- Hello, I'm Jacques Pepin.

Whenever I have guests to dinner, I want to show them my special kind of hospitality.

It are the time I like to splurge on ingredient that might cost a bit more, but make a great impression.

First, we'll poach a striped bass and serve it in its own liquid, the court bouillon, surrounded by a julienne vegetable.

Then, a lean veal chop quickly grilled and served with a sauce of caper, lemon, and fresh sage.

We'll make vegetable burger, a medley of colorful peppers, peas, corn, and spinach green lightly held together with grits, and finish with an elegant concoction of pear, espresso, and Kahlua liqueur.

The best part of entertaining is that you get to sit with your guest and enjoy the food, too.

So, join me for "Today's Gourmet".

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) I invite people at my house very often, and you always wanna do a bit special when the guest are coming.

And very often, I use fish.

We have a beautiful striped bass today, and sometime a bit costlier ingredient than you would conventionally do, as we're going to do today with a rack of veal that is expensive.

And we'll start with the fish.

I have a leek, here.

And what you wanna do for your leek at that point, you wanna do a julienne that is taking the lower part.

This, you keep for soup or stock, and that, you wanna cut in half.

Now, this has been organized by Mother Nature in life all in strip like this, so you can put it flat and cut it into thin strip in what we call a julienne.

The julienne refer to a way of cutting everything in thin strip, like that.

And it is, in a sense, (speaking French) of nouvelle cuisine.

A lot of thing in nouvelle cuisine are with julienne.

So, here we have a julienne of leek.

And the leek is very tight in the center, so it's clean, and I can see here I have no dirt, oh, I have some dirt, here.

If I have dirt, you look at it, then you clean it after.

Don't clean it before, because if you clean it before, you disorganize the whole thing and you have to put it back together.

But if it's dirty, then take a bowl of water, clean it up.

And very often, people clean something up in the water and tend to take that and put it into a sea.

You cannot do that.

You have to lift it up out of the water this way.

And we have julienne of carrot, here, and we have onion.

In addition to that, we have garlic.

Now, sliced garlic, we're going to put.

The sliced garlic is going to be milder than if I cut it very thin.

So, we put the sliced garlic in there, and the peel of lemon.

And the peel of lemon will have a lot of taste because I'm using only the surface part of the skin where you have the essential oil.

And with that, again, we do another type of julienne.

Now, all of this, I'm gonna put in my saucepan, here, and we bring that to a boil.

A bit of white wine, a little bit of olive oil.

I have all my seasoning there, the salt, and maybe even a little dish of butter, or maybe nothing at all for the time being.

Then, the fish.

Look at that fish, here.

It is nice and very clear eye with deep red gills, and that indicate freshness.

If you buy those this way, those are striped bass, and it used to be that you couldn't buy it.

It was a sport fish and you couldn't get it.

Now, those are raised fish.

Put it into a plastic bag to scrape it this way because that will go all over the place, the scale, so this is a good way of doing it, this way.

You do it on each side.

I'm just going to do one side to show it to you.

Now, it's nice and thin.

You see, there is no more scale.

And to clean that up, I mean, to take the filet out of it, you wanna put it flat, put your knife flat on the center filet to remove your whole filet this way.

Remember that that recipe, I can do it whole, and if I were to do it, cook the fish whole, I would remove the head.

In any case, the head, everything you have to keep to put into the freezer or something and keep it for stock.

Now, I have those four filet, here.

And if my fish, now, should have cooked for about a minute and all the vegetable are a bit soft, then you place your filet right on top of it, here.

You can remove the skin if you want, but in that recipe, it's so thin, I'm leaving the skin for four.

As I say, again, maybe a little piece of butter goes into our recipe.

And that will cook for about four, five minutes.

And during that time, I wanna show you what we do with our veal.

First thing that I wanna do is probably clean up my finger a little bit, take the fish out.

And here, I have a very expensive cut of meat.

This is called a rack of veal, and the rack of veal, you have that part, here, that part, here, and the large end, this is the shoulder where you have the bone and all that.

It's like when you back a standing rib roast.

the best part is this side.

One rib at a time, and you can see why it's so expensive in a restaurant.

Because you cut it, you don't get that much out of it.

And now, we wanna trim it totally, to take most of the fat and the sinew out of it.

All the fat, here, we're going to grill that, put it on the grill, and for me, this is one of the biggest treat.

You clean it up along the bone, here.

And most of that is remove, you scrape it up.

Remember, in a restaurant, we use those scrape, those pieces here into pate or thing like this.

In the case here, we leave it this way.

I have a veal chop, here.

It's about 10 ounce, and that's quite expensive.

It would cost you about 350 in a restaurant, each piece.

And this, we are going to grill it in the middle.

But before that, I wanna check on my fish.

And the fish, usually, you see the way the filet curl up like that, and it's barely cooked.

And in the context of nouvelle cuisine, very often, we would do those filet not to cook as in a former type of cuisine.

We tend to overcook the vegetable and the fish, also.

Now, you don't have to go to the extreme.

Remember, it has to be cooked, but it can be just slightly crunchy.

All color, different type of vegetable.

And that, you wanna serve that directly.

You could, if you want, also, remove the skin.

I think it's cooked, but, or leave it on, and this is fine because I've removed the scale, so I don't really have to remove the skin.

And there, what I would want to do, maybe remove one of the filet on the side so that I could have a little bit of that mixture underneath of different color.

Remember, the julienne of leek, the carrot, and so forth.

Then, you take one of those filet gently that you place on top.

You wanna put maybe a couple of those vegetables on top, not too much.

You wanna keep it nice and clean, with, certainly, a little bit of the juice.

With the juice, remember, are the olive oil and a little bit of butter and a dash of white wine.

This is what we call a nage courte, that is, it's cooked in a liquid, but a courte liquid, which is between a liquid and a sauce, really.

Well, it's time to cook our veal chop now.

And those beautiful veal chop, what we wanna do, just brush them a little bit with oil.

Those are milk-fed veal, nice and pink.

Also called nature veal, sometime it's called Provimi veal.

They give the baby calf sometime a formula made of protein, vitamin, mineral.

That's why it's called Provimi.

So, just salt, pepper, a little dash of olive oil.

And again, at the last moment.

You don't wanna put your oil, or your salt, rather, early on it.

And then, we wanna put that to cook on the grill here gently.

So, with that, we are going to serve a kind of vegetable patty which is made with a lot of different type of vegetable that I have here.

I have fresh peas, I have, this is organic red pepper, corn, spinach.

And I have the grits, here.

The grits is, of course, corn, granulated corn, hominy, sometime call.

That is used a great deal in the South, and I love the taste of it.

So, we'll start with this.

I wanna cut those.

So, we cut a little bit of the red pepper.

Usually, you'll take the rib out of it and cut them into little dice this way.

Now, you don't have to remove the skin for that.

It's perfectly fine.

Well, the grain you should remove, that I have here.

And if you have another color of pepper, it's perfectly fine.

Now, the spinach, here, you may want to cut your spinach in pieces like that, also.

It makes it easier to mix it together.

So, here I have, and what I wanna do next is to show you how to cut corn.

Very often, when you take the kernel out of the corn, you can do it this way or this way.

Other time, I see to do it against me, people tend to put their knife and apply pressure here.

And here is what happen.

It's dangerous, and why is that?

Because a lot of people use only one part of the knife.

And crushing forward, if I start here and if I finish here, and all of a sudden, it's very easy, as you can see, because I'm using the knife, actually.

This way, you see?

And/or this way.

But one way or the other, I'm starting at one point of the knife, finishing at the other end of the blade.

That technique is very important.

You can use even the end of it, scrape the rest of this.

And now, that goes in the compost pile, or you give it to the cow, if you have cow.

Not to the dog, my dog wouldn't eat any of this.

Only eat good stuff, like me.

For now, we have fresh peas, here.

All of that, we're going to cook in a little bit of water.

I have a cup of water here that I put to boil.

And that cup of water, I have no salt or anything in it.

And I wanna place that in this so that by the time it boil for couple of minute, I have basically almost no water left.

And the little water that I have left, I'm going to use it to cook with the grits.

Let's see my veal chop, now.

They are doing beautifully well, there.

I'm putting them on the side, it's going a bit fast.

You wanna cook that on a very clean grill.

That's important.

Nice, clean grill.

And what I have here, I have chicken stock, a little bit of chicken stock, no fat in it.

We're going to cook the grits right into it.

So, let it flow gently, like you do semolina, if you do that type of thing.

You bring that to a boil, and that will cook 20, 30 minutes, stirring it.

Look at it occasionally, stir it, because it might stick in the bottom.

Let me look at my vegetable, now, if they came back to a boil.

Yeah, the vegetable are getting there.

And what I have on this side, I have grits which has been cooking for the amount of this one, here.

I mean, been cooking for 30 minutes, but the same amount than what I have here.

So, look at what I have, here.

It's nice and thick, which is basically the way I want it.

And in there, the only thing that I don't have here would be the juice of those vegetable, because when those have come to a boil, what I do, they could boil one more minute or so, but we're going to leave it at this.

And what I wanna do here is actually to press on top of that to extrude most of the juice out of it and mix that in our grits.

This is our vegetable burger, so you can do a lot of different variation on this.

And then, I put some of the juice.

I have too much juice, here.

Usually, you will have about half a cup of juice left over.

So, you add this to it.

You cook it until it's thick, like this, which will take, as I say, approximately 25, 30 minute.

And now, this, you wanna mix it together.

I do that with farina grit, with semolina.

Semolina is a wheat type of thing.

You do that with couscous, any of that type of mixture to be use if you wanted a binding agent.

So, when the most important thing now is to let it rest, spread it out.

Put a piece of plastic wrap, and I like, usually, to put it on top of it, so it touch like this, so there is no oxidation.

And then, you want this to be really cold, now.

Cool it off.

And I have some right here which is cold.

And we are going to saute that in a little skillet, here.

You can see that I have two patties here which have been formed together.

They're still a bit soft.

You can use plastic wrap to mold it together, or you can use your finger.

In any case, you can do that ahead.

Take a bunch of this, put it in there to form your patty.

You could even squeeze it together nicely like this to form.

This is still delicate.

I could do it cooking it longer and it will end up being firmer, but it's not as good.

So, always go with what is the best to eat, even if it tend to break down a little bit.

It is not that important, in my opinion.

Again, we put another one like this, squeeze it to make a nice patty.

A vegetable patty like this could be used instead of meat sometime.

People don't want to eat meat, a light type of different dish for the summer, it is a nice thing to do.

So, you would invert it nicely on your hand and put it preferably in a nonstick pan like this to cook.

This one here, and this one there.

Okay, that will cook a couple of minutes, three, four minutes on each side.

Remember, everything is cooked, there.

The grits is cooked, the vegetable are cooked.

But of course, it's cold, and you want a nice, little crust on top of it, so you wanna cook it for a little while.

And while this is cooking, let me, you can even partially cover it if you think it's going to splatter too much.

And let's see the other side of your two veal chop.

You wanna do a quadrillage, we call that, is you turn it so that you have a nice mark on each side and that nice taste of the charcoal.

And now, we're going to do the sauce for those veal chop.

You can serve them plain, but I like to do it sometime with a bit of a sauce.

And as you can see here, what I have, I have some red onion, and the red onion cut into fairly large piece, here, about half-inch pieces.

Those are very sweet onion.

You can use those onion sometime, Maui, we use, or Walla Walla onion or Vidalia onion.

All of those are nice and sweet, but those red onion are quite sweet, too.

I have capers.

The capers is the bud of a flower, and the small caper like that, this is very nice.

We use here shredded skin, the shredded skin that you do very simply by taking a vegetable peeler and taking the skin of the lemon, taking only the surface, like this.

And that, you do into a fine julienne, that is, a thin layer like this.

This is very good.

Some lemon juice.

We press lemon juice in there.

And here, I put a couple of tablespoon of chicken stock just to extend my sauce.

Remember, this is a light sauce with the veal.

Again, a little bit of olive oil in there.

I have at least for four, here.

And then, we put sage.

Sage goes well with veal, as well as parsley, for that matter.

I can put a little bit of the parsley, a little bit of the sage I have here.

It has a really, and there is many, the family of Salvia, so-called, or sage, there is many, many different type.

This one is deep green.

There is some which are red, some which are yellow-red, and so forth.

It's great.

And in different part of the country, particularly on the West Coast, this grows very well and it comes back year after year, so it's a great thing to have.

I'm going to mix this to serve with the veal chop.

And now, what I would like to do, see, that sauce can be done ahead, is to turn my patty, here, see what they look like.

As I say, you have to be, I hold the top of it.

It tend to splatter a little bit.

But they are beautiful, look at that.

And now, they cook on the other side for a few more minutes, and we're going now to prepare the dessert.

And the dessert is a very interesting dessert today.

It's a dessert where you can use a lot of leftover.

And what I have here is pear, different type of pear.

I have three pear which are peeled.

I'm putting brown sugar on top of it, and espresso, espresso or a deep coffee.

when you have coffee left over, one of the best way to use your coffee left over is to do this.

I'll show you how to peel a pear.

Cut the bottom of it.

You cut it around.

Actually, very often, we peel that with a vegetable peeler.

With a vegetable peeler, It's probably easier for most people.

Look at this, the pear is round, so you cut round, at least for that part of the pear.

Now, the pear is long, then you cut long.

Try to follow the shape of the fruit.

Those happen to be Bosc and they need a bit more time than other pear to cook.

Now, with that little melon baller, I take the center, so everything is eatable now.

So, we have everything in there.

What you wanna do is to put a small plate upside-down on top of it to keep those pear in the syrup and put them to cook.

Put them to cook here with a lid on top of it.

And now that the pear are cooking, I can show you some which are completely cooked, which I have right here.

I have the syrup right here and the pear there.

Now, they have that deep amber color of the pear.

You see what happen, after the pear are cooked, you let them cool in the syrup.

Then, you take the pear and you reduce the syrup.

And the syrup, I reduce it to one cup of very strong intensity.

So, this is a mahogany color, very strong taste of coffee there in that syrup.

Actually, you can serve it by itself or you can put a little bit of Kahlua.

You can put the Kahlua on top.

That will go well with it.

And lemon, little lemon rind.

That will go with it.

You can decorate the, this is the leaves from citrus fruit.

It would be nice to decorate that in there.

And a couple of, couple of eatable flowers around, and we have a beautiful dessert, here.

And now, what we'll do is to finish our veal that I have there.

I have my two veal chop, which are are beautifully brown, now.

This is a treat, those veal.

Expensive, but very good.

I put two, of course, for two people.

We are going to put the, our vegetable burger just next to it.

Here, another one right there.

Mm, that smells good.

And on top of that, we'll put the sauce.

This is, remember, our caper-lemon juice sauce, which will go well with this very Mediterranean, expensive, but so good.

A lot of the friend who come to my house are chef, so we cook together.

Sometime we fight at the store, but we cook together.

But we eat together also, and that's even more important.

And that type of food is ideal for that.

Expensive, yes.

Occasionally, I do a veal chop.

Not all the time, because it is an expensive piece of meat, but the best for your friend, all the time.

Be sure, however, to cook it properly.

That type of cuisine, very elegant, I think.

The fish here that we have on that little bed array of vegetable, a bit acidic.

Remember, we use a Sonoma chardonnay here to cook it with.

The fish is barely cooked, but cooked, and the vegetable are slightly crunchy, but cooked.

And with that, we have the veal, there, those beautiful veal chop.

Pink inside, not raw, but pink inside, not overcooked.

It would be a shame.

And we have those vegetable burgers.

Those vegetable burger by themself are really terrific with the grits and all of those different type of vegetable.

It goes well with it, with the juice and the sauce that we made with it.

You'll love that dish.

And finally, a salad, of course.

And the dessert, the dessert, it's a great way of using your leftover coffee.

You can do a great espresso, but your leftover coffee would, you poached it in it.

You have it cold, a little bit of Kahlua, and of course, with that, we're going to have a glass of wine.

We're going to have another chardonnay, this one from the Napa Valley.

Nice and very full and fruity.

I love a glass of Chardonnay with the fish and the veal.

You have to do that dish and that menu for your friend.

They're going to love it.

I love to do it for you.

Happy cooking!