- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

- And I'm Claudine Pepin.

- Today, we are going to prepare an elegant celebration dinner.

- Great, what are we celebrating?

- Life, good friends and good food.

- Sounds good to me.

- We'll start out with a silky smooth yellow pepper soup with asparagus garnish.

A tournedos of beef in a mushroom, mustard and red wine sauce with colorful corn and ham stuffed tomatoes.

- And for dessert apple rounds with Calvados glaze.

When you're cooking great food for the people you love, any day can be a special occasion.

- So open a great bottle of wine and join us for a special celebration.

- Next on "Jacques Pepin's Kitchen."

- "Encore with Claudine."

(mellow soothing music continues) Today, Claudine and I are cooking a special celebration.

What are we starting with?

- Well, we're starting with a beautiful bell pepper soup with asparagus.

- Yes, a glossy yellow pepper soup.

And you're peeling asparagus.

- I'm peeling asparagus.

- I don't peel asparagus this way.

- Well- - I go against my finger.

- [Claudine] Oh yeah, that's real smart.

- What?

Yeah.

- No way.

- [Jacques] With a vegetable, pillow like that, yeah.

See, you do that and then you break at the end.

- I'm done faster.

- That's true.

Okay.

(Claudine laughing) Then I'll cut it.

This is the garnish of our soup.

Cut it on the bias like this.

And of course you peel the bottom part of your asparagus.

So that is just our standard at the top.

Claudine, you want to give me- - See, the bias thing I think is really nice.

- The rest of this here, you know.

All of that, we put in there and that goes into a little bit of water.

Here, that's it.

And the water we going to use in the soup anyway.

And this just has to blanch for like 30 seconds to a minute by the time it comes back to a boil.

So what do we have in the soup here?

- We have peppers.

- Yes, beautiful yellow pepper.

- Yeah.

- Look at that.

- These- - Now gimme that pot.

- Is there a difference in the taste between red peppers and yellow peppers and green peppers?

- I would say the yellow one are probably one of the mildest ones.

Why don't you put that in the pot instead of looking at me working?

- I'm just wondering, I'm gaining valuable information.

- Onion in there and potato.

That's all we have in that soup.

Onion, potato.

And- - Do you want the water of the potatoes or no?

- No, no, I'm going to put extra water.

- Okay.

- Here we are.

Basically, I have more than enough here.

- Well, that's the way it always is at home (laughing).

- You do that, you know, in summer, yes, when you have a lot of paper in your garden.

And you see this is, this blanched for a few minutes and that's enough.

- Yeah.

- You wanna put some garlic in there?

- I always wanna put garlic in everything.

- All right, I'll put some garlic.

Just slice a couple of pieces of garlic.

That's just a fun taste.

- Salt and pepper?

- You wanna put salt, pepper in there.

- I knew that.

- And you see this here, we're gonna keep as a garnish, but the juice, going to use the juice in the soup here.

- Oh, that's really smart.

- Okay.

Well- - You're a smart guy.

- Don't.

- Wait, wait, wait.

- Don't be a smart aleck now.

Okay, here.

This is for our garnish of the soup.

And water.

You put salt and pepper on top of that.

About two three cup of water there on top of it.

We cover it.

And when it's finished covering, it look this way.

- It looks great.

- Cooked enough, very soft.

And you see, we could emulsify it too, but I really want to put it through the food mill.

And you know what's good with those pepper also?

You could have a dash of sugar in it.

- Oh cool.

- So we could add a dash of sugar.

So this is a very plain type of soup.

Are you turning or am I turning?

- I'm turning, I'm turning.

- Good.

- Oops.

- You're a good turn.

Go back and forth.

See, that's good to go back and forth, because otherwise, the skin of the pepper, which is what we want to eliminate here, just go into the holes.

Basically, you see what you have at the bottom of that is really pieces of skin and all this, so.

But look, this is nice and creamy here.

- [Claudine] Oh wow.

(spoon scraping) (glass clinking) - We do mashed potatoes with that too.

- You do mashed potato with that.

That's very good too, yes.

Okay.

You want to emulsify this.

(blender whirring) And I give you a piece of butter, like a tablespoon of butter.

(blender whirring) Go behind you.

Dash of olive oil.

(blender whirring) Now I'm tasting.

(blender whirring) Okay.

You put the sugar?

- No.

- A little dash of sugar.

Probably a little dash of salt.

(blender whirring) I think it's looks beautiful.

- It turned white.

- It turned white because you put air in it.

And this is all there is to it.

Of course, if you do that ahead, you would want to, good of you, so it's nice and creamy.

- Mm, it's beautiful.

- Now you can put your garnish of asparagus in the bottom.

- Oh.

- You know, or we can put some on top.

If you put some on top so they're a bit more visible.

And if you want, you could have that a bit less thick than that.

But I know you like- - Yeah, I do - A thick soup, you know.

A couple of pieces.

That's plenty.

And here is our glossy yellow pepper soup with the asparagus garnish.

So let's start, maybe we start with the tomato here.

- Okay.

- But I wanted to show you, remember your grandmother in France does the (speaks foreign language)?

She cut that in half like this, you know, and just press a little bit of the seed out.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Not much, just a little bit like this.

When you press the seed, it's good to change, yes, exactly, from one direction to the other direction.

If you press this way in one direction and you turn it the other way, again, shake it, you know a little bit.

Remove most of the seed.

Okay, you wanna bring them here.

Have a very hot pan here.

And I'm going to put just a dash of oil there.

These are really going to sear, you know, I want them seared.

(oil sizzles) - [Claudine] Oh.

- To kind of roast on one side.

That's maybe a bit hot, but.

- Wait.

- Okay, that's, you see what you did there?

That's bad.

- Sorry.

- The hotter it is, the closer to the pot, you go.

Very hot, you go very close.

- [Claudine] But it's scary.

- It is scary.

This is going to give a caramelized taste to it.

And there is basically no oil, you know.

So here is, see this is a filet of beef.

You have a layer of fat on top, then the silver skin.

I remove it from here.

See the whole filet, sometimes you can buy it in store.

And out of the filet here, we cut what we call the chain, you know, That's the chain of the filet.

But you see this is our filet here.

I leave that here.

What we are going to have in there is also mushroom.

And I have some of those mushroom, those shiitake- - Oh.

- Soaking here.

Today, we're going to do the petit filet mignon, you know, so we're going to go from the center of the filet.

But normally, you know, you would have the whole head of the filet like this.

See, the whole head of the filet, you put a towel around and you palm this into a large steak.

That's a chateaubriand.

- Oh, okay.

- You know.

And then you go in the center with what we call the tournedos, or the filet mignon, you know, right in the center.

And this is what we are going here.

Nice little filet mignon of about four, five ounces per person.

So it's not much, you see?

- [Claudine] No, but it's gonna be really good and rich, right?

- [Jacques] Yeah and very lean.

You see, look at that.

- Yeah.

- But there is nothing in there.

So, okay, I'm going to start cooking this.

- Right.

- So they'll take a couple of minutes on each side.

So a piece of butter, a dash of oil, (oil sizzling) salt and pepper.

You could have done that for me, huh?

- [Claudine] I'm sorry.

- So I'm doing four filet here.

And this is going to cook a couple of minutes on each side.

So during that time, I think our tomato are getting there.

Okay, Claudine, so I think I showed you a couple of times.

If I have a long narrow knife to cut it this way.

You see?

And it's easy if I cut this way.

If I took my knife like that, it's hard.

If you move your knife and really slide from here to there, slide easy.

You can do the same thing in that direction, you see.

You go down, down, the idea of is cutting rather than (exclaims) just crushing it.

You understand?

You see that helps.

You're hiding your finger, yeah.

- [Claudine] No, I wanna do one.

- You wanna do?

So you go ahead, you do that.

I hide.

Good, that's good.

And now with the back of your knife, you scrape this.

(knife scraping) - [Claudine] Oh.

(plate clinking) - Good, that you give to the cow in the back.

(Claudine laughing) Okay, this we put in the pastry scraper, you know, the best of this.

Here.

- Okay.

- And we are going to cut some ham with that.

See the piece of the leftover ham.

Here, when you do a roast, you know this is nice.

If you don't want to put the ham, it's perfectly fine.

You know, we do a little bit of a julienne here.

I have plenty here in what we have.

I know you'll make a sandwich with the rest of it, right?

- [Claudine] Uh-huh.

With this one particular piece.

- Well, that particular piece, okay.

Now let's see whether my tomato are cooked.

I think they are.

(oil sizzling) We'll see.

In there, they have that type of crystallization, you know.

In there, we're going to put the corn.

Put the corn with a dash of oil.

Okay, just rotate the corn like that.

And the ham.

Salt, pepper.

I'm putting this for you.

(oil sizzling) And now let me turn my on tournedos, here.

(oil sizzling) Here we are.

- [Claudine] Mmm.

- See where they are?

But what's important in there too is that I have a very thick, heavy pan here.

And the thickness of it will really retain the heat and give me nice crystallization.

You want to touch it here?

- [Claudine] Yeah, I don't know what it means, but I'll touch It.

- Well, do you see the way it bounces back?

- Yeah, - It indicates that it's rare, you know?

- Oh.

- Because you have the the liquid from the the beef which goes in the center of it, you know.

- Oh, okay, - Okay.

- All right.

- You know what you could do, if you cut a little bit of chive.

- Okay.

- Maybe and make them in our mixture here would look good.

And during that time, I think, you okay there with that?

(oil sizzling) That's a good system.

- [Claudine] Goes a lot faster than cutting them on the board.

- You think so?

That's plenty, Claudine.

You know what we forget, I forget to put those mushroom in there.

- Oh, the shiitake mushrooms.

- Yeah.

And those shiitake mushrooms have been soaking for a while now.

You press them.

And remember those we have removed the stem.

The stem is tough here.

- Yeah.

- So we cut them.

I - I remember, it's like wood.

- Yeah, in two or four.

And what you should do, which I forgot to do, is to put them with your meat at the beginning.

You want them to cook them for a while.

And that gives taste to the meat too.

So remember, that should normally be all around and cooking in it.

The liquid there, we're going to use in the sauce.

At that point, you know, frankly, I think that this is ready.

(oil sizzling) We're going to be able to finish it up.

And this also, I think I'm going to take my filet here (oil sizzling) and let them to rest.

You could put that into a lukewarm oven, like 170, 180 degree, just to rest, or then cover them, you know, like this.

In their own heat, they're going to continue cooking.

We will continue with this.

And maybe I'll start (oil sizzling) pouring the juice.

- That's a great smell.

- Look at the bottom, you know.

- Oh, it's full of sand.

- Yeah, a little bit of sand.

If you have some, so be sure not to put the bottom in there.

- Okay.

- Okay.

(pot scraping) We're going to reduce this and I'm going to reduce that also with a bit of red wine.

So that has to reduce for a little while.

And then to this, we're going to thicken it with a dash of ketchup.

I like to finish a sauce like that.

It gives me a bit of viscosity, in addition to this.

Know what that is?

- Mustard, dry mustard.

- Yes.

Colman's dry mustard, you know.

So we'll put dried mustard.

- [Claudine] That's a pretty new spice for me.

(metal clanging) - We want this to reduce, cook.

Little bit of ketchup, as I say.

Couple of table spoon, if it comes out, huh.

- [Claudine] Mom always said squeeze the bottle.

- Oh, squeeze the bottle?

- Right?

- That one.

All right.

I'm gonna reduce that.

(pot scraping) (metal clanging) Look at the beautiful color.

- Yeah, that is really pretty.

- No, you could, here, can help you on the other side.

You could have a dish by itself, just those you know.

Okay, so this is the stuffed tomato with corn and ham.

And let's put them on this side and then I'm going to prepare, reduce this.

(pan scraping) You know what, here, let me taste it too.

(lips smack) It need another minute or so reduction.

(pan scraping) So we're going to wait.

It's just going to take a minute or so, okay.

Okay, this is reducing nicely now.

Often, on the tournedos, to make them higher, more important, (indistinct) them a taste, we put the crouton underneath.

And you see on the slice of bread like that, I cut already with a cookie cutter.

You can take two crouton.

What you can do is to put a little bit of oil on this, dip in oil like it's very lightly and put it into the oven, which is what we have here, you know.

- And I'm gonna leave these here so that we can put 'em on our- - Absolutely.

- Plate.

- And my tournedos is ready now.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- If I want to enrich them at the end, maybe I'll put couple of teaspoon of butter just to melt in the sauce.

(pan scraping) And you can arrange your crouton, Claudine.

We are going to arrange that on top.

- So I just put one on top of each?

- Yeah, I could even show you.

Just, if you want to see, I can show you rare it is.

You see the way it is?

- Oh wow.

- The center.

- [Claudine] That's perfect.

- Yeah, this is if you want it medium rare like this.

You can cut them in half.

Okay, arrange them here.

- Okay.

- A little bit of green on top.

Yeah.

(plate scraping) - [Claudine] It's abstract.

- It's abstract, good good.

- Abstract garnish.

- Beautiful.

- There.

- It's actually beautiful.

This is a tournedos of beef in mushroom, mustard and red wine sauce.

- [Claudine] So now let's make dessert.

- Let's make dessert.

You know when you want to do dessert, especially when you're going to do a dough, one of the best thing, you see, to put a tray with ice.

Now the ice is almost water, but it melt.

It doesn't, it melts in the pan, but it keep your board ice cold.

This happened to be marble and marble is very good for dough.

But any non-porous type of thing, even wood, formica, all of that would work well in it.

- Oh.

- Okay, so let's do the dough.

Very simple in there, a pate brisee.

We have a three quarter of a cup of flour here with a stick of butter, a little dash of sugar and a little dash of salt here.

And you want to turn them one second, very fast, huh.

(food processor whirring) Okay.

- You scared me.

(food processor whirring) - Okay, that's it.

And then I put a little bit of water.

Again.

(food processor whirring) Okay, let's see if it's hold together.

See, just grab a little bit and see whether it's hold together.

- [Claudine] Oh yeah.

- Yeah, okay, so that's what you want.

You don't even want to continue doing it further.

The reason is that if you do it this way, then the dough itself, I'll show you, will still have tiny little pieces of butter visible in it.

If the butter is visible, when you spread it, as you roll it, it develops some of the flakiness that you have in a puff pastry, you know.

You see, the dough is gathering together nicely.

There is nothing, in a sense, more tricky and more delicate as a good pate brisee, you know, a kind of pie dough.

But you have to do it right.

I could use more flour to actually roll the dough.

I think we should have a little more flour, Claudine, anyway.

Or then roll it in between plastic wrap.

(plastic wrap shuffling) Here we are.

And there, what we want to do here is little round to cook apple on top of it.

And so here, you roll it this way, you can even move this, move the two pieces of plastic and do this.

- Really cool.

- You start extending it.

Like that, you wanna try this?

We're going to do it very, very fine there anyway.

Good.

You can see that this is very, very fine here, because you crush it at the end, right.

This is very thick here.

You have to equalize it.

But you don't have to go necessarily in that direction, you know, you can push it over there.

We'll start with that.

We'll cut pieces like this, you know, with that one.

You know I have at least three.

And I can gather the dough and do more.

- [Claudine] Oh, I see what you mean.

- Yeah.

Here we are.

Now here, you know, this is one of those special magic baking things.

This is made out of silicone.

Nothing stick to it.

And you know, with this here, what we wanna do with all of them is to cut something like this.

- Oh.

- You know, and do like a leaf.

We're going to do leaves.

You can do mark like this.

- Okay.

- With the back of your knife, you know.

And I'll give you the leaves.

Yes.

You can cook that with your dough, but of course you'll have to remove it before because it's not going to cook as long.

And I'm even going to use the remaining of that dough here to do the stem to decorate that like little apple, you know, like this.

- Oh.

- Here we are.

And this, we put one.

(knife tapping) A whole bunch of stem.

Put that here.

We're gonna put that to cook right there on the side here.

And this may be on the side here.

But first, we have to put the apple on top of it, right?

- [Claudine] That would be good.

- Okay.

Two apple for four would be more than enough.

We can arrange them this way.

You put a big slice in the center and small one all around.

That's one way of doing it.

That's very good what you're doing.

In fact, that may be easier even to do them in half like this, to do like a flowers, you know.

Now you wanna put a little bit of sugar on top of this.

- Okay.

- Like a teaspoon, teaspoon and a half of sugar per apple.

And up they go into the oven.

And they cook quite a while, you know.

About 375, you wanna cook that.

Of course, you remove the leaves and the stem before that.

Are you gonna put that in the oven?

- Mm-hmm.

- Okay, you go and I'll clean up the table during that time.

- Thank you.

- I think there is a cooked one you can bring me.

- [Claudine] Yup.

- That's very good.

- Okay.

- And see those one we did couple of different way.

Now, that's cool now.

And we can glaze the top, which is always nice, with a little bit of apricot glaze.

And this is just plain good apricot preserve.

You can, if you want, dilute it with a few drop of Calvados.

Calvados with an apple brandy, you know, and it'll go with it.

I'm gonna glaze the top with this, use the brush.

And if you want, you can arrange your two leaves.

Two leaves like this, you know, and a stem.

- [Claudine] That looks so cool, that's awesome.

- It's all finished.

- Yup.

(glass clinking) - Good.

What we have here, and this is the apple round with Calvados glaze.

Well, we love celebration.

And today is a special celebration because we have friends coming to eat with us.

How are you Tina, Vincent?

- Very well.

- Well, maybe we should give our guests a glass of wine first, right?

- Tina, what would you like?

- I'd love a glass of the red.

- Okay, me too, actually.

- Well, I'm going to serve a little bit of this because I wanted to taste it.

Vincent, you want to try it.

- Please, I'd love some.

- Yeah, this is a chenin blanc from France with a Botrytis type of thing.

So it's like a, it's a dessert wine, of course.

And when in doubt, start with dessert.

- Well, this is a- - And your red wine.

- Cabernet sauvignon and this is from the Alexander Valley.

- That's it.

- And when in doubt, start with a cabernet sauvignon.

- I agree with this.

But then the meal tonight, we have that beautiful meal.

We're starting with that beautiful yellow pepper soup with the asparagus that you peeled beautifully.

- Thank you.

- And then- - We have the tournedos of beef with the shiitake mushrooms and the colorful tomatoes with the corn and ham.

And for dessert, we have the little tiny tarte aux pommes with the little leaves and stem on it, which I'm still really glad you decorated, by the way.

- Yes.

Well, when you have great friends and wonderful food, any meal can be a special celebration.

Thank you, Tina and Vincent, for joining us.

- Thank you very much.

- Until next time.

- [Claudine and Jacques] Happy cooking.

(mellow soothing music)