- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

On "Today's Gourmet," I always encourage people to try new combinations of foods and lighter ways of cooking.

That's just what we are doing today, starting with a colorful stew of squid and those large kernels of Native American corn called pozole.

We'll dress up a veal chop with a shaved olive sauce and lettuce served in neat, delicate packages.

And I'll show you how to create a farina Bavarian cake that sounds beautiful as a stained-glass window and as light as air.

Join me for a blend of cuisines and flavors.

It's a savory melange coming up on "Today's Gourmet."

(upbeat jazzy music) (upbeat jazzy music continues) Today, we're doing a very savory melange, a great menu with unique flavor, kind of adventurous.

And we're going to start with squid that we're going to mix with pozole, and I'll tell you what it is later.

Anyway, those squid here that you can buy this way, very easy to clean up.

You pull out the head, how I did here.

And cut the head about just above the eye here this way... Whoop, and here there is blood in it sometime.

And there is a beak, which comes out if I press here.

So that beak is now removed.

And this, you can also remove the skin that you have on the outside, although some people don't remove that tiny skin that you have here.

But conventionally, it's good to remove it.

And inside of it, there is a piece, what they call the pen, P-E-N, which is like a piece of plastic that if you can see there.

That you remove also.

Clean it as much as you want.

There is, again, the appendage here.

We remove that back also.

All of that is cooked.

You can grill it, you can do a lot.

You can stuff it.

It is one of my favorite type of shellfish.

So what we do here, we are cutting that into ring like this.

This, we can leave it alone and all of that, we're gonna drop in boiling water to blanche it.

You know, just to firm it up and blanche it.

So with this done, the second party of the of the stew, we're going to saute some onion.

(knife chopping) Yeah, here.

Finely chopped.

About a cup of onion I think I have here.

Here I am.

Always keep your knife very sharp, which helped in the chopping of your onion.

We put a little bit of olive oil in there and the onion.

(pan sizzles) With one tomato.

I have a tomato here which is about a cup, which is about six ounces.

So we cut that into dice, this way into cube rather.

Cube about one inch big.

That's going to go in it soon.

I'm putting it in there for the time being because I want to add first garlic So I have the garlic here.

(hand pounds) Crush two clove of garlic.

(knife chopping) Chopping it coarsely, and add it to your onion.

(pan rattles) And finally, the tomato.

This will make a fast little stew, saute.

And in that stew we're going to add our squid as soon as they come back to a boil, just to film them up.

And during that time, I want to discuss pozole with you, which is actually corn, corn which has been treated with lye, treated with ashes really by the Indian.

You see how dry those are?

Dry one and they take a couple of hours to cook.

They get almost as big as chickpeas.

So we are going to add some of those.

They come in can, white or yellow.

What I have here, I'm doing a mixture here.

And they're really kind of addictive in taste.

We put that there.

Some salt and pepper.

And finally, we put our squid in it, which now is basically blanched enough.

It is good to blanch the squid first because it release a lot of juice otherwise in there.

So you blanch it.

Even when you do a salad, you know?

I do it this way and drop the squid directly into the dressing, hot dressing.

So you wanna saute this around and we'll finish that up with a little bit of tarragon.

Fresh tarragon.

(knife chopping) So as you can see, we really have a mixture of different style here.

The tarragon will give it that type of anise taste, you know, which is quite delicate.

And now we just have to serve our dish.

I think I should put a little bit of a dry white wine in it.

Actually, I should have put a little bit earlier.

It's fine to put it now.

A dash of Tabasco in it if you like it hot.

And that's about it.

We're going to serve it now, giving a bit of juice.

Creamy mixture here.

And maybe, a little bit sprig of tarragon on top.

(upbeat piano music) And now, we're going to do one of my favorite dessert, a farina Bavarian cream cake.

People who are not used to farina or you can use cream of wheat.

You can use couscous.

You can use any of this to do those type of delightful cake.

I have two and a half cup, two and three quarter cup actually here of skim milk.

But we start with skim milk, so the recipe is much lighter than it used to be.

And I put a bit of vanilla and a rind of lemon and orange in it.

Then the next step, I have half a cup of sugar.

I'm gonna put one envelope of bland gelatin in it.

And a quarter of a cup of farina.

Very little really because it will expand quite a lot.

And as I say again, you could use tapioca.

You could use all the kind of farinaceous here.

And you mix it together.

And when this comes to a boil, see about now, we wanna put this in there.

Stir it good.

(whisk whirring) And basically, that's about it.

You know, you let that cook approximately, bring it to a boil, and cook for about four minutes.

It'll thicken enough.

Then you have to let it cold.

And that's what I have here.

I have this one which is cold here or at least cool, cool enough so I can use it.

And now, we wanna put whipped cream in it.

Now the whipped cream that I have here, I have half a cup of cream which I started beating already.

You wanna beat it to the extent at which it is just firm, but not too firm, otherwise you'll have a taste of butter in it.

Now realize, it is half a cup of heavy cream, which is eight tablespoon.

But by the time you finish beating it, it's going to be a cup.

See, half a cup is a cup of whipped cream.

And that cup of whipped cream actually, tablespoon per tablespoon whipped cream is about the same than sour cream.

'Cause sour cream is about 20.

A tablespoon of heavy cream is approximately 40 to 45 calorie.

Well, if you get a cup out of half a cup, it give it to you about the same than sour cream.

So what we wanna do is to mix it in there.

Remember that the mixture has to be slightly cold, otherwise you may have problem.

You know, it will break down.

Your cream is going to break down.

I did it with a whisk.

You can also fold it, you see, with your rubber spatula to really incorporate it well.

And what I'm doing here, I'm putting that into a mold.

I put a piece of paper in the bottom and a strip of paper around to be sure that I can unmold it.

Then you put this in there.

As you can see, even though the recipe is for four, you can serve practically eight people with this.

You can do an individual one too.

They're really delightful.

All you have to do now, place a piece of plastic wrap on top so it doesn't dry out and up in the refrigerator 3-4 hours at least.

And with that, we're serving an apricot sauce.

And the apricot sauce, I have a cup of strained apricot preserve here, putting a little bit of cognac in it.

I have put here the rind of the lemon.

A little bit of the lemon juice also, couple of tablespoon, maybe a tablespoon, tablespoon and a half to dilute it and give it that type of acidic flavor.

And mix it gently.

This is the sauce that you want to serve with it.

You can serve that sauce, of course, with a lot of other things.

I'm gonna put it in there, so it's easier to serve it.

And now, I wanna show you a kind of bonus or an extension to the dessert, the decoration that we do with it, yeah?

And what I have here, I have a piece of parchment paper and we cut triangle out of this.

Those triangle are transformed now in cornet.

And this is like an isosceles or right-angled triangle.

You remember your geometry a little bit?

You fold this in the center.

The point end is here, and bring it around a couple of times.

Don't worry about the end.

Now it's around, you move your hand up and down this way to really create a point, a very tight point that I have here.

Then you fold it inside, and now you have a cornet.

This is absolutely indispensable for a pastry chef.

All of the great dessert pastry, wedding cake and all that, are done with this.

And what we have here is strained apricot preserve with a little bit of food coloring, which is done with vegetable.

We are having one, a green one here.

This is all apricot preserve, remember?

So we have a little bit of a green one.

And I have a yellow and a red one as well, which I have here.

It's easy to put them directly in a... Oh, so what you do here, you fold it this way around so that you have a seam right there.

So you can use it to fill up things with it.

And of course, the design is going to be done with chocolate.

And here is the chocolate that I have, that you use it in the same way here.

This is just plain melted chocolate.

You don't want to use too much here, about a couple of tablespoon.

Here we are.

And again, you fold it carefully to be ready now to decorate.

Now the end of it, you can cut it.

You wanna cut it very, very thin to have a tight, a thin line, yes?

Okay, so what we have here, we have our cake, same one that we showed you.

And this one has to be unmolded.

I run my knife around.

And you wanna place this on top of it.

Remember we have that piece of paper, fortunately, which I hope is going to help us hopefully.

And then, we can start pulling on it.

Here it comes.

Remove this.

Remove this.

And now, we can start drawing with the chocolate.

What do we do?

Oh maybe, I'll do like a vase here.

A vase.

Maybe with a little circle.

And maybe in that, we start doing some flowers.

So you could be freehand with this.

You know, large leaves as I'm doing here, as you see.

There's flowers.

More leaves.

Whoop, watch out if there is little pieces in your chocolate give you problem here.

Here, another flowers here.

So you do your whole design this way.

And when you feel you have enough, you can put a little heart here.

Or and maybe another little heart here.

And then now, we can start filling it up with the design.

This is a great way of doing thing.

Let's say we have a red flower here.

So you know, all of the inside of the chocolate, which is used as boundary, is now filled up with red.

Maybe I have two red flowers.

I'll do, well I'll do maybe another red one here.

And maybe some of those inside those shape here, maybe two red one.

That's maybe enough or maybe a heart.

I put a heart, red also.

Here it is.

Now I use maybe the yellow.

Couple of other flowers.

I mean, you can do like a stained window type of effect here.

It's beautiful, you can decorate cake this way in a very easy way.

This happened as I said, to be a farina cake.

It doesn't have to be a farina cake.

It can be anything that you can use in this manner.

Here, I put maybe a red one here.

So now, well this may be a little flower is also.

I put that here.

Now, let's try the green one.

This is for the leave of course.

Wanna spread that.

It's real fun.

One time when my daughter was small, I had the kid coming from school and I drew a barn and tree and I forget what I drew on a big cake.

And then, after I gave little cornet like that to all of the kid, so that they could... Maybe I put a piece underneath.

So that the kid did actually fill up the inside of the leaves of the tree, the barn, the cow, all of that type of thing.

And they had a real ball, doing that type of thing.

So you can continue even with your chocolate if you wanna do a little more.

Here I have done.

You see, you could do thing right across.

I put another flowers maybe here, fill it up, Maybe a yellow flower there.

If it doesn't work, you take it out and you start all over again.

It doesn't really matter.

But, this is about what you would want to do now and you could serve a little bit of the apricot sauce on the edge or around because you wanna serve the apricot sauce anywhere with it in the dining room.

Sometimes, the edge is nice.

And here you have a beautiful... (plate whirs) Put it the right way, a beautiful decorated Bavarian cream cake.

And now, we're going to do our main course, which is a veal chop sauteed with olive shaving, a type of sauce done with it.

(pan sizzling) I have four veal chops that I started cooking.

Now, they're about eight ounces a piece with the eight, nine ounces with the bone.

And I wanna show you what's important is truly to clean it carefully of fat all around that I'm doing here.

As you may notice, that veal is a little red and that's an organic veal.

And that's why it's a little red like this.

But the taste is just about the same.

Be sure to remove all of the fat around so that it's nice and clean.

And not a moderate amount of fat in it.

That's important.

So what we are going to do.

With this, we're going to serve a salad, a braised lettuce.

And very often people don't use... This is a Boston lettuce.

Often people don't use the lettuce, other vegetable.

And we do it a lot at home.

So you have to wash those beautiful green Boston lettuce and be sure to wash them under the sink.

So you go in between the leaves to really wash them all over.

You have to spread out the leaves so that they are clean all over the place.

Wash them very carefully.

Then now, we're going to cook them.

And what we do very simply, we are going to put them in that big pot of water.

Dash of salt in it.

And you drop them into this.

I have three lettuce here.

It depend on your size.

I think in the recipe, I have four.

They are smaller.

So to a certain extent, you work out with the way that you have.

You put that to be sure that they're going to stay immersed.

You know, you put a small lid inside which will push the lettuce under water.

The large lid on top.

Bring it to a boil.

This should cook between 15-20 minutes.

Then you lift them up or put them directly under the sink or lift them up and put them in cold water and ice that they have here.

Then, when you lift them from there, be sure that the leaves... You know, redo the configuration of the lettuce.

Don't tuck them upside down.

Be sure that you follow the shape.

Then after, you start pressing it.

Now they look like a type of endive.

I do here, you wanna press as much juice as you can out of it and that you can of course do ahead.

You can do that a couple of days ahead to have what I have here.

Those lettuce are relatively large.

I'm going to put a little bit of oil and maybe a dash of butter in there to cook the lettuce.

And those lettuce as I say, I'm going to cut them in three pieces.

One, two, three, like this.

(knife chopping) And what you do, the neat little package, each of those, you press it flat, fold the end of it, and fold the front back on top.

And you can trim if you want the core a little bit.

Again, frame it this way.

So here, you see I do three package pair of lettuce because they happen to be bigger.

Sometime they are small, I do two package.

And sometime, even small lettuce, I leave them one.

If you have pieces of leave as I have here, just put it in the center in the middle of it.

That's it.

Laitue braiser.

You know, we used to braise that with bacon and a lot of thing.

And now, in a more modern way, we do it in a much thinner.

So what I wanna do here is to put them, the nice side down first to cook them.

They have to cook a couple of minutes on each side, to brown nicely.

I have two more here.

(pan sizzling) Okay, I wanna to do a dash of salt on top and pepper.

And now, it is time to turn my veal here, which are really well cooked on this side.

I have crystallization in the bottom of the pan, which is what I want.

They cook a relatively long time on this side, so I'm not going to let them cook too much on the other side because what you would want to do is to let them rest a little bit.

So in like a warm oven or on the corner so that the juice come out of it and they get more tender and they tenderize themself and continue cooking in their own juice.

What we wanna do is some onion in the dripping we're going to put here.

(knife chopping) I have the onion here.

A little more.

Maybe that's enough.

And part of the sauce, we are going to do olive shaving.

And those olive here, what I do, is just to cut the outside like that into kind of flake.

Call that olive shaving.

And you can have different type.

I have a Kalamata.

You can have red one.

You have dark olive and so forth.

So I think what I'll do now is to remove my veal chop.

Oh, if they were allowed to rest a little bit it would be just about perfect.

And you can see in the bottom of the pan, the crystallization.

See that could be in a lukewarm oven or on the side.

But you see the crystallization in the pan, which is going to create the sauce.

So into that we have the onion.

I'll saute the onion a little bit in there.

Use a flat wood spatula to scrape your metal.

It's better, and with this, we wanna deglaze that with a dry white wine here.

(pan sizzles) Dry acidic, white wine.

About a third of a cup.

That will melt the crystallization.

While it's cooking for a minute, I'm going to turn my lettuce, which now are nicely brown on top as you can see.

Lettuce package, you know?

And we can finish the sauce soon.

I wanna thicken the sauce, put a little bit of ketchup in it.

Couple of tablespoon.

We put, I started that without any butter, with a a small dash of oil, so I'm finish that up with like a tablespoon of butter to finish the sauce.

Mix in it.

(pan rattling) Sauce is practically finished.

And we're going to put some parsley on top, a bit of decoration with parsley.

Here it is.

And my olives, of course, here are part of the sauce.

A bit of water if it's too thick.

And I'm ready to serve.

Now, a couple of lettuce package here.

I think the recipe gave three.

Three, I have a beautiful chop here that we can put somewhere in the center.

And finish it up with our olive sauce, with the flake of olives.

Around a little bit of the sauce.

Beautiful brown, rich color.

Maybe a couple of sprig of parsley on top.

We really have an interesting savory melange today with our menu, starting of course with the hodgepodge or the mixture of pozole, which sometime called hominy and the squid.

And then after that, we have a beautiful veal chop saute with the braised lettuce, which may be a bit different than what you do usually.

Olive shaving on top, a salad, and our beautiful cake, the farina cake, which has been done with the sauce.

You know, that beautiful apricot sauce.

Now with that, we're going to serve a Cote de Beaune which is from upper Burgundy.

Very spicy, very fruity.

It's going to go well with it.

And because we have such a beautiful dessert, we even serve a little bit of wine from a small bottle.

A little bit of Muscat, a sweet wine, which is going to be terrific with the dessert.

I hope you enjoy seeing the show today.

I love cooking it for you.

Happy cooking.