- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

- And I'm Claudine Pepin.

- Many people have the idea that it's difficult to work with dough, so today I'm going to teach Claudine how simple it really is.

- I just don't have much experience with dough, but I'd love to learn the technique of working with it.

- Today we'll experiment with a pate brisee and a pate sucree.

That is a standard pastry dough, and a sweet one to make dessert.

- Sounds great.

Soon I'll be able to make you a beautiful tart.

- We'll have a pastry lesson.

- Next, on "Jacques Pepin's Kitchen."

- "Cooking with Claudine."

- Well, today I am going to do a special lesson for you, a lesson in pastry, because I know I've never had any tart that you ever cooked for me.

- I'm a little paranoid of dough.

- Yes, I know.

- I can spend it, but I just can't make it.

- Oh, good.

I know you can spend it.

I know you have no problem there.

Well, we're going to start with a couple of classic doughs.

I'm going to do a pate brisee here.

We call a pate brisee, which is a whole purpose type of pie dough.

You can use it for dessert, as well as quiche, as well as fish, as well as a fruit tart, all the type of things, you know.

And it basically made of flour, water, butter.

- Okay.

- So that we are going to do it in the food processor, help you because that's easier in there.

And what I have there, it's two cup of flour.

So what I want to have here is a little dash of sugar, 'cause the sugar will give a bit of coloring in it, a little dash of salt.

And you start by working first, your, you know, before you put the water.

As long as you don't put the water, it's not going to develop the elasticity.

Go ahead.

- Okay.

- That's it.

Okay, it's working now.

- Okay.

- You see what happened here?

You see the dough?

- Uh-huh.

- I don't know if you can see in my hand, I have tiny little pieces of butter here, so you do a short pastry here.

You don't want to incorporate the butter more than that.

In fact, if you incorporate even slightly less, you get more flakiness, you know?

- Okay.

- The amount of water that you put in it, depends on how much you incorporate the butter, because if you incorporate the butter a lot, you use the butter as a moisturizing agent, you know.

- Hot water?

Cold water?

Does it matter?

- Cold.

Cold water.

Always cold water.

- Why?

- Very cold water.

Otherwise it melts the butter.

So you do it a few times and see, I will see whether it's holding together.

Seems to be holding together, so we're gonna take it out this way.

You want feel it?

Rub it in there.

- Oh.

- You feel it?

It gathering together?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- So you don't want to work-- - That's it?

- Work it more than that.

That's it, you know.

If you do it, even if we do it by hand, we can do it this way.

Okay.

Now let's see this.

You are very careful.

Don't do what I'm doing here, but if you do it, you have to be very careful, otherwise you can cut yourself.

Yes.

Okay, so now, yes.

What you want to do, to gather it together.

You know?

You can knead it a little bit, you know?

Well, knead it.

You know, you gather it like that to really have the dough.

And if you feel, yeah, see it's wet enough, I can feel it.

If you don't have enough moisture in it, then it's going to crack when you roll it.

If you have too much moisture, then you're going to have a very tough dough.

You know?

So here is-- - But what happens if you knead it more than you needed it?

- That, it toughens the dough.

- Oh.

- Okay.

Now we're going to roll the dough.

That dough could be rolled between plastic wrap or directly on the table with flour.

You know, one way or the other.

I'm gonna show you that.

Now look at that dough here.

In fact, you know what, I'm gonna cut it just to show you the inside.

Can you see the inside?

Can you see little pieces of butter?

Here, here, here, there, too?

- Yeah.

- You have a dough with pieces of butter like that, it is going to give you the flakiness.

So if I keep little pieces of butter, like I did here, it's going to get flaky.

So try to press it out already with your hand like this.

Always, they always say that the dough should rest after it's been done, and it's true, because when you work it out to develop the gluten, the elasticity, when you let it rest, the gluten relax.

But if it was cold in the refrigerator, I probably would use this.

Bang it this way, you know?

- Mm-hm.

That start expanding it, you know?

- Oh.

- And that soften it a little bit.

Then you start rolling it.

Now, I'm gonna roll a little bit and make you roll it.

Down in the center, I apply pressure, and I move forward like this.

You see?

Then when I come back up to here, I don't really apply pressure.

Now I apply pressure here.

That is, you don't want to go back and forth all with the same amount of pressure, because you develop the gluten again.

- Okay.

- You try it.

So forward, go ahead.

Extend it.

That's it.

- Okay.

And then I-- - Come back.

- Lose the pressure until here?

- Yes, and you've got it.

That's it.

That's getting there.

- Again?

Same thing?

- Yeah.

Yes, yes.

Keep going.

And you see that you don't, you know, that it doesn't stick all over the place.

So you know, you want it to be, I wanna be sure that it's smooth, and I like the dough very, very thin.

- Is that thin enough?

- So what you can do, you know you are there, you put your dough on top, you roll it back.

- You know?

- Oh.

- Put a bit of flour if you want there.

Now I unroll it again.

- Wow.

- Well we probably going to have a lot of leftover dough.

You cannot do a dough exactly.

You know, you have trimming.

But as you can see, this one is very thin.

That's how you would want to do it.

So, okay, now you roll it back on that rolling pin.

Put it on top, here, and then after, put your hand here.

That's it.

Roll it.

Okay, then you, you lift it up, and when you lift it up, hold the dough a little bit with your finger here, otherwise it unrolled.

I'll get you the tray.

So you unroll that on top of it.

You can start from here or there.

Yeah, I do it this way.

Some people do it the other way.

That's pretty good.

- Thanks.

- Okay.

This is fine here.

It can rest for a little while.

You could put it in the refrigerator if it's going to stay for too long because you don't want it to soften, but during that time we want to do the mousse to do the fish inside, okay?

- Okay.

- Okay.

So what we want to do now, we want to do that fish, and as you can see here, I have salmon and I have monk fish.

- Mm.

I like both of them.

And what we're going to do, we're going to do a mousse with the salmon and we're going to stuff the monk fish with spinach.

We're going to put all that together.

Okay?

So let's do the mousse first.

You know what mousse mean?

- Uh, puree of?

- No, mousse, indicates a texture.

Very foamy, you know.

So usually mousse is either emulsified so that you have a creamy puree, or then you have whipped cream in it, or whipped egg white, or whatever.

So we are doing the mousse here with this.

Now you put an egg in it.

I don't really have to beat the eggs.

You know why I'm beating the eggs?

- So that you can save some for later.

- Exactly.

Yeah.

I just wanna save a little bit of the eggs to glaze the fish on top.

Yeah, I keep like a tablespoon of eggs.

Okay.

I leave it here.

So now what are you, you go ahead, you put that in.

Now you put the cream.

Put 1/4 of a cup of cream, about.

That's fine.

- Okay.

- Now you can see at that point, the mousse is a bit soft.

Huh?

- Uh-huh.

Now I'm going to put a bit of cracked pepper in it, the freshly ground pepper, and salt.

The salt is going to tighten the mousse.

Go ahead.

And the mousse is going to get slightly tighter.

- Oh, wow.

- That's fine, Claudine.

So you know what you do now?

You know when you remove that?

- Mm-hm.

- You remove some of the fish here, let's say... Like this, some of the mousse.

Okay, you put that in there.

- Okay.

- And you mix a bit of dill in there.

During that time, I'm going to clean that piece of monk fish.

Monk fish, angler fish.

This is a large filet, slightly over a pound, and I've start taking that black skin that there is on top.

There is that black skin.

Just want to remove it.

Okay, it is better.

- Do I put this in?

- Yes.

Mix it in.

And what we want to do here, I want to butterfly this.

See what we call butterfly?

Look how beautiful the meat is.

- [Claudine] Oh, wow.

- The beautiful white meat, you know, that fish.

Okay.

And what we have here, I have spinach.

We're going to stuff the center of the fish with this, and I want to put a little bit of salt and pepper, there.

And the pepper.

And now you want to fold that back and now it's stuffed with the spinach, and we are going to now put it into our dough.

Okay?

So we put our mousse, it's nice and creamy, about half of it, let's see, we put it here.

- Does the dill stay as green when it's cooked?

- Well it change a little bit color, but it really infuse taste all over.

You know, that's going to.

And then we put that here.

Let's see now.

Put a little bit of that on top.

We can spread it out, you know.

I mean you can help me.

I mean, spread it out.

- I'm looking.

- You wet your finger.

If you wet your finger, it doesn't stick.

- Ooh.

- We put it just on top like this.

So what we want to do now is to fold it, so here is what we are going to do, to fold it this way.

And it's a bit long here.

About to the center.

- Okay.

- Okay.

We fold this, and what you want to do also now, still with that water, you want to wet the dough, because we want to overlap the dough.

- So what does wetting the dough do?

- They're going to make the door glue together, you know.

- Oh, okay.

- Okay.

So, I bring this here, it sticks on top, you know, and this, that's going to do the tail on this side.

Now what I have to do is to turn it over to have the seam underneath.

Why don't you help me over there?

- Oh, boy.

If it gets messed up, it's gonna be my fault.

Ooh no, we did it.

- Now.

Okay.

Let's see the head of the fish.

And you know, I'll show you a very easy way to do the tail here.

All we do, you know, I press this here.

- Mm-hm.

- I press into the tail, and we'll... - Oh, wow.

- We'll mark this like this, you know.

- Oh, that looks wonderful.

- So that's not too complicated to do, right?

- No, that I that, I can do.

- Okay, here is what we're going to do now.

Why don't we cut a little bit of the dough here to do a mouth if you want.

Okay?

- Okay.

- And we can brush that a little bit.

Okay, now you see, extra dough.

Now that piece of dough here, I could do, let's say I do a fin like this.

You know, a long fin like that?

- Okay.

- Yeah, okay.

- Oh that's great.

- Alright, so, we can do another piece around there.

Now that's your eyes.

Okay.

- Okay.

- Now it's starting to look a little bit like a fish.

And now, you know what we're going to do?

Let's mark it with a fork here.

We can mark scale, we can do all kinds of things.

- [Claudine] That's what I was just thinking.

- Well, let's mark the front like this.

Okay.

See, that looks good.

Put another one here.

Boy, you are an expert now.

- Hey, nobody will believe I actually did this.

- I think that I probably have maybe 1/3 of the dough left, but you see, you can wrap that dough now, you can freeze it.

- Uh-huh.

- And then when you need it to do a little tart, you can do this.

In fact, I have a tart right here that I'm gonna show you.

You bring that, this one has been rolled, because sometime you can roll the dough directly into the plastic, you know.

And I'm gonna put it this way just to show you.

So what you want to do there is to lift it up and use the plastic to push it back without stretching it.

You know what I mean?

Here.

- Oh.

- Okay.

You try this very gently, very gingerly.

You know, lift it up.

Okay.

- That's it?

- And here.

Usually you want to do a border on.

To do the border, if you want it.

You can cut it as is.

Now it'd be perfectly fine, but if you want a bit of a border, you bring the dough back in and press it with your thumb.

See what I'm doing here?

- Oh.

- Just to bring a little bit of the dough inside.

You go ahead.

You try it here.

Yeah, that's it, keep going.

I'm gonna do some on this side.

Now you want to cut this here.

Now, all you do, roll on top of the dough this way.

Starting here.

Yeah, up to the end.

And now do it the other way.

Okay.

- Okay.

- That's it.

It's good.

So now you remove the extra dough.

- [Claudine] Oh.

Oh, that works really well.

- So now we have that little piece of extra dough.

So look what I'm doing now.

I'm bringing, you know, pressing it like this, it give a better decorative border, you know?

- Oh - You see what I'm doing here?

- Mm-hm.

- You know?

- Oh.

- So you have a little bit of a decorative edge.

So you want to try this here?

That's it.

Yeah, good.

Good.

- I have a good teacher.

- So that's it.

That's what you do all around.

And you have the decorative edge, or nothing at all.

It's fine, right?

Whatever you're going to put inside, like the quiche, takes less time to cook than the dough.

So if you cook both together, one is kind of overcooked.

So first you cook the dough a certain amount of time, then you finish it up with the custard.

And in order to cook the dough by itself, we put a piece of paper inside-- - I'm almost finished.

- To protect it.

Yes.

See, it's a square piece of paper.

You fold it in four.

Enforcing, you know?

- Okay.

- Now we do it on the table there.

See, from that radius you fold a triangle, into another triangle, into another triangle.

This is the maximum of your radius.

And you want to measure this like from here, and it has to go up the side, so I need the whole thing up to here, so I cut it here.

But to help it full, because it has to fit, you fringe the side a little bit.

- [Claudine] Oh.

- [Jacques] And if you fringe the side a little bit like this-- - And you're gonna cook it with that on it?

- Well you cook it, you put that to hold the dough, you see, you put that and you press that inside.

Now if you didn't fringe the side, it makes it hard to fold, but here, it's full.

Beautiful.

You know?

- Right.

- You put rice in it, you put beans, you put whatever you want, other ways to hold the dough down, but the best is to put pebbles.

Those are pebbles, which are kind of rough, but they are fine.

And that's it.

You cook that for 25, 30 minutes.

Then you remove this, keep your pebbles, and you'll do it half-cooked.

And then you continue, you put whatever custard you eat and you finish cooking it.

Well, let's see our fish now.

- Oh, it's a little hot.

- Looks pretty good, huh?

- Yeah, look at this.

- You see?

So look at that-- - I'll close the oven.

- Let's put it next to the other.

Let me start on the sauce.

We have to do a sauce with that, because that should rest a little bit, and you may start beating.

Very simple sauce.

We put about 1/2 a cup, cup of just tomato sauce, you know, from the can.

- Mm-hm.

- And two big tomato, you know?

You wanna put the other one inside?

- Yep.

- And that's it, you know.

And into this, you want to put a dash of sugar, Claudine, there, you know, for sweetness in there, and a little bit of salt.

- That's it?

Enough sugar?

- 3/4 cup of water.

Cook that five minutes, and that's it.

You know?

- Wow.

- Five minute later-- - That's my kind of sauce.

- You just cook like this.

- Oh it smells great.

- And now we're going to emulsify it and give it some richness.

And this is what you should have.

This be a great sauce.

You could have that sauce just straight.

There is no fat, nothing in it for the time being, so if you really want to cut down, although there, you know, we have a fish, which is kind of rich, so we might as well do a nice sauce.

- Okay, I'm gonna emulsify this.

It's hot.

- Yeah, that's it.

And you know what I want to put in there?

It's a couple of tablespoon of butter.

You go ahead.

Yeah, because-- - Hang on, let me get this down in there.

- That's it.

And it's going to change in color.

- Oh look, it changed the color, yeah.

- Yeah, it is going to become pink.

See, it's nice and creamy now.

And you can do it as thick or as smooth as you want it.

We have a beautiful, creamy, but it could be even-- - That's smooth enough, right?

- It could be slightly smoother than that, but that's fine.

Here.

So we have the sauce.

We can put it right in there.

But I'm going to cut it, anyway, just to show the center of it, to see how cooked it is.

Oh, it looks pretty good.

- Oh, it looks beautiful.

- Beautiful inside.

We can decorate it with a nice little bunch of fresh parsley.

- Oh, that looks great.

- And this is a beautiful centerpiece for a buffet.

(cheerful instrumental music) - Well, my father obviously has not only been the chef, but the baker in the family and, but now, after this, I'm sure that next Christmas I'll have to do it.

- And now I want show you how to make another type of dough.

A pate sucree.

A sweet dough that's for dessert.

Quite different than the pate brisee that we did, remember, with the fish.

And this is 1 cup and 3/4 with about a stick and a half, no, no, a stick and 1/4, about, of butter we have, and that we can do it by hand.

I'm doing, I'm going to do it by hand, but basically you can do it in the food processor, too.

- What's that?

- This is powdered sugar.

We're doing a sweet dough.

We use almost no water in that dough.

So it's a type of cookie dough, which is in a sense, richer, you know.

So why don't you put like one tablespoon of water here.

There is a tablespoon measuring, put it into the egg yolk there.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

Okay, mix it a little bit and add that to my dough here.

- That's it?

- Yeah, go ahead.

Put it in there.

Pour it in.

Okay.

So, we work on the table and we are going to work in a technique, a technique here that we call fraisage, or fraisage.

You gather it together and with the palm of your hand, you see, you crush the dough.

- [Claudine] You're smearing it.

- So you do it twice.

Yeah.

And again, you see now it's getting together.

Okay, you pause now.

- You just want my hands to be all messy like yours.

Like this?

- That's it.

That's it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Get a little more.

You see, gather it together.

No, no.

You do one hand and you keep pushing with one hand.

- I thought that was a good time saver.

- Take take a little less, you know, out of it.

You don't have to take that much.

Take a little less and push it each way.

And now you see the dough is completely cohered together.

- Wow.

- All gathered together.

And there is no elasticity in that dough, you see?

It doesn't bounce back.

- Oh.

- Because there is basically no water.

So we are going to roll that with plastic wrap.

You know, why don't you get a piece of plastic wrap there.

Alright.

Good.

And we put another one on top.

You see, it's soft.

You can spread it out this way.

Now, if I do that in the food processor, it all gathered into a bowl in the food processor, and I put it on the plastic, I never touch the table, I never dirty the rolling pin, nothing, so.

- [Claudine] Wow.

- Your mother would like that one.

- Very neat and clean.

- Okay, so, and now we are going to peel the plastic off.

I mean the one from the top like this, you know?

You see, you don't use any flour like that.

It's good, too.

And you know, you take the other one like that.

You can also put it in the refrigerator this way.

Put that and right on top of it here.

Now you take the other plastic off, and now we want to do the border.

So to do the border, we're gonna roll that back on itself.

You know, all around like this.

But you wanna bring it already one layer like this.

Then you do a second layer.

I press this so that it's pointed on top and flat in the bottom like a pyramid, so it cannot fall on itself.

- Oh, okay.

- That is, you don't press it straight, otherwise it fall.

This is wide bottom.

And, now, now we do the side.

You see, I put one finger here and press like this.

- Oh my.

- You see?

Now, you can do that.

Go ahead.

Press a little more.

That's it.

Okay, so you see I have one which is cooked there.

You want to give me the berry here?

Now the berry, which are beautiful, I keep them the one which are a little broken and damaged.

I make them with a little bit of jam, you know?

And this, you put that in the, in the bottom.

- Mm.

Oh, it's a beautiful color.

- And you spread this out.

I'm not going to do all of it, just to show you.

Okay.

And then you use a good raspberry preserve, you strain it, or one without seed.

You can put a little bit of raspberry brandy in it.

- Hmm, that sounds good.

- Because that basically you put on top, you know, I don't, you can, yeah, people arrange them one by one and you can do that, too, but you know, doesn't matter.

Now, you want to give me the raspberry preserve?

Now you can do that with a brush.

I have a brush, too.

You can also, if you want, just with a large spoon like that, kind of glaze it like this, extend it, you know.

Then you finish it up with the brush at that point.

You know, you extend it a little bit to make it it all together, and the whole top is glazed like that.

And it's beautiful.

See, that give you an idea?

You see that dough?

I mean look how brittle it is.

- Oh, goodness.

- Like butter, you know?

- Mm.

- Isn't that good?

- Mm-hm.

- So you can see what we did.

It's a great dessert.

And we can see here we have a big one, which we did before.

Beautiful fish for a presentation of a buffet.

This is great.

- Yeah.

- For a wedding, for whatever, you know.

And the quiche is done with exactly the same dough than that.

I hope you're not too scared of dough anymore.

- No, I'm okay.

I'm a little bit more confident.

I'll have to try it.

- With that type of food, that type of food we can have, this is a grenache from South Australia.

It's quite interesting.

But this is a Fume Blanc.

- Mm.

- You know, from the Lake County.

And this is really very spicy.

I think we deserve.

We worked a lot today.

- I think so, too.

- I hope you know how to do dough now.

I hope you're going to make a pastry lesson at home and teach yourself and your friend how to handle dough.

I'm sure you're going to have a ball.

We had a great time doing it for you.

Happy cooking.

- Happy cooking.

(cheerful instrumental music)