- A favorite soup of mine is made with leftover crouton bread, Swiss cheese, a good chicken stock on top, a little bit of chives, bit of ground pepper.

Soup is terrific.

I'm Jacques Pépin.

This is "Fast Food My Way.

Happy cooking.

I am doing a very simple tomato grata today.

Just a very savory tomato.

To make it a bit fancy, I'm taking the core of the tomato, the skin, the seed, which often I don't.

Now to peel your tomato, there is different way.

You can put them on top of a flame and burn them.

That would charcoal them and give it a specific taste.

You can peel them with a knife or then if you have a lot, you drop them in boiling water.

How long in boiling water?

It all depend on how ripe the tomato are.

If they're really ripe, you know, 5, 10 seconds, it's fine.

In fact, don't leave them too long because if you leave them too long, too much of the flesh come out with the skin.

So this way, this is about fine.

Some people put them in cold water after to refresh them.

You can do that if you want, but frankly I think it wash them out and you know, you have better taste like that.

Okay, it could have stayed another like five second.

Let's see that one.

Yeah, see, this one is a bit more ripe and the skin comes out very easily.

You always cut your tomato parallel to the stem.

That's what expose the seed and you have your seed exposed, so you press them out, the seed as well as the juice.

And sometime you even strain this, you know, and you do an emulsion of oil in the strained juice.

I've done that in many recipe and it's quite flavorful, you know?

So I have a little bit of olive oil here and a piece of butter.

I want kind of a burned (indistinct), you know, so cool.

And this is going to be cut into cube, you know, one, two inch cube.

Here we are, that's what goes in there.

Well, it's not quite hot enough.

You see, the thick on the tomates à la provençale we do in France, you know, where we do the half tomato that you put some shallot and some garlic and some herbs in it.

This is another way of doing a kind of grata.

As you see, the butter kind of clarified there.

It's quite hot and I want it hot to give a particular taste.

You know, the taste of nutty butter.

So salts and pepper in there, that's basically all you want.

Salt and pepper.

(pan sizzling) Actually, you don't really want to cook the tomato.

At that point, you are flavoring the tomato here with the butter and all of this.

This is bread I put into the oven.

(bread crunching) To do a dry bread crumb.

(bread crunching) And that dry bread crumb, I'm gonna put some thyme with it.

Fresh thyme.

And maybe a bit of chive, but first, that goes in there.

That's it.

Here is the grata, put on top of it.

So as you see, this is pure tomato.

This... (blender whirring) Okay.

Remember that if I had two slice of bread, I put two large slice of bread, if those bread were fresh breadcrumb instead of dry, I would have that bowl would be more than full.

It is very different with dry breadcrumb.

I'm gonna put a little bit of olive oil in there to flavor it.

Not enough for this thing to become gooey like, but just enough to moisten the bread and make it brown and very flavorful.

So here we are, we put that on top all around the grata.

And that's going to go into the oven about 10, 15 minute under the broiler.

Maybe not even as long as that.

Seven, eight minute, my tomato are hot.

Should be enough.

And yet now I'm gonna do a dish with shrimp and scallop and using those pot sticker, you know, those wonton wrapper, pot sticker that you can buy all over the place now.

And I'm going to do a sandwich with the mousse and put that in the center.

However, the part that you do underneath, it'd be piled up with the mousse.

So the piece that you put on top should be larger.

So you can take actually like four of those together and roll them and make them a little bigger.

They'll roll together.

They don't really have to be that much bigger.

This way and the other way.

Okay.

And as you can see, the original one was this way and the other one is this.

So it's bigger and it's going to stick on top.

So here I have shrimp.

And of course shrimp, you want to take the shell out of your shrimp, even the end of it.

If you don't leave the skin, press this because you'll see that you have the flesh from inside the tail comes out and that should not be discarded either.

Do a soup with the shell, that's very good.

So what I want to do here is just cut the tail.

And the tail is going to go into with the scallop, doing a mousse with this.

And the rest of the body here, I'm gonna cut it into pieces to put inside the mousse.

So the tail are there with the scallop.

This is for the mousse.

As for the body of the shrimp, I'm going to put them inside the mousse to cut them into inch pieces or so.

Okay.

(knife chopping) Right.

Okay, now this goes into the food processor.

I'm gonna put some pepper in it.

Salt.

A little dash more.

And that's about it to start with.

(blender whirring) Then we put some sour cream.

About a third of a cup of sour cream or so.

(spoon tapping) And that goes with it.

(blender whirring) Probably have to bring back the side to emulsify it more.

(blender whirring) And it should be fine now.

Right.

There is quite a lot of albumin, you know, in the scallop and in the shrimp, so it make quite a tight mousse.

Wanna clean up everything.

Wrap around.

So this is the part of the mousse, you know what you can do with that?

I mean, I'm putting that in wonton wrapper, but you could do little canal with this, that is with a spoon to form a little dumpling and drop them in hot water to poach them and serve them as such.

You could also do larger dumpling like that, like a kind of hamburger and then put it in a skillet and cook it this way.

So here come the pieces, a bit of chive.

(spatula scraping) Okay.

And I have enough here for about 12, 12 of my dumpling.

So I'm going to start with the small one, the one, remember, that I did not roll.

Maybe I'll do six of those and chill about half of the recipe.

(bag rustling) (knife clatters) So this goes about that much on top at the most.

Yeah, the small one goes underneath of course, and the big one goes on top.

And the reason is that I say that's to form around the dumpling itself, around the center.

So it has to be bigger.

So what you want to do, however, now, is to wet this so they stick.

Just use water, three.

One, two, three, four, five, six here.

Water.

You can wet those around if you want, but it's easier to do the big one, I think.

Especially the edge, of course.

Okay, put them on top.

Well, on this side.

Here.

Here.

Here.

And there.

So you grab them after.

What you want to do is to glue the side like this to be sure that they're holding together.

Now we're gonna cook that like the Chinese do, you know, pot sticker.

That is you want them to brown, but you want them also to cook, so we need liquid in there.

So I have a large skillet here.

I'm gonna put a little bit of oil on top and some water in there, about I have half a cup of water here.

Okay, you don't have to.

You can put your pot sticker and pour the stuff on top of it.

Doesn't really matter, but here it is.

Okay, that come to a boil.

I'm gonna cover it and after two, three minute, the amount of water that I have in there is practically evaporated.

So you remove the lid and what's left is the wonton and the little bit of oil I put at the beginning.

That start browning in that oil and you wanna brown it on both sides.

Okay, the grata is just about fine now.

And we're gonna leave it here to cool off a little bit.

And then go on with our, I can hear them sing there.

And you can see there is basically no more water.

You know, the pasta is cooked.

See if I can flip them over.

They're a bit crowded there, but keep them on the other side.

(pan sizzling) You gotta cut.

(pan sizzling) You gotta cut them.

(pan sizzling) Nice and crusty, you know?

I want to lower the heat a little bit.

And with this, I like to serve that on a nice Boston lettuce.

Beautiful lettuce here.

You know when you want to clean up your salad, you cut that in half or in the big leaf like that, you remove this and again, cut that in half.

But this is a beautiful lettuce and I love Boston lettuce.

Okay.

And this will be seasoned very simply with oil and vinegar, salt and pepper.

This is usually, you know, I do a lot of different dressing, but frankly more than anything else, it's oil and lemon juice or vinegar.

In that case, lemon juice is delicate with the fish.

Just spread it across.

And that of course you don't want to do it too early so your salad doesn't get wilted too much.

You can wilt your salad.

And you can actually serve that directly on the plate.

you know, one next to the other or put it on a large splatter.

Here we are.

(plate clattering) The crispiness, you know, of those wonton is going to go well with this.

I am trying to make a bit of a mess here, arranging this around.

Okay.

And this is where need to go on top of it.

Look at what they look on the other side.

They're going to be fry on one side.

So maybe this one looks better, but you can see that this here, you can hear it.

(pan sizzling) It's very good.

(pan sizzling) That should be more than enough on this one.

(pan sizzling) Another one.

Okay, and this is the crispy woton on lettuce sleeve.

(gentle music) I am doing a very simple fruit dessert with grapefruit.

Cut each hand, cut it in half, and really cut it straight here.

And then we want to separate the segment.

So you can use a small pairing knife like this.

You know, often people use that type of knife which is serrated on both hand.

And this is fine too, but I'm used to my pairing knife.

And then now you want to cut in between the membrane, all of that to make it easy to eat at the end, you know, with a little spoon.

Those segment will come out, no sweat, you know?

(knife tapping) And now the topping, graham cracker, you know, you can crush them coarsely like that of fine.

You can do all of that in a bag if you want crush it or then in a little food processor like this.

And then I put like a tablespoon, a good tablespoon, tablespoon and a half of butter.

About two, three tablespoon of brown sugar, a dash of cinnamon if you like cinnamon.

And that's it.

This is a nice... (blender whirring) This is a nice topping, you know, that you can use for other type of fruit or actually other type of dessert, you know?

(indistinct) so here, or maybe I'll put it in there.

It'd be easier.

You put a nice bunch on top of it, you know?

And that's it.

You will spread it out a little bit.

You can do that ahead, you know, it's great.

And ready to go into the oven.

About 400 degree oven, about 10 minutes until they are warm inside and nicely brown on top.

My dearest friend Jean Claude today came to join me for lunch.

I'm glad you could make it.

- Yeah, it was easy.

- It was easy.

- Yeah.

- We worked together for 47 years.

We work in Paris with the president between 56 and 59, so we've been cooking together forever.

- That's true, and yet it looks like yesterday really.

- Like yesterday.

You bring me some of your favorite Sauvignon Blanc.

- Is it?

Well- - You like those.

- Sure, I love Sauvignon Blanc.

You want a glass?

- Yes.

- Do you want to try?

- Yes.

- All right.

- Those are Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand.

I know you love those.

- Ah, those are- - [Jacques] Yes.

- [Jean] The best as I'm concerned.

- [Jacques] It smells good too.

- Very fruity, huh?

- Yes.

So you wanna see what I cooked today?

- Yeah, just looking here, yeah.

What is that here?

- Well, look at that.

You know, it's nice and red inside.

It's a little grata of tomato, you know, that I did this way.

- Wow.

- You wanna taste it?

I'll taste it first.

- Okay.

- It's good.

Go ahead, taste it.

And after that, you see what I did, the wonton type of pasta wrapped this way with a mousse of shrimp and the scallop inside.

We've done that at home.

- You always come with those different ideas, you know?

- Different idea.

Remember the pasta we did the other day?

- Right.

- That good pasta.

We just boiled some bow tie pasta.

You have your bow tie?

- I forgot.

- Are you opening wine for us?

- I do.

- Okay, that's one thing you know how to do well.

So that's great, yes.

And I'm going to grate a little bit of that cheese here.

- Yeah, I love the Gruyere and the pasta there.

- Yes, I know that.

Anything which has Gruyere in it he's going to love it.

I know that.

- Oh, good.

- Okay.

So my pasta is going to be ready soon.

Let's do the base for the pasta.

- Okay.

- You know, I put salt, pepper.

- Salt and pepper.

- You put your cheese now on top of the pasta.

- Oh, on top of the pasta or in the middle about.

- [Jacques] You put some olive oil in there.

- Yeah, and- - A good dash.

Do you want to put butter in it?

- I love butter.

- I know.

Okay, you see what I did?

I always put a little bit of the water from the pasta.

- Oh, yeah.

- You do too?

- Yeah, that's so important.

Otherwise kind of dry, you know?

- Okay.

- You know it very well, huh?

- You want me to go there?

- It is better, yeah.

- That's it.

That's enough for the two of us.

- Oh yeah.

If you put more cheese, maybe we'll be- - Alright.

So you wanna put your cheese in it too?

- Yeah.

- [Jacques] You told me a little more of this, right?

- [Jean] Yeah.

- Go ahead and toss it then.

There won't be enough cheese for you, right?

- [Jean} Okay, put the Last drop.

Okay.

Looks good.

- So we are going to have that with fried eggs.

- Oh, yeah.

- I like eggs on top.

- Yeah, very good.

- Why don't... I'm gonna fry one eggs.

You want to do one?

- Well, the appetite is good, I want to cook too.

- Okay, I do mine with oil.

- Do mine with butter.

Why don't you take the other one, huh?

- Huh?

- Okay.

- Oh, you want me to be here?

Okay, fine.

All right, here is your eggs.

- Oh, that's your... Don't give me a hard boiled egg, huh?

- Okay, here I break it on something flat, you know?

- Yep.

- And as the eggs start cooking a little bit like this, I like to put- Oh, you want two eggs?

- [Jean] I told you I'm hungry this morning.

- Okay, I'll put a little bit of black pepper on mine.

So I'm going to cover it mine because I want the steam to come a little bit, or not the steam, but I mean the heat to come and kind of glaze the top.

We call that oeufs miroir, mirror eggs because the top is like a mirror, you know?

You don't do that?

- You put any water to do that?

I always put a dash of water.

- Water?

- Why do we expect the steam?

You see, like when it start to sizzle like that, you have any water, I show you.

Gee, I show you everything today.

- [Jacques] Here, you get water.

- Good.

- [Jacques] Not too much, huh?

- [Jean] No, not too much.

That's it.

- Do we have time to plate the pasta then?

- Okay, let's plate the pasta.

- We're ready.

- Yeah.

- [Jacques] Okay.

- Oh, I see what you mean, yeah.

- [Jacques] So I'll put mine this way.

You wanna put your eggs?

- So yours is glassu also, look at that.

- I have to say, that's beautiful.

This is sticking.

- No, not much (gentle music) - You break on that egg, it should be really creamy in the center like this.

- That's the beauty when it drowns, you know?

Look at that.

- Give you my fork.

That's it.

More cheese on top.

- Look at that, huh?

- I love egg and pasta like that with cheese.

When we cooking with friend, doesn't get better than that.

Right?

- I agree with that.

- Happy cooking!

- Happy cooking.