- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

There is nothing like a winter dinner with family and friends to warm your soul.

And there is no reason that the hearty food of winter can't be light and healthy too.

Like a single scrambled eggs, fluffy and delicate, served with flakes of smoked trout, or a savory stew of mussel and lima beans, served on a bed of garlicky salted spinach.

As an extra bonus, the cooking liquid from those mussels and beans become a quick and tasty soup.

For dessert, a warm gratin of apples with crunchy walnut and granola.

Soothing and sustaining food to see you through the colder months.

It's winter fare with a bonus next on "Today's Gourmet."

(bright jazz music) (bright jazz music continues) We are going to do an interesting menu for you today, a winter fare with a bonus.

And I'm going to start with scrambled eggs.

I know scrambled eggs nowadays, a lot of people don't do scrambled eggs anymore because of higher cholesterol and so forth.

But I'm going to show you how to do it in the French way.

It's only one egg per person, in a very delicate way, on the type of dish which can be used as a first course, as we are going to do today, but as well as a brunch or even a light supper type of menu.

So what I have here is four eggs.

Be sure that you beat your eggs properly so you don't have a streak of egg white in it, with a fork.

So you go from one hand to the other here.

And then we are going to start with a little piece of butter in there.

About two teaspoon to a tablespoon of butter.

And with this, we're going to start cooking our eggs.

But in the French way, we want to do it with a whisk and really beat it all the time to create the smallest possible curd.

It's a special way of doing it, rather in the conventional way, where you have large curd that you fold one on top of the other.

So, conventionally, what you will have to do here, it's really to keep working on it all the time, you know.

Going around to break those curd as much as you can, which is what I'm doing here.

And during that time, you know, although you shouldn't really keep the stove here, I want to clean up that trout that I have here that we're going to use.

Those smoke trout now can come, you can move.

The whole skin, as you can see, comes out quite nice.

And you can break the head, remove the head, and now separate the back filet, you know.

Just break it down this way.

I will have four of those, one here, one in front that I make slide off the bone here.

And of course, the same thing on the other side.

I still have to work with the egg white.

What happened is that, what you have to realize is that that will retain a lot of heat.

So I may remove it before the end so that it continue cooking in its own heat.

What I'm going to put in there also, it's a little bit of chives.

Here we are.

And what we used to do years ago was to keep a little bit of the raw eggs to put at the end, like now, to stop the cooking.

A thing that we wouldn't want to do now with salmonella, A thing that we would want to do now with salmonella, so we're doing something else with this.

What I want to do is to serve it on toast.

So I'll put that here.

Break a toast like that that you can put in the bottom.

We can put one in the bottom this way.

We can even put another one around in decoration If you want two toasts, you can even use it flat to separate your toast like that, between in a very thin, for Nellie, you know, the soprano from Australia.

for Nellie, the soprano from Australia.

So what I have here and, of course, my piece of trout, which you want to separate into their own little pieces.

You know, the design of the trout itself will be beautiful, so I may separate that like this to put it around.

And what we want to do is to serve the toast on top of it.

And now, as you can see, So what I want to do is to finish it up with, as I said, it used to be finished with the raw eggs or sometime with a lot of cream and butter.

or sometime with the a lot of cream and butter.

What I'm doing here to give the creaminess, I'm putting a little bit of yogurt.

And you know, this will change depending on the quality of your pan.

That pan happen to retain a lot of heat, and that what will happen if it retain a lot of heat, but you see it's still quite nice and creamy, which is basically what I want here to serve it in the middle of this.

You can even have the little piece of trout on top.

And with that, maybe a little decoration, fresh thyme.

And this will be the first course which could be used, as I say, as a light lunch, which is as a main course.

And what I want to do next is to start with mussel.

I have a bunch of mussel here that I want to put directly.

Those have been cleaned.

As you can see, it's hot.

I'm putting a table, talking about half a cup, half a cup, three quarter of a cup of a very dry, a dry fruity white wine.

And that's all I put in there.

What I wanna show you is how to clean those mussel.

And I have some mussel right here, which I wanna show you.

Mussel are very inexpensive, they're extremely high in protein, low in cholesterol.

So they are very good.

You can see that the beard of the mussel there, this one, some of them were open before, they close.

You know, it's not necessarily when they are open that they are bad.

What I do, you take a little knife and touch the inside mussel.

If the shell close by itself, the mussel is not dead so you use it.

If it doesn't close and all that, then you would want to throw it out.

In any case, there is a beard on top here.

That you pull out, you pull that beard.

This is a very, very tough string.

The Greek, for example, the Greek fisherman used to keep that together and weave it to do gloves, the gloves to go fishing with it.

A knife doesn't go through so it's very good.

So you would clean it up of that beard those appendage, if there is a lot and what I like to do with it too is to press the shell, not press it straightforward but press it so that you try to move it up.

And because sometime it's full of dirt, you know mud like and it's like a suction and it doesn't happen if you push it this way, it open, because if you have one bad one you can ruin the whole dish.

So what you do, you drop that in boiling water, in the cold water rather, rub them one again the other, take them out of the water and repeat that a couple of times to have them the way I did it when I had them in that pot.

With that dish, with those mussel, we wanna serve something else.

We want to serve some lima beans and I have those small dry lima beans here.

Be sure I have a couple of the pieces of dirt that I find in them on top which you want to remove.

So what I did, I went through them to remove pebble or pieces of stone or foreign material and then you want to wash them in water, you know, run them under the the sink so they are clean.

And that amount, I have half a pound here, I put that into four cup of water, a little dash of salt in there and that's it.

You cover this and you want to cook that for about 45 minutes, 40, 45 minutes.

It depend on the size of them.

Those are medium size so they will take a little while and that's all you do to it for that time being.

That dish is a little bit complicated.

In that dish also, I want to use some spinach.

So I have some spinach here and with the spinach, we're going to do a bit of garlic.

I have a little bit of oil here for my spinach.

Start them.

And along with the spinach, I'm putting another pan here which is going to be a pan to finish the mussel by the time they open.

So the first thing that I do, a little bit of oil for the spinach and garlic.

Crush your garlic to release the essential oil, you know.

Two clove of garlic would be more than enough for me here.

Chop that in a fine way and I put that directly into the little bit of olive oil that I have here.

Note it that it start frying.

You don't want to burn the mussel here, but I will put the spinach directly in it and you notice those spinach are all wet.

They've just been washed.

You keep the water from the spinach to create a little bit of moisture in there.

That's good.

Those are fine spinach, they don't have any big stems so you can leave the whole thing.

What I want to do here is often to turn a little bit of the spinach.

Just grab it with the tip of your finger so you don't burn yourself so that you bring the garlic on top and it doesn't get burned, you know.

Okay, we can put the rest of the spinach here.

This is going to be a bed of spinach, right, the bed of spinach right underneath the mussel.

Making a mess on the table here.

And what you want to do is to cover this so that they steam a little bit.

I need maybe a bit of salt in there and that's it, they're going to steam by themself.

Now let me take a look at those mussel.

As you can see they are opening beautifully.

So you toss them a couple of times so all the juice come out.

Those are nice mussel.

I try to get small, heavy mussel.

This is what you like, you know.

And now to finish the mussel and the beans, what we want to do is to saute a little bit of scallion.

And I have some scallion here that I'm going to use.

As you can see very often people cut that off here.

You don't.

Look at what's bad.

For example, this is bad.

So I remove that first leaves, throw that out.

The second one here is bad on top, it's good to about here.

Third one, this is a bit tough also.

This one maybe here, this one maybe there.

You see, this is what I keep.

It's not a question of cutting the whole thing.

Yeah.

We want to put again a little bit of olive oil there.

This is on high.

And saute your scallion.

I use scallion a great deal.

And the size is different, you know.

I think I add in the recipe a dozen scallion, which was like a cup, cup and a half of scallion.

And here I have about five scallion, which are the same amount.

So look not only at the amount of, you know, the individual pieces, like so many scallions, but how much you should get in your recipe.

So here that's what, I have about a cup and a quarter, which is more than enough here.

So we want to saute that for a minute or so.

I should check on my spinach, yeah, which is getting wilted nicely, exactly what I want.

And again, we did not precook the spinach as it used to be in older cooking, you know, where you would saute or cook the spinach in water first.

They are no, we leave it as such.

In fact, I don't even have to cover it.

I think it's cooked enough.

I'm going to stop it now.

And what I will do is to bring my plate, I'm going to serve an individual plate.

Now there is a bonus to that meal.

The bonus is that I have the beans which are cooked here, the bean that I discussed with you before.

As you can see they are cooked.

And what happened with those beans, what I try to do very often if I see little... sometime the shell you know, comes out, the skin, the skin of the beans comes out, you know, empty.

So if you have a lot on top, especially on larger lima bean, then remove them.

You know, they are hot now but they tend to separate like this and you see those shell like that.

So you can remove this.

If you want, if not that important.

And then we are discarding the juice here.

No, we are not discarding the juice, we are draining it because we want to use the juice for something else.

So here is all of my juice here and this is going to go with my scallion.

I have about two cup of juice left here.

That I put in there.

That's quite a lot, with half a pound of beans its going to give you a lot.

And what I want to do, a bit of the liquid here and as you can see, my mussel are now totally open.

So what I want to do is put the lid this way so you can put approximately a cup, approximately a cup of the liquid from the, from the mussel, don't burn yourself, and the rest of the liquid goes with the liquid of the beans.

And now we want to separate the, we wanna separate the mussel here.

Now as you can see, they'll come out very nice.

This way, we're going to add all of this to our dish.

I'm only going to do a couple, as I don't have time to do the whole thing for you.

Couple, as you can see, it's easy.

You can keep the shell for decoration, and the rest of it I have here.

I have some here which have been totally clean.

And this is about what it's going to give you.

Three pound of mussel will give you that amount of meat, you know, which I have here.

So we'll add the amount of meat right in there, you know.

We toss it together like a beautiful stew and then we can finish the dish and the dish will be finished with the spinach.

I'll bring this over there.

You want to spread out your spinach, you know, to create a bed of spinach underneath.

Here, nicely, especially on the outside, this way, approximately.

And on top of it we can serve our stew here.

It's a beautiful, I think, a bit original and unusual type of dishes, with a few mussel on top.

Don't forget to use some of the juice around and maybe a couple of mussel around for decoration.

The mussel shell are always attractive this way and this is going to be the main course for our menu today.

In that recipe or in that menu, I told you that we would have a special bonus and here it is.

Remember I have the juice of the mussel, about two cup, and about two cup of juice from the beans.

You know, pour it slowly in case there is a little bit of a deposit in the bottom, but I see a little of the pulp here from the beans.

You know, it's fine if you don't have four cup, just add a little bit of water.

This is quite flavorful so you strain it.

What we want to do in there is to put a little bit of sour cream.

If you don't want to, you can put a little bit of yogurt if you want.

We put that in there.

And this can be served hot and cold, a type of vichyssoise if you want, type of cold soup or hot soup.

It's still lukewarm here of course.

And I'm gonna garnish with a little bit of chive to serve on top.

I love to do that that type of menu where you get a little bit more than what you're supposed to get out of it, you know.

This would be terrific if you do it and let it cool overnight and serve it after.

If you let it cool overnight, I would tell you, don't put the sour cream in it or the chive, just let it cool.

This will thicken just slightly by the time it cool off.

But it'll be a very flavorful, delightful broth that you can serve as a first course for a light elegant dinner party.

And now what I wanna show you is the dessert we're doing with that menu.

Very simple dessert, very straightforward, with apple.

I have different type of apple here.

I'm going to take that beautiful Red Delicious.

What you want to do is to peel the apple, rinse it a little bit, you know, I rinse it out because I'm not going to peel it.

I cut that hand here that I can keep as a decoration, actually this there.

Then cut it in half.

Notice that now both hand are clean and again using my thumb as a type of pivot here, I took the center out of it, again, you know.

This is the easiest way, the best, the fastest way to cut up or however.

When you do that you have to be sure that your thumb is holding the blade here.

Otherwise, if you don't have your thumb there, you can go right through and cut yourself.

So be careful, put your thumb here and you'll really turn around your thumb, you know.

So what we are doing here is cutting those apple into approximately one inch pieces, you know, skin and all, this way.

I have... Those are a fairly large apple, you know, so take that into consideration.

We're doing two apple for four people here, which is plenty.

I have another one here.

This is a Red Delicious.

This one look like an opalescent, different type.

You can use russet, you can use all of this.

Now what I have in there is a mixture of different thing.

I have some granola here and there is different type of granola.

Some with more nuts, some less nuts.

In any case, I have a cup of granola.

I have about half a cup of orange juice.

Go with it.

Couple of tablespoon of sugar and that you can even have it if you want.

And some walnut, you know, some crack, you can crack your walnut a little bit.

Very straightforward.

You can toss this around.

Mix it like this, and put that to cook in that type of gratin dish, you know, This way here.

My apple are jumping all over the place.

This one can go back in there and that goes back into the oven.

This, as I said, you can keep for a decoration.

So I'm going to take it with me.

That will go into the oven, approximately 400 degree.

You wanna cook that a long time.

You wanna cook it a long time so that it's nice and still firm, you know.

I mean it's still soft, you know.

You want that type of very comforting, that type of homey type of food.

This is a very low kind of fat, low cholesterol and high fiber actually dessert, especially with the skin of the apple that I left in it.

And basically the best way would be to serve that lukewarm, you know, Very simple dessert, it's still lukewarm.

I still have some, in the bottom, some caramelization.

I could serve it this way.

If you feel that it's slightly dry, just add a little bit of orange juice at the end.

Not a bad idea.

I can even put yogurt on top and maybe even the decoration of your apple to finish the dish and serve it as a very simple savory dessert, you know.

We have an interesting menu today, very eclectic menu, with our winter type of fare.

What we have first is the eggs.

You know, I discussed the eggs and those eggs are very interesting because even though today I'm serving that as the first course on a light dinner, and which is classic in France.

We often serve a bit of scrambled eggs like that or a poached egg or that type of thing.

Yet however, this could be served as a light supper by itself, you know, even as a brunch, even as in breakfast, you know.

So this is a very versatile type of egg dish.

Remember that there we have one egg per person, which is relatively very low in cholesterol, rather than using eggs substitute or whatever, which I'm not for.

I would rather stay as close as I can to Mother Nature.

We have a lake trout, which is high in Omega-3, you know, the type of fatty fish.

You can also use, of course, any other type of smoked fish with that from salmon to sturgeon or any of those will be excellent, you know.

So this is with the toast around too.

It's kind of consistent and it's not that much.

Then we have our stew of lima beans and mussel.

Now as I said, the lima beans are very high in fiber.

You have a lot of spinach in it, which has a lot of iron, potassium.

Then we have a great taste with the mussel, you know, which goes with it, which are very high in protein.

Then we have the special bonus.

Special bonus is that soup, you know, that we have with, you can put actually a bit of Tabasco in it.

I forget to put it when I was doing it, but if you like a bit hot, a bit of Tabasco, serve it at a cold soup.

You can freeze your stock if you don't want to use it, it's perfectly fine, and use it whenever you feel like it.

This is an interesting dish served hot or cold.

A soup is always welcome at my house with a piece of bread and a salad, you know.

And then in that menu we have a salad.

We always serve a nice salad with it.

And finally the dessert.

The dessert here, the type of granola with the hull in it, you know, which are very high in soluble fiber.

We have a lot of apple in it.

And the apple, again, are high in fiber.

You can mix that together.

You can do different type of variation.

And again, serve that as breakfast also as well at the light dessert.

It's an interesting menu, I think, very eclectic.

And with that, we're serving an eclectic wine also.

This is a wine, a (speaks French).

(speaks French) is at the foot of the Pyrenees, and those wine were done by Henry IV, you know, during the 16th century, in 1530 or so.

It is done with grapes which we call the, (speaks French) which are grape that I don't think are very known in the United States.

In any case, it spicy.

It's also very inexpensive, quite nice, and it will go very well with our eclectic menu.

So I'm going to have a glass at your health.

I thank you for watching the show.

I'll see you next time and happy cooking.