- Hi, I'm Jacques Pépin.

- And, I'm Claudine Pépin.

Papa, can you teach me how to make a great meal that I can serve when my vegetarian friends come over?

- Sure.

There are many people who cook this way.

Finding that it's not always necessary to center a meal around meat.

- I want it to be hearty and satisfying.

And, I also want dishes that you can make with or without meat.

- Well, it's good to be versatile.

Lots of good vegetables are available year round.

We are cooking a nearly vegetarian meal.

- Next on "Jacques Pépin's Kitchen."

- "Cooking with Claudine."

(train horn blows) (upbeat music) Well, the menu we're going to prepare today, you can do that year round.

Year round you have pineapple, we have stuffed onion.

We have a bulgur wheat salad.

We have a string bean salad.

A lot of vegetable.

I mean, it's nearly vegetarian.

Not quite.

We can put a little bit of meat into the stuffed onion, but it's basically a lot of vegetable.

- Well, I have some friends that are vegetarian, so they'll like this.

- Yeah.

You know, if you really want it vegetarian, we can alter it to make it totally vegetarian.

- Good.

- We'll start - with the pineapple here.

What you want to do is to cut the top (knife slices) this way, just as much as this, you know, and at bottom of the part, this one particularly is not straight, you know?

(knife slices) So I want to take the bottom so that it's about flat, like this, you know?

Okay.

And actually this one could be riper than that, it's slightly green at the edge there.

Now, what you want to do is to take the inside out here, - you know?

- Oh, my.

- And, what we want to do is to do a long knife, and see, you wanna put the knife on this side, and you wanna start cutting it.

- [Claudine] This looks very difficult.

- You wanna try that?

- Okay.

- If you just.

- If I make a hole, - can you fix it?

- Wait, see you go.

Yes, small.

Move it like this, yes.

- Oh, oh, no, this isn't bad.

- But, you're going through the center here.

(Claudine laughs) No, no, - [Claudine] No wonder it was so easy.

- No.

Okay.

Oh, okay.

Now, when I feel that it's all out, then you pull out the whole thing like this.

- [Claudine] Ooh.

- I mean there is a little bit of meat that you can see here.

We made a mess at the end there.

That's your fault.

It's not mine.

- Okay, fine.

- Okay.

- So what you wanna do is to cut this, and out of this here, let me give you the little cookie cutter here.

You wanna take the center, which is tough here.

(pineapple crunches) - [Claudine] Oh.

- Well, that's one way of doing it here.

(knife slices) (Claudine scoffs) - Not the way I doing it.

- Well, would you like - to tell me a different way of doing it?

- Well, I go this way, you know, turn it like there, but it's okay, the other way, too.

- If it works, fine.

- It worked.

- Okay, good.

So keep.

- Do we keep these?

- Keep cutting.

No, this is tough here.

- Okay.

- So usually.

- So I give it to people I don't like?

- Yes, give it to people.

(Claudine laughs) Okay.

(knife slices) And, you know what we didn't do?

- No.

- Because, - you want to try to keep it in the order that you put them in.

Because what we want to do is to bring that here, and I want to reorganize this, and put them in the same order, otherwise they don't fit - properly, you know?

- Okay.

- Keep going there.

- Okay.

- [Claudine] You give to me in order.

- Okay.

- Whoa.

- We can do an individual plate, also.

Right there.

I would put probably two slice like that, would be nice.

Okay, we want to do a little bit of a sauce with this.

And, what I have here is orange juice, gimme some honey in it.

We wanna put about a couple of tablespoon of honey.

One.

- Two.

- Two.

That's it.

- And, we want to do maybe a little bit of cognac.

- You wanna put a bit.

- Two tablespoons?

- If you don't wanna put cognac, no one, (whisk wooshes) one tablespoon would be enough.

(whisk wooshes) All right.

And, you may want to let that marinate a little bit in that sauce, or then serve it directly on the plate.

- Here.

- Here it is.

- So look on the plate you want serve that - Oh, wow.

- it's a very simple sauce, - [Jacques] but I think it's - Very good.

- well, - the honey actually - thickens it.

- And this.

- This, you know, is going to go around there, and you can see, you can take some, and put it back onto it.

(dishes clatter) You can put that back onto it.

You can present it at your table this way or present it?

No, you put it back on top.

Bring it to the table this way.

So this, we can present a couple of those around, maybe.

- [Claudine] Mm.

- Oh, that looks great.

- What do you think?

- Yeah.

And, you wanna put a flower maybe on top?

And, this is the very simple, very fresh, dessert for our nearly vegetarian meal.

But, let's go do the main course, now.

- Okay.

- And, the main course is going to be those big stuffed onion.

I know you like it.

So we're going to peel that onion.

I know you know how to peel an onion.

You want take both end off it, you know?

- Okay.

- And, go ahead, - and remove thing with that.

- Okay, well.

- You know to do that?

- Maybe I do it a little differently.

I do it a little differently.

- Don't cut all of this.

- I just grab it so I have one.

- Remember, we need the outside there.

We need the outside of the shell.

If you cut all of the outside, it's not going to hold together.

- But, I have to get - the skin off.

- You cut it too deep there.

- Oh, this one, huh?

I don't know whether we're gonna be able to use it.

- I'll do it.

- Okay.

Okay.

(dishes clatter) So put it in there.

All right.

Okay, so here is what you do, now.

You just put it in there.

(foil crinkles) You know, fold it up on top, (foil crinkles) like this to make, I kind of tuck the edge, you know, again, and you put that in the oven at like 400 degree for an hour, - okay?

- Okay.

- Put it on.

And, I have some here that I have taken out of the oven.

Yes, about 15 minutes ago.

(foil crinkles) And, as you can see, look at that, Claudine, they're just, - Oh.

- about right now.

- See, they are not completely cooked, but cooked enough for what we're going to do now.

Because, what we are going to do now, you see the bottom is already brown a little bit, which is nice.

So we want to cut the top, and I want you to put that in the food processor.

(dishes clatter) So you see I cut the top like this.

So it is about half inch.

We put that in there.

And, you see this here?

You want to empty that.

That should come into one block, you know, very easily.

- [Claudine] Really?

- And, you want to keep one or two layer.

And, that's what I told you before.

- If you cut it too deep, - Ah.

- it's not going to work.

- Okay, I understand.

- You know?

- I'm sorry.

- So this, - we can put that back in there to chop it.

I'll do this one.

I'll cut it, and you can empty it.

- Okay?

- You wanna do that?

- So what we are going to do, we're going to saute this.

If you don't think you remove enough, you remove another layer, you know?

- Well, no, - Maybe another one.

- I was actually worried about - Okay, that's good.

- taking too much.

- Go ahead now.

- Okay.

(lid clatters) - Good.

- On pulse or?

- Yeah.

- Does it matter?

(machine whirs) (machine whirs) - Okay.

That'd be about fine there.

So we wanna put a little bit of olive oil there.

You're gonna bring that here.

We're going to saute this in there.

Go ahead.

Come on.

(onions sizzle) So here we have a lot of onions.

So it is an onion, which is done with stuffed onion.

(onions sizzle) (pan clatters) So that's going to be nice.

And with this, we're going to put Swiss chard on it.

We have a red Swiss chard as well as white Swiss chard.

This is the most common, but this is fairly common now.

When I was a kid, my mother used to do those, the white one.

They come very big in France.

And, we used to cut them like that.

I don't know if Meme, you've seen her doing that.

She would cut the end, just a took a, - then break it - and break it.

- And, pull it out.

- Yeah.

- [Jacques] To get all of those.

You've seen her do that?

- Yep.

- And, remove all of those things, you know.

But, that was for the real large one, which is kind of tough.

This, you don't really need to do that.

So what I'm going to do there is to chop those a little bit, (knife thumps) very coarsely.

And, if you don't have Swiss chard, you could spinach - or another type of green, - Oh, yeah.

- it's not really that important that you put.

So you wanna put this in there.

Wanna gimme the garlic.

- Two cloves.

- Just crush it, huh?

(hand thumps) (knife clatters) That's it.

Coarsely, like this, because that's gonna cook for a good 20 minute.

I'm gonna put a bit of salt on top of it.

Pepper.

What you want to do.

(pan clatters) A lot of the moisture is going to come out.

(spoon bangs) When the moisture come out, it's going to go down.

We cover it, (lid clatters) and cook it on medium heat for about 20 minutes.

And, I have one here which has been cooked.

You see it reduce, and now soft, and now it's cold.

- Wow.

- So now that it's cold, we can mix the rest of the mixture, which is a little bit of sausage meat.

- Okay.

- And, this is what we have here, You know about six ounce, half a pound at the most, you know, if you don't want that meat, you need a bit of a binding agent.

So there, at that point you could put, let's say two slice, yeah, about two slice, two or three slice maybe of bread.

- Oh, okay.

- You do breadcrumb, - and you add breadcrumb to this, you know?

Okay, so you're gonna help me to stuff this?

- Sure.

- It's a bit messy, but you can always use your finger a little bit if you want when you know you're going to recook it in the oven anyway for a long time.

So let's pile it up, like this, and the whole thing should fit.

You can pile it up higher if you have to.

(spoon clangs) So where we put a little bit of Parmesan cheese on top of this.

You know, and you wanna put a little bit of water around, pour some water here, like half a cup, because otherwise it's going to burn around.

That will create a juice.

- That's it.

- That's enough?

- Yeah.

So you can put that into the oven now.

And, that has to cook for a good hour, hour and a quarter at about 400 degree.

You bring the other one?

I have one which is cooked there, Claudine.

- [Claudine] I'm working on it.

- We're going to serve it right there.

- You want me to put it here?

- Yeah, you put it there.

- Here?

Where?

- Okay.

- Yeah, put it there.

- So this one is really, yeah, cooked.

You can see how soft it is, but you want this to be soft, like this, you know?

- Mm.

Oh, it smells really good.

- Yeah.

Okay.

And, we put the juice on top of it, because don't forget the juice, we serve that with it.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Wanna put it?

Yes.

And, this is our stuffed onion, at our main course in our nearly vegetarian meal.

(upbeat music) - I think society is coming into the view that we're supposed to eat more fruits and vegetables now.

I just know I've always had them in my house.

They've just been part of the way I grew up.

Look, these are just like at Mamie's house in France.

- Ah, that's (speaks in a foreign language).

When I was a kid, you know, we used to take the string out of it.

You really had to string it from one side to the other side.

If you didn't do it, you couldn't eat it.

And now, there is no string to those things.

- Yeah.

- Look at those.

- Those are wax beans.

Those are very fleshy, and very nice, too.

And those are Romano beans, and those are really maybe the fleshiest of all, (bean snaps) you know, look at that.

And then, those are burgundy - beans.

- They're beautiful.

- Unfortunately, when you cook them, they turn green, or you have to cook them like ten seconds.

So you can see the inside is green.

- Oh, wow.

- See?

- Then here, you have your regular string beans.

Again, you want to them very plump like that, and nice, you know, that's when quality is there.

But sometimes, you have a bit of a string.

Not those.

This is those Chinese, have you ever had those Chinese long beans?

- Yes, you've had them.

- I think I've had them, - but they've been chopped up, - so I can't tell.

- There is no string at all.

- Then, you cut them, biased, and we stir fry them.

And today, we're using those regular beautiful string beans.

(upbeat music) To start our meal, We're going to do a little (speaks a foreign language) ragout, you know, a string beans ragout.

See those string beans?

Those are the tiny one here.

Hold those, because you want to peel, take the end of it.

You wanna remove that.

The other side is not really necessary.

So here we put it in there, and what I have here is just not that much water, you know, like a cup, a good cup, cup and a half of water.

Because by the time we finish cooking it, I want basically all the water to be evaporated so that I have less loss of nutrient, - you know?

- You don't - put salt or anything in there?

- No, not for the time being.

We'll do that later.

- Okay.

- And then, we're going to do a little bit of a ragout of tomato to go with it.

So what I want to do is to put a dash of olive oil in there, and a little piece of butter, one teaspoon, two teaspoon of butter.

And then, I'm going to slice this, chop it coarsely, (knife slices) you know, again.

(knife thumps) - Wait a minute, I wanna take the end off.

- No, well, you can do it now, or you can do it after.

See, if you cut it this way, (knife thumps) remember the position of the knife, (knife thumps) I've shown you that a few times.

Okay?

But, you know, maybe you don't cut quite as fast as I do.

- No, I would say I don't.

(onion sizzles) - It doesn't matter, you know.

Okay.

So we're going to saute this, and you know when you want to saute that sometime, and the recipe tell you cook it until they are transparent, and cook, but don't let them brown.

So what do you do?

You put a little bit of water, see, you can hear it, (onions sizzle) it's sizzling, and then it disappear.

You cover it, (lid clatters) you cook it two, three minute, by then you can hear it, it start sizzling again.

Then the water is gone.

So let's put some garlic in it.

Why don't you slice some garlic, too?

Remember, try again (knife thumps) to put your finger, and keep the head of the knife on the table, and down and forward.

Down and forward.

That's it.

That's it.

That's it.

I have Band-Aid, anyway, you don't have to - Worry about it.

- Oh that's good.

- Okay.

- Okay.

That's enough.

- Let me get - all of that garlic, and we'll put that with our onion here.

So now what we want to do, I took the (speaks in a foreign language) the stem here.

You want to cut that in half to take the seed out of it.

So you go ahead.

- Okay, - That's it.

- And then, you know, you wanna press it like this, basically to empty all of this and be left just with flesh.

Yeah, shake it a little bit.

Okay.

You see what happened with this?

You keep that for stock, and it cost you nothing at all.

- Yeah.

Oh, that's good.

- And, you know, this is used just to season the stock.

So now we finish, we are going to put this into the onion.

I can smell.

No, no, wait a minute.

You see, I wanna show you the onion.

- You see - Oh, wow.

- there is no more water now.

There is no more water in that onion.

- And, they are all nice - They are seasoned.

- [Claudine] and white.

- [Jacques] But, they are white and seasoned.

- Okay.

- Okay.

- We can add that to the onion, and we cook them for a couple of minutes more.

I'm gonna put a dash of salt and pepper in there, (lid clatters) cover it.

And, what we'll do is a little bit of tarragon.

You know you want to pull it this way to keep, again, see the stem of tarragon.

- Stem of parsley.

- It's going in there.

(Claudine laughs) - Yeah, remember your tarragon is pretty strong.

(knife thumps) So we have chopped tarragon there.

- You gonna put it - I think that should be.

- in the string beans, or in the?

- We're going to mix the whole thing together.

You see, I still have a bit too much water.

Well, so what I'm going to do here is to pour a little bit of the water, If I have some water left, you know, here I'll do this.

I'll put it into our stock there.

- It's got all the vitamins.

- Yes.

But, yeah, I should have put a little bit water or less at the beginning so that by the time we finish I have none.

This goes with it.

Now, you can put your tarragon.

- [Claudine] Good.

- Okay.

And, you can bring me the plate.

We're going to present it now.

- Okay.

(dishes clatter) - This, you forget that little bit here.

Look at, that's beautiful.

- Oh, wow.

This looks great.

- Yeah.

- Now, ragout of string beans.

- [Claudine] Ah.

- And, we have the sliced garlic on top, which now is cooked.

So this is a great dish, and it's going to be perfect to start our menu today.

(upbeat music) So now, why don't we work on the bulgur salad.

- What is bulgur?

I mean, I know this is bulgur, but.

- This is bulgur.

(Claudine laughs) - Exactly.

This is bulgur.

- What is it?

- This bulgur is wheat, you know to do flour with?

- Yeah.

- The wheat.

- Okay, you get the wheat, the wheat are steamed, they are cracked, and they are dry in the sun.

So those are precooked in a sense, you know?

You can cook them like rice, it's fine.

But, you can also put like a cup of this, three cup of water (water splashes) and they will rehydrate.

You know, the whole thing will be absorbed.

And, this is what we get out of this.

You see three cups there.

- Hey this worked - really well.

- So, put that one here.

(Claudine laughs) - That works well.

Put that on the side.

And, that's what we have here.

Now, what you want to do after that amount of time, you want to drain it.

No, sometime I cook that, you know, I saute a bit of onion, and I put them.

But this, we did with cold water, and you would want to let it dry, to let it drain rather, for, you know, 10 minutes, at least 10, 20 minutes.

But, we can always press it a little bit later.

Why don't we leave it - on the side.

- So this is ready to eat.

- You don't have to cook it now that you've rehydrated it.

- This is cooked, I mean you can taste it.

Because it has already been - Oh, well.

- Steamed, you see?

- It needs some stuff in it.

- Okay.

- So what we want to do here, we want to grate some carrot.

You know what you could do with the carrot, too?

You could do thing like this, and put that in there.

In fact, maybe we'll keep that to put on top.

- Okay.

- You know?

- And then, on that you want to grate it like this.

You want me to do it, or you wanna do it?

- You do it.

- Okay, then you cut this.

(Claudine laughs) - How would you like this cut?

- Well, you want to - slice it.

- Actually, - I'm not even gonna ask you, because I can really only cut like two ways.

So I better just do it.

(carrot grates) - Again, you don't put your finger.

Ah, okay, that's better.

(carrot grates) (knife thumps) You can also chop that coarsely, you know, in the food processor.

- Oh.

- The carrot are very nice in it.

You want about a cup of carrot here.

(carrot grates) - [Claudine] Do I want all this green?

- Yeah, yeah, a lot of the green.

I love the green.

- I think you just got carrot in my eye.

- Well, I tell you, I think it's a bit big what you're doing there.

(carrot grates) I think that's enough (grater taps) what you're doing.

- That's it?

- No, but I mean, it should be a bit thinner than that.

- Well, you didn't say - thinner.

- Well.

- We'll put that a little bit thinner.

- [Claudine] Should I redo these?

- All right, it's okay.

(Claudine laughs) Just put them in there.

- Everything.

- All right.

- Everything in there, yes.

Put it here.

Now, garlic.

Well, the garlic, we want it fine, eh?

(hand thumps) Again, in a puree, (hand thumps) a fair amount of garlic.

Not that I.

(hand thumps) - I love garlic as you.

- Yes.

(knife thumps) - So there we want to do a puree, you know, because it's raw.

You don't really want to have pieces of garlic.

You want it pretty much.

(knife thumps) Okay, here we are.

And then, why don't you put the bowl right there for the time being.

Because, I have to cut this.

See we have a lot of mint here.

- Oh, I love mint.

- Parsley, mint and parsley.

- [Jacques] You know, that's what, you want to gather it together into a ball, and slice it.

- Could you use a food processor to do this, or would it make a puree?

- No.

Well, that's a good point.

You know, you can use a food processor, but you have to be sure that your food processor has really sharp blade.

- Okay.

You know, when it's new at the beginning, it chop it beautifully, and after a year or so, especially if you cut like nuts, and there's little pieces of food in it, and it's not as good.

Want to cut that a bit finer.

(knife thumps) And, not even I cut it, the head of the knife go first.

(knife thumps) Now, put your hand here.

Go ahead.

(knife thumps) - I can feel that the head of the knife goes first, but it goes a little fast for me to see it.

- Oh, okay.

So a lot of - herb in it.

- Oh, it smells so good.

- Yeah.

That the mint.

- All the fresh.

Yeah.

- Okay, so now you can put that here, and you can bring that, and look at the amount of liquid that you have.

Why don't you press, because it didn't drain.

No, press it a little bit like this.

What I'm going to do is to put some Tabasco there.

- Mm.

- Fair amount of Tabasco.

And, I love the Tabasco with the mint, particularly, because the hotness of it is cut, you know, by the coolness of the mint.

Then, lemon juice.

About a quarter of a cup of lemon juice, and about two, three tablespoon of an oil, at that point, you know, a canola type of oil.

- Okay.

- I think that's good.

- We can make that in there.

- Just dump it?

- Yeah, just dump it.

- Good.

- There.

- [Jacques] We wanna mix it.

This is a good refreshing summer salad, you know.

- With everything that you put in it, could I keep it in the refrigerator for a while?

I mean, - would it sit good?

- Yes, it would.

- It would, remember that the green of of the scallion will get slightly yellow after a while.

All the green, because of the citric acid - Oh, okay.

- that you have - in the lemon juice, you know.

- You wanna present that in there.

Yes.

- Oh, this is beautiful.

- Nice summer salad.

- Well, we have a lot here.

Put that right on top of it.

That'd be nice.

One piece is enough, two pieces enough.

That's it.

And, this is a great salad for our nearly vegetarian.

Well, we have a ton of vegetable in our menu today, huh?

- Well this is wonderful.

I have a lot of vegetarian friends, and this is pretty easy to do.

The salad looks wonderful, and it's very colorful.

- [Jacques] Yes.

- And, the string beans look wonderful and fresh.

- [Jacques] Yeah.

I love the ragout - of string beans, like this.

- Summery.

- And, the pineapple I'm gonna have to practice a few times before I make this.

- No, but it's nice.

And, you know, when it marinade a little bit with the juice, it's really good.

You can do that ahead.

Of course, the stuffed onion, you can do it with or without the meat.

You have a totally vegetarian meal.

Well, with that great summer vegetable type of meal, I mean, it's summer year round, that type of stuff.

We have a pinot noir here from.

- Oh, yum.

- Yeah.

- From the Anderson Valley.

And that very creamy, very berry, with a kind of medium body.

And, I think it's going to go very well with it.

I like the pinot noir, as you know.

- Yes.

- Coming from Burgundy.

- I hope you're going to do all of those vegetables for your friend and have a ball.

As we have a ball cooking it for you.

(upbeat music) Happy cooking.

- Happy cooking.

(upbeat music)