- Hi, I'm Jack Pepin.

Today's new fashion cuisine seems fresh and inventive, but it's often just old fashioned cooking with a chance of emphasis.

Scallop have been around forever, but nowadays smoking is very much in vogue.

I'll show you how to make a salad of stove top smoked scallop in an orange and onion sauce, a colorful vegetable bouquet served over fettuccine that's decidedly more vegetable than pasta, and a new way to turn an humble grapefruit into an elegant and satisfying dessert.

Old-style ingredient, and I got it done in a modern way.

Join me as I share the secret of the new fashioned cook, next on "Today's Gourmet."

(cheerful jazz music) (cheerful jazz music continues) We're going to do an interesting menu today, a new approach to a traditional food.

And I just started by putting some fettuccine into water to cook them, and it takes a few minutes to cook, and we're going to do that with a lot of different vegetable.

And what I have here is a large skillet, I'm putting a little bit of canola oil and a dash of butter in it, like one, two teaspoon.

And into this, we're going to start our first vegetable, I have some broccoli here, and I remove, you know, the stem of the broccoli for me is like the best part of the broccoli, except you have to remove the outside, which is very fibrous and tough, you know.

But if you remove the outside, then it can be very tender, and that's what you want.

So I'm cutting that into like half-inch pieces, and now the floret in the same way, in small pieces.

And we're going to start sauteing that first.

Here we are, and of course you can choose any vegetable that you want.

Here we are.

Maybe I should check my pasta now, and I want to stir it so that it doesn't stick together.

You want to be sure that it's boiling.

There we are.

Okay.

And then I have my broccoli in there, the second vegetable that I put in there is the scallion.

Those takes a little longer to cook, that's why I started with the broccoli and scallions.

You know, now it's kind of fashionable to do those pasta with a lot of vegetable in it.

Pasta primavera, you know, springtime pasta.

And this actually started in New York at Le Cirque in 1974, when Lucia Kopp and Sirio, the owner decided to do a new type of pasta.

And one of his friend, one of my friend, whose name is Ed Giovi, a painter, but a great professional cook, gave a recipe that his mother used to, his grandmother actually used to make, and it is actually a tomato salad, you know.

It's diced tomato, like I'm cutting here, and he put them into a bowl with chopped onion, a lot of basil, some oil, salt, pepper, so to that point it's basically a tomato salad.

And in that tomato salad, he cooked the pasta and dropped it in the raw tomato salad.

So it's a raw tomato sauce, like a tomato salad, and he put the pasta directly in it, and it's absolutely terrific.

So I have my second vegetable here, and I have also some mushroom that I'm going to put in there.

Cut them in four pieces, they'll be good.

In there.

And the corn.

The corn, I'm going to cut right here, because they're going to go with the tomato.

We're going to use that with the tomato at the end.

There we are.

So one ear of corn like this.

Be sure to slide your knife, and move the blade forward, you know, to cook it the proper way and remove all of the corn.

This is nice standard corn, I'm making a mess on the table here, that will go at the end of the recipe.

I think we're ready now to add the second vegetable, which is this one.

And maybe, a bit of salt in there.

And I'm going to cover it so that it can steam a little bit.

And while this is cooking, we're ready to put those vegetable in at the end only, we're going to do a base kind of pesto.

The pesto sometime is done into that mortar, and pesto, you know, doing that type of thing that's where the word come from actually.

But there we're going to use one of those tiny coffee grinder, putting some basil in there, and a little bit of tarragon to intensify the taste of the basil, because the tarragon add that type of licorice taste.

A couple of clove of garlic I'm putting in there, or maybe even three, and little bit of water to help in the grounding, you know.

(blender whirs) And that will take second, you know, to make a a pure out of that.

Beautiful.

If it doesn't turn as much, you put another touch of water, and that will help.

We have here a beautiful green puree here, very flavorful, and we're going to put it directly into this.

This is the base.

And to that, the seasoning of course, some salt pepper, and a little bit of olive oil.

Remember, we haven't put any oil in it now.

So this is the base.

And actually, this is a very light pesto, conventionally it has much more oil in it, and also probably more it has nuts and other thing like this.

So this, we're going to look at that now, it's softening nicely.

Mm.

And put the rest of our vegetable now.

So as you can see here, the proportion of vegetable is at least as much vegetable as pasta, maybe even more vegetable than pasta.

So what we want to do here is to remove our pasta, which now should be cooked.

I'm going to check it.

You know, you want this to cook seven, eight minutes, depending how you like it.

I like my pasta a bit al dente.

So you drain it, I add it to it, and very often I add some pasta water, because it will absorb it, you know.

We're going to toss this, might as well toss it with that.

See, the pasta would be beautifully served by itself just like this.

And if you stay one minute, one or two minute more, all of the liquid underneath is absorbed.

What we want to do now is to bring it, to serve it directly to the table.

We can put some of those underneath here, it has a nice light green color, and of course the vegetable on top.

This is a kind of fettuccine, it has more vegetable than pasta, so pile it up with vegetable, and put a little bit more pasta on top, and this is the way we're going to serve it.

(gentle music) And now I want to show you how to make a terrific dessert with grapefruit, a grapefruit in nectar, we call.

I started a caramel here, and that caramel have a quarter of a cup of sugar and a tablespoon of water, and we're going to let it cook until it turn into caramel.

I have those red grape fruit here, taking a few strip, and note that I'm using a vegetable peeler, this is a good one actually, and piling it up together to do what we call a 'julienne,' that is a thin strip made with the skin.

And you can candy those, it's used now a lot in candy making and so forth.

But if you can't eat, the best thing is first to blanche it.

What we mean by blanche it, you put it in boiling water because the skin is pretty bitter, you know.

So by doing it in boiling water, as we're going to do it, in blanching it like this as we do, then it helps remove some of the bitterness.

So you boil it for a few seconds.

And during that time, I want to cut the center, the flesh, and as you see here, I'm cutting with a knife to remove all of the white cottony thing that we call the pith.

So the grapefruit is totally nude.

Here we are.

This is blanched enough.

I can cool it off in cold water now.

And look at my caramel, my caramel is now ready.

I'm going to stop it, it can stay like that for a couple of seconds.

And with this, I want to cut the segment here in between.

And what you do here, you run your knife along one of the membrane, twist the knife, and come back next to the next membrane.

And like that, you remove only the flesh.

Now I want to use the juice of this, and what I'm doing here, oop, removing, watch out not to cut your finger, that's it.

And there I want to put the juice, and the juice is going to help me to stop the cooking of the caramel here, Pour it slowly.

(caramel sizzles) That's it, that's going to melt the caramel.

And in addition to that, we're putting a little bit of Cointreau here, an orange liquor in there, and a little bit of grenadine for color.

This is going to be our sauces.

So we make this.

And if this had a chance to cool it would thicken to the consistency of a nice syrup, like a maple syrup.

And as you can see here, all I have left is the membrane, you know.

So, let's going back to the skin here.

I'll take the blanched skin right on top of that.

And frankly, I'm doing that quite fast here, but you should do it and let it marinate together, you know, that juice will be quite concentrated, you would put it on top of your grapefruit and let it marinate like that for a couple of hours, and serve it cold, it's really a delightful type of dessert, a bit unusual taste.

And you can change, you can put Grand Marnier instead of the Cointreau, of course, or another type of liquor if you feel like it.

Here we are here with a few of those skin on top, the juice in it.

And we can top that up maybe with a little sprig of spearmint for the final touch.

We have a great first course today in our new style type of menu.

We're gonna smoke scallop, you can smoke any type of fish, meat or whatever, and it's really in style now.

And of course when you're talking about smoking, first you talk about wood.

All kind of wood on the market, now, you can do your own too.

I have here the classic hickory, and this is probably what's used the most.

But then here I have thyme, you know those are just the branch from the thyme when you pick up the thyme, you keep the branch, dry them out.

This is pecan wood.

This one here is rosemary.

So when you have those big branch of rosemary, and removing the leaves out of it, just dry this and use that to smoke, it's very odoriferous, great amount of taste.

Here I have maple wood with some corn husk, you know, which is dried out.

And finally here, basil.

You know, I have a lot of basil in my garden and when I remove all of those leaves, this stay, you can dry it out and use that to smoke.

You can use basically any type of smoke.

Don't go to your husband or your wife's shop and pick up the sawdust there, if you have a machine and if you do some work in your basement, because it may be likely that you're using a wood which has been pressure treated, if it's slightly greenish, and it's treated with poison, with arsenic actually, so it would be quite dangerous.

So unless you know where the wood come from, rely on those things here.

But it's great.

And you have a lot of diversification, you do, and you can cook a long time or very little.

Some people soak the the chips, I don't really soak them, I use them directly this way.

Now, the advantage of doing this in a small smoker, and you can do your own, you can buy a roasting pan, and old roasting pan, you don't know what to do with it, put a rack on top so you have space for the sawdust.

You can also use sawdust, yes, you can use sawdust, or the chip like that.

And you put a piece of aluminum foil on top, and you use that as a smoker.

I had an old pan that I used at home.

This is a very nice one, you put it on top of the stove and start smoking, putting your stuff directly underneath there.

So you see what happened is that I put a little bit of that mixture here.

Let's say that that amount of wood take six, seven minutes to burn.

Then after that, I have no more smoke, so I only smoke for the amount of time, or the amount of material that I put there, two minute, 3, 5, 10 minute.

And after it stopped smoking, but it still continued to cook.

What I'm saying is that I could put a chicken or a turkey, and smoke it for the first five minutes, and leave it on the stove, unload it, and it continue cooking very slowly without the smoking.

You see very often people put too much smoke, there I smoke just a little bit.

Or I can put fish or scallop that I'm going to do, smoke them three minute, I have enough of a smoke test, and I remove them even if they are not cooked, and then I finish them in the oven.

So I can really control exactly what I want to put, the amount of smoke that I want to put on top.

What I put, a dash of salt, dash of paper, and a little bit of oil so it doesn't stick all over the place.

And you wanna put that on top there, you know.

I do shrimp, I do salmon, I do, you name it, you know.

And it is a great way, it's actually quite low-calorie, I mean except for the fact that you have to put a little bit of oil so it doesn't stick to the pan, that's all you put in it, you know, and you can have it this way.

And eventually you close it, they slide in, you know, and you press that on to really keep it tight, and that's how you smoke it.

Put it on the stove, when it starts smoking, you lower the heat so that it smokes slowly.

You don't really want to burn it, because if the heat is too fast, then you get a kind of acrid taste in it.

And this is what I have here, I have some of the scallop smoking here, and I hope they are smoking okay, put them a couple of minutes ago.

Let me see them, see whether they are smoking nicely.

So you will pick up some of the smoke here.

They need a bit more smoking here.

And while they are smoking, I'm going to do the sauce which goes with it.

And I have an interesting mixture for the sauce here.

I'm going to do that with red onion that I have here, which I'm going to slice and chop rather fairly coarsely.

This way.

If you feel that your onions are very strong, what you do, you run them under cold water, wash them, and that will take some of the hotness out of it.

You can see it smoke a lot now, I may reduce it a bit, you know.

And another thing too, I think that it's good to do it outside, I know that if I do it inside I get into problem, I have a little bit of orange juice that I'm going to put in there, because it can really smoke your house.

You wanna smoke the fish, not the house.

And it's not even a question of the smoke itself, it's a question of the smell, you know?

And it really stay into the house.

So it's good to have a little fire outside and do it directly outside.

So what I have here, a little dice of tomato.

As you see, I took the seed out of the tomato.

Probably about enough here.

My tomato.

Then I put some orange, see, the acidity is good in there, I've done that with grapefruit or orange.

So the tomato, orange, onion type of mixture goes well together, so that's what I'm going to do.

I feel that I probably have close to enough smoking here, so I'm going to stop it and just leave it in the bowl itself, I mean in the container itself, so that it continue cooking a little bit in the smoke because it has been cooking for maybe three, four minutes now.

But I have enough smoke, and I know it should be slightly golden on top.

Again, it's a question of taste, you may test it and say, I like it, but I like it with a more intensive, stronger taste of smoke, so leave it any longer.

Entirely up to you, as I say, with that type of technique, you can control the amount of smoke.

Smoke is very fashionable now, a lot of restaurants smoke, and as I say, again, it's a question of the right wood to find.

But it's a new way of cooking, you know, it's a new style of cooking, smoking.

Although smoking is not new at all, it's one of the oldest way of preserving, whether it's fish or whether it's meat, you know.

You've seen that the center of that orange here is kind of a bit woody in the center, that's why I'm going to remove that.

When you follow a recipe, you know, you try to follow a recipe so it works.

But you know, occasionally if the recipe tell you that it takes 25 minutes in the oven at 400 degree, and after 15 minute it start to get black and smoky, you do remove it, you know, even though you still have theoretically 10 minute to go.

So you have to do that.

For example, you do, what I say, an orange here, if it's a bit woody then you change.

Okay, so I have my mixture there.

I'm gonna put some red vinegar in there.

Yeah, maybe a little more.

Salt, nice ground pepper, and some olive oil here.

And of course as I say, I put at the beginning the juice of an orange, you know.

Okay.

And now a little bit of cilantro.

Now you may like or you may hate cilantro, people love it or people hate it, so if you don't want to put that, you put basil or something else.

But I love cilantro, so I use it a lot.

Actually, I also use the stem of the cilantro like this, we freeze them at home, put them in the freezer and use them in beans dish, even the root, it goes very well.

But it is very pungent, and you may, as I say like it or not, so it's up to you.

In any case, this is a beautiful colorful sauce.

Let's see our scallop now what they look like.

I do shrimp this way, big shrimp, and they're really terrific.

Look at that.

So this I can feel are barely cooked, I can see the texture here.

They are soft like this, and they are just about perfect this way.

Remember, I put a little bit of salt, a dash of pepper on top of it.

So we are basically ready to serve it here.

What I would like to do is to first, orange, a little bit of the sauce directly in the plate, you know, around another.

I say again, you can serve it without the sauce, you know, just by itself.

Maybe a bit more orange here.

And then I can take those scallop.

You see I can place a couple of scallop on top here.

Look at that scallop, for example, if I cut it, you will notice the inside will be creamy, beautifully creamy white, you see, as opposed to slightly golden outside.

And I would say that with with three scallop like this, or maybe a fourth one, I'll cut this one too, that would be more than enough as a first course for our dinner.

And this is a great new dish to start our menu.

You know, it's always great to investigate new way of cooking, and as I say, you know, smoking now is big, and people love it, and I love to do it.

Those scallop particularly, you know, have a third of the amount of cholesterol that you will have in shrimp, and it's quite good, the scallop done on the type of very acidic sauce, the mixture and the real dice of orange and tomato and the cilantro make it not only different but very exciting.

Then the main course we have that vegetable bouquet with the fettuccine.

Now there is six, seven different type of vegetable I have in there, there is a high amount of fiber, rich in vitamin C, rich high soluble plant fiber, this is a really good, and the pasta, you don't have that much pasta, and as you see, I didn't really put a minimal amount of oil in it.

And with that, we have a salad.

After the salad, we're going to have the delicious dessert, that grapefruit nectar, which is done with the caramel, and not only the caramel in it, but a little bit of Cointreau, if you don't wanna put Cointreau, you put another liquor, or you eliminate the alcohol if you want, and a little bit of Grenadine, very refreshing and great.

And to drink with it, we are going to use today a Gavi di Gavi.

This is a wine from the Piedmont region of Italy, a white wine from the Cortese grapes.

And it is at its best, very luscious, excellent, it can rival some of the greatest Burgundy.

And I'm sure that type of spicy, full-bodied wine is going to go so well with our meal today.

I hope you enjoyed learning with me how to smoke, and I hope you're going to do it with your friend, maybe outside the house.

In any case, you will enjoy it.

See you next time, and happy cooking.