- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

- And I'm Claudine Pepin.

During the week, I don't have much time to cook, so when I do, I'd really like to make several meals at once.

- No problem.

I can show you how to make several main courses from just one cut of meat.

You can freeze them and keep them for special occasion.

- That would be great.

- I'll teach you how to divide a leg of lamb.

Then we'll create a hearty soup, a spicy curry, elegant steaks, and a delicious roast.

It is a weekly planner.

- Next on "Jacques Pepin's Kitchen."

- "Cooking with Claudine."

(train whistle blowing) (cheery music) (cheery music) - Hi papa, what are you doing?

- What I'm doing, today I'm going to give you a lesson.

- Oh.

- And a lesson in handling lamb.

I mean, I have a whole leg of lamb here.

Won't cost you anything.

- Am I gonna get a grade?

- You're gonna get a grade.

(Claudine laughing) You know how much it costs to get cooking lessons?

(knife scraping) A lot of money.

I have a whole leg of lamb here and I'm boning it out.

I'm finishing taking that bone out here.

This is the central bone, the femur if you want, or you know the two bone of the leg, and at the end of that you have that bone which fit right there, and this is the pelvis, you know, area.

- Oh.

- This is the two bone that we're going to do that.

What I want to do is to show you what to do with that leg of lamb.

See, I have a whole one here.

I've already taken the fat.

You take the fat now because there is a fair amount of fat.

You see all over the place, I've removed that.

I have at least a pound of fat.

- Wow.

- And this is for you to do later, so.

- Okay.

- Let me start with this one, and as you see, the only thing that we don't do anything with, the fat.

Fat is no good, especially the fat of lamb is very, very strong and to divide it, you see if I pull on it, you see where it separate like here?

- [Claudine] Uh huh.

- Basically all of those place, you know, you will see the different muscle are going to separate like that by themselves.

This is the largest muscle.

This is what we call the top round, you know?

- So this is one muscle.

All of these are.

- This is one muscle.

All of those are different, you see.

This is what, that was around the leg at the end here, and I'm pulling this out and cutting.

This is the shank.

You know, you do the osso buco and all that.

- Oh yeah.

- This is very moist and all that.

That we're gonna use for stew.

This is the part where you had the most fat.

That was the hip there.

That's what's called the top sirloin.

This is very, very tender, nice.

So I'm removing this one here.

- So you're just basically following the same lines that nature has already created.

- Exactly.

Exactly.

- Hey.

- And here you see, I have the kneecap here.

You know that kneecap?

Well, I can take it out actually and put it with our bone, but you could leave it.

So that's what we call the top knuckle, you know?

- Okay.

- This is the top sirloin.

We're gonna do a beautiful roast with that, and those piece that I had left here is the bottom round.

We have the top round, we have the bottom round, and the bottom round is divided into those two muscle, those two pieces here.

Again, removing some of the fat, and in the center of that, a big piece of fat, and inside of this you have a gland here, you see?

It's a gland.

- What is it?

- Well, some people say this is strong.

So we remove it anyway.

We remove the fat, we remove all of that.

Anyway, so here, all of that, we're going to do a stew with it.

I like it to have it very, very lean.

So the stew that we are going to have here would be for, well, I would say at least six to eight people easy, you know?

- [Claudine] Wow.

(meat slapping) - So here is my top round, the larger muscle.

With that, we are going to do steak.

Now look at this.

You see, you'll see it's very lean.

- Oh wow.

- So we'll do kind of large steak with this so.

- Oh, that looks great.

- Look at that, we have one, two, three, four nice steak.

We have a roast, and this is the top sirloin and the top knuckle.

We have the stew, we have the four steak, and we have our soup.

Let's start with the soup then.

- Okay.

- So almost we have, I think we have three quart of water in there.

Okay, and this has a lot of taste.

So what we are going to do with this is to cook this on top of the stove.

You cook this, you bring it to a boil, start with cold water and you're going to have that gray scum coming to the top.

So you skim that for the first 20 minute.

After 20 minutes, it's cooked.

We add barley.

Here, I have a cup of barley and this is, you see those big grain and we put it directly in there.

20 minute, take the scum out, add your barley and cook it for a good hour after that, and what you do after that, you want to remove the bone.

See, this is the bone there, and what you want to do is to pick that meat off the bone and you can go directly in this, you know, with your knife like this and scrape the pieces, whatever meat, you know, you find around it.

You don't wanna put pieces of fat, but basically the fat is gone.

Do you want to do this?

- Yes.

- Why don't you do this?

Here.

- Okay.

- And after that, as you can see, now the bone has been removed and the barley is cooked.

You can see the barley at that point is quite thick, very soft, and of course extended like, at least four times the original volume.

So this is the time now to put our vegetable, and the vegetable that we have here, we have some leek, we have some mushroom, we have some celery, we have a large white turnips, and we have carrot, and we're gonna cut the turnips while Claudine is cleaning up the meat.

Okay, so we peel that up.

- I'm gonna just use my fingers.

You know, I think it goes faster for me.

- Use your finger if you need to.

That's fine, because at that point we're going to recook it anyway.

So now we put our vegetables.

You see, and I have quite a lot of vegetables for this.

I mean, that soup here would be plenty for like eight people or whatever.

- [Claudine] Do you wanna put the meat in there now too or?

- Well, the meat, when it finish, yes.

- Oh, okay.

Well, it's almost finished.

I'm almost done.

- No, you can spend a bit more time, get more.

You should get a couple of cup, you know, meat.

- [Claudine] Do we need the bones for anything else?

- No, the bone now has been used several times.

So we can do without it.

Just stir that in, bring it to a boil, and you see that and that look great.

- [Claudine] Yeah, that's wonderful.

- And then you bring it to a boil.

You cook it about 20, 30 minute, and this is what we have here.

- [Claudine] Ooh.

- Now the soup is cooked and as you can see, we have quite a lot of soup, and you can serve that with bread.

I know you have some bread there.

- Oh, and I have these too, and these are fun 'cause I think this makes it into a whole meal.

- Yes, exactly.

Now this is great.

Used to do that, one apple and a piece of cheese.

If you have an apple and a piece of cheese, you know, serve with this, then you end up with a whole meal.

Let's serve our soup now.

Boy, I hope you invite me to your house when you do.

- Should I chop this?

- [Jacques] Well, no, just put a little sprig of.

- Okay.

- And we are basically a whole meal here in our first dish today.

(upbeat music) - How can I buy lamb that's a little bit more economical for my purposes?

- Well you're taking lamb chop, lamb chop and the rack is probably the most expensive, but there, you know, one of the best is the leg.

You can see on the other side, this is nice.

- Oh wow.

- You can see here that you have the top sirloin, you know, which is missing right there.

This is the top round, you have the bottom round too, but this is a nice piece of meat, and with that you can do roast, you can do steak, you can do a lot of it, and it's relatively quite inexpensive for the quality you get there.

- If anybody ever gave me a leg of lamb, I'd probably A, call my father and have the knife available and there on the phone or B, just kind of trot it back over to the butchers and say, "Excuse me, could you divide this "just like Jacques Pepin does on TV?"

and hope he didn't recognize me.

(Claudine laughing) Okay, so what are we gonna do now?

- We're going to, look, we have a lot to do.

We have the roast to do, we have a stew to do.

We have the steak to do, all that with our leg of lamb.

You see what I did here?

Big clove of garlic.

You cut sliver like that so that they're a bit pointed, and those sliver, you know, you make a little hole in there and slide it in there.

- Oh, I wanna do it.

- And wait a minute, and then after that you do, herbes de provence, the salt and pepper, and we're ready to, I'm going to start browning it right there with a dash of oil here.

- What are you browning?

- I'm browning the meat because we're going to do a roast.

(meat sizzling) So I'm gonna start browning it right there.

While you're doing that, I'm gonna start on the stew, and this is the lamb curry of course, and we're gonna put a dash of oil in there too, and we start browning.

We start browning the meat.

So this actually should brown for about seven, eight minutes, you know, to get it nice and brown around, and use a wood spatula there.

You know, that would be the best so you don't scrape the metal in the bottom.

(spatula tapping) Okay, how you doing here?

(meat sizzling) - Ready to go.

Should I put it in the pan?

- Sure, if it's ready.

- You said salt, pepper.

- Yeah, use it.

Okay, so I put that.

We're gonna brown that on each side.

See, this is browning, and during that time we are going to do potato, the gratin dauphinois.

What we want to do.

(knife smacking) - All right.

- Slice the potato like this.

Now, but you see what happened.

The potato are peeled, you can keep them in water.

- Okay.

- But very important, after you slice them, you don't wash them.

If you wash them after you slice them, your gratin is dead.

- Why?

- Why, because look, you see the way this look, this is just coming to a boil now, and you know what we have in there?

We have sliced potato, milk, garlic, a bit of chopped garlic, salt and pepper.

Look at the.

- That's it.

- Yeah, look at the texture of this.

- [Claudine] Oh wow.

- [Jacques] This is thick, almost like a sauce.

- Yeah.

- And this is the starch.

(spoon tapping) The starch of the potato, when you put it in there, it's going to thicken that if you wash your potato after you slice them, it will be too thin, won't work.

So what we want to have here, bring me that gratin dish over there.

You put it in a big gratin dish.

You can even put it into individual gratin dish, you know, smaller one, and you're ready to put them into the oven, right?

I have one which is cooked in the oven.

- In the oven?

- I can smell it and increase the temperature of the oven.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- I need it higher for that, like 400, 425 for the lamb, you know, so it's browning all around.

You want to crystallize the outside of the lamb.

This should brown really seven, eight minutes to get a nice crystallization all around and give taste and give a good juice and give crystallized juice, also in the bottom of the pan.

(meat sizzling) See this, you see where they're brown around?

You want to turn them with that, it's good.

You really don't want to use a fork, you know, to go because you make hole into it and it kind of bleed.

- Oh, okay.

- The same thing, you know, remember you put salt, pepper on it.

You put salt only at the last moment.

You put salt, then you start browning it.

If you put salt too long on top of the meat, it's going to draw out the moisture.

Why don't you put it in the oven?

- All right.

- And remember this one will take, the small one will take like seven, eight minutes and the big one like 12, 15 minutes, okay?

- Uh huh.

- [Jacques] So.

- [Claudine] Okay, it's at 425, is that right?

- Yes, at 425, 400, 425 is good.

- Okay.

- Okay, now you see the curry here?

- Yes.

(meat sizzling) - Browning nicely.

- Mm hmm, ooh.

- So the pieces.

- Oh, it smells great.

- So here, here's what we're going to do.

Curry powder in there.

See, you have three kinds of powder.

This is curry powder, this is allspice, and this is cumin, and then I have tomato paste, onion of course.

Then we have banana.

Why don't you cut that open?

You wanna sprinkle that on top.

Then I put the two bay leaf, put the onion.

So this is a very easy dish to do.

The curry's a great dish to do.

You can freeze it, you can serve it, you know, with all kind of condiments.

You can buy, you know, chutney, you can make your own chutney, you can serve grated coconut with it.

You can serve nuts with it and so forth.

- Should I slice it?

- Yeah, you can slice it in there if you want.

Just going to cut this and we cut it, you know, kind of coarsely because it's going to fall in pieces anyway.

That's why I leave the skin and so forth.

This is fine.

- [Claudine] Can I put it in?

- Yeah, let me put the tomato paste.

Is it good?

- Uh huh.

- The recipe won't work now.

You ate off of my banana.

- No, it was an apple.

There wasn't enough room in the bowl.

- Okay.

- All right?

- Go ahead.

All right, and water.

Why don't you pour the water in there?

- [Claudine] Okay.

- And you know, maybe not all of it.

I need two cup of water.

- [Claudine] All right.

(spoon tapping) - You need to put some salt in there today.

That's it.

- Pepper?

- Yeah, a bit of pepper too.

Even though we have curry, the pepper will add another taste.

Okay, I think a bit more salt there.

Now it's coming to a boil as you can see here, and that's what you want, and at that point you cover it, you lower the heat and cook it gently for a good hour, you know.

You see the way it is here.

Now it's cooked.

You see the curry.

- [Claudine] Oh, it smells so good.

- Well, the apple are, some people put potato in it, some other type of thing, but this is so, you know, this would be a great party for you.

You freeze it, you put it into a container, you freeze it, serve it, and that's a great party for six.

You serve that with rice, usually you put rice in there.

- [Claudine] Rice, couscous?

- Couscous would be very good too.

So let's see what else we have to do now.

- [Claudine] We have to do these steaks.

- We have to do the steaks.

So you wanna bring me the steak?

- I got the steaks.

- So this is the steak that we cut before, remember.

So here what you want to do.

Put a bit of salt on each side, a bit of pepper.

Okay, go ahead, do the other side, and I'm going to put a dash of oil in there, and a little piece of butter.

Don't use butter yet, like two teaspoon of butter, and we are going to saute those steak.

Depend the way you want them.

See, they are very lean.

- Yeah.

- About a couple of minutes on each side if you want them.

Now this is browning nicely, (meat sizzling) and let's do the sauce with it.

Why don't you check the small roast, yes?

- Okay.

- And you can take it out, and the big one will take a little longer.

Yes, use them.

- Love tongs.

- Okay, during that time I'm gonna do some garlic.

You know, there I can break the garlic on the table, right?

You think it's cooked?

- [Claudine] Yep.

This looks good.

- What you want, you want.

Yes, you see, I will touch it.

It need to rest.

At that point, why don't we cover it?

You know, you would normally, if possible, keep that into like a warm oven or on the corner of the stove where it's a little warm so that it rest, you know, it rest, and at the same time it continue cooking a little bit.

Look at the steak now.

I think they are cooked enough on this side.

They're nice and brown, look at that.

- [Claudine] Ooh.

- I think you're going to like that one.

So you do that, your steak are a little more expensive.

The roast is a little more expensive.

So you do that for better friend maybe than the stew.

(Claudia laughing) - Okay.

- Although, I don't know, I like the stew.

So you see what I have here, what we have, we have some balsamic vinegar, we have some soy sauce, I have some mint here, and then we have, you know what that is?

- That's ketchup.

- That's ketchup.

- I can identify that.

- And this is a hot chili sauce.

- Oh wow, okay.

- So we put a bit of that.

Why don't you get me the tray?

I think the steak.

- Okay.

- Are about, if I push, the way it bounce back, it tell me more or less where it's cooked at, and because as I told you, you have the blood coming toward the center, see it bounce back, and is there is it's firm already.

- Yeah.

- That's a medium rare steak, you know.

So we put it there, is nice, huh?

And I'll leave it here, okay?

- Okay.

Now you see the crystallization in the bottom of this.

That's what you want, all the crystallized juice here, and so we put garlic, okay?

You stir it with a wood spatula, just as you're doing, that one, just mixing the garlic, 20, 30 seconds.

- [Claudine] Hot.

- This is very hot, yeah.

So we put balsamic vinegar.

Be careful when you add the vinegar, and you're going to evaporate, add a little bit of that water we add before.

- Oh.

Just to create a natural juice.

You want to reduce the vinegar, 'cause otherwise the vinegar is going to be very astringent, very acidic.

You know the vinegar.

Okay, you can put the ketchup in it.

All right.

- I like ketchup.

- So we are creating a sauce here, a kind of sour acid sauce, a dash of soy, just a tiny dash, and you wanna put a little bit of this.

- A little bit or all of it?

- Put a little bit and we taste it because this is pretty strong.

You see, I have a nice glossy sauce and depending how hot you want it, you know.

- Oh, this is really hot.

- [Jacques] Yeah it is.

- I just smelled it.

- I'm putting a little more water in there because it is getting thicker fast with this thing, and that's basically it, you know.

(pot rattling) Do you want to taste a little bit of that sauce?

- Okay.

Hmm.

Oh, that's great.

- So we put some mint in it, and the freshness into the mint is going to be very nice, kind of cut on the hotness of the thing, (knife chopping) and mint goes well with lamb, right?

- Yeah.

- So like a tablespoon of mint like this.

Should I put it in the sauce or directly on top of it?

- No, I think on top because it'll.

- All right.

- It'll look better after the sauce.

- All right, so I'm gonna put my sauce on top here.

Nice steak here.

Want a bit of the mint.

Do we put right there, and this is going to be a great main course, you know, for a special dinner party.

People won't even know, you know, I mean, they wonder how you going to do that.

You know what?

Let's see now.

- Oh, look at this.

- Yeah, yeah, you see that the juice which came out of it.

- Yeah.

- I told you when we rest, the juice come out of it.

Could rest a little longer.

Get the other piece, yes.

- Okay.

- It should be a.

- Gonna get, 'cause I've already burned my fingers once today.

- [Jacques] Yes.

- So I don't need to do it twice.

- Okay, I'll get a, (plate clattering) or even if it's not.

- Okay, why don't you take this.

- Put it here.

You see, there is a certain brownness going to it, and you see it bounce.

It bounce a lot.

There is a lot of juice inside.

This will have to rest a little longer.

So let's put it there for the time being.

Okay.

- Next to the other one, because I want to delay that, I think, with a bit of white wine.

I have some white wine there and maybe a bit of a Lea & Perrins sauce, Worcestershire sauce.

- [Claudine] Oh, okay.

- To give some, but again, I do have some crystallization in the bottom.

We are, what do we have, a chardonnay here.

- Good wine.

(pan sizzling) - Yeah, we have a good wine.

So about a cup or so going.

Put a little bit of the.

- Worcestershire.

- Yep.

Ooh, ooh, that's enough.

Okay, perfect.

You know, this is strong stuff here.

We want a natural juice, but you don't want to drown it.

So you wanna bring that to a boil.

Okay, you wanna cook it a little bit because of the white wine, the white wine should cook down.

Yeah, it's too acid now, so let it cook for a minute or so.

- My fault.

No, no, it's not your fault.

It was, your sauce is fine, very good.

- Oh, okay, good.

- And what we're going to do to serve it there?

Now look, this one render that juice.

This one hasn't rendered juice yet, you know.

I put the juice back in there.

- Is there a bounce difference?

Oh yeah.

- Yeah.

Now I'm gonna cut it and I'm going to show it to you.

See, this one should rest, as I say, longer, and I'm gonna cut it and you see.

- [Claudine] Oh, it looks raw.

- And I tell you as you see, the outside is grayish and still, and the inside is kind of raw and soft.

- Yeah.

- If that piece of meat rest for 10 minutes there, the whole thing will be pink.

- Wow.

- Very important to let it rest, you know?

- Huh.

- You know what?

Do you want to serve a bit of gratin with that?

- Yes.

- So cut a little bit of gratin from the side to put it here.

That'll do nicely, yeah.

Okay, and then I'm going to cut this one.

This one should be, you see this one has a nicer color pink throughout?

- Yeah.

- See the little pieces of garlic that you did?

This is really tender, you know.

You have it here.

You have that piece here, and for me, I like the end piece, you know?

That one here, can put it on this side, but oh, I like the end piece.

A little bit of the juice with that, and when you put a natural juice here, you don't really put it on.

You put it on a little bit on the red part, but you don't wanna cover it entirely.

So just a little bit around, maybe a spring of thyme like this one.

- Mine's nicer.

- Oh, okay, and put yours, and this is now our roast of lamb with the gratin dauphinois.

Now that you have a real class in economy with good stuff, I hope you've learned stuff today.

- I've learned a lot today, thank you.

- I mean, look at that.

You have a soup and now it's ready to be frozen.

You know it's cold now, it's fine.

You've eaten half of it already, but you have those steak.

Those steak, you wouldn't freeze them now.

That's what you do.

You freeze them raw, you defrost them under refrigeration.

Then you do the recipe.

The same thing with your roast.

You know, you freeze the roast, defrost it slowly, then do your roast when you're ready, but the curry of lamb, you can freeze it now.

You can eat half of it and freeze it after.

I tell you, we have four main course here of different dish, which is at least 24, 25 portion or more, and certainly less than a dollar per person in main course.

So I think we work a lot.

We deserve a glass of wine.

- Yes, we definitely do.

- With the lamb, rather, you usually serve a Bordeaux-type wine.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- And here we have a Merlot from the Alexander Valley.

- Okay, well you're gonna taste this wine.

- I'll taste that one, yes, and thank you very much.

- You're very welcome.

- And the other one here, we have a homemade from France, again Bordeaux-type, that Cabernet Sauvignon.

- I'm gonna take this one.

- And those are the classic wine with lamb.

Of course with the curry of lamb, you could have something more spicy and all that, but any of those will be great.

(glasses clinking) I hope you enjoy cooking it for your family.

I hope you're going to buy a big piece of meat, bone it out, and save money.

I enjoy doing it for you.

Happy cooking.

- Happy cooking.

(cheery music)