in the center.

And this is another presentation that you have there.

With this you can serve also some short bread.

I'm sure you all have a favorite recipe of shortbread that you like, don't hesitate to make it.

I have three different ones here.

That leaf is a ginger shortbread for the leafs of New England.

And here is one with chocolate and pistachio that is a vanilla one, and this one is made with cardamom.

You could also put lemon, you could also put anything you would like.

Lemme give you one bit of advice when you make your short bread.

It's very important that after you cream the butter, you add the sugar, but do not stir anymore so that the sugar doesn't melt.

And when you add your flour, it will make big holes when you bake it.

It has been a pleasure to be with you.

I hope that by now you're having your last glass of champagne.

And I dare not to ask you to toast me, that would be too much.

I will see you later.

Thank you for your attention.

(gentle music) (bright music) (gentle music)