- You can find a jar of roasted pepper in any market.

They are peeled, ready to go.

You drain them, put salt, pepper on top of it, pumpkin seed.

That goes into your little food processor, a little bit of cream cheese, a dash of olive oil, and you're ready to go for an absolutely wonderful dip.

It takes seconds to make, and it looks absolutely wonderful.

With a bit of transformation, store-bought food becomes your own.

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

Happy cooking.

I'm cracking my eggs or trying to know whether they are cracked or not because today, I'm doing a real French menu.

We're gonna start with asparagus fan in a mustard sauce, after, scallop Grenobloise, gratin of potatoes in cream, and we end with tartine of jam, tartine of jam and fruit sherbet.

That's what we were eating very often as a kid.

So I'm starting with the eggs.

And when I do hard cooked eggs, the rounder part of the eggs is here.

And on the rounder part of the egg, there is the air chamber.

I make a little hole here because if you put the eggs into boiling water, as I'm going to do, and with a lot of pressure, you can see sometimes the air bubble coming out of the shell because of the pressure, and the shell cracks.

If you put them in that you will see... I'm gonna stop this so it doesn't boil so you will see when I put that into the water, the pressure being released here on the eggs.

And then they won't crack anymore.

And I put that on 10 minutes.

They should not boil too long.

They should just gently, very gentle boil.

If they go too fast, the eggs is going to be rubbery, the egg wide, they toughen the albumin.

So that will take 10 minutes.

During that time, we're gonna start on the gratin of potato.

Again, a classic.

Certainly where I come from, the potato, and in gratin like that like my mother would do, is really a dish that I do very often.

So those are beautiful golden, Yukon gold potato, peeled.

As you see, they are totally cooked.

I don't like my potato nouvelle cuisine, crunchy, that is.

No, I like the potato cooked.

And when those are peeled, to peel them, you use the side of the knife and you really scrape the top of the potato like this.

That's how you peel potato, I mean, cooked potato.

That's it.

Again.

So I have a good pound of potato here.

And if the thing crack a little bit, it doesn't really matter.

There we are.

So on top of that, we're going to put salt, pepper, maybe a little more pepper, more salt, and nutmeg, other seasoning.

Now, the nutmeg, I can do it with this on top.

That works very well.

I can do it with a knife as well, which is what we used to do at apprentice.

You put it on the side like that and just scrape the side of the nutmeg to have powdered nutmeg.

This is decadent gratin.

We want to put a good cup of cream on top of it.

Now, you can put half and half if you really don't want to splurge that much, but it does make a difference here.

And arrange them in a nice layer, a bit of Parmesan cheese on top, and this is ready to go into the oven.

It doesn't really take that long for the simple reason, remember, the potatoes are cooked.

It's a different type of gratin.

So this will go into the oven for about 20 minutes, 400 degrees.

And now, we wanna continue with the asparagus.

This one here is like the top of a flower and the petal are starting to come out.

You see, I can already... And it's like a rose where the petal is starting opening.

This is an older asparagus.

You want to shoot for that type of thing where the head is like a tight bud, like the bud of a flower.

The best way to peel it is to put it flat on the table.

Don't lift it up because it will break when you push on it.

Take your vegetable peeler.

Don't put your hand underneath because you're higher than the asparagus.

Put it flat on the table like this, this flat, and you make it roll.

So you go this, make it roll, turn it around eventually to have almost like a flower here, and then you can break it at that level.

So here we are.

I mean, usually, in a kitchen, what we do, we do all of them this way, and then you break them after.

I worked at The Russian Tea Room in New York, and we serve up to 12, 1,400 people a day, and they only have three guys behind the stove.

If I had told him to peel the asparagus, I probably would have been assassinated.

The point is that if you can do it, you do it.

If you're pressed by time, then just cut the top.

But here we are.

My asparagus are peeled.

That, of course, can be done ahead, huh?

Okay.

My water boiling now, just barely starting boiling.

I think I'm going to put it on this side because that's stove goes faster and lower this one.

And there should be, well, about one layer like this.

Bring to a boil.

They will cook in about three minutes.

And we're going to do a mustard sauce with that.

And to make it easy, we're going to do with mayonnaise, jar mayonnaise, which is the principle of our show here.

So what you want to take, you want to take something like a mayonnaise at the market, then you change it, put some French mustard in it, a little bit of red wine vinegar, crack pepper in it.

And all of a sudden, you're starting having another type of mayonnaise, your own.

Actually, for that, you want it even slightly... Yeah, there is enough vinegar, but slightly thinner, so we put a dash of water in it.

Okay.

So... (alarm rings) Okay, my eggs are cooked.

And what I do, usually, with the eggs, I will pour out the hot liquid, and then I shake the pan.

Shake the pan to crack all the shell.

And then after that, water and ice.

Here, the secret of a good egg is not only to put water and ice but to leave it long enough, as I said, in the water so the sulfur inside dissipate in the water.

So it has to stay for a while here.

Of course, we can peel it.

And as you say here now, they're all cracked because I banged them out.

But one of the best way, when you start peeling it, sometimes it catch underneath here.

There is a second membrane, that one of the best way is to peel it under water like I have here, a little bit of water.

And if the water goes under the shell here, it makes them much easier to peel.

Okay.

My asparagus now are basically ready.

Let me check it out.

Often, you're told also don't cover green vegetables when you cook them.

They are not going to be green.

That's not really true.

Well, we do that in restaurant, it's true in some way, and the reason is that the stove are extremely, extremely high, the temperature.

But very often, at home, unless you cover it, you don't really get it back to a boil very fast.

Another thing that you're told also and that we do in quantity is to drop your vegetable in ice cold water to cool it off and stop the cooking.

Yes, but if you don't have that many here, if you spread it out as I do here, it will evaporate and you don't have to put them in ice cold water, which, in my opinion, takes some of the taste out.

So what we do here, I want to put a layer of asparagus on top.

You want to serve that kind of room temperature.

And another layer here, of course.

But doing that at home, I would do that a little slower, but you want to fan them out like this, one layer here, one layer there.

And we're ready for the sauce.

It should cool off a little bit.

Which one is my cold egg here?

This one, there you go.

I'm gonna peel this one because I know it's cold inside.

The other one will probably still be... Yeah.

Hmm.

This is the one that I just cooked in front of you.

I just wanted to cut it up.

And this is the best way to cut eggs is with the egg cutter.

If you cut it this way here, now, you could see there probably the center of that egg.

For me, this is perfectly cooked.

It's still a bit warm in the center.

There is no green around the yolk.

They don't smell of sulfur or anything like this, so that's great.

I should let it cool longer.

But when I slice it, you slice it one way, and then you turn it the other way and slice it again.

And that's ideal for... That's ideal for, what do you call... An egg salad, cutting it this way.

This one is a bit gummy because it's still hot.

I like eggs.

So this one, which is cooler from before, again, it's nicely cooked too.

And this way again.

Okay, I have my garish of eggs here.

That's good.

I'm going to put a little bit of chives on this with a beautiful young chive that I'll cut softly.

I can even mix them in my eggs.

Makes a nice, delicious garnish.

And the sauce on top.

I need a large spoon.

I cover the base of the... There'll be enough sauce for... A bit of that on top here.

You wanna put a little more.

I think I'll leave it this way.

I'm going to mess it up if I put it here.

So this is the asparagus fan and mustard sauce.

(soft guitar music) And now, it's time to make the scallop Grenobloise that is in the style of Grenoble in the Alps in France.

And those are really very large diver scallops, as you see.

And there is a sinew on this side that you want to remove for that particular recipe.

If you do a mouse, you ground that in it and it's perfectly fine, but there, otherwise, it would be tough.

This is the abducting muscle that you have holding the scallop to the shell.

And we're gonna put a little bit of oil on top of this just to oil them nice, just barely, and a dash of salt in there.

And I'll start them on without any fat in there.

Just by oiling the scallop a little bit like that should be enough.

So, you could use an non-stick pan, but this will give you a better crystallization in your pan.

Okay.

Those are quite large scallop, expensive.

And you should do that at the last moment.

You don't want to overcook them.

And the garnish is going to be bread.

And you see, a bread like this, what I do usually, I cut it, cream it.

You won't even have to cream it, frankly.

Cut it into little strip and dice so you have nice croutons.

That, I put that directly on a cookie sheet like this, a dash of of oil again on top of it.

You wanna roll it in oil like this.

And that you, put that in a 400-degree oven, and that's what I have here.

You will use much less oil if you do it this way than if you fry it in a skillet with the oil, which is like a sponge there.

Okay.

Second garnish of this, we have lemon.

And the lemon, what you want to do is to actually remove all of the skin of the lemon, including the pith, the white membrane.

So there is a different ways of doing it.

That's one way.

See that I move my knife in a kind of jigsaw fashion here to go all around.

And then you want to use those tiny, in between the membrane here, you want to remove and if you don't want to have any membrane with it.

You can do it this way, and even twist your knife.

This one is a bit, that's too small.

That's it.

That is you cut on one side of the membrane, twist your knife to go on the other side of the membrane.

It's just flesh.

I mean, of course this is the same technique that you use for an orange or a tangerine or even a lime.

Okay, so I have that amount here.

And as you see here, all I have is those membrane left, a little bit of lemon juice here that I can use in there.

This, I can cut those in half or in three pieces.

Put that as the second garnish that I have.

I see my scallop now.

Yep.

There you go, very fast, maybe even too fast.

Lower down the heat.

But I have nice caramelization on top, which is what I want.

And if I had a big party and if I had 30 portions of this, the heat that I have in there is enough to finish cooking them.

I would put that on the side and leave them in an oven like 130, 140 degrees, it would continue cooking just slowly.

So capers, this, I'm going to have parsley on top of it, very coarsely chopped.

And mushroom too.

The mushroom, I'm going to saute it with the butter because at the end of the scallop, we're going to do a beurre noir so called, or a beurre noisette, that is hazelnut butter, a butter which cooks long enough so it has an hazelnut color and a very nutty taste.

In the hazelnut butter, we'll put those mushroom.

Those are really fast dish that you do with scallop, a fast dish that you do with fish.

You could actually do the same recipe with salmon, I have done it.

Okay.

Yeah, I think I'm going to remove my scallop.

One.

Diver scallop like this, if you were to go to the sea and look at those, they're about a pound each.

They are very, very large.

Whoop.

This, and one more.

Put the big one in the center, one on the side here.

And then we want to put butter.

I want at least three, four tablespoons of butter here.

It's going there to finish it up.

Finish the sauce, that is.

And I want it to get slightly brown.

So the mushroom are going to go into that as well.

Here, I'll put the bread.

That, you would want to put that, actually, at the last moment.

Capers.

Oh, the little dice of lemon here, that goes all around.

Capers.

Hmm.

It's turning, actually, the right color here.

I want it with that kind of wonderful smell of... Yeah, parley on top.

And finally, I can put the brown butter, which should sizzle on top.

And sometimes, as an added thing, a little bit of red wine vinegar into that very hot pan to have a few drop of that on top.

Beautiful.

And this is the scallop a la Grenobloise.

(soft guitar music) And now, the gratin of potato is ready.

Let's get it out.

It's beautifully bubbling here, as you can see.

I can smell the nutmeg.

You have to be very parsimonious with your nutmeg because you can really smell it.

But here is the gratin of potato.

(soft guitar music) And now, best part of the meal, the dessert, jam tartine with fruit sherbet.

What we call a tartine, in France, we give that to the kids.

It's a piece of bread, sometimes cake, usually layered or coated with jam.

When you're a kid, you eat a lot of tartine.

There, I USE a pound cake that you can buy.

So take the side off.

You cut a couple of slice of this.

And then we can put our tartine on top.

I have apricot jam here.

You can have apricot jam.

Those are always great.

I don't know any kid who don't like the tartine of jam.

And then the other one with strawberry or raspberry jam or any type of jam that you want.

And you can cut that in a different way.

We could cut it in a triangle like this.

We can cut it into maybe a rectangle like this.

And sherbet here, you wanna put a nice ball in the center of it here.

(soft guitar music) The jam tartine with fruit sherbet.

It's really nice to cook with your friends.

Life is certainly truly beautiful around the table with your friends.

So enjoy time with them, and happy cooking.