- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

I've learned much about cooking from my wife.

Her mother is Puerto Rican, and she often prepare dishes with special zesty flavor of the Caribbean.

In today's menu, I'll prepare dishes both from my wife fruit, and from my own.

Light onion soup with vermicelli from my mother.

And my wife specialty, pork and beans with spareribs and spicy jalapeno pepper.

And colorful yellow rice with orange rind.

Including desert, toast with guava paste and mint.

A Puerto Rican classic.

The diversity of my own family helped me create this menu.

So join me for a trip to the Caribbean on "Today's Gourmet."

(pan sizzling) - Today, we're gonna do a very special menu.

Special to me, special for my wife, too.

Although my wife was born a New Yorker.

Mother is Puerto Rican, her father is Cuban.

So we do a lot of Caribbean type of cooking at home.

And this is what we are going to do.

A great dish with pork and beans.

And rice, you know?

But first, going back to my ancestry, then we wanna do a soup.

A very simple soup like an onion soup, soup vermicelli.

One of the favorite of my daughter, especially when her grandmother does it.

Her is better than mine.

So what I have here, I have a pound of, I have a pound of very thinly sliced onion.

And it's been cooking like 15-20 minutes slowly so that they caramelize in the bottom and that's what I want.

This is basically like an onion soup.

If I wanted to do an onion soup, even (indistinct) would do exactly the same thing.

But I would omit the pasta in it, of course.

So here I put six cups of chicken stock in it.

Chicken stock has not been flavored with anything.

It's nice and lean.

But I mean there is no fat in it.

I put a dash of salt, and those tiny things that we call vermicelli.

You know, angel hair if you want.

Type of thing that we break.

And of course, you could put another type of pasta in it.

This is going to cook three, or four minute.

Just give me enough binding agent to create my soup.

Those type of soup you do in about 10 minutes, and it's not complicated.

And while this is cooking, should boil gently.

We are going to move on to our pork with rice and beans.

And what I have here, it's country-style pork chop.

You know, the end of the pork chop.

There is still the rib, but then it's kind of meaty and all that.

And this is what we wanna use for that.

And what we do, we put it flat and we wanna brown it first, you know?

So it will take 15 to 20 minute to get it nicely browned all around, you know?

And I'm going to have it here.

And this is the first thing you wanna do.

And as you can see here, I have nice crystallization in the bottom of the pan.

And that's going to give me the right taste, you know?

So you use this, you can use a bit less if you want.

But basically what I calculated here, it's about three ounces of meat per person, plus the bone and all that.

It's not that much.

And with that we have onion, we have carrot, we have oregano, we have garlic and hot pepper, cilantro, tomato, and red kidney beans.

So this is what we are going to start browning in there, you know?

All of those vegetable.

You can add more, you can add less.

You know you can omit the carrot, you can put more carrot and so forth.

But what we have here, about half-a-cup to a cup of carrot.

You know, cut coarsely.

(knife chopping) This is going to cook a long time, you know?

And that's what we want.

Long simmer type of dishes, you know?

Which warm you when you eat at home.

And I can put all of that stuff in there.

We have three bay leaf.

And garlic, maybe I'll chop it.

It doesn't matter that much.

Even if you just crush it this way.

(knife crushing) I have a lot of garlic here.

(knife crushing) And just push it, just crush like this.

Remember, it's going to cook a long time.

So it's fine.

Then the jalapeno pepper.

Which you already kind of touch it, your finger and say, "Oo, this one is hot."

If it's really hot, what you do, you want to remove the rib inside, you know?

The rib and the seed.

That's what the strongest, are the hottest part of it.

(knife tapping) It also depend upon your tolerance, you know?

You like it very hot, or you like it just mildly hot.

At home we like it fairly hot.

So I may put a piece of it with the rib, you know?

And that you wanna chop fairly fine to add to the mixture.

You know this is the type of thing which is even better reheated, you know?

And when we do it at home, we always enough either reheat it, or do something else with it.

So the cilantro here... So what I'm going to use is the stem of it.

See my wife, even the root, I don't have the root here.

But sometime even the root of the cilantro, you know, you wash them, and my wife put it in the freezer and keep it to do in those bean dish, too.

That part of the root and stem she put in the stew.

And the leaves that I have here, you keep that to decorate the top with it, you know?

So again, it's going to go there.

(food sizzling) This is nice and colorful.

(food sizzling) Here what they are.

(tongs tapping) And now of course the binding agent here, we have a pound of red kidney beans, you know?

You can use black beans also.

I mean in that type of cooking at home, we use black bean a great deal, also.

And it's fine.

But the red kidney beans are fine.

For that matter, white beans would be fine also.

Any type of bean.

And (indistinct) you know, people soak that over night.

I didn't soak those beans.

All I do is wash them, take any pebble, you know, out of it.

You put them on a tray to pick out the dirt or pebble.

Wash them, of course.

And that's about it.

This should be started in cold water.

So I'm going to put my tomato here, which is cold.

(food sizzling) And this on top.

I can even rinse this out here.

And I have four cups of cold water here.

As you can see, a very easy dish to put together.

And very delicious if you have the right proportion of everything.

Very colorful.

And that's about it, you know?

(tongs tapping) You wanna cover it.

(lid clanging) Bring it to a boil.

And you want that to boil, it's going to change.

From an hour-and-a-half to two hours.

Sometimes two-and-a-quarter hours.

Sometime less than a hour-and-a-half.

It depend on the beans, you know?

If it's beans of the year, which are not too dry, it's going to cook faster.

Those beans are two, three years old, it's going to take longer.

So that's basically it.

Now let's see our soup.

Our soup, I'm sure is cooked.

Because those vermicelli cook in about a couple of minute, yes?

And that's fine, that's cooked and beautiful.

And we are going to serve it right there, you know?

A big bowl of soup always warm your heart.

You know, and there is nothing easier to do and inexpensive than soup.

And soup is always welcomed with me, my house.

A bit of maybe chive for coloring on top.

And that's about it, you know?

An easy soup to do.

(cookware clattering) Next while the beans are cooking, I wanna show you how to cook the rice which goes with it, you know?

Because in the Puerto Rican cooking and in South America, a great deal, people are going to have beans and rice together.

And that's a complete protein.

If you only have the rice, only have the beans, it's not complete.

But rice and beans together, they complete protein.

You don't have to have meat.

Although I have meat in there.

But even if you didn't have meat, it would be fine.

So what we are here, we're going to saute, we have a little bit of butter.

I put like one, two teaspoon and a tablespoon of canola oil.

And here is our rice tray.

Now what I have here is simple white rice, you know?

Carolina type.

I have an orange, we're going to use the orange rind.

A very special flavor.

Hot pepper flake, hot pepper flake are extremely potent.

They are hot, so you want to be careful with it.

Onion, water, and here I have a cheera seed, you know?

And the shorter seed there is called anatto, sometime, A-N-A-T-T-O.

It's a seed which is very common in Latin American cooking.

And it give you that beautiful yellow color with it.

This is the type of thing that the Indian, American Indian used to use to paint their face, you know?

To do war, war face or whatever.

They used to use that type of thing.

And here we are using it.

(knife chopping) If you want that type cheap saffron.

You know, the saffron is, of course, the pistil of crocuses and extremely expensive.

I mean it take like 40,000 flowers to do one pound of saffron.

And a pound of saffron, of course, is an enormous amount.

But it will cost in the area of over $1,000, you know?

So we wanna put the onions first to cook them.

(pan clattering) I could actually have even a bit more onion than this.

You wanna put a lot of onion in that rice.

(knife chopping) It's a cup, cup and a half, you know?

I use a lot of onion in my cooking.

Again, here.

(onions sizzling) And in there we want to put a bit of those cheera seed, you know?

And this are going to color it.

They are not strong at all, they really don't have much taste.

It's more of a question of coloring.

You may, sometime you know, people soak that in oil.

Only in the oil.

And the oil become extremely deep yellow color.

Then they drain it and just use the oil to color it, that dish.

You can leave them in, because basically what will happen with that, as you can see they're already now, it's starting getting yellow.

You know, the coloring is going to go there.

(spoon tapping) You wanna saute the onion for a couple of minute.

During that time we do a little bit of grated skin of orange.

(orange scraping) I do this, I like that orange taste.

You know, with the rice.

Except if my daughter is at home, because she doesn't like the orange taste, so I omit it.

So the orange.

A little bit of that hot pepper flake.

Remember it's very hot, so not too much.

And then rice and water.

I mix the rice in there.

What you want to do is really to stir it so that all the grain of rice are coated with the oil and butter.

I put a dash of salt in it.

Two cup of water.

Remember that a cup of rice will take two cup of water.

That type of rice, at least.

(spoon tapping) That's about it, you know?

You cover it tight.

(lid clanging) Bring it to a boil, 40 minute.

That's cooked.

And I have another one which is cooked here.

Which I kept about 200 degree... (pot clanging) In the oven, just to keep it warm.

Right here.

What... And let's see now.

I have one of those rice, rind of those beans.

That have been cooked right here.

As you see, very colorful.

(lids clanging) Very, very colorful.

So we're going to serve this on that beautiful kind of Latin American plate.

You know it's going to look nice on top of it.

And as I said, this is the type of dish that you bring at home and serve directly, sometimes directly on the table like this, you know?

In that case here, we wanna spread it out.

It's always nice how you can see that rice will become very nice and fluffy.

Doesn't stick together if you have the right proportion as I said, of water, to liquid.

So what I'll do first... You see that?

I can put all of my rice in there.

Maybe a bit too much.

And spread it out.

Our recipe for four, four people (indistinct).

But this is quite generous.

I have a cup of rice here.

And you see a cup of rice will give you at least three cup.

(spoon clacking) So what you do is you put it in the center and spread it to the edge.

Don't worry whether the center is dirty.

Here it don't make any difference.

Because we are going to cover it.

(spoon tapping) I'm going to cover it, of course, with... Let me put that here.

With the beans.

And rice here.

This is one of our favorite dish at home.

And when my daughter comes from her... Come home from vacation, you know from... She lives in Boston now.

She always requests a few thing.

My mother is there, she request the onion soup, vermicelli that we have there.

Because as I said, the best version for is always my mother.

She will ask my wife to do that type of dish, not me.

But I think it is pretty good.

I think she would be happy with this one.

And finally on top of it, then we could put a bit more of our cilantro here.

Remember this is the leaves.

We have used the other part of it in the stew itself.

You know, you can put that.

You can even put some on the outside if you want.

I love cilantro, but some people hate it.

You know, you either love it or hate it.

If you don't like it, just put a bit of parsley just for the green color and so forth.

And this is our main dish for today.

And now I have a special bonus.

Like usually at home we have some leftover.

And I have some leftover beans here that I have, and I'm going to do a soup with it.

Just like we do at home.

You know, the proportion that we have usually, we don't have any meat leftover.

Because we have maybe one piece of meat per person.

But beans, the mixture... Be sure, however, to feel it through it with your finger so that you don't have pieces of bone in the mixture, you know?

So here, that's what I have here.

I have some rice leftover also.

Rice, I can put it in there.

All of it, some of it.

Maybe keep some to put on top of the garnish.

Any of this, we're going to do a great soup.

And of course, water.

Because this is too thick here.

I can put a bit of water to start.

And emulsify it.

You may want to do it very... (food processor whizzing) Very thick, or rather a very smooth puree.

I think that I hear a bone in there.

But, a little bit more.

And... (food processor whizzing) You may want to leave it chunky, you know?

That's basically the way we like it.

And maybe a little more water, still.

Now you will have to taste for seasoning here.

Taste for seasoning.

(food processor whizzing) Put a little bit of, a little bit of salt in it if needed.

Maybe a bit of pepper, extra.

Whatever you would want to add.

And this... Now I want to serve it in there.

You know, you have a nice creamy soup.

And we do a lot of different garnish with those soup, you know?

A lot of different garnish.

And I have different garnish here.

As you can see I have some crouton, just regular crouton.

I have eggs.

And those eggs here we cut them with the egg cutter one way, then you cut the other way.

And this is absolutely perfect for the soup, you know?

It's just cut into little dices.

You know, this is a great way of doing an egg salad.

Great way of cutting eggs as the garnish, for black bean soup and so forth.

Now here on the other end I have onion.

Onion, if you chop them ahead, they're going to smell and they're going to discolor and get dark.

And this is a compound of sulfuric acid in the onion that does this.

To avoid that, we wash the onion.

Just wash it under water.

Like I do here.

And I can smell it, it's very strong now.

So you wash it under cold water.

That will wash out that compound of sulfuric acid.

And at that point your onion will stay white and fluffy.

They are not going to discolor it any more.

So this is a must.

Of course you have to put them in a towel, press them a little bit, you know, to take the water out of it.

And this is a must if you're going to serve caviar in the dining room, or anything with chopped onion.

Those onion will stay white and fluffy.

So what we do here... Now you wanna serve a very thick.

I'll go for that soup, you know?

At least as much for the main dish that we did before.

You have a couple of different garnish here.

You know the eggs will give you color.

You don't wanna put all of those garnish.

You know you can omit some of it.

Onion on top, and even onion is going to be very mild now.

I could even have extra little thing of rice, you know?

And finally at the end always.

Naturally we put a little bit of vinegar on top at the last moment.

Red wine and a dash of olive oil that you can omit if you want to cut down on your calorie a little bit.

But it's a great addition.

Remember also that I did not reheat the soup here.

But after you put it through the food processor, of course you bring it to a boil.

Reheat it and serve it just the way it is right here.

And now I wanna show you a special desert that we do at home which bring very happy taste memory of childhood to my wife.

And this is guava paste.

And I have two type of guava you might... You buy on the market.

This one just come in a package.

There is egg white added to it, it's whiter.

And for me far to be as good as this one, which is in can.

With a purer quality of the fruit itself, you know?

This is the one that we use at home.

And what we do with this, just cut it into pieces, you know?

This way.

And we serve toast with that.

Right here, you know?

And we serve that with cream cheese and mint, and toast.

You know, I have toast here.

Now I could trim the toast.

(knife chopping) And cut it just in little square like this.

One for each piece, you know, to add to it.

Another way of doing it is to do as we do at home, which is a real toast Melba.

And the toast Melba was invented by Escoffier from Melba, the Australian soprano singer.

Which liked her toast extremely thin.

So you put that in the toaster.

When it comes out you cut it so that the side is still gooey here.

So you can put your knife in between the two layer and slice it here in half.

And you have an extremely thin slice.

You could not toast a piece of bread that thin because it would tear up, it wouldn't work.

And you can re-toast the other side after.

Put it under the broiler.

So while you are doing it, is to do this.

There.

We have our... Our cream cheese here.

A little bit of cream cheese, you see?

That I put.

Cream cheese is calories, so you put a little bit.

But this is, you know, a great snack for the kid also.

This is probably the peanut butter and jelly sandwich of my wife when she was a kid, you know?

This bring her the same happy memory of that type of thing.

So often at home, especially when my mother-in-law is there, then we would do that type of desert or snack, or whatever you want to call it.

That we pass around, you know?

And as an addition to this, I put a little piece of mint on top, because the coolness of the mint really goes well with it.

I have at home a lot of mint growing in the garden.

And it's one way of using it also.

Not only does it discolor, but the taste of it is terrific with it.

Put small leaves of mint right there.

It fit quite nice and the kid would love that.

Miniature sandwich.

You know that we put, I can arrange in there, you know?

It really look nice and appetizing.

And even in that sandwich here, if you want really taste that I was saying before, the kind of sandwich maybe that you had when you were a child.

Peanut butter and jelly, you know?

We do the same thing here.

Putting this in between.

Maybe little pieces of... I can put thin pieces of guava.

On one piece here.

Another piece here.

And there.

And we put this one on top.

We can cut that maybe in little triangle.

We won't put the mint in this one.

We'll put this one right here.

If I have an extra one, I can eat it right now.

And this is desert which make for very happy memory.

I don't think there is anything, you know?

We shape the life of people like the food they had when they were a child.

I mean what they eat, what you eat are the child, you know?

You remember all your life.

And this is a perfect example of this.

In fact my daughter will probably say that I have no business cooking any of those dish.

Because the onion soup, the vermicelli is really from her grandmother in France.

The main dish is from her mother here.

The desert is from her grandmother here.

But in any case, I think she would be happy with this, too.

You know it is very important on the child, you know, to sit together with the child to condition them.

You know, to make them eat.

And for me now family.

Even though some of those dishes are from my wife background.

I have other type of dish from my own background.

It really doesn't make any difference.

And we never in a sense even prevented... I'm not a snob, I don't think I am.

And I never prevented my daughter from going to fast food.

The McDonald, or whatever restaurant.

Because it is part of your background.

It's part of your makeup, too.

But at the same time, she should be exposed to good food.

To home-cooked food, as well as good planning.

As well as a good (indistinct), or any of this.

And that become very, very important.

The family mix, the flavor that we have.

I can see it in my daughter now.

Even in what she cooked, and there in their habit and so forth.

So today this is what I cook for you.

You know, family food.

I have, of course, that beautiful first soup from my mother.

Then I have the rice and beans with the (indistinct), you know, deep yellow and very hot that we have around.

With the leftover beans, obviously we did a terrific soup.

And that terrific soup is chopped eggs and around.

And finally that little desert.

Which is a snack, snack type of desert.

We can have a salad with our meal.

And with this, nothing is better than great wine from Spain.

We have vina sol here, a dry crisp white wine.

You know from the top arena of grapes.

And we have another Caronas.

And the Caronas here, which is very smokey, deep wine from around the area of Barcelona.

It's going to be absolutely perfect with our meal.

Cook for your family, cook together.

You're going to enjoy it, and that's going to make for a lot of happy memory.

I enjoy cooking.

Let me eat, bring memory for me, too.

Happy cooking.

(gentle music)