- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

- And I'm Claudine Pepin.

I was raised in New England, and I love to eat foods that remind me of home.

- At our beach house, we swim and go clamming in the shallow water.

- We hold onto the sides of the boat and bring up the clams with our feet.

- And our hands.

Clams, lobster.

Even if you're not from New England, I really think you'll enjoy today's menu.

A Yankee inspiration.

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

- "Cooking with Claudine."

- We are going to prepare a New England meal today.

Yankee inspiration.

They can recognize my Yankee drawl.

- Oh, right.

- That is pure Connecticut.

Well, Claudine was raised in Connecticut.

Me, not quite completely.

In any case, when we are at home, sometime we go fishing for clams.

We get those very large co'hog clams just by walking on it and picking them up in the mud in front of our house in Branford, huh?

- Yeah.

- Did you see?

And those are slightly smaller.

And those are like large cherrystone.

And this is if you want a large little neck, you know.

But you know those one, you don't know those ones, right?

- No.

- Do you like this?

- No.

(both laughing) - This is called a geoduck.

It's from the Pacific Northwest, all the way up from Northern California up to Washington.

And what I did here, I dropped that in the boiling water just to blanche it.

And you see, you cut the belly out of it, that you discard.

- Uh-huh.

Hm.

And after it's been blanched, you see the skin will peel out.

You know?

And you know this is used in sushi.

Oh.

- This is really good.

You see, you can see the inside of the meat will get very, very hard.

See, this is good, those large clams like this, to chop them coarsely, to do what we are going to, those would be a bit more expensive.

- I'm just going to put this away.

- Yeah, just put those away.

Okay.

Now I'm going to show you how to open clams.

See what you do here?

I use a regular knife.

- Uh-huh.

- Just plain knife.

You put that at the opening here, you find the opening-- - Oh.

- [Jacques] And push with your finger there-- - This makes me nervous.

- To go into this.

You do that on top of water, you know, open it like this.

Cut the muscle here and there.

Do you want to try to open that one?

It's a bit smaller.

Why don't you take a towel?

- Right.

Yeah.

- Okay.

Take a towel because-- - Because you want me to work for the rest of my-- - Put it like this.

Okay.

Put this flat at the opening there.

And with your finger, you're going to press the, yeah.

Are you?

- Um, I don't think so.

Okay.

- Alright.

No you, with those fingers, you push on the blade.

- Okay, well come back next week when I'll have this clam open.

- No, no, no.

Here, here.

If you put your thumb here and it, you good.

See, I put this at the opening here, and I use those fingers to press it.

- Uh-huh.

- You see?

Then I cut it open.

Well, I'm going to get you a whole bushel so you can practice on them.

Okay, you put your clams in their own juice, then you wash them in their own water.

The best way to cut them, is actually just with a scissor like this, you know.

Cut them into pieces.

- But we always save the juice, too.

- Well, of course you save the juice.

Yes.

- Well you let it settle for the sand.

- Yeah, you wash it on that.

You want to do this?

- Mm-hm.

- And I'm going to do the batter.

We are going to do the fritters, and I will say again, the cherrystone, as well as the little neck, are kind of expensive for that.

You do that with those large clams, you do that with conch.

So I have 2/3 of a cup of flour.

We put corn in there, you know.

Like 1/2 cup of corn.

- Oh, cornmeal?

- And give me, there, baking powder.

Put the baking powder, one egg.

- Just put it in?

- Yep, that's it.

And I'm going to put a little bit of the juice of the clam.

You want to pick it up gently from the top so you don't get any residue in the bowl.

Okay, so sometime you need four or five tablespoon.

Okay.

- And that's the only liquid that you'll put in there?

- Yeah.

You don't want do that butter too much ahead.

The reason is that if you do it too much ahead, the baking powder will lose some of it strength, you know.

And we put the clam in there.

Okay, why don't you stir this a little bit?

- Okay.

- I'm going to give you some scallion with this.

We'll put some scallion, a little bit of garlic in there, and maybe a little bit of tarragon-- - Mm, that sounds good.

- To give it a bit of a French twist, you know, if you want.

Okay.

Do you think that it's smooth enough?

- I think so.

Let me see.

- Could be a little more.

If not, we can always put a little more of the juice.

A bit of garlic.

- Mm.

- I think it's enough with a piece like this, right?

- Yeah.

- Put a bit of pepper in it.

- But no salt?

- Yeah, a little dash of salt usually.

Okay, here we are.

See what it looks like?

The thickness?

So, here is what we're going to do.

We put it there and we have three cups of oil here, and take about a tablespoon at a time.

You want to get pretty close to the, just to push it like that in there.

- How hot do you think the oil is?

- It's 375 degree about.

- Okay.

- Now do you want to try one?

One or two?

You go ahead enough.

- That enough?

- That's okay.

Yeah, that's more than enough.

Good.

Okay, we'll put another one here.

And that's enough.

You do that in two batches, anyway.

For the amount that we have, we do like a dozen and a half, about 18, of those clams.

And if it's done properly, you should use very little oil.

While this is cooking, let's do our salad.

- Okay.

And we're going to do a watercress salad with potato.

- Mm.

- And you see the potato, we cook them.

And what we can do here is just to cut them in pieces like this.

You want to cut them?

- Yeah.

- You try here.

So-- - Just-- Well, I start with nice slice, and now you mess up my potato, here.

- I'll make little slices.

- Nice slice.

- Oh.

- And you want to slice thick enough so that they hold their shape, you know?

Oh, okay.

- I'm going to do it on the board.

That's what it's for.

- Then you dirty the board in addition.

- Oh, well.

- Okay, that's fine.

Okay, now the watercress.

Now the watercress, you see here?

I have a bunch of watercress, and that's how you wash it, directly in there.

Then you lift it up, and you can throw that out.

Then you can put it back so that you can spin it, you know?

- Okay.

- Now notice that when I cut it, I cut the whole bunch of watercress, and I cut the stem and left the stem here.

You don't want to throw that out, because that make a great soup.

Wow, you did good.

Look at all the water that you get out of this.

- Yeah.

- You know?

Well done.

Okay, let's do the dressing of the salad now.

- Here's a bowl.

- And you mix it.

Okay?

- Okay.

- So a good tablespoon of mustard, then I put a little bit of soy sauce here.

- Oh, yum.

- And a little bit of red wine vinegar.

That's it.

And now the oil.

You know, I think that those things are ready to be turned.

Wait a minute.

Leave that one second.

- Okay.

- And I want to show you, you see, sometimes, if they are round enough, they turn by themselves.

- Ooh.

- Sometimes they don't turn by themselves.

Just push them like this, and you move them like this, they'll turn on the other side, turn them on the other side.

That's it.

Altogether, they take about four to six minutes to cook really crisp, so let's finish our salad.

The potatoes should marinate in the dressing.

Bring the watercress.

You know, the watercress here, you have to be very careful to make that at the last moment.

The watercress will get wilted in no time at all.

So you can even put your potato, but don't put your watercress in right away.

So let's mix this this way.

So at the last moment, you put that on your table.

Mm.

Watercress is very good.

- Watercress for me is definitely summer.

- Yes, it is summer.

Remember, in Hunter, we used to go pick up the watercress in the river?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

That was great.

And this is a terrific watercress and potato salad.

Do you want to check our fritters?

- How do they look?

- So we move them like this.

See if they are turned around.

Yeah, I think they are basically ready here.

- Okay.

- Okay.

You see?

So they are quite nice.

And you know what I wanted to show you, that should not absorb too much oil, and I'm going to measure how much oil I have left over here.

I started with three cups of oil.

I'll see how much we have.

They usually, you don't really use much more than like two tablespoons or so.

We have three cup on the nose here.

That's that.

- Wow.

- That's basically what you want.

So you know, give or take a couple of tablespoon, you shouldn't really use more than that.

Okay, we want to arrange that in this... and you know, save those at the last moment.

Actually for aperitif, you know?

Okay.

- You want this on top?

- Yeah, we put a lot of tarragon in it, so-- - Yeah.

- Maybe a piece of tarragon here.

- Okay, I'll put this over here.

- And this is our clam fritters.

Terrific for aperitif, or to start a meal.

- For me, summertime is kind of doing clam bakes at the beach house, and you don't have to wear shoes, and you can get sand inside, and you can just have piles of lobsters, and crawfish, and corn, and potatoes, and everything on a big table, and you can make a mess.

And it's summertime, so you can just kind of jump in the water and rinse off and start again.

- Well, we're going to do a really now New England or Yankee inspiration.

We are doing lobster, of course.

- Oh, I love lobster.

- And you see, I put those lobster in there like three, four minutes ago.

They are not cooked.

They are just blanched, you know, - Mm-hm.

- So that their inside is still raw because we are going to broil them.

- Oh.

- What you want to do is just to blanch them in boiling water and let them cool off a minute, and what we are going to do is a stuffing for that.

- Oh, that sounds great.

- So, do you want to start cutting a little bit?

The shallots?

- Sure.

If you give me the knife on your side.

- Oh, you want that knife?

- Thank you.

This is your favorite knife.

Isn't it?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- I love this knife.

- What we're going to do is to put a little bit of olive oil there, and the scallion in there.

Okay?

How you doing?

Okay?

- Yeah.

- [Jacques] Don't cut your finger on that.

- [Claudine] No, because you need me to help.

- Yes.

Okay.

Okay.

Oh, a little bit of practice.

I think you have improved.

- Since when?

Birth?

- Since last time I cooked with you.

And from birth, too.

I think you have improved a little bit.

- Thank you.

(both laughing) - Okay.

Now here is our shallot.

So we have shallot, and if you don't have shallot, you can put red onion, or regular onion, and so forth.

Put a little bit of salt on top of this.

- Just tell me I don't have to do another one.

- A dash of pepper.

- Is this enough?

- That's it.

You just can add it to it.

Good.

You know what?

Put a little piece of butter in there.

- Okay.

- Because that's going to go on top of the lobster, under the broiler.

- Mm.

- A piece like that is fine.

And we are going to add some breadcrumbs to this.

And you see what I have here?

You see this one is brown?

- Mm-hm.

- The breadcrumb, by putting it into the oven, you brown it, and, after that, you put it into the food processor to have a type of coarse breadcrumb like this, you know?

- So-- - Okay.

why don't you mix that in there?

That's it.

We stir it a little bit.

Yeah, you don't want to get it too mushy, but you want the bread to get slightly softened with the, no, you can leave that.

- Oh, okay.

I'm going to put it back into that bowl.

Maybe easier, you know?

- Papa, sometimes you use fresh breadcrumbs, and then other times dry.

Why?

- That's right.

Well, depends what I have, first.

But secondly, what's important, you can use one or the other.

This one I wanted to toast it, you know.

- Oh.

- Because it has more of a taste, a different type of taste.

So here is what we do now.

I'm going to crack this, bring that bag over there.

- Okay.

- See, you have two different claws here.

This is the crusher, the big one.

This is the pincher, the small one.

- Either way.

- What they call it.

And you want to crack this, and it's better to do it in there, so it doesn't splash all over the place when I hit it.

Those are fairly soft.

- Oh, wow.

- You know why they are soft?

They're what we call shedders, you know?

They have been shedding not long ago.

- Oh wow.

- And the shed is still soft like this.

- So I crush those?

- Yeah, you want to break it.

- Especially that.

No, not there.

That's it.

Okay.

Okay.

Now I'm going to split the lobster in half.

Now you start by the head usually, and there is a line here, you see?

- Oh.

- Put your knife straight down, break it.

- Mm-hm.

- And you're going to get me a towel because there is juice all over the place here.

- Okay.

- Now you see what happened here.

This one was, this is a female, this is a male.

You know?

I can show you the bottom, the part here, however, the important part is that we have the tomalley.

The tomalley is that mixture here.

- I like the tomalley.

- I would like to put that into my stuffing.

- [Claudine] Yeah.

- This is the liver, really.

Then there is a bag here.

See?

A bag, and usually full of gravel.

- Oh.

- This is the stomach.

The mouth of the stomach is between the eyes here.

That you discard.

Okay, again, I cut this one here.

And you see the difference here.

- [Claudine] Whoa!

- Okay.

In the other one you saw the tomalley.

The tomalley was the pale green one.

- Yeah.

- It has it, but in addition, it has that dark green thing.

You know what that dark green thing is?

- No.

- The egg.

This is what will turn bright red when it cooked.

- Oh, okay.

- But now it show you that it's not cooked here you see?

- [Claudine] Oh, alright.

- And you see that that long string, sometimes comes out of the tail?

- Yeah.

- This is the intestinal track, you know, so you remove that.

And you know what, just why don't you mix that gently.

- Okay.

- Here.

- In fact, you know what we're going to do, is take a little bit of that juice, mix that with a little bit of white wine.

Give me a bit of white wine there.

- In here?

- Yeah.

- Or in here?

- No, in there.

- Okay.

And now you help me here, you take this, you put that a little bit in the cavity and on the meat.

- Okay.

- Okay.

And that we're going to put it in the broiler, but you don't want to put it too close to the broiler, like about 10 inch.

- Oh.

- Because it has to broil, but it has to cook at the same time.

And a little bit of Tabasco here.

Put the dash of Tabasco on top.

Couple of drop here, there, too.

And that's it.

You want to put that into the broiler?

- Okay.

- Now about 10 minutes.

And as I say, pretty low, okay?

- Okay.

- And, of course, you can prepare it to that point, ready to go into the oven, and sometime you want to serve one lobster per person when they're about a pound and 1/4 pound.

Yeah.

Pound, pound and 1/4.

- Was this-- - Sometime you want to do 1/2 or 1/3 per person if they're a larger one.

No, that's fine.

You can keep that to serve with it.

Or we can put a little bit around, you know.

- Oh, that sounds great.

- The juice.

Let's see now, now what we are going to do, we're going to do the corn there.

And what I have here is two here of corn.

Again, very New England.

In summer we have corn, and I want to put a little bit of corn oil, put in there.

And on the corn oil, we want to cook that, you see?

When I was a kid, I'm from one part of France where we eat corn, in Boucagneres, you know?

They're going to pop.

So I put something on top, maybe a dash of salt, and I put a cover on top.

And they're going to take 7, 8, 10 minutes here to really crystallize and caramelize.

And we're going to do that with polenta here.

You have a whisk over there, Claudine?

- Yep.

- Mix it.

I have 2 1/2 cup of water here, and 3/4 of cup of polenta.

Go ahead.

- Start your engines.

- That's it.

You want to mix it this way.

And that will cook pretty fast.

It depends the type of polenta that you have, but usually four, five minutes.

That's fine.

- Salt?

Or anything?

- As long as you did it, yes put salt, as long as you did it this way, you dilute all of the lump, you know?

And that's what you want.

- Pepper?

Yes.

A dash of paper.

And what we want to do is to reduce this.

- Ooh, I heard a pop.

- Yeah.

And okay, keep mixing it.

I'm going to give you some scallion.

- Mm, do we have scallions-- - Okay, Claudine, here we go.

- In the garden this year?

- Yeah, we have some, yes.

- Oh, good.

- Okay.

And you know you are still continue cooking it slowly for a few minutes and we're going to cover it.

If it get a bit too thick, we add a little bit of water.

It will take about five, six minutes to cook, and this one a little longer, so put a lid on top of this.

And now I'm going to stir my kernels, you know, which start getting crunchy in the bottom here.

You know, this is actually two dish.

- You serve that by itself, or you serve this by itself, or then you mix it together, as we are going to do, but it still has to cook for a few minutes.

(cheerful instrumental music) Okay.

We are going to mix them together.

We mix it at the last moment.

Maybe I keep a little bit to put on top.

- Ah.

- It looks good.

You know what you can give me is the rubber spatula.

Better.

Here it is.

I mean, this is a mixture of different type of, I love corn, you know?

- Yeah.

- And we do crepes sometime with the corn.

- Mm-hm.

And those candied corn like this, you know, on top are really-- - That's great.

It's sweet.

- Really terrific to eat.

Yes.

I have one for you to taste right here.

- Okay.

- Okay.

- I hope I picked the right one.

- Yes.

And here we are, the roasted corn puree.

(cheerful instrumental music) We're going to finish our meal with a patissier with winter fruit.

Of course we can use any type of fruit, but I decided to use winter fruit because I have them.

We're going to do a creme patisserie here.

I have a cup of milk here, two egg yolks, tablespoon and a half of corn starch.

And you see what I have here?

We use the vanilla here sometimes, and you use it for like six months, a year, and it get dry, very dry.

So we still use it.

I mean this is a vanilla sugar, - Oh.

- And it's very good you know.

We use about three tablespoon of sugar here.

We put that on this and go ahead, turn it.

You can hear it?

- Yeah.

- You go ahead, you turn it.

While we put that in there.

- I'm just going to keep going until you tell me to stop.

- [Jacques] Yeah, that should be okay.

- So you made powdered sugar here.

- You make powdered sugar in addition to that, yes.

- Wow.

That's like-- - Okay.

And really nicely flavored, so, stir it with the corn starch, that's your base, the two egg yolks.

And what we're going to do is to put a little bit of the milk inside this way to dilute it.

You want to stir it?

Gently, otherwise it goes-- - All over the place.

- All over the place.

So you want to dilute it this way.

Thank you.

Here.

And then I add that to the boiling milk here.

- Oh.

- You know?

This is on high.

Okay, and all you want to do is to bring it to a boil, and this is what we call a creme patisserie.

A pastry cream, as opposed to a custard cream-- - [Claudine] Oh, look.

- Which is made only with the egg yolk and the sugar, the pastry cream has flour in addition.

And because it has flour, you bring it to a boil.

- [Claudine] Oh, okay.

- And you see here it comes to a boil and it thickens?

- Mm-hm.

- Okay.

- Okay.

- So give me the little gratin dish over there.

What we want to do is just cool it off.

See, you cool it off in there.

- Oh, it smells great.

- If you want.

- Okay.

And at that point you can cover it with this, you know, to let it cool off.

And I have another one here, see?

Which is cold.

And we have-- - Mangoes and kiwi, and-- - Mango and kiwi, yes.

Okay.

- And pistachios?

- Pistachios.

Crushed pistachios, to put on top of it.

- [Claudine] Ooh.

- [Jacques] We could arrange that on top you know, this way.

- Very neatly.

- Very neatly.

You can do any type of fruit that you want, you know?

And then we put some of the kiwi on top.

- You call this winter fruit?

- Yes.

Because you have that in winter.

But you could do that with berries.

Very good with-- - Oh, wow.

- Raspberry or fresh apricot.

You know when the apricot are really good and in season.

- [Claudine] Yeah.

- [Jacques] And this is an abstract design.

- That's very nice.

- You know what I like with this?

To glaze it with apricot glaze, and this is a very good apricot jam.

Homemade.

- Mm.

- And you put like a tablespoon, one to two tablespoon in that, of Grand Marnier, you can put cognac, or a bit of rum.

And you see the preserve has pieces in it, but it's fine.

Some people strain it, but I just like to have it, you know, on top like this, you have those pieces of apricot.

Why don't you put a little bit of pistachios, crushed pistachios.

- Just sprinkled on top?

- Yeah.

And this is patisserie with winter fruit.

And this is our Yankee inspiration, New England dinner.

The cuisine of your roots, right?

- Yes.

- Well, we're going to start with the clam fritter, and sometimes we go fish for those, but not those one, and the potato watercress salad, I know you love that.

- Oh this is going to be great, yeah.

- And of course the broiled lobster with two different type of corn.

The corn mush, if you want, or polenta, and roasted corn, like caramelized on top.

And to finish, the patisserie with the fresh fruit, and that great glaze on top.

I think it makes a great meal altogether.

Anyway, with that dessert, I think we're going to have a Sauvignon, late harvest from the Russian River Valley here in California, but with the lobster, maybe a Puligny Montrachet.

This is from upper Burgundy.

A very deep, very fragrant, spicy Chardonnay.

I think you're going to like this one.

- Oh, I'm thrilled.

- Did you learn anything today?

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Don't ask me what it is, but I know I must have learned a lot.

- Okay, well, (glasses clink) I toast you to learning, and I toast you too, I hope you're going to get in the kitchen with your family, get inspired one way or the other, and cook.

Claudine and I enjoy making that meal for you.

Happy cooking.

- Happy cooking.

(cheerful instrumental music)