- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

- And I'm Claudine Pepin.

- Sometime you want to make an extra effort when you cook for a very special occasion.

- Yes, I have great memories of everybody being at the house for dinner or being at mere's house in France with everybody there and eating for days.

- Yes, there is really nothing like making great food for people you love.

- Could you teach me how to make some of the special dishes so that the next time we're all together, I could do some of the cooking?

- Good idea.

Let's prepare a family celebration.

- Next on "Jacques Pepin's Kitchen."

- "Cooking with Claudine."

(light uptempo music continues) Well, I don't think we need any special occasion to celebrate at the house, don't you think so?

- I agree, every occasion is a special occasion.

- Every occasion is a special occasion.

- Especially if you get to eat.

- Yes, but today, we're going to do really a special menu But today, we're going to do really a special menu for a special occasion And I have some milk boiling here with a little bit of butter.

- Mm-hmm.

- I'm putting a dash of sugar in it.

- Okay.

- And I'm doing a dash of salt.

- Oh.

- It's coming to a boil.

And you know what I'm doing here?

I am doing a Paris-Brest.

- Oh, yum.

- So I'm showing you how to do the pate a choux.

And the pate a choux, the crimp of dough, you bring all of that to a boil.

You kind of take it off the stove to put, I have three quarter of a cup of milk, three quarter of a cup of flour.

You put that into one stroke here.

And then you stir it together.

- Oh.

- You see it's going to get together into a block.

(pot clunks) You see the way it come together like that?

- That's great!

- [Jacques] Touch it like this.

It doesn't... - Wow!

- You know, that's about fine now.

Now you can see, you will see we're going to put that directly in the food processor.

So if you want to open it, that's it.

So three eggs, you know, we have in there.

And the pate a choux, you do choux, you do profiterole, you do croquembouche, you do all of those things with it.

But this one is called a Paris-Brest, you know?

And you know why it's called a Paris-Brest?

- Because it originated in Paris?

Paris?

- Paris with the Brest.

- Brest is- - Brest is a town in Brittany, and they have a very famous bicycle race there.

So it's done in the shape of a bicycle race, I mean, the shape of a wheel, rather.

- Oh!

- And it's called a Paris-Brest to name after the... You know what I'm doing here?

- What are you doing?

- Take a little bit of that to glaze the top.

- Oh, okay.

- Okay, so go ahead, put that on, go ahead.

(food processor whirs) Alright, stop it now.

I put about maybe a third of the... Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.

You don't want to let it... (food processor whirs) So it turn like this, all of a sudden, it's going to get thick again.

You see, it gets thick again.

- Oh, I can feel the machine.

- You can feel it, you see here?

So up, I put it again.

- I know.

- You let it thick.

And again, the rest of it, three times.

- Do I stop it?

- Yeah.

See now, it's holding together.

So here it is.

And here in a pastry bag here.

So when you use a pastry bag like this, the first thing that you do, this is 16 inch, you need the side, so you turn the side so it doesn't get, you can fill it up here, it doesn't get smeared all over the place.

Then, you put one of those in there, depending the size you want it.

So we put a big one here, like one inch.

Okay, so take it out and you're going to put that- - How about I hold the bag and you scrape?

- You hold the bag, okay.

- Yeah, my scraping skills aren't what they should be.

- [Jacques] Okay, this.

That's it, you know?

- Okay.

- You put it here.

And now, when you put that inside, you see what you do, you fold it like an accordion.

- Oh wow.

- And then you squeeze it, and then you put your hand here, and I press with that part of the hand.

When you press here, don't open your hand because it goes back up.

So you push that now and I start turning and each time I give a turn, you know, a twist until you get to the end.

- Oh.

- Now what we wanna do is a ring here, five inch, about that size, you know, in the center and do the ring.

I'll start it and I want you to do it a little bit too.

Now you see, I do the first ring on the outside here, this way.

- Okay.

- Then we're going to go on the outside.

Now look at what I'm doing here.

I'm pressing, but look where my bag is.

It's pretty high up.

I let it fall.

- Yeah.

- I let it fall and I come around.

Notice also that this is a seam, this is a seam.

So you start here so the seam are not in the same place, you know?

- Okay.

- So now you go on top of it, okay?

No, no, no, no.

No, no, this way.

Okay, and then you direct with that hand.

No, no, you direct with that hand.

You hold this.

(Claudine laughs) What a mess.

Hold this gently and direct like this.

Okay.

- If it doesn't work, I'll say you did it.

- Keep pushing.

Yeah, that's the idea.

See, you're getting better at the end.

Oh boy, what assistance!

(Claudine laughs) Okay.

- Ta-da!

- So we have a little more.

You know, we gotta finish it up, so... You want to do the whole ring here.

We're going to brush it now with the egg like this.

- What does that do?

- Well, to give the glaze to start with.

- Mm-hmm.

- Then you see, like this?

- I have a friend who's a painter who'd probably be a lot better at this - Okay, you can go.

- than I am.

- Put it flat now, see.

Instead of holding it like this, put it flat and drag it on top of it, and then get it in there so it doesn't stick.

And you go to the side and all that.

Okay.

That's the idea, to do a little bit like the tree, I mean the bark of a tree, rather.

Okay, so we have some almond there.

- Mm-hmm.

And I'll sprinkle them on top?

- Yeah, put your almond on top all over the place.

Yeah, you want to stick them to it.

Okay, now that's ready.

Very often, you would want to let it dry a little bit here for the glaze on top, then you put it into the oven.

That will take an hour in the oven.

I would start at 375.

After half an hour, put it to 350 and keep it in the oven that amount of time.

Thank you.

- You're welcome.

- And I have one here, thank you, which has been cooking and cooling off.

It's off now.

- Mm.

- And I have a spoon here.

Why?

To have a little bit of air in between, otherwise it may collapse a little bit, to keep its shape like this, you know?

You do it like this.

And as you can see, this one now is nice and it's soft, soft enough and just right.

And it has to cool off a little more now.

- Oh.

- So let it cool off a little more now - Okay.

- and let's do the cream, you know, for it.

- Mmm, we have chocolate.

It's gotta be good.

- We have chocolate, yes.

We have chocolate.

And I have milk boiling here.

Two egg yolk.

Go ahead, mix it.

(whisk rattles) And I'm gonna give you the sugar, about two, three tablespoon of sugar, two-ish.

That's it here.

And we put two tablespoon of flour in there, which I have here actually, two-ish.

That's it here.

Then we bring it to a boil.

So you mix all that together and you see it's liquid.

Now, put it back on the stove.

It's going to come to a boil.

And at that point here, it's going to thicken, you know?

- Mmm.

- [Jacques] We're going to flavor it with chocolate.

- I like that idea.

- Yeah?

Now you see, it's starting to come to a boil and it started to thicken.

You can see it's thickening?

- Yeah, on the bottom, it sticks.

- Yeah.

And what we do now with this, in that particular case, we put the chocolate in there, about four ounce of chocolate.

It's bittersweet.

You see, it mixed together right away?

- [Claudine] Yeah.

- And then, you want to let it cool off now.

And when it's cold, well, it look like this one, which I have here, which is cooling off, you see?

- Hmm.

- And this is what we're going to put inside our cake.

Now, the first thing that we are going to do, however, because here we're splurging all the way today, you know, we're doing chocolate like this chocolate cream.

But first, we're going to do some whipped cream in addition to put on top of it.

The cream should be cold in the refrigerator, so we have nice cream there.

- Yeah.

This is good stuff.

- See you have a sink like this.

So you go directly in the sink.

So first it's lower, - Oh!

- it's lower, and if it splatter, it will go good.

You do that, I'm going to go get the cake now.

What you want to do at that point, you want to cut the top.

Just insert your knife in it, a pointed long knife, and do a lid here.

So you have the lid.

Now you can see... And Claudine, I wanna show you that.

Bring the cream here.

Oh, you finished it - Yeah.

- Practically?

- Yep.

Got a little on my finger.

- Hm, that's good, you know?

That's good, the texture is just right here.

That's fine.

(whisk taps) You did a great job.

- Thank you.

- I love you.

Beat cream all the time.

Put that in the sink.

You see the texture inside here?

- Mm-hm.

- This is nice, very airy.

Some people remove that but this is good.

Don't remove that, use it.

So we're going to stuff it.

So the first thing that we do, we do the chocolate cream in there.

- [Claudine] Mmm.

- So this is the first base, and as you can see, it look like a bicycle wheel sort of.

Okay, that's it this way.

And what we're going to do now is we decorate it with the pastry bag again and the cream.

I'll show you something.

If you're alone in the kitchen, you know, you put that in there in some type of bowl so that it's open like this.

- If I was alone in the kitchen, I wouldn't be making this.

- Well, of course, you're alone - Well, yeah.

- when you work for your guests, you know?

Don't you think so?

- Yes.

But I'd call you to come help.

- Well, (Claudine laughs) I would probably come, right?

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

Fold it again.

The same idea, we extend this.

And this way here, maybe we'll do something like this, you know, back-forth, back-forth, back-forth.

You want to turn it for me?

Yeah, get the feel out of it.

Just put a border on top of it.

Yeah, do here.

- Oh.

- That's it.

Stand more up, that's it.

Okay and I'm going to cut this into pieces.

This is a great treat.

See, you do that, you cut it like this so it's all done.

- Oh!

- So like that, it gets very easy to carry in the dining room.

Of course, if you're in a restaurant, you give it to the maitre d', that's his problem, but... (Claudine laughs) No.

Put a little bit of sugar in there.

Put powdered sugar.

That's it, you see it's all cut and you don't even know that it's cut.

So you want to bang that on top.

(spoon taps) That's it, all around.

Not too much, not too much.

You wanna see the almond through it, that's it.

And you see, because now if you go through it, it's very easy to cut, you see?

- Oh, okay.

- Otherwise, it's kind of difficult.

This is going to be a great celebration dessert for us.

(light music) Okay, well, I know you love artichokes.

Today, we're going to pick up some artichokes.

And look at this one.

This is a real firm, thick artichoke.

I mean, the end of it, watch out the prickling here.

- Yeah.

- But this is very fresh artichoke, that's good.

Also more expensive.

You see, if you break the stem here, there is almost no thread there.

This is pure meat.

And you can peel that up and use that too.

See, this is an older artichoke.

And you can see here, it's soft and this is much softer and all that.

And you'll see at the end here, it's much more fibrous.

You have much more of that type of stuff, you know?

If you leave them on the vine, then that's what you get.

- Oh, that's beautiful!

- Yeah, you get the artichoke.

This is not edible anymore.

And this, you know, they let them dry out like dry flowers and it make beautiful flowers arrangements, you know?

(light music) And now I'm going to show you how to cook artichokes.

And you know, sometime you go to the market, you have artichokes.

Those are pretty good still, but sometime they are, you know, all damaged like that, the leaves, and they're getting a bit softer.

- Yeah, - You go to the back of the store and you get a whole package of artichokes for like 80 cents or a dollar.

That's when you buy to do kind of artichokes bottom, or the recipe we're going to do today.

- Okay.

- See what you want to do here, cut the end of this, because we're going to use this also, with that knife here, and you have to have a very sharp knife.

See, I cut it on a kind of, on a bias like this.

I don't know if you can see.

I cut around the heart.

You know, the heart of the artichokes is here.

And I remove all of this, you know, which is tough.

And the front of it, you know.

And eventually then I'm going to peel the tail like this, I mean the stem.

- Wow.

- Just like this.

So you see this, and then that part, the last part here, then I remove all of that part.

And you can see, as I say, you know, you really have to have a sharp knife.

So basically, most of this is edible.

And that we'll cut in two.

Four piece like this.

- Mm-hm.

- See?

- What about this part?

I know this is bad.

- That part you have to remove.

This is the choke right there.

You see the choke here?

- Yeah.

- That they call the choke, that thing which stuck in your throat.

- Oh.

- Okay, you cut it with the end of it.

You wanna remove that.

So we put this in there.

See, I put a plate here.

You can remove that plate.

Just water and a bit of lemon.

If you do artichoke, that will discolor, and we put those in there.

You could do it with the vegetable peeler.

- Oh.

- Try there, just go down like this.

That's it.

During that time, I'm going to start saute my onion in there with a little bit of a dash of olive oil there.

And I want to put some sliced onion that I have in there to start saute.

Because remember, we're doing a stew here, okay?

I'm taking some garlic.

And the garlic, I'm going to slice it here.

Just have thinly slice.

- Mmm!

Oh, I love sliced garlic.

- Sliver of garlic.

You like it like that, huh?

Don't look at the garlic.

Look at what you're doing.

- I am.

- Okay, adding my garlic to this.

See, this is a simple sauce too that I'm going to put salt, pepper, the artichokes, which should be finished by now.

- Almost finished.

- Alright, okay.

I don't want that lemon.

This was just to keep it.

Once we add that to it, then the tomato.

We're doing a stew - Oh, right.

- with the tomato in this.

Now you see what we do there?

Just rotate like this.

This will take about 20 minutes to cook.

Now, and then we put about half a cup, three quarter of a cup of water.

You cover it, bring it to a boil, and cook it gently for 20 minutes.

You know the artichoke is very high in potassium.

It's good for you.

Then I have this one here which is just lukewarm.

Look what it looks like.

It looks great.

You know, that's stewed artichoke- - Oh, it smells so good.

- I know you love artichoke.

- Yes, I do.

- When you were small, you know, you had artichoke for... Why don't you pull a couple of those around like this - Okay.

- just so that this one may look good.

Put the rest in the center.

We have a nice, nice stew here.

You have that lukewarm.

You have that room temperature you like.

This is a terrific dish for the family celebration.

(bright music) - My father says, "Eating light means eating whenever the light's on."

So as soon as you turn on the light, then you can eat.

(light uptempo music) - Okay, so you see I have boiling water and I have a beautiful filet of salmon here.

- It's a salmon steak.

- It's a great one.

It's a salmon steak, but usually, people call it a salmon steak when they cut it with the bone.

They cut it with the bone right across like this.

And of course, it's not as nice as this.

See, I cut a piece of salmon about that size, which is a steak, which is about about six ounces.

Then you cut right through the skin here, - Uh-huh.

- But without going to the end.

- So just the skin?

- To the skin and a little bit of the flesh, just enough so you can fold it.

See, a little more and I can fold it, - Oh, cool!

- and now it's folded, - Oh, that's great!

- like a steak, you know?

What we do otherwise, you take a piece like that and then you turn it, take it off, off the flesh to have the regular steak without the skin.

So what we want to do is to poach those just in boiling water.

All you want to do there is to bring that back to a boil, that's it.

You bring back to a strong boil, and when it boil, you cover it.

- Okay.

- That's it.

And you steep it into that boiling water.

So we want to do a sauce ravigote with that.

Ravigote.

- It's happy.

- You know what that mean?

To prop yourself up, that's ravigote means in French.

So ravigote usually is going to have a little bit of vinegar, something acidic to wake you up, you know, and some strong seasoning.

We're going to have all kind of things, and we start with tomato here.

So, we want to put some capers in it, and I'm going to chop some onion.

- Okay.

(knife taps) - Okay, you continue to mix it.

It's in there.

Put the capers in it.

You want two tablespoon of lemon juice, yes, right through your finger.

Chopped parsley.

That's going to ravigote.

Oh, some garlic in it.

And I have some spring onion here, or scallion, that we put in it also.

We put about four, five tablespoon of oil there for the whole thing.

And I'll give you a little bit of salt.

And while this is mixing, I'm going to start on the couscous.

You know, we're going to do a couscous.

You know, with the couscous here, that grain from Morocco that we have.

And those are kind of pre-steamed also, so they cook in like five minutes.

We want to do a green couscous with all kind of herbs.

So what I'm going to do here, I have parsley, maybe the stem are removed.

I have some beautiful basil here.

I put some tarragon like this and maybe even a bit of chives.

- It already smells good and nothing happened to it.

- Are you kidding?

This is great.

(Claudine laughs) Okay, since I have to cook the couscous with water, I put a little bit of the water in there to help in the pressing.

And you know what I use here?

This is great.

(blender whirs) - [Claudine] Wow!

- I put a little more water.

And I press this down - It smells so good.

- to have it all over.

But you see, a food processor would be fine, but not as good as this.

This is a blender, a kind of blender attachment to that food processor, and it liquefy much better, liquefy like a green puree, you know?

And this is what I want on this, huh?

- Could I take all of this that's just green and fresh and the only thing it has in it is water and could I freeze it?

- Yeah, you could, - Or would it- - you could freeze it, yes.

But you know, why would you?

Yeah, you could freeze it.

That's true.

So what we're going to do there is to put a tablespoon of butter in our couscous and we add the couscous directly in there to stir it.

And you see here, I have close to two cup of couscous.

I stir it a little bit like this.

Okay, put some salt in there.

Alright, that's fine.

And I'm going to put the herb in there and water.

I have a cup and a half of water.

I might as well rinse all my herb there.

(pan hisses) Remember, the water is boiling and that's important.

You have very hot water and that's it.

You don't cook it more.

You do it this way, you cover it, - And that's it?

- and you let it steep like four, five minutes, then it'll set together and be hot.

I have one which is cooked right here, Claudine.

So it steep for... I mean this one will be ready in like five minutes.

It goes quite fast.

So you fluff.

You fluff it like this.

(spoon clanks) Yeah, you can remove that.

And I'm going to put that in the... - Oh, it looks so good.

- Well, I have a lot, so we have more than enough here.

Put everything in the center.

Don't try to arrange it outside.

And after it's like this, then you can push it, not to arrange it to the side.

Why don't you do this - Okay.

- to do a nice border around.

Because now, I'm gonna look at my... The fish is cooked in there.

Dry it out a little bit.

- Oh!

- Whoop!

And we have the sauce.

Now you want to give our ravigote sauce.

- It looks wonderful.

- Okay.

- [Claudine] I love salmon.

- I know.

- It's great.

- And this is going to be a beautiful main course for a great family celebration.

(light music) - I love being home for any kind of celebration, the holidays or anything, because I know the food is gonna be good.

But now I feel like maybe I can do some of this by myself.

Thank you for taking the time and teaching me all of this.

The salmon with the ravigote and the green couscous is beautiful.

The artichokes are great.

And it's nice, it's kind of economical.

- You love artichokes, - I do.

- Claudine.

- I love artichokes.

And really, I think that the Paris-Brest I could actually make by myself.

- No kidding?

- I'm not totally sure, but I'd also like to thank you for letting us start with dessert first because it is my favorite part of the meal, especially when there's chocolate involved.

- When in doubt, you know, start with dessert.

(Claudine laughs) - And then what are we gonna drink with this?

- Well, I think with that, you know, probably the main course, we have a sauvignon blanc here.

This is really a very spicy and terrific wine.

But as a special treat, you know, I wanted you to take that one.

This is a muscat Saint Jean Minervois That's from the Roussillon, found in the southwest of France, just about in the west.

And this is done with muscat petit grains.

And this is a dessert wine.

Well, what the heck?

We start with dessert as you say.

And this is go very well with your chocolate.

So thank you for cooking with me, Titine.

- Thank you.

This has been great.

- I hope you all cook with your family and celebrate holiday, birthday, whatever.

You'll have a great time doing it.

Happy cooking.

- Happy cooking.

(light music) (light music continues)