- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

- And I'm Claudine Pepin.

- You know, you don't need a lot of money to make a delicious meal.

- Well, that's a good thing because I don't have a lot to spend.

- Well, you don't have to.

Look for specials and reduced items.

If you're flexible about what you're making, you can plan your menu around foods that are economical.

- Well, that's one thing I've learned from you, you can really use leftovers to create a brand new meal.

- It's a Pennywise Potluck.

- Next, on Jacques Pepin's kitchen.

- "Cooking with Claudine".

(upbeat music continues) - Oo, turkey carcass.

Looks like soup.

- It looks like soup.

You're absolutely right.

At our house, after Thanksgiving, in fact, anytime we cook turkey, the day after, we do turkey carcass soup.

Very inexpensive, delicious.

Use anything left in your refrigerator and this is what we are going to show you today.

So, we start with the carcass.

and what we want to do, I have four quarts of water here.

And you can help me here.

See, what you want to do is to take the skin out of it.

You know, there is a lot of fat in the skin, so just scrape the skin out of it.

And we have the carcass here, as well as the bones, you know, of the legs and so forth.

I mean, we don't use the bone, that people chew on it, but we use the rest of the carcass.

And what we have here, you know, you have all of the juice, some of the aspic again, you know, the juice which has congealed in the refrigerator.

And this of course goes into the soup too.

Adds a great deal of flavor.

And this now has to cook a couple of hours.

Now I cook that a couple of hours uncovered.

You don't want to cover it because if you cover it, it boils and it emulsifies the fat.

You don't want this.

Now here is one which has been cooking two hours.

And as you can see, I've removed a lot of the fat.

You see all that fat that's put in here?

- Mm-hmm.

- Okay.

And you know what happens with this, and it has to cook for two hours, after you have, you know, cooked it for that long, there is still some fat.

We're going to strain it out and can remove more fat even after it.

So, yeah, we put it into a colander, you find it's kind of a coarse soup.

And as you can see, the bones here are kind of falling apart, you know?

Because, you know, the carcass has been cooked for a long time.

I mean, the turkey already has been cooked for a couple of hours.

That now can be discarded.

Now look at all what I have on top here.

And again, you know, I will do the same thing.

Push this, push it like this, and kind of pick up some fat.

Even though we remove the fat, remember, there some in the juice.

Now it's pretty clean.

And what we are going to do is to put the vegetables in it.

We have one leek, a couple of carrots.

You have a celery here.

You wanna gimme the celery?

- Mm-hmm.

- Good.

And leftover lettuce.

You know, leftover lettuce, sometimes, you know, you have different leaves and so forth.

You washed those, right?

- Yes.

- Oh good.

Okay, now the leek itself, you see what you wanna do when you do the leek, you cut the end of it.

Sometimes you remove the first layer.

The first layer may be tough, you know?

This one actually is pretty good.

And after that, I don't really cut all the leafs here, just take a piece here.

The end of it, you know, if I feel that it's too tough.

And what you want to do after is to split it open, like this, to expose the center because this is, we're in the center now, light green, this is what you want.

And this has to be washed.

Do you wanna wash that for me?

- Yeah.

- And the celery that I have here, so you use like a cup, cup and a half of the celery that I have in there.

And some carrot.

You could put other vegetables, of course, whatever you would have around, would be perfectly fine.

How is that leek, clean inside now?

- I hope so, 'cause if not, I'll have to do it again, won't I?

- Yes you will.

- Yeah.

- Why don't you start putting this in the soup there.

- Okay.

- Okay.

- Just put it in?

- Yep.

- Here it goes.

- Put it in, in the stock.

You know, we have a good stock, and now we want to flavor the stock with all of those vegetable.

So we put that right in there.

That's it.

Good.

And as you can see, a great deal of vegetable this way.

At that point, what you want to do is to bring it to a boil, cook it 15, 20 minutes, that's going to be enough.

And we put a bit of pasta in it, right?

- Sounds great.

- So look at what we have here.

And the other one.

I have pastina here.

I mean, those are small, those small pastas that you have.

You have alphabet noodles here, if you like.

- Can you spell my name?

- I can't spell your name with it.

And this one, the small pastina.

So you wait until this cooks, 15, 20 minutes, you add that to it.

You cover it.

Cook it another five, six minutes with the pasta.

And that's it.

You have your turkey pasta soup here.

You wanna give me that bowl here?

- Okay.

- To put it in.

We'll serve a nice portion out of this.

Look at that.

- Ah, that looks so good.

- I like it when it's... Nice and thick.

This is really a winter dish, right?

- For me, this is a whole meal.

- Yes.

I mean, I'm sure that you can have a big bowl of soup, a couple of slices of bread, and it'd make a whole meal in itself.

And remember when there was no mushrooms in the supermarket, we had to get them?

Look at what we have here.

It's amazing.

See you have those brown mushrooms here, button mushrooms, you know, nice and firm.

These actually are the same thing as those white mushrooms, you know, which are button.

- [Claudine] So why is the color different?

- Well, it's just a different strain.

When those get big, you know, they get to this, often they call them cremini.

And at that point, you know, the veil, with the parent like this, and this is very good.

Here you have some shiitake mushrooms, you know, that we use in Chinese cooking.

We have oyster mushrooms here.

- [Claudine] Oh, those look really nice.

- All of those are cultivated mushrooms, you know?

This here is actually a tree ear.

- Tree ears.

I know those.

(Jacques speaks French) Yeah.

- They're good in soup, very crunchy.

Not that much texture.

Very good for high blood pressure.

- [Claudine] Oh.

- You have those large, you like those portabello mushrooms.

- I love these grilled.

- Grilled whole.

- Yeah.

- Like a steak, yeah?

- Yeah, it is.

- You know, this, this, the brown mushroom, all of those are the same family, it's an Agaricus.

And finally your regular white mushroom at the supermarket.

It's one of the best mushrooms.

- I like these.

- And you know, certain supermarkets, when the veil is apparent, and I was showing you this one here.

Sometimes, when this one get older, it opens, it gets darker, it gets softer.

That's about half of the price at that point.

And that's what you look for, because that's what we are using today in the recipe.

(upbeat music) And in keeping with our inexpensive meal today, we're going to show you a dish of mushrooms.

And you may think mushrooms are expensive.

Sometimes they're expensive at the market, even the regular white button mushrooms.

But see the one that we've seen, look at though, they are open, they are black already underneath, open.

Those are even a bit blacker and a bit softer, which is what happens when they get older.

But you know, those mushrooms which are open like this as opposed to this one, which is a button mushroom, very tight and firm, this has more taste than that.

- Why?

- Like the cremini, because it's an older specimen, it's like a pear, which is well ripe, you know, a pear or any type of fruit, which is ripe?

- Oh, okay.

- It's going to have more fruit than something young.

So what we have to do now is to wash those mushrooms here.

You want to give me the water?

- Okay.

A lot of people say you're not supposed to wash mushrooms or you're supposed to wash mushrooms.

So will you please explain, do you wash mushrooms?

Do you not wash mushrooms?

- Do you wash mushroom?

- I do because you wash 'em.

But other people say, "No, you're never supposed to wash a mushroom."

- So when people tell you, "Why do you wash mushrooms?"

You say, "Because my father"- - "My father said so."

- Oh, I see.

No, here is what happens.

You see?

I mean, there is a lot of dirt on that mushroom.

The point is that you are not supposed to keep them in a plastic bag because they get soft, they get yellowish, and they run out their water.

You should wash them if they need to.

But the point is that you should wash them only when you're ready to use them.

You don't wash them ahead, and too, because they get soft.

So now we're ready to use them.

We wash them, take them out and use them.

So we're going to do them en papillote there.

- What does en papillote mean?

- Well, I have a double layer of aluminum foil here.

You can even put some plastic wrap inside if you want.

Papillote, remember, at Christmas, when you're at your grandmother's in Lyon, they have those cookies?

- Yeah.

- I mean it's like a chocolate and it's twisted at the end, with little frays on?

- Yeah.

- Those are the Papillotes de Noel, and there is a little joke inside, like from the Farmer's Almanac.

This is a papillote, it's when you get something wrapped in paper.

So here is, we have our mushroom here.

Why don't you put like... Like a tablespoon at the most of butter on top of this, you know, at the most.

Then we put a little bit of olive oil, about two teaspoons of olive oil.

We cook them like that, very closed in, you know, like in a hot oven, you know, like in a pressure cooker or even a kind of homemade pressure cooker.

So here what we want to do now is to close it, like this, you know?

Oh you know what?

We should put some garlic in there.

- Oh, okay.

- The garlic.

Here and I forget.

Sometimes we put a lot of garlic, sometimes.

And you know what?

The garlic, instead of crushing it, I'm going to slice it just like this.

That's it.

Very, very fine.

And we put it on top.

Remember, this should cook in the oven about 40 minutes, 40, 45 minutes until they are really soft.

You cannot overcook mushrooms, you know?

- You can burn them.

- Well you can burn them, but then there will be a lot of juice in it so you don't have to worry about this.

Okay, so we have our garlic in there.

And herbs, well, we put herb at the end, so they look good.

Again, we fold it, leaving a little bit of air space inside to create moisture, you know, like a hot house, and put that in the oven.

- All right.

- About 45 minutes, you know, 400 degrees.

And during that time we're going to start on our lamb.

And I have a breast of lamb here.

This is a very kind of a flavorful braiser, you know, a braised piece of meat.

And it costs maybe a fifth of the price than if you buy your lamb shop, you know?

This is the breast.

And as you see, there is a layer of fat here.

You see the layer of fat, layer of meat, layer of fat, layer of meat?

Even the felt, or the red skin underneath, you can leave it.

That's how it comes at the supermarket.

You know?

So we can use that.

See that piece of two pounds would serve four people.

It's not quite two pounds.

So what we do, we want to remove a little bit of the fat.

And the way we're going to remove the fat mostly is by braising it, that is melting the fat.

- Oh, okay.

- So let's cut that.

And this is why we call it a braiser, you know?

And you cut it into six to eight piece, four, five, six.

There and you have those pieces.

You can get rid of that fat.

And what you want to do is actually cook that in one layer with the fat on.

Of course you don't have any fat or anything in there, for 25, 30 minutes, you know, covered if you want, on this.

Turn them now and then to melt all the fat away, you know?

And that's very, very important.

And this is what we have here.

I have one which has been cooking for like 30 minutes in there.

And you can see the amount of fat that I have in there.

You know?

Do you see that, Claudine?

- Yeah.

- That's very important.

So now we have kind of a dry piece, not dry piece of lamb, but kind of crisp, and we're going to remove them here.

- It smells good.

- Yeah.

I mean, you know, you don't remove all the fat, but basically as much as you can, you understand my principle here?

You melt the fat in the center, you know?

- [Claudine] Well, there's no way to take the fat off any other way.

- There is no other way.

You have to cook it slowly, a long time until the fat melts.

And again we put it to sponge it onto paper towel.

You can see here the amount of fat that I'm going to have- - Wow.

- In there, you know?

- And lamb fat- - That's a lot.

- Lamb fat, I tell you, you can't do anything with it, it's no good.

But keep the bottom part of it.

You know what's important is the crystallized juice.

That's what we're going to do the sauce with it.

Why don't you do that apple?

We're going to cook some onion to put in there.

I'm gonna saute the onion in there.

- Do you want these cut up in small pieces?

- We are going to saute them.

- Square pieces?

- To cut them coarsely, you know?

Kind of coarse.

- Coarsely, I can do that.

- Just cut them, cut them coarsely like that.

It doesn't really matter.

They're going to fall into pieces.

- [Claudine] I'll just gonna hand them over.

- We're going to put some cumin.

- I can't see.

- Oh, watch your finger.

Okay, some cumin.

And some chili powder that we have here in the stew.

So let's put that in there.

That's it?

- Yep.

- That gives it some texture, you know, in there.

That's good.

What I'll do is like about a good tablespoon, tablespoon and a half of tomato paste.

- [Claudine] I love tomato paste.

- You can put that thing in there, put it in.

About a tablespoon and a half of cumin.

Go ahead - More?

- Yeah.

Put the whole thing, huh?

- Okay.

- I like it.

And of course, less of the chili powder.

Yeah, go ahead.

- Just half of it?

- Well, a teaspoon, yeah, about half.

So we mix that.

- Mm, smells good.

- That does smell good, huh?

And in this now we're gonna put two cups of water.

- Would you use any kind of stock or anything?

- No.

- Or would that... - No, that's a good question.

But I tell you, no stock, because the lamb is so strong.

I know a lot of people are going to put stock in there.

What for?

Okay, let's put that in there now.

You can give me a hand.

We put that.

And even in this, you know, even on the paper, I had some fat.

- Yeah.

- So, we have the base of our stew here.

It smells good, right?

- It smells great.

- I put so.

We cover that and we want to cook that 30 minutes, after it boils, you lower the heat and boil it very gently for about 30 minutes.

Then we add potato in it.

See I have those round potatoes here.

Those small potatoes.

Just peel like that.

You keep them in water so they don't discolor.

You know, that's important.

- Yes.

- And then you add them to the stock and you cook them another 30 minutes.

So it cooks an hour.

This has been cooking here, it's been cooking for a while.

I stopped it for a few minutes.

And now the potato has been in.

- Okay, - And we finish it up.

- I'm gonna get the mushrooms.

- Why don't you get the mushrooms, yes?

And now, you would want to do that at the end, basically putting that mixture, you would want to do that at the end.

A mixture of lemon rind and parsley.

Your mushrooms are... - Are hot.

- Are hot here.

Maybe I'll open it on top of that.

Put the little mushroom dish here.

And let's see what it looks like.

Those mushrooms.

That's mushroom- - Oh, it smells so good.

- Yep.

You see them smoking here.

There is a lot of juice here.

- Yeah.

- And the garlic is there.

Then we put a bit of fresh parsley on top of it.

You know, remember, we have all the sliced garlic inside.

Believe me this is very, very flavorful.

Put it in there.

- It smells good.

- Yes.

And I'm going now to serve the lamb to you, well first I'm going to put the mixture in there.

That's it.

Here, you can put that over there.

And make that, put that at the end.

Very inexpensive, again, stew.

Remember, we started today, I was going to tell you to do something inexpensively.

And that's basically what we did.

Now, see, braised like this because you can see, even the surface of the, look at the surface of the juice here.

You don't really see much fat now.

- [Claudine] No.

- There is another thing that you have to be very careful, because the lamb, I tell you, when you have fat in the lamb, it's very strong and not particularly good or appealing.

So more than anything else, it's important to remove the fat in the lamb, yeah?

- It doesn't smell strong.

- No.

Can you smell the apple?

I can smell the apple and the cumin.

- I can smell everything.

But it doesn't have that strong lamb smell.

- Yes.

Here it is, a little bit more juice on top of it.

I have a few more potatoes, because I know when I'm at the table I'll come back from more potatos for me.

This is our braised lamb today with potato.

This is a great comforting dish that I'm sure you're going to enjoy.

And it's going to go very well with our mushroom en papillote.

(upbeat music) - My father's approach to economy in the kitchen is that if it's not the plastic wrap, you have to eat it.

No matter how long it's been around, you have to use it.

You absolutely have to use it.

- So there is nothing as refreshing like cucumber salad.

It also keeping with our menu today, it's very inexpensive.

I mean, cucumbers in summer are really inexpensive.

And you like cucumber, right?

- I love cucumbers.

- So here we're going to peel the cucumber.

Sometime you don't even peel them, right?

- Yeah, I like 'em with the skin just because, well, right, 'cause I'm lazy and I don't want to peel it - Again like the carrots, you know, you cut the end of it and that make one platform, you know?

- [Claudine] Oh wow.

- Cut this, one strip like this.

I mean the whole idea, of course, is that when you do that, you have to pivot that on top of your hand without your finger being higher than the carrot or the thing.

You can go from this side, you know, in the same way, you know, as you said before.

So let's say I like them peeled.

So we peel them.

We cut them in half.

Those are actually the long so-called seedless cucumber.

They have seeds here, you know, and you go with the edge of the... With the edge, you know, of a little spoon like that to do this.

But you know what, we don't really have to seed those.

And you go on the other side this way and those really, usually they call that seedless cucumber, even though there is seeds.

They are fine like that uncut.

Now this is a good practice with the cucumber because it's flat, it's soft, to practice your cutting.

You know?

And taking the biggest knife.

You see, if I do this, (knife tapping) if I don't move my hand, (knife tapping) nothing happens.

If I move my hand, my finger here, very slowly, (knife tapping) then I'm going to have very, very, very thin slices.

I mean you can see, those are all thin slices.

You know what I mean?

They are transparent, you see?

- Wow.

- So the noise is basically the same.

(knife tapping) If I go fast... Have them a bit too thick here, you know?

But it's the same thing.

Okay, so why don't you start, but with the big knife, and try to cut the other one.

- This side or this one?

- No, cut, well, cut this one is fine.

- Okay.

- Okay.

And you go down and forward.

That's it.

And keep the knife touching your finger.

(knife tapping) - Oh, I think you've been doing this a little longer than I have, huh?

- It's okay, Claudine.

(knife tapping) (Claudine chuckles) Okay, so we have another one here.

And with this, you know, you can add that to it.

I'm gonna put some mint.

I love mint.

You know, just cut it coarsely there.

There's so many different types of mint in the market.

You could put cilantro in it and mint.

- Oh!.

- About like, let's say instead of a cup, half a cup.

And have some dill here.

And in the same way, you know, kind of cut it coarsely.

This way we're going to put dill and mint there.

You know, about half a cup to three-quarters of a cup of those here.

So you finish cutting that during that time.

And we have those onion, you know, I have a big onion or two smaller ones are fine.

I'm gonna do the dressing in there.

And you see what we have in that dressing, you know, we have sugar, you know, and about like a tablespoon, tablespoon and a half of sugar.

Just a little pinch of salt.

Maybe a dash more.

Some Tabasco.

Put some Tabasco in there.

And you know, I have like three tablespoons of vinegar.

And this is- - Is that enough Tabasco?

- It is plenty.

- Okay.

- And this is cider vinegar.

And a little bit of oil.

You see, in that case, here, contrary to what we do normally, I have like two teaspoon of oil and like three tablespoon of vinegar to do a marinade, you know?

So why don't you bring the onion.

We put it in there.

Go ahead, put it in there.

Good.

And put the rest of the stuff.

You can give me the rest of the stuff here.

And this is good if you can, if it can be marinating a little bit ahead, you know?

Beautiful color.

Look at that.

- Mm-hmm.

- It gets a bit softer.

And the cucumbers are going to render a little bit of juice, you know, and you want it to render a little bit of juice.

So that basically, that's a nice, great summer salad.

You have a nice portion of that.

Of course now it should marinate for a while because there is a fair amount of juice which comes out of it after it marinades.

And it really gets slightly more flavorful.

But this is a great salad for our inexpensive menu today.

I think we have a beautiful table here.

You know, cooking inexpensively doesn't mean to cook not inelegantly.

I mean this is very elegant.

Nice.

And that's the way it should be, if you know how to prepare it at the table.

I mean we have that soup, that soup could be a whole dish in itself, I mean a whole meal in itself.

Then that stew.

You know, you're going to do that stew.

- Oh yeah.

- You like the cumin, huh?

- Yeah, this is great.

- And I probably would eat that directly with my cucumber salad.

- [Claudine] Ooh, that would be nice.

- And with the mushrooms together, you know, eat the whole thing.

And you know, on that type of meal, I think the dessert, you know, grapefruit and whatever is in season is the best.

- And what kind of wine are we having?

- Well, I think, you know, to keep with what we've been doing, we're going to have an inexpensive wine and we picked a Merlot from Chile.

And Chile comes out with really terrific wine, very inexpensive for the quality of the wine.

And this is 95% Merlot, about 5% Cabernet Sauvignon.

Exactly in the style of what we do in Bordeaux, in the Pomerol, you know?

So I think this is a great wine.

Very inexpensive to serve with our meal.

And I hope that you're going to do that meal for your friends.

That inexpensive meal is going to get the family all excited and very happy.

And I'm sure you're going to enjoy it (glasses clink) as we are enjoying it.

Happy cooking.

- Happy cooking.

(upbeat music)