- I had this treat when I was in Bilbao.

A real Spanish treat.

You take bread of the country and really toast it, rub it with garlic, a very, very ripe tomato.

The flesh, you know, you rub on top of it.

You put a piece of prosciutto or no prosciutto on top, right on that tray.

A little drizzle of good olive oil.

This is heaven.

I always pick up new idea when I travel and I like to share them with you.

I'm Jacques Pepin and this is fast food my way.

Happy cooking.

This is Pako, my doggie.

He like to be with me in the kitchen and he doesn't eat much.

Convenience food doesn't just mean ready-made dishes for me.

Convenience is that pre-cooked crust for my chorizo, mushroom and cheese pizza, canned tuna I use for dry pasta in my orecchiette with fennel and tuna.

An apricot jam I use to finish all my popover with apricot jam.

So let's start cooking.

I start with dough.

You have them at the market in different shape, different size.

In fact you can use lavash bread as well as tortilla, you know, which I do occasionally.

So what I do with this, I usually put a little bit of oil on top.

This is the pale side, you know the other side is a bit better with some cheese on it.

So I turn it over.

So that is going to brown in the oven, now on this side.

And then we're going to put some onion in there.

I have onion here.

You can slice the onion very thin.

And red onion, white onion.

You know the type of pizza where often you empty your refrigerator and whatever hangs around, this is what you put in there.

So I have finely sliced onion here.

I'm gonna put slice of garlic also.

And it's one time where I really like to slice the garlic rather than crush it.

You know, slice very thin like this, flake of garlic.

If you don't wanna do it with a knife, you know you can use a vegetable peeler to do that and the vegetable peeler will do a great job.

Okay, three clove of garlic.

My guests love strong food.

I don't have any timid guests in my kitchen.

We eat a lot of garlic.

I dunno what everyone eat it, so it's fine.

And drink red wine on top of it.

Okay, then I'm gonna put chorizo in it.

And of course at my market I have four, five different type of chorizo and frankly this one which is chorizo from Spain, is probably the strongest, to this one is a bit mild, this one is weird looking.

I think I like that one the best.

And there is, you know, a little bit of a casing on top.

Remove the casing and your chorizo, sometime you go to Portuguese market and they are called chourizo, C-O-U rather than C-H-O, C-H-O-U.

And it has usually very larger pieces of meat, but this one is very good.

It will give some color to your pizza as well because this is flavored with Spanish paprika and that's why it's reddish.

And when you cook like a paella on anything with your chorizo, it tend to discolor, you know, make it all reddish.

So this is bit you can of course your classic pizza, with you know, Italian sausage as well.

But I like the chorizo.

Yeah, this one is pretty spicy.

You can prepare that ahead, you know.

We never go wrong with pizza.

I'll do all kind of small pizzetta, you know, small pizza as I say with tortilla shell, seven inch, eight inch and all that.

I'm gonna put some mushroom here.

White mushroom, well they happen to be in the refrigerator so it's often the case that what I put in a dish is determined but what's in the refrigerator on that particular moment.

Okay, so do the regular white button mushroom, I mean white mushroom, those mushroom actually are one of the best mushroom in the market.

A lot of people go for expensive mushroom and I buy, you know, sometimes chanterelle and other type of mushroom at the market to cost like a fortune and have less taste than those mushroom.

Especially if you buy those mushroom when the veil is slightly apparent like this.

You know often when you buy just the button mushroom, it's a tiny mushroom that has a lot of liquid in it and has less taste.

When the mushroom get older, it open the veil become apparent and it's really ripe.

That's what it does taste.

Better than that even you get it in the leftover part of the supermarket because when those become black a little bit, they put them there and you get them for nothing at all.

So think about that.

Pepper, and I'm going to grate some cheese and likewise, you know I use different type of cheese.

Of course your classic is your mozzarella cheese that you can grate, I mean crush like this or even do it by hand really, this happen to be a pretty soft mozzarella, you can see, but it's all right.

Oops, stay up.

But I love to put sweet cheese as well.

Or here I have a piece of fontina.

This is one of the other way that I use leftover cheese when I do pizza, often I open the refrigerator, I have such and such, this blue cheese as well, and I put it in my pizza.

So this is almost a show of leftover.

See a piece of, I could also slice it with a knife, really.

Like you would do it with that piece of old Camembert, you know, left over.

Well I can't see my chorizo anymore.

Okay, this around, I think I'm gilding the lily a bit too much, as we say.

A tiny piece of a little bit of olive oil on top.

And this is ready to go into the oven.

Specialty pizza, that cost you $25, here you can put it, you know, with what's leftover in your refrigerator.

425 degree or 400 for a good 20 minute or so.

Even though the dough is cooked, it still need that amount of time if you want it a bit, you know, crunchy and how it should be.

And now we are going to the orecchiette, which is the little ear, with fennel and tuna.

I have a part of those here.

You know, they look like little ear and really the sauce stay in there, so they are very nice, and I'm gonna put this, wap, into boiling water.

Salted boiling water.

(pasta rattling) Okay.

Then you don't want to, you want to stir, do your pasta at the beginning a couple of time, whatever pasta you cook so it doesn't stick at the beginning.

When you start boiling again, you don't have to cover it anymore.

So I think that this is on high, it's gonna start boiling soon.

So let's start the sauce that I have here.

I'm gonna do a sauce with all kind of different vegetables.

Start with olive oil, of course, I'm going to put onion in there.

Onion, (food sizzling) and I'm going to put pinoli nuts to brown with the onion a little bit here.

I'm gonna take a minute or so to pick up some color and during that time I'm going to cut some fennel.

One of those nice things is really nice because it's very, very thin and you know you want to hold it this way.

You don't wanna put your finger in top here, you can use that with a towel even.

And that's cut, I mean it's shaved really very, very thin.

Okay.

See, quite a lot.

I do the same thing with a salad.

You put a bit of salt on it and the salt of it get it a bit wilted and you can do a wonderful salad with that.

Well here we have a little more for this.

What else?

Another green vegetable.

I'm gonna put that green pepper here.

You see the part, where there's a separation here, that's where I'll cut it.

Sometime I peel it, but not in that case.

Here.

Here we are.

Those are mild pepper.

You know, I mean you could put actually a jalapeno in there or a serrano.

After that, the pinoli start getting a little color, then I'm going to add this.

I feel about fine.

Moisture.

This.

(knife clacking) Red pepper.

I could have put pimiento, you know, that I buy at my market, all done as well.

(knife clacking) Here we are.

All those vegetables are going to get a bit softer.

That's what I want.

You can see that the pinoli now have pick up some color, so I turn them so they are on top, they don't brown too much.

But with this I'm putting raisin and canned tuna that I have here.

So the tuna, I have the moisture in there.

And this is similar to recipe that I've seen with pasta, here with sardine, you know, and I've had it actually with canned sardine as well as with fresh one.

I'm gonna put a little bit of water maybe in there.

So a couple of cloves of garlic.

Here we are.

We have a lot of seasoning in there, a lot of taste.

I'm gonna put paper on top.

Bit of salt.

Cover that, and that's going to soften for a couple of minutes.

Well it's going well.

I think I should put some parsley in it.

Whole bunch of parsley.

Parsley is very good for you.

Everything is very healthy.

Everyone want to die in good health.

So we are doing healthy food.

A lot of... Good.

(pan scraping) Another couple of minutes of cooking.

Let me check my pasta again.

(water bubbling) Mm.

It's pretty al dente.

I like it al dente, that it, you know, firm to the teeth, but not really when the center of the pasta is still a line of white uncooked dough.

You know, which people prefer it that way.

Not me.

And my mother like it well done.

Okay, this is cooked enough.

(pan scraping) And I think it's time to combine the two together.

When I do something like this, I always use, you know, some of the liquid from the pasta in a bowl at the end, you know?

Because the pasta will still absorb this.

Let me shut that off now.

Let it drain.

And then I can combine it.

My pound of pasta.

It's interesting when you think when you cook pasta sometime, like if I put elbow macaroni, penne, rigatoni, any of those, a pound of pasta go a much longer way.

I serve five, six people with it that I cook a pound of spaghetti, or, and spaghetti and all that.

Usually it serve just my wife and me.

So I don't know why but the linguini particularly with clam sauce, we don't get much more than two people.

Okay, this is nice and mixed.

Now let me taste it to see if the seasoning is right.

Mm, that's good.

Now put Parmigiano Reggiano in it.

Don't be too modest with it.

Maybe a little more olive oil again in the center here.

I think I have enough for 10 people here anyway.

(pasta sloshing) Okay.

There is a big pasta bowl.

Okay.

When you do that type of thing, it's really a one meal type of thing.

Well, on top of it, I like to add a little more pasta sometime with a vegetable peeler like this, make nice, you know, little strip of cheese, and maybe even on top of that, another little dish of oil, just a little bit.

You can put some of that too because that's the role.

That's what we started with.

So this is the orecchiette with fennel and tuna.

(upbeat music) Okay, let's make a popover with apricot jam.

I have three tablespoon of butter here melted.

And what I'm going to put is half a cup of flour in there.

Couple of tablespoon of sugar.

I did a dash of salt, putting two eggs, one, two, and half a cup of milk, about.

I'll put a little bit in there and start mixing.

You see when you have a certain amount of liquid in a batter like this, it's good to put only half of your liquid in it so that it's thick enough, like it is fairly thick here.

So when it's thick I can work it out with the whisk as I'm doing here and the thread of the whisk will go through something thick enough so that it liquifies and make it very, very smooth.

And then I can put the rest of the liquid.

What I'm saying is that if I put all of the liquid at the beginning, then, the flour gets wet with the liquid, you know the protein in the flour, and what happen, they form little lump and then you have to strain it.

About a quarter of a cup here of sour cream that I have in there.

(whisk rattling) So this is a very fast dessert that she loves.

I have three table spoon of butter in there that I put in there.

There is a little bit left, course, in my pan, and I'm gonna put that in there.

That's it.

And that goes into the oven this way.

(whisk rattling) So it's pretty easy to do.

Again about 400 degree, 425 degree oven.

Take about 20 minutes or so.

(pan clanks) I might as well check my pizza while I'm here and I think it's done.

The pizza is beautifully brown and I have it here.

Oh, I have to close the door of the oven.

Okay.

And the best you know with a pizza is really to do a salad with it.

And that's I think what I'm going to do, and the green salad very often now, what I do, I take a clove of garlic, I crush it.

(knife banging) If I wanna do it with garlic, chop it, you can do that.

You can use a garlic press as well, you know, but the time it takes me to clean up the inside of that little thing, garlic takes me faster than doing it by hand.

I have a jar of mustard here and you know, you can see there is about a tablespoon, maybe two tablespoon of mustard left in it.

And often when I am at the end of it, or frankly I take a fresh jar, I put that in there and I put salt and I put a fair amount of pepper in it.

Then red wine vinegar, you know, sometime I take the things out about, eh, about a quarter of it.

Yeah, it's about one to four.

And then the olive oil, I fill it up like this and then I have a jar of vinaigrette.

You know, I mean, this guy will cost $4 at the market, you know, all done.

And here you have a jar of fresh vinaigrette.

So it's ready for the next week each time you do a salad.

What I'm doing here, you can see that by whipping it, it kind of emulsify it, you know, so I have my salad already here.

That's it.

(salad crunching) Salad and pizza.

One of the best meal you can have.

And pasta in addition today, this is carbohydrate, you know, (indistinct) recipe.

Okay, let me put this on top.

This is high enough here.

(crust crunching) My pizza will cut beautifully here.

That's it.

Okay.

A nice portion of salad like this.

(tongs clinking) Slice of pizza, a glass of red wine.

This is it.

This is my lunch.

Chorizo mushroom and cheese pizza.

I'm sure the popover is ready now.

(pan scraping) It is the type of the dessert that the kid love to eat.

I do this way and yep, good.

Came about nice and warm this way.

I love to do that with a little bit of a apricot jam.

I do my own apricot jam.

I have incredible apricot.

I love to do the jam.

And this, you know, I just put it in the microwave oven about 30 second, 40 second or more just to cool it up a bit.

A little dash of cognac for me or my wife.

You serve that to the kid?

Probably not.

And then we put that in the middle of it.

You could put some nuts in it, even, if you wanted to.

Bring that to the side.

It's like a type of crepe, type of dessert which is really satisfying, easy to make, and good to eat.

There we are.

Okay, you can put a little bit of a classic powdered sugar on top of this, you know, especially on the outside.

And this is a warm popover with apricot jam.

(upbeat music) If you put some on the apricot jam, you know, or on the apricot jam, you might as well put some in your glass too.

And you know when an unexpected guest arrive, you can pull together a wonderful meal to share from your pantry.

Happy cooking.