- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

- And I'm Claudine Pepin.

- You know, summer is the best time to take advantage of the wonderful fruits and vegetables that are in season.

- And in warm weather, I really don't like spending too much time working in a hot kitchen or eating very heavy meals.

- Sometimes, it's fun to see if you can cook a whole meal harvested right out of the garden.

- Sounds great, I'd love to learn how to make a satisfying meal that doesn't rely on meat.

- It's quite simple.

Join us today for a meatless summer suburb.

Next on "Jacques Pepin's Kitchen: - Cooking with Claudine."

You know, sometime in summer, I like simple meal, simple dessert, and I like to eat sometime meatless, you know, vegetarian meat.

I mean, I'm not a vegetarian per se.

But very often, a lot of what we eat at whole are vegetarian.

What do you think?

- Yeah, I have a lot of vegetarian friends like Harry and Terese and a bunch of other people that are real vegetarians.

So I like to know what to make for them too.

- Well, we are going to do a simple prune de sucre, plum with sugar.

This here, we have a couple of different plum here.

These are black friar.

You can see the red one, usually Santa Rosa, they call them red sweet and green cage.

There is a bunch on the market.

What you want, you want to pick up someone which is soft, you know?

I mean you don't want it to fall apart but you want it to be ripe.

And you know, one way of carrying it is just to do a wedge like this.

So you continue cutting wedge after you cut one.

You see, and again here, I'm using my thumb.

You know, my thumb like this with the knife?

And cutting it until you get to the pit - The pit.

- [Jacques] The pit you throw out.

So you wanna try this one the other way like this?

- Okay.

- Like I did, you know?

And then after, continue like this, try it.

See, you're starting using your thumb, that's good.

Yeah, come with the knife against your thumb.

Scoop it out like this.

You know, I think you're a bit afraid, and.

- [Claudine] It's kind of uncomfortable.

- [See because what I'm doing here, I'm scooping it out, right?

- Yeah.

- Okay, I think we have enough for four here.

So basically, what you want to put here, sample fruit or sucre, we put a bit of sugar.

And of course, lemon juice.

We wanna put like two tablespoon, maybe a tablespoon and a half.

- One, two.

- Yeah.

- Hey.

- That's perfect.

And if you want to be a little more special, you can put a plum brandy in it.

A plum brandy, like flavor width, either a plum brandy or quetsche.

- Okay.

- And also, the mirabelle.

The mirabelle are those tiny, big like cherries, yellow plum, which are like, I mean, like sugar in your mouth.

And we have that especially in the north-east part of France.

So I put a little bit in there.

- Okay, not too much.

- So you want to get the bowl to present that.

- All right.

- Okay.

Yeah, put it right there.

You know this is.

- [Claudine] Oh, this is beautiful.

- A large bowl and sometime, you can arrange your slice.

That would be nice.

You may put dash of sour cream in the middle.

- [Claudine] More?

- [Jacques] Well, that should be enough.

We can put a little piece of plum inside here.

- Oh, that looks looks nice.

- That's it.

- And this is a very simple type of dessert with the fruit that you can do actually with many of the fruit of the summer.

Did you know that where I was born in France, we ate corn?

In Bourg-en-Bresse, you know, we ate corn and that's why, you know, they call that le ventres jaunes?

The yellow belly.

- Yellow bellies.

- It doesn't have the connotation it has here.

It's because we ate corn.

And when I was a kid, we used to roast the whole thing like that on fire.

Look at those white corn.

This is the white corn.

Those are super, super sweet corn, a kind of new breed now that, you know, stay sweet for a long time.

This is incredible.

They are so good.

And then, you have this one here.

See this one?

- Oh that's beautiful.

It's like marbleized corn.

- Yeah, it's actually bicolor, you know?

The white and the yellow corn.

And even though here, we have the tiny one, you know?

I'm sure you have seen them in jar, you know, in jar?

And in Chinese market, they have the tiny, the baby corn like this, you know?

- [Claudine] Oh, wow.

- Those are really tender and all this.

But you know, my favorite is to go with this.

And you don't ever cook them.

You put the water to boil, you drop them in there, you shut up the heat, cover the pan.

That's it, it's cooked enough.

I tell you, we're going to start our meal today I think with a corn soup.

I love corn in soup and beignet, in anything.

And maybe we do even a couple of recipe with corn.

So you know what, we'll start.

I'm going to put a dash of oil there and like a tablespoon of butter to do the corn soup.

Okay?

- Okay.

- And now, I'm gonna put slice onion in there.

So let me slice this onion.

- I wanna do something.

- You wanna do something?

Well, why don't you cut that potato into large chunk, you know, something.

- I'm good with chunks.

- Put your finger because that slide, you know?

- Well, that's why I'm gonna cut it in half so that I have a flat surface.

- Good idea.

- I learned that.

- Cut them in, yeah, in two would be even enough.

See, we're going to make a period out of it anyway.

- Only know one way to cut things and this is it.

- Wow, this is fancy, you know?

You're getting really good here.

Here you learn fast.

- Ta-da!

- Okay.

And if you do potato ahead like this, keep them in water.

Otherwise, they will discolor, you know?

So we want to saute those onions for a couple of minutes there, right?

- Okay.

- Okay.

And during that time, I wanna show you the corn.

And you see here, we have yellow corn.

- And white corn - And white corn.

Yes, well during the summer, the sweet corn, you know, you can have them sometime panache, you know?

Half and half, half yellow-white and they're really terrific.

Now you see when you want to take the kernel out of the corn, you can go this way.

People put their knife here and very often do this.

And you see what happened here?

- Well, see.

- It's hard.

- Yeah.

- It's hard.

- And it damage wrist.

- Yeah.

- Why that this way?

You don't know, right?

- Why is that?

What, why?

- Why cut this way because people do this and cut just with about one inch from the center of the blade here.

- [Claudine] Oh.

- If you put your knife here and you start here and you finish there, you do.

- Ooh, that's very nice.

- You cut, you see?

- You know, you cut like that, much easier.

Now you can do this, of course, in the other direction if you don't want to go with here.

But you start here and you go down.

You start here and you go down this way.

- Okay.

- And even in that case, you know what we do here?

'Cause I'm making a mess, you see it's all over the place.

With the back of the knife, you can scrape this, get that, and this you give to the cow now.

When you were small, you know, in Hunter, you used to go in the back and give those stuff to the cow?

- Yes.

- So you can want to try this one.

You can also put it on the table and cut it this way, you know?

- It's a bit more my speed.

- And the yellow and all that, you want to try that?

You wanna do it with your knife?

- I have.

- You like that knife there?

- Okay.

- Like this?

- Yes, you don't want to take any of the center, but that's good.

Keep sawing, that's it, you don't crush it.

That's the idea.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Let me see this.

Okay, we are going to do a little dumpling with corn.

So for this, we need about three and a half cups.

So now the onion, you see the onion are kind of soft down now?

So let's put the corn that we need in there.

See we need that left about and the potato.

- Okay.

There you go.

- Okay.

Now the potato here, I can put them with the liquid because we need liquid.

We are going to cook this because we are doing vegetarian more.

So we're going to cook it with water.

Otherwise, you could use a bit of chicken stock.

But this is perfectly fine here, you know?

About two and a half, three cup of water.

We put salt and freshly ground pepper in it.

Bring it to a boil.

You cover it and you want to cook that for 30 minute.

And I have one here which has been cooking.

- Oh, it looks great.

- For 30 minute, which is cooked now.

So what we are going to do is to emulsify this.

And you can see that.

What you can do, you can put that in the food processor.

You could actually serve it like that with big chunk of potato.

- Yeah.

- You can serve it like this.

or then you can emulsify it in the food processor, you know?

Or then, you like that better.

- I love this machine.

- Okay, so go to the bottom.

- Okay, keep going.

And I'm going to do a little bit of tarragon to put on top.

You know, we could put chives.

You can put other type of herb.

But I like the tarragon.

Tarragon is pretty strong, but that's more than enough.

- Is this good?

- How are we doing?

- Keep going, keep going, a bit finer than that.

Now we want it a bit creamier than that.

Well, you are working, I'm working, everyone is working, that's good.

I think it looks pretty creamy to me now.

- I think it looks so good.

- But you know what?

We finish it with milk.

That soup can be served cold or hot.

We are going to serve it hot now we have it.

Just put the milk in it.

You see that cream in that?

That's good, eh?

- Yeah.

You could even use cream in this.

I mean, if you wanted to get a little fancy, right?

- If you want it get richer, you can use cream.

And if you really want to cut down or half enough, if you wanna cut down, you can use skim milk, you know?

So here we have in there, you can stir it a little bit.

See this is nice and creamy, it's beautiful.

So here is what we are going to do.

Now to put it in there.

And this is very copious and it's going to be absolutely scrumptious for our first course on our vegetarian meal, you know?

- Sounds good.

- So now why don't we do, why don't you do the vegetable with that now, huh?

- Okay, what are we gonna do here?

- Well, we have a vegetable salad that we are going to do and a vegetable salad that you can vary a lot.

You can do a lot of different type of things in this.

So what we're going to start, this is hot.

I have three quarter of a cup of water.

We are going to put string beans in there and those are tiny French string beans, you know?

And we put them in there and you know those French string beans?

Commercially, you cook green vegetable in a lot of water with a lot of salt.

Here I have that much water, a little bit no salt.

You usually cook it uncovered.

Well, we're going to cover it.

This is new way of cooking.

We want to cook that five, six minute.

I like the string beans just slightly al dente, you know, I mean bite to the tooth if you want, but I like it cooked.

I don't like it raw.

So we cook it this way.

What I want to have at the end basically is no less loss of nutrient because I will have no water leftover so it doesn't wash up the nutrient.

I don't really need any salt at that point.

We're going to do a seasoning.

And in addition to that, we won't even refresh it.

We used to refresh it.

That is put it in cold water to stop the cooking.

I will spread it out, it cool off, and I feel it get a better taste.

Did you get all of this?

- Yes I did.

- Okay, fine.

So we're going to do crouton with that.

See, if you have leftover bread, that's a good thing to do, crouton.

Okay, here you cut that.

You see when you cut crouton like this, you do down and forward, - Down and forward.

- You're seeing that?

Because people take bread like that and apply pressure.

- Okay, that was me yesterday then.

- And go.

And then you have to re- You have to re-inflate the bread, you know?

So start here and finish here.

- Okay.

- You know?

To do - You wanna put 'em on here?

- your bread this way, right?

So you wanna try that one?

- Okay.

- Okay, let's see - Down.

- Watch your finger there.

- [Claudine] I'm watching your fingers.

- Well, you know, I like to put the knife, that's it, against my finger and keep it more this way than this way there.

- You're making me nervous.

- No, you scare me, you know?

Okay, well, that's okay.

That's right, my string beans are cooking beautifully.

Now we're gonna put that in the oven.

It could be actually maybe even a bit smaller than that.

Give me that tray over there.

- [Claudine] Made them big so that I wouldn't lose any of my fingers.

- Okay, that's it.

But it doesn't matter.

It's a kind of a rough type of thing, you know?

Do you want to put that in the oven?

- [Claudine] Yeah.

- You want put that in the oven?

And I think there is another one done over there that you can bring.

And during that time, I'm going to maybe cut the zucchini, cut the end of it.

Those are washed, right?

Although they're good.

- They're washed.

- They're nice and brown.

This, did you wash this?

- Yes I did.

- Okay, so we just cut that in the dice like this, you know, all of it.

- Okay.

- And this, you know, what we're going to do is to cook it with the string bean because that takes a couple of minutes to cook.

So when the string beans are almost finished, we're gonna cook this with the string beans.

I'm gonna cut the tomato.

Those tomato are going to go in there and you want to take the peduncle of the tomato.

And again, you put your thumb here and the knife to turn around, you know?

Holding it with the knife this way.

See that's very important to hold it at the end here.

Because if you hold it this way, you go, you know, it's dangerous.

Here, you cannot go farther out than your thumb, you know?

And this you keep for stock.

Well, we don't have any stock, not talking about the stock market either.

Okay, here it is, Claudine.

We cut that.

We put that in the salad at the end in dice.

- So we're gonna leave the tomatoes raw?

- Raw, yeah.

- In the salad?

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- I'm asking.

- Oh, okay.

No, I mean usually.

- You're cooking everything else.

So I got confused.

- That's true, yeah.

Well, you have a point.

Yeah, that's true.

But I mean, well, we do salad with zucchini that we also keep raw like this, you know?

- Yeah.

- Okay, let's see this now.

It's almost cooked enough now.

I think it's time for our- - Oh, the color is so beautiful.

- Yeah, the color is going to stay green.

Especially if you cook it.

See, I have a stainless steel pan, that's important too.

In the stainless steel pan, we do it, it's nice and clean the inside.

And that's going to cook it well.

So this is cooking for another couple of minutes.

Why don't we do the dressing at that point?

- Okay.

- Okay?

- Yes.

- So garlic.

Okay, you want to hit it or you want me to?

Put it off, that's good!

But you know, you put it on the side a little bit, it goes even better.

Okay, there is one which is peeled here and I'm going to another clove of garlic.

You can put that garlic back over there.

So you can peel it like that or you can crush it and the skin come out.

- Yes.

- So this go faster, you see it takes me much longer to do that.

So I'm going to crush this one to do one, see?

Down again and forward to make a puree, puree of garlic.

And you wanna do the other one?

- Yeah, but I'm gonna do it like my grandmother does it in France.

- Oh yeah, yeah, that's right.

That's your technique, you know?

- Right.

- Scratching.

Right, put it a bit flatter like this and go back and forth, that's it.

Okay, now look at that, that piece is too big.

- So I can mash it.

- Crush it a little bit, that's it.

I think we have plenty here.

What do you think?

- Yeah, that's great.

- Okay.

So I'll add that to it.

Why don't you put about two tablespoon of vinegar?

I'm putting the salt in there.

- Two tablespoons, one.

- Oh, that's more, yeah.

You have about two tablespoon there.

Well, no, maybe a dash more, okay.

And about a third of a cup, fourth of a cup of oil, about double than the vinegar, good double than the vinegar and a lot of ground pepper, you know?

- Okay, I'm just gonna pour, you say stop.

- Okay, so you go ahead, stir it like this.

A little more, that should be just about right.

That's fine, good.

- Okay.

- This should be about the end of it.

And you see what happened there.

You can hear it's sizzling.

I have in a sense, like if I steam it because there I don't have any loss of nutrients.

It's nice and green and because it's very hot, it absorb the moisture out of it and it will get dry.

You know, that if I put it under cold water to cool it off, going to that, of course, there it'd be nice to spread it out so it cool up fast and it doesn't get yellow.

But it's perfectly fine this way.

And it seasons well when you put it like that.

In the dressing, it seasons well and you see there is no more moisture left.

So that's what we're going to do.

Let's get the salad.

Now I'll give you some green salad there.

The tomato.

Boy, we have a lot of color there.

- Yep.

- And nice sucre salad in a nice bowl too.

We have the crouton.

If you do that a little bit ahead, you want to put the crouton at the last moment because you don't really want them to dry it out.

Maybe I'll keep a couple to put on top.

- Should I mix with the crouton?

- What do you think?

Yeah, mix some of the crouton in there and we put the rest on top.

I think that's fine there.

So you know, in a nice bowl, and you may say, why did you mix it in another bowl first?

Well, the point is that usually when you mix it in the bowl, all of the side of the bowl kind of get greasy, you know?

And a bit messy.

So it look better at the table to have a fresh bowl like this.

A couple of, wouldn't you want to be eating that salad?

- I will be eating that salad.

- A great salad for our main course in our vegetarian meal.

- I think what your favorite food is depends on what mood you're in.

Because sometimes your favorite food is soup because you want soup.

Sometimes your favorite food is a cheeseburger because nothing is gonna be better than that.

And sometimes your favorite food is caviar because that's, you know, where you're at at the moment and you're lucky enough to get it.

I don't think I could have a favorite food.

And that's limiting.

- And now a little treat.

I'm going to show you how to do little corn dumpling.

- Sounds good.

- Yes.

Remember we had some corn leftover here that we have.

So we're going to do a batter.

And in there I have, you mix it.

- Okay.

- A third of a cup of flour, we're gonna put two tablespoon of corn starch.

Okay, I'm gonna put a teaspoon of baking powder.

Now this is the style of the Chinese, do that with baking powder like this.

One egg.

- One egg.

- You mix it and I give you a little bit of water.

- Is it cold, hot?

Does it matter?

- It's cold, it's cold water.

And just bring it around like this as you're doing and that's when you're going to really work it out to make it smooth.

Then, we'll put the rest of the water.

Well you see, you do this like that.

It's hard, you hold it like this and you do in that direction.

In that direction here and look how nice and smooth it is.

- That's what you get.

- So now you can stir the rest of the water in it and it's not going to get lumpy because now it's smooth.

So I'm going to put a little bit of oil in there.

No, but we do a bunch of small dumpling, that's fine.

This I'm not going to fry by myself.

Just put the corn in there.

That's it, you see, you could have all the type of thing.

I have about two cup of corn here.

So you see what you want to do with this is just put about a tablespoon of this here and spread it out like this.

You see it starting already taking at the edge?

- Yeah.

- So you can do three or four at that time, probably three in that type of a skillet.

And if it's really very crisp, you know, you absorb least amount of oil.

You see here?

- Hm-hmm.

- So you want until the edge are really crisp and cooked and it's gonna take a couple of minutes.

Okay Claudine, you see the way it looks there?

- Hm-hmm.

- I think it's about ready to be turned.

You know, use a little spatula like that, you can hold it with a spoon so it doesn't, then you wanna try one?

- Okay.

- And I say hold it so it doesn't fall back into the oil and splatter you, you know?

- Splash me?

- That's it, okay, the other one.

Go ahead, go do the other one.

Good, and then now as you can see, the side is crispy here.

It has to cook again a couple of minutes on the other side to have it nice and crisp.

Okay, you see nice and crisp now?

- Hm-hmm.

- Start all around.

So it's splatter a little bit.

You have to be careful.

Why don't you get the other one?

I have some in the oven, you know?

- Okay.

- And what you wanna do, you want them nice and crisp around.

And if you do them ahead, you put them on a wire rack.

Not on a paper towel because they'll get soggy underneath and at the last moment, you can put them back in the oven, you know?

To keep them hot and re-crisp and so forth.

That we have those here.

Okay, here they are.

Here, we have those here.

And you know, all we have to do now, open the wine, this is going to be great with our aperitif.

For the aperitif, we are having Chardonnay from South Africa.

It's nice and crisp.

Why don't you have one of our little thing with it here.

This is the big one, I'm taking that one.

- Okay, fine.

- That's good.

- Uh-huh.

- They're very good.

We're ready to go the garden, right?

- Yes.

Mom, set the table outside.

- Mom very well, that's good.

So we're going to take all of that with us.

So we're ready to go.

I think with the main course, we're going to have a red wine from La Dole area of Switzerland.

Slightly unusual, it made with pinot noir and gamay, which is a bit unusual and I think it's going to go very well with, what are we going to have?

Tell us.

- Well, we have the soup, the corn soup, which we're gonna have cold.

We have the salad of tomatoes and lettuce and string beans.

- String beans.

- And so forth and so forth.

- And zucchini?

- With the garlic.

- And garlic, yes.

- Yeah, zucchini, yeah.

- And the plums for dessert with the sour cream.

- Sound like a great meal today.

- Yes.

- I hope you're going to do that meal with your family.

I am cooking with Claudine.

I enjoy it, happy cooking.

- Happy cooking.

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