- Perfectly cooked texture, nine minutes.

And I do that for the family with a little bit of ketchup, mayonnaise, a dash of water, a good dash of Tabasco in it.

You mix it.

(bowl clinking) You have a nice pink, beautiful sauce, kind of cocktail sauce.

(whisk clinks) Put your eggs this way, coat them with the sauce.

(gentle music) Beautiful color.

You wanna put an anchovy filet on top of it.

This way, this way, and that way.

And a little garnish of capers and red onion, incredible dish.

A great first course in seconds, so you'll have more time to spend with your family.

I'm Jacques Pepin, and this is "Fast Food My Way."

Happy cooking.

I love seafood, and certainly I use a lot of clam and oyster where I am in Connecticut.

But you know when I have to open those large clam, the cherrystone, the quahog, even the topneck, I put them in the freezer, like 5, 10 minutes, to really get them very cold, and they make them much easier to open.

Seafood simply prepared is light, and it's some of my favorite food.

And usually, it's quick to cook too.

My Baked Clam Madison takes a minute.

Then I'm going to do a cod with an olive tomato crust and with a garnish of broccoli bits.

And finally, mango with a Nutella ice cream sauce.

So let's start with opening the clam.

(plastic rustling) So this here, (knife clinks) what you do, you place them this way.

I use a regular knife for that.

Place that against the opening here, and with your hand here, (clam clacking) you press that into it, open.

You want to cut the abducting muscle on one side, (clam clacks) break this.

(bowl clinks) And you wanna cut it on the other side as well so that the claim is really free and can slide in your mouth.

In any case, as I say, the juice, I have a lot of juice here.

We keep them.

(bowl clinks) We can do a cocktail with that, what they called bulleye or something like that, we do in Long Island with the clam juice and vodka.

It's very good.

So this, while I'm doing the sauce, I'm putting that in the oven.

And I put that in an oven, about 180 degree.

So, (glass scraping) (door thuds) put the temperature that you warm your plate at.

So it's really not very hot, but I want it this way just to warm up the clam without getting them tough.

Then we put the garnish on top and we serve them.

Clam can get really tough very fast.

Much more than oyster or certainly muscle, you know.

So here we have bacon bits I'm going to cook.

I have a couple of slice of bacon here for 24 clam.

(bacon sizzling) There we go.

Should put a dash of olive oil in there.

Okay, start frying this.

A bit of onion on top of this, about 1/3 of a cup should be fine.

(knife clacking) (bacon sizzling) Awfully sharp.

(knife clacking) Should be more than enough here.

(knife clinks) Scallion, about the same amount of scallion.

Two scallion, maybe three would be more than enough.

I like to do those garnish.

And this, of course, can be done ahead.

You know, you can have your clam open, you can have your garnish made basically.

(knife clacking) And serve it at the last moment, of course.

(knife clacking) Let's see my bacon here.

Oh my, now I have to do it lower.

(pan rattling) (bacon frying) Until it become nice and crisp.

(metal clinks) Okay, celery, if I use that that celery, I probably would kind of peel.

(bacon continues frying) (peeler whooshing) Peel the celery of the fibrous, the skin on top.

Okay.

(peeler thuds) (bacon continues frying) All of this, you know, usually I have a ball in front of me, and that goes into the bowl.

Eventually, the bowl get into one of the container I have in the freezer.

And those are usually empty half gallon of milk.

When I have a half gallon of milk empty, rinse it out, keep that in the freezer.

And in front of me, I will have pieces of celery, the stem of parsley, juice of tomato, pieces of garlic.

I put all of that in there.

And when I do a stock, any type of stock, I grab one of those frozen container, I cut right through with my knife and drop it in the stock pot.

So onion, celery, scallion.

Getting there here.

(hand thudding) (knife clinking) Garlic one, maybe two.

(hand thudding) (knife clinking) Feel like garlic this morning, so.

(knife clacking) Clean up your knife.

(knife clacking) Okay, now my bacon is just right.

(pan rattling) (wooden spoon scraping) (pan clinking) (pan rattling) (bacon sizzling) And I'm gonna put that stuff in there.

(food sizzling) Usually, I put it right there.

(food continues sizzling) (pan rattling) This has to cook for a minute to get just tender.

That what goes on top of my clam.

Oh, and mushroom.

I forget the mushroom.

So here I'll use, maybe (knife clacking) the mushroom will give me moisture in there.

(knife clacking) (food continues sizzling) Awfully sharp.

(knife clacking) (food continues sizzling) Slice them.

(knife clacking) (food continues sizzling) You know, you can always vary.

You can omit the mushroom.

Sometime I put leek.

I love leek.

And I usually have a lot of leek in my garden.

(knife clacking) (food continues sizzling) Okay, here we are.

You know, very often you have a recipe which tell you, "Brown the onion or saute the onion.

Don't let them take any color or whatever.

Or you want to soften it out."

See one of the secrets, what you can do is put a drop of water on top of it, cover it, and you keep that for, you cook that for one minute so the water evaporate, the vegetable get softer and moistened.

Then you remove this and you saute until it's dry again.

The secret of the chef, you know?

(knife scraping) Okay, clean up my table.

(knife clinks) (bowl clinking) And I think we're going to be ready close for the clam.

You can keep them about 10 minutes in the oven.

As I said, just to warm them up, not to toughen them.

(food sizzling) I lift that up now.

(lid clattering) (pan rattling) (food sizzling) Good.

(lid clatters) I think it's ready.

I'm gonna go get the clam.

(door thuds) (glass clinks) You certainly won't see much different in the color of the clam.

Now they're just warm and that's what you want.

The way they toughen.

(pan rattling) (food continues sizzling) And then we can garnish them.

Just a bit like this.

(spoon scraping) That's it.

24 clams here.

Six clam per person.

Will probably be more than enough.

The garnish on top is pretty warm as well so it'll also warm up the clam.

I do actually a clam case, you know, with a classic piece of bacon on top and spinach underneath.

And I do the same way.

You know, I often take them, I mean, the oyster case, you know, I'm sorry.

And the oyster case, you know, I take them out of the shell, and I put them on the sauteed spinach, and I put them in the oven this way, low oven for like four or five minutes until they are just warm.

And then serve them with a Naughty butter on top.

You know, a melted butter.

Okay, I have plenty garnish here.

I probably, on top of that, (cutlery clinks) would put a little bit of a good olive oil like this.

(bottle thuds) And here we are, the clam Madison style.

I live in a little town called Madison, Connecticut, and I name it after that town.

Here we are.

Put that on top.

(gentle upbeat music) My big clam Madison, only takes a minute or two to do.

Okay, now the man course, which is still fish.

And with that, I use different type of fish.

In that case here I have cod.

I love cod.

You know, the texture of cod.

And cod is a very, is a good fish for someone who doesn't cook that much fish, because first it's easy to cook, it's flake, and it stay moist.

Or if you ever cook a piece of salmon, if you ever cook a piece of tuna, become like a piece of cement, you know.

You can overcook scrod or cod or even the catfish, for example, and all that.

Those type of fish may break down a little bit, but they still stay moist.

So it's a good fish to do if you are not too sure of yourself.

So let's put salt and pepper on top of it.

Those are fairly thick filet as you can see.

We have a good, I would say a good inch and a quarter.

You know, so the direction that I set in the oven may change slightly depending on the thickness of the fish, and certainly how you like your fish.

I like my fish slightly undone inside.

My wife like it practically raw inside, you know.

So let's put that on a roasting pan.

(fish thudding) Okay.

(bowl clinks) Maybe I should put a dash of oil underneath here to roll it.

(foil paper crackles) Okay, just a tiny bit.

(foil paper crackles) (bottle thuds) And the garnish that I'm going to do in there, I have some dry tomato here in oil, and those are pretty soft.

Some of them may be drier than that.

So look at it, I have black olives.

(lid clattering) I'm gonna put some Parmesan cheese here.

Nice piece of Parmesan cheese, and I think I'm gonna crumble it on top.

You can use, of course, shredded cheese, or grated cheese rather.

Okay.

(lid clacks) (mixer whirring) The idea to start and stop is the idea is that if you stop and let it go, the bottom may turn into a paste, you know, and the top stay like this.

So when you stop, start, it give a chance to the bottom, to tumble into the mixture, you know.

(lid clacks) (spoon clinks) So that it's done all over.

So here we are.

I'm gonna put a nice crust of this on top.

We can probably realize that this is a pretty assertive type of a mixture with a lot of taste.

(glass clinking) Here we are.

Another one here.

(spoon clinking) You know, I have done that in a skillet, for that matter, and cook them in a nonstick skillet stuffed side down.

You know, the stuffed side down is perfectly fine.

I have pieces of cheese here.

(spoon scraping) Another piece here.

And it's good, you know, as I say, in the skillet, too, it doesn't burn.

The crust become kind a bit tougher and nice black.

And it's a great way of doing it too.

So that will go into the broiler.

(tray thuds) And I put it on top here.

(door thuds) It's about four, five inch from the source of it.

So it's pretty hot.

So you check it occasionally.

It should take about four, five minute, depending on the thickness of your fish.

And I think now we're going to do a garnish with that of broccoli.

So the broccoli here, I use, of course, the tip of the broccoli that I cut into, you know, two, three inches pieces like that.

But in a sense, what I like the best is probably the stem.

But the stem has to be peeled, you know, and sometime it comes out like that.

You take that out of it, and you can see this is a very thick, very thick fiber stuff.

If you leave that in, you cannot eat it.

But if you take it out, this is the best part of the broccoli.

(water sizzling) I'm gonna put a bit of water here.

(pot scraping) This is hot.

(broccoli crunching) There we are.

(broccoli crunching) (knife clinks) I'm gonna put this direct in there.

It's totally peeled now.

You cut that into pieces, (knife clacks) and that's really nice and tender.

(knife clacks) I mean, that the best part that I say of the broccoli.

Okay, I think I have enough water.

I need some salt in this.

Very straightforward recipe here.

Pepper.

Freshy ground pepper.

And some olive oil.

Cover it.

And cook it well, two, three minutes, until it's just tender, but still a bit crunchy.

Okay, let's check the fish.

(food sizzling) It's getting brown.

Maybe a bit too brown.

Hm, it's about ready now.

If it's not quite ready, I put it in a lower part of the oven.

I don't want it to brown more on top, and it'll be finishing cooking this way without burning on top.

Let me check on those.

(lid thuds) You can see there is no more water left here.

(pan rattling) See the water is used as a carrier here.

There is many time we do that in cooking.

You know, you wanna saute something, a little bit of water give you the moisture, and the water evaporate, then you let it glaze a little bit.

You can see this is just a bit tender now.

I think it's cooked enough.

Mm, if you like it, nice and crunchy.

Good.

(glass clinks) (lid thuds) I'm going to let it cook another minute or so without the lid, and I'm gonna go get the fish.

(footsteps tapping) (latch clicks) (tray scraping) Okay.

All right.

(tray clacks) Now the fish, (ceramic clinking) I can go now and practically go through just with a slight resistance in the center, meaning it's still slightly underneath in the center, which either way I like it.

(pan scraping) You can hear this.

Well, you don't even have to look at it, you can hear it sizzling.

And you know there is no more moisture, so it's ready.

(bowl clinking) Nice bright green.

And ready, here we are.

(knife scraping and clacking) And then the fish.

The cod is... So that cod is quite thick here.

(foil paper crackles) I put a piece of aluminum foil, as you see, on the bottom.

And that make my wife really happy.

There we are.

(spatula clinks) I think we need a little trickle of maybe olive oil again on top.

And around.

(bottle thuds) Maybe a few leaves of parsley (parsley crunching) for color here.

All parsley like this, it's fine.

That very simple fresh cod.

The cod in a olive and tomato crust.

In fact, I'm going to open a piece, show it to you.

You can see that the center here is just barely the way it should be.

(gentle upbeat music) And I go a mango in Nutella sauce.

You know what I use?

Jam, or in that case, Nutella.

I put that in the microwave oven for a minute or so, just to get it nice and smooth.

What I have here, I have an ice cream.

I have about a cup of ice cream, which is almost totally defrosted, and I mix it with Nutella.

We do an ice cream like this, (speaking in French) we call in France, which is really the ice cream, which is inside, you do a pala.

And the pala is really a mixture of hazelnut, roasted and mixed with chocolate, you know.

So that's a bit of the same idea.

So that makes a wonderful sauce.

(spoon clinking) And you don't tell anyone that you made it that fast.

(tongue clicks) (spoon clinks) Good stuff.

So we are gonna do a fruit with it.

So you see here, this is the long way.

So you try to cut the pit in that direction.

So you try to cut alongside the pit.

So you go this way.

(knife thudding) See the pit is easy.

And you do the same thing on the other side.

And then we empty it with a fork, with a spoon rather.

When here like that per person is more than enough (spoon clinking) All of that depend on the quality of your fruit, you know, whether it's ripe or not.

(knife hissing) And here have this.

(knife clinks) I'm gonna put some of the sauce in the bottom here.

You could have raspberry on top of it.

It doesn't have to be mango.

And my mango here doesn't want to get together.

Here it is, it's sliced.

(knife clinks) Maybe a little piece of poundcake around.

Always like to have a cookie or a piece of poundcake.

And maybe for a bit of color, I have some, some lavender here.

That would be nice on top of it, too.

And here we are, the mango in Nutella sauce.

(gentle music) I have two pretty assertive white wine which would go well with my menu today.

Even though often now we drink red wine with fish.

And certainly it could go with that one with the olive.

I have a Greco di Tufo full here from Italy, (wine gurgling) and it's pretty deep intense.

And then a sauvignon blanc from Australia, which is very citrony and grassy.

And I think I'll go with this one, and certainly with the claim it'd be absolutely delicious, the Baked Clam Madison here.

Now the cod with that crust, which is very assertive with cheese on top and black olive.

Of course, the tidbit of broccoli saute and the Nutella dish.

This is what I'm going to taste first.

(mouth crunches) Mm, and it goes well with it.

As Voltaire say, "Can you imagine how dreadful it would be if you had to eat three times a day and if God had not made it a pleasure as well as a necessity."

I'll drink to that.

Happy cooking.