- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

As you can probably tell, I was born in France.

But I live in New England.

My wife's background is Puerto Rican and Cuban.

And my daughter is thoroughly American.

It may seem like a hoge podge, but often that make the most interesting combinations.

Same thing with food.

Take a look at our eclectic menu today.

Thinly pounded beef carpaccio with a basil chiffonade.

Tender catfish filet on a bed of ratatouille.

And a hazelnut parfait covered with candied violets.

It's a potpourri of wonderful flavors.

Coming up on "Today's Gourmet."

(upbeat jazz music) You know, I like to mix my menu sometimes.

A little bit of French, a little bit of Italian, a little bit of South America or somewhere, and this is what we are doing today.

A kind of potpourri mixed menu.

And for that we're going to start with the dessert.

And we do have some nutritional concern in our show as it regard fat, saturated fat and so forth.

But, you know, a great thing about that is that you have to think of it in term of moderation.

Small portion.

And even though I'm doing a dessert with cream, with a whipped cream, it is not necessary that you have to do it with that menu.

I mean I do a dessert for each of the show, but actually at home, you know, it's rare that I serve a dessert unless we have guests coming over the weekend, we extend the menu, make it a bit fancier and so forth.

And that's what we are doing today.

So what we are doing is basically whipped cream.

With nuts in it, crushed nuts, and we are freezing that.

We call that a parfait.

And we have a cup and a quarter of heavy cream.

You have to use heavy cream here.

The whipped cream, I mean it won't whip properly if you use a light cream.

A dash of vanilla and sugar.

This is a pure vanilla extract that we want to do.

You can whip it by hand of course.

We do it into.

That type of electric mixer, which is very nice, but makes a lot of noise.

It will take about two and a half, three minute to whisk, and I have some right here which are already ready.

To proceed with, you know, it has a nice texture, firm, and into this I already have the vanilla and the sugar.

But what we want to do with the nuts, you see, those are hazelnut or filbert sometimes called in different part of the country.

F-I-L-B-E-R-T, the filbert.

For me, probably the best nuts.

You put them in the oven so that the skin will crack on top of it and release like this.

This is different for almond.

Remember, if you want to remove the skin of almond you boil it.

When you take it out of the water, you press it.

And the almond pop out of the skin.

That would not work with hazelnut.

Hazelnut you have to put it in the oven.

And brown them.

And even if you spread a little bit of.

Of oil on top of it, or water actually.

My friend Jim Dutch told me that the skin will release even better.

But what you do, you put them in there and rub them a little bit to remove the skin, like that, in a towel.

Don't worry about it if you don't remove all of it.

It's not that important really.

Remove whatever comes out of it.

The toasting of it, however, is very important.

The taste is going to be quite different from nuts which are toasted to nuts which are not toasted.

That happen with everything, you know, if you consider like coffee for example.

In Europe we toast the coffee beans a great deal.

And that's why you have what is called an espresso coffee that is dark, you know, and strong because the beans of coffee beans are toasted much darker than what we do in this country.

And it's a fallacy to believe that because the nuts are toasted more, you get more caffeine in it.

Whether you toast it a little bit or a lot, the caffeine doesn't change in the beans.

So as you can see here, most of it are removed.

We put it in that little food processor here.

And we're going to ground this into a powder.

Goes quite fast in this, as you can see.

This adds a nice aroma now of fresh nut.

We put it directly into the cream.

Actually, you know, there is something similar to that that we do with whipped egg white, sugar, and we put the nuts in it, then we cook it in the oven, and it's a type of meringue.

We do cake with it, like a dacquoise, would be done with that type of cake.

This is molded here.

And now we put that into a little bowl.

Any type of bowl is going to work out fine.

Even a little souffle mold.

We oil that very very lightly, and what I did here, I put two strip of paper in it because I don't know how hard it's going to be to take it out, so that will help me pull it out.

So what we are doing here.

Putting that directly.

Into our mold.

And as you can see, my cup and a quarter of cream give me quite a lot.

And I have calculated the dessert for six.

Of course I'm sure you can serve more than that even with it.

It's not really going to be more than an ice cream.

But it's still quite calorie, you know?

What we put on top of it, maybe a piece of plastic wrap so you can press it with the plastic wrap.

So that you make it flat on top.

Wrap it.

And in the freezer.

You can do that two, three days ahead.

I mean you can do that ahead.

That's a nice dessert to have in your freezer in case.

You have some guests who pop unexpectedly.

So what I want to do, however, I want to talk to you more about the parchment paper.

You know, the two strips that I do there.

We do a lot with parchment paper in the kitchen.

And it's a good idea to know how to handle it.

I have a piece of paper here.

If I want to line up the jelly roll pan.

If I do a buche de noel or something like this.

Very often you will be told to butter it.

So you see what I do here, I will take a little bit of butter and butter only half of it very lightly.

So you butter half of that piece of paper.

Then you fold the unbuttered one on top of it.

Again, like this.

And what you can do, to cut each corner with a knife this way.

At that point you undo this.

You put the butter side directly into your jelly roll pan and press it.

Put some of the butter in the bottom.

Half of it.

Lift it up again, now the bottom is slightly buttered.

Put it back on the other side.

And now you mold this.

We could have cut the corner this way.

As you can see here and there.

This will fit exactly into the mold.

This is how you do a jelly roll pan.

Then after you lift up the paper, peel it up, and roll your jelly roll with it.

Many other thing that we do with that paper.

For example, if you want to line up those mold, take a piece of paper.

Actually you can use the edge of the table like I'm doing here.

To cut a rectangle out of it.

Let's say that rectangle you fold in half.

Again, in half.

And now from the center where you have no opening, you fold triangle.

This way.

A smaller triangle.

And a smaller triangle.

And so forth.

Turn that upside down if you want to measure.

You cannot do it bigger than that, so you measure your radius from the center up to let's say here.

You cut it.

And that will fit the bottom of that mold exactly.

Nice and round, you see?

Exactly fold in it.

Makes your life much easier.

For example, this one.

Which we call a separate mold, you know?

Which is really strictly for those things.

Again, I fold it in the same way.

Smaller and smaller and smaller triangle.

You measure there from the center.

Right here.

The center is there, you cut it here.

You can cut it with a knife, and now from here to there.

Again, you know, you are going to have a piece of thing which is relatively hard to cut otherwise fitting this perfectly.

Maybe the most useful use of that piece of paper is to do what we call the little corner.

And those are little cornucopia that you fill up with something to do decoration.

Absolutely indispensable for someone doing a wedding cake.

I cut a triangle here, it's like a right hand triangle.

If you remember your plane geometry, you fold this in half.

In the center you put in this here.

Don't worry about the end of it.

Now you go around a couple of times, you know?

Now I put my hand inside, and I bring this with my finger in that direction to get a real point out of that.

Then I fold that in.

Now I have a really very pointed thing.

It's easier to put that directly into a cup.

Like that, or a bowl, to hold it.

And let's say if I put a bit of chocolate in there that will hold it.

You usually put just a little bit to decorate in the bottom of it.

I fold it.

This way.

Nicely.

Then you can cut the point of it very lightly.

To see whether... Yes, it is coming out fine.

And this is how you do your decoration, you know?

You have all kind of decoration when you're in the kitchen.

Like this, you do little flowers, you do one of that, happy birthday.

Very useful.

Let's do our main course now.

Now the main course today is going to be a dish from the south.

The south of France, as well as the south of the United States.

We are doing a ratatouille.

R-A-T-A-T-O-U-I-double L-E.

It's a classic dish from the south of France which is made of onion, garlic, eggplant, you have zucchini, tomato, and pepper, you know?

And of course on top of it, we are going to do a catfish.

So the first thing we want to do starting our ratatouille is to saute the vegetable with a bit of olive oil.

And for that we are starting with the onion.

And you cut it kind of coarsely.

Remember that the ratatouille is in essence even better done ahead than it is when it's fresh.

Ratatouille is served by itself on the first course, you know?

And very often in the south of France they're going to serve it cold.

Not ice cold really, but like room temperature, you know?

This is the way it is good, so we have the onion.

Want to saute those onion a couple of minute.

And after the onion, the eggplant.

And notice here, like in many dish with eggplant, we are using the whole eggplant.

That is including the skin, you know?

There is many recipe for eggplant in Africa, Especially North Africa.

All around the Mediterranean crescent, you know?

All of the Arab world do eggplant.

I think it's in Turkish they say there is over a thousand recipe for eggplant.

In Russia they do eggplant also.

I'm putting that in there now.

What is called poor man's caviar, you know?

Where the whole eggplant is roasted in the oven.

Then you take the pulp from the inside to make a mush, a kind of spread you serve with bread.

They call that poor man's caviar.

The zucchini.

Is used a great deal too.

As you can see, this is your classic stew of vegetable, you know?

Ratatouille in France.

And caponata in Italian.

You know, caponata is a stew which is very similar to that too.

Again remember, being on the Mediterranean border, and all of those country around the Mediterranean will do dish which are in a sense very similar, you know?

So this has to cook a couple of minute.

Before we add the tomato.

The tomato here, we just cut them in half.

Parallel to the stem, you know, and press a bit of the seed and cut them into little dice like that, or cube.

You want this to cook first.

Then the garlic.

We take the stem of the garlic out again.

Crush it.

So that's released.

That's going to release the skin, you see, by crushing it.

And now.

Again, crushing the garlic.

To extract the essential oil taste.

And chopping of the garlic into a puree, you know?

You can of course use.

A press, you know, a garlic press is perfectly fine.

What works works.

Here I have nice color.

With salt in it.

A lot of ground paper.

A lot of freshly ground paper in there and you put a little bit at the end anyway.

The garlic.

And this is it.

I mean the ratatouille, now you can cover it.

And cook it for about 10, 15 minute.

Conventionally it's cooked a little more, and I have some which is already cooked right here.

And now, what are we going to put on the ratatouille?

Catfish.

And the catfish, you know it's a very interesting fish.

In the last few years it's available in so many different part of the country because it is farm raised.

You can have it all over.

I have the catfish here.

I want to start by cooking the catfish.

And I will discuss that with you a little bit after, so I put this.

In that very hot skillet here.

I put some water in it.

And just put my filet of catfish in a little bit of water.

I mean actually what I'm doing is steaming them in that water.

A couple of minute on each side.

Pepper and salt.

Cover it.

Then we poach them about two, three minute on each side.

As you can see here, I have a whole catfish.

Those are farm-raised.

Catfish of course because they have those whisker like the cat.

You have to be careful with those.

At the end of those fin there is a very pointed needle.

And if you puncture yourself with this, it's very painful.

But usually of course you are not going to buy it in this form.

I wanted to show you a catfish farm-raised.

You buy it directly of course from the fishmonger in filet.

A very firm, nice, white flesh fish.

When the filet are undone you see on the other side here I have a little bit of darker flesh, and you can remove a little bit of that if you want because that's stronger.

You know?

And this is often why people objected to the catfish filet.

Which are fished in a pond, you know?

And they end up being a bit strong in taste, but those are not.

But even the one that you fish yourself, you know?

If you clean it up the right way, like I have done here, it's a perfectly good fish.

Especially, as I say, it's so firm, you know, and all that, so you can use it, you can saute it, you can even grill it on the barbecue because that will hold.

Always remove the skin, however.

The skin is like leather, you know?

It's very very strong.

In addition, what we are going to do with that catfish.

We are going to do an herb.

An herb will emulsify into a kind of green puree with a little bit of olive oil in it.

And for this we need that little machine here.

Maybe first I'm going to turn my filet of catfish because they probably are cooked on the first side already.

But I can see here.

Turning them.

That's quite a nice filet.

And you see, what you do there basically.

You saute/steam in the same time.

I didn't put any fat, but I have just enough water so by the time it's finished cooking the water has disappeared, so I lose none of the nutrient or anything which is why this is a good recipe too, and all the taste stay in my skillet over there.

So inside, in top of that, we want to do a little bit of herbed oil.

And as I say, I use that little machine here.

This turn much faster than a food processor and it can liquefy.

And very often that's what I do in my kitchen.

I take this, I put peppercorn in it, the black peppercorn, a few zip of this, and I have a powder, you know, I have ground pepper.

Freshly ground pepper, so I use that all the time.

And here we have tarragon, you see?

That tarragon leaf, when you bite tarragon, what you do, you take a piece of it and test it.

Two type of tarragon.

French tarragon so called, it doesn't come from France, but it's called French tarragon, and Russian tarragon.

One has taste, the French tarragon has taste, the other one look exactly the same, has no taste at all.

So be sure to taste it.

If you buy a plant that you want to put in your garden because that grows well and comes back every year, so it's terrific.

Now there I have some... You see what I did here?

This is what I shouldn't do.

In that little machine, put your finger here.

When you put something in there, otherwise it fall into the center shaft.

I have water there.

A little bit of water in there to help in the emulsion.

Two, three tablespoon.

Then I put that on.

I can do like a green liquid out of this.

And that green liquid out of this will of course be beautiful in color.

And you have all of the nutrient, I mean look at that here.

I could have turned it even a little more.

Into this.

We are going to put a little bit of olive oil for flavor here.

So I have.

About a tablespoon or so of olive oil.

A dash of salt and pepper in there.

The seasoning is there.

You know, we used to cook those sauce a great deal.

And now a raw, you know, the raw taste of those herb on top of it is really terrific.

We use also to do reduction with wine, and with a lot of butter added to the pot in emulsion.

A little bit of olive oil here, and just at the last moment in term of (indistinct) a piece of fish, you know?

in fact vegetable to replace amandine sauce or something like that, that's going to be very good.

So, we're going to finish presenting this.

Now our ratatouille we put underneath.

Here.

In the pot we put the ratatouille.

Right there.

And the filet of fish which now are, as you can see, completely cooked.

There is no more liquid in it.

So the liquid has evaporated.

So I get all the taste.

Grab that on top of it right here.

So you have a complete meal here.

All of that bed of vegetable, and as I said, ratatouille can really be done ahead and served, you know?

Very nicely.

Cold with a bit of olive oil on top.

And sometime with even black olive, you know?

So a little bit of that beautiful green herb sauce on top.

That I can put right there.

Maybe a bit of presentation, those chives, you know?

I have chives in the garden, so I like to present them to make it a bit more festive.

And I have a beautiful main course here.

What we are going to do, put it on the side, we now are going to move to the first course.

So what we've had, we've had a dish from the south of the United States if you want catfish.

We've had the south of France with our ratatouille.

Now we are moving to Italy.

With a carpaccio.

And the carpaccio is like we used to do the steak tartare.

You know, the ground beef that was seasoned and served this way, we do it with a piece of beef this way.

We're going to have some basil with it.

Beautiful red onion, some parmigiano.

You know, the parmesan, this way the real one is the parmigiano-reggiano which is what this one is.

A whole garnish on top of it.

Now look at that steak.

That steak is basically what we call a clean steak.

Coming from the butcher, this is a clean steak.

Well for me, it is not cleaned enough, so again, we are cutting it.

Now that steak, with all of those things removed, is going to be about eight ounces.

You see, I even removed the back here.

I really take anything which resemble fat skin or anything like that, particularly for that recipe.

I don't want anything left in it.

I'd rather have it smaller.

But all of this will be removed.

Okay.

Now we're doing four portion with this.

By cutting it in half.

And each of those, again, in half, you know?

So that give me approximately two ounces of meat here which is not much.

Now those two ounces of meat, we have to pound them.

To put them directly in those plate here.

Beautiful plate.

To help in the pounding, what I do, I do that with a piece of plastic wrap, you know?

Put a piece of meat right on top of it.

And another one, again, a type of sandwich.

Here.

This way.

And we use a meat pounder here.

And as you can see here.

Makes a lot of noise of course, but we want it very thin.

Sometime.

That's it.

People will freeze the meat, you know, to have the meat frozen.

And for that to slice it.

I don't like to do this because I feel that the frozen meat render a lot of liquid.

Remember that Carpaccio, C-A-R-P-A-C-C-I-O, was an Italian painter of the 16th century.

(indistinct) period, and he used to paint with a lot of red and white.

So someone thought of doing a piece of beef, pounding it very thin, which is red, with a little strip of mayonnaise on top, white.

And that was the carpaccio.

Now of course we do carpaccio with anything.

People carpaccio a fish, carpaccio one thing or another.

You know what you can do here, to do it to that extent as I do at home.

Then put another plate on top, leaving the paper here.

Doing a second one, third, fourth one.

You do a whole party of six, eight people.

And you can do that ahead.

Now if you have any concern with raw beef.

You don't do, you know, use steak tartare or carpaccio like this, I understand that.

And then you should not do that dish very lightly.

Be sure to go to a butcher which is very reliable.

Remember however, that when you do a roast beef, which is very very rare that you slice, for that matter even a hamburger which is very rare, that you slice it very close to what we are doing here so it doesn't really make that much difference.

Now there I have a. Green onion here, and we slice this very very thin here.

And I want to have those strip of onion.

And I have some here which I already wash.

I wash it with water that removes up, there's a compound of sulfuric acid which kind of sting your eyes and discolorate the onion.

If I wash it with cold water, I put it and I see rancid, that take it out, and that's what I would do normally to make the onion less strong, you know?

But I have the decoration on top, you could put some scallion, you could put some garlic on top of this.

We give a garnish, and as I say, remember that this is like two ounces of meat at the most.

Now on top of that, we are putting some fresh parmigiano.

Which I use a vegetable peeler like this.

This is the way I use truffles.

So if I have those truffle, those soup terrine and mushroom, especially the white truffle from Alba in Italy.

It's called a tartufo bianco.

And the tartufo is very expensive, so you shave it with a vegetable peeler on top of pasta or whatever here.

Then a bit of basil.

I have a couple of basil leaf that we roll together here to do what we call a type of chiffonade, you know?

Where we bring the basil together.

We have color here, but more important than color, we have taste.

Now this is about 120 calorie as it is, not even quite.

Now of course by putting your oil on top, you put like a tablespoon of oil you need on top of that, and that will double your calorie.

You can cut it down a little bit if you want.

And now let's see the whole menu for us.

Now I have the dessert, and I use those strips, you see, to remove it.

It's quite handy and nice.

You remove them of course.

The dessert can be cut into like eight pieces.

I'm sure you can decorate with fresh edible flowers as I have here which is of course pretty.

As well as crystallized violet which are cooked.

That makes a terrific finish for our menu with carpaccio to start, the catfish with our ratatouille, a nice salad, a piece of bread, and of course a good glass of red wine from the south of France.

I hope you enjoy it.

Happy cooking.