- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

You know, when you think of breakfast, chances are you think of pancake, waffle and sweet roll.

But wait and see, today instead of sweet, I'm going to show you some unusual savory breakfast dishes.

We start with warm oatmeal soup made with milk and leaks, and smoked white fish with cream cheese and radishes.

Of course, we'll make eggs in many varieties.

And I'll show you once and for all how to make the perfect French omelet, light and fluffy.

So join me for a classy and modern breakfast, (speaking in French), on "Today's Gourmet."

(bright music) (bright music) Today I am going to cook a savory breakfast for you.

It's a little bit different than the conventional breakfast with more sweet roll and Danish and that type of thing.

And I like to cook soup for breakfast, integrating the type of ingredient that you would've in a regular breakfast like oatmeal, milk and so forth, but with a tiny dash of salt and some ground paper on it rather than putting sweet and so forth.

And that's what we're going to start today with the milk.

I have three and a half cup of milk here cooking for the soup.

And we're going to have leak and oat oatmeal in it.

I use regular milk, which is about 150 calorie or so per cup.

And of course if you feel like using skim milk then it'll cut down a great deal on your calorie.

Not only will it cut down on the calorie by half at least, but more so and maybe more important on the fat in it.

So we have the leak and as you say, that leak here.

Now, this is boiling.

The leak, I use a lot of the green of the leak also.

You know, if you see that it's about tender, you should not discard the green of the leak or the scallion.

We're going to cut that very fine.

The leak will cook in almost no time, you know, two, three minute.

We do the same type of soup occasionally with water or chicken stock, you know, as more of a dinner type of soup, in addition of other vegetable.

But I thought for breakfast we do soup in France with milk, you know?

My mother does soup just with milk and bread in it, and herb, you know, which is very good also.

Nice for breakfast.

So we put our leak in there.

Give you a beautiful color too, the white of the milk and the green of those.

And this will cook a couple of minute before we add the oat oatmeal.

And those are rolled oat, you know, natural, quite good.

And during that time I wanna start on the second dish.

And the second dish is quite interesting actually.

It is a mold done with white fish or another type of smoke fish, you know?

I have white fish here.

If you cannot find white fish at your market, this is smoked white fish.

Quite common where I live in Connecticut.

But you can use the smoked trout that is available all over, even sable or other type of smoked fish.

And with this we are putting some radish in it.

I have a bit of cream cheese.

And again there if you wanna cut down a little bit, you replace your cream cheese with maybe a bit of ricotta.

That will be of course much less calorie than the cream cheese.

Sometime I have addition of other vegetable, cucumber in it and so forth.

You can do that type of mixture.

And now I think that this has been cooking for like a minute or so, boiling nicely.

So what I'm going to do is really add the oat now in there and again bring it to a boil, stir it a little bit.

And it will take a couple of minutes for this to finish cooking.

Now it cooks pretty fast, you know?

You have to watch of course that the milk doesn't rise and just make a mess out of your stove and your pot.

I'm going to cover it maybe and put it on very low.

That's it.

It on very low and that should be okay this way.

And during that time I am going to do the mold here.

Keep take a look at my soup occasionally.

So the skin, as you see here, will come out quite easily from that smoked fish.

And what you wanna do is really run your knife in the center and pull out, you know, push it out like this, the pieces of fish, you know, to remove most of the bone 'cause that central bone will stay there.

This we can rewrap it and keep it.

I will have plenty here to show you how to do it.

And what we do, I put a piece of plastic wrap directly up.

Watch your milk, is going to be all right.

What you do, you put a piece of plastic wrap so it helps in the unmolding because you can really do that way ahead, you know?

You can do that ahead.

In the bottom of it I put some chive to start with, you know, and a little piece of the cream cheese that you will press directly embedded really into the chive there.

Then on top of it we have sliced radish.

Now you know, you can have a slice of cucumber, you can have some scallion in it.

You can really have fun with that dish doing different type of interpretation.

Then our first layer of white fish, you can have smoked salmon would be very good in it, as I say, as well as trout.

Okay, maybe a bit more of the chive, a bit more of the radish on top.

You can really do it according to your own taste.

Maybe a bit more of this.

You want to kind of fill up the mold, maybe another little piece of that on top and a few more radish.

I don't even remember when I do several one, they end up all being one different to the other.

Bring back this on top of it so you can press it into shape, you know?

This way.

And that should do it.

So at that point all you have to do, it's really to unmold it, which is really quite easy.

You know, bring this on the outside so you can bring that in the center.

Now it's going to be easy with the plastic wrap to bring it out.

You unmold it gently.

I said the advantage is to have that ahead, you know?

A bit of a toast next to it.

And you have a beautiful little breakfast/brunch type of dish, you know, which will work very well as I say, with different type of smoked fish, different type of cream cheese, different type of vegetable, ricotta and so forth.

Just the question of having the idea actually, you can do it large for a party, which is quite nice.

And I think now that the soup should be about cooked as those... If you leave it longer, you know, the soup, it may get thick, quite thick.

Then if it get a bit too thick then you may have to dilute it with a little bit of water or milk.

I wanna put some cracked paper in it (grinder scrapping) and a little dash of salt.

Stir it.

And this is a very early, you know, earthy soup that we love that at home, you know?

Now here it is.

That's really breakfast but a different type of breakfast, you know?

Here we are.

So the soup is going to be very satisfying also.

And what we wanna do next is to move to another dish that we are doing for breakfast made with citrus fruit.

Quite different, but it's all part of our breakfast juice and so forth.

And what I have here, I have different type of orange and grapefruit.

I try to get those ruby red grapefruit, you know, and sometime they are very red in inside.

Sometime they are less red.

What I have here, different type of orange.

This is a blood orange, which you can see is beautifully red inside.

And I have one made right here of the blood orange and the regular, the regular orange here.

So what we do first we take the skin out of this.

Oh, but maybe first I will take a little bit of the skin of the grapefruit, all of that to do a little bit of what we call a Julian to serve the garnish.

Be sure to wash your grapefruit first, which is what I did.

When you wanna use the skin, I think it's better to wash it first.

Fold this in half and cut it very thin like this, (knife thudding) to do a little bit of what we call, (knife thudding) what did I say, a Julian, which is those nice thin little strip here that you can put in many things, you know, from sauces to fruit salad.

Thought about 130 calorie in that type of things without of course any cholesterol in it.

So it's good.

So we want to take then the skin.

Now, notice that I will move my knife in a jigsaw fashion.

You know, I'm cutting around here so that I get to the flesh directly, removing that thick layer of white skin which is under the surface, you know?

And you have to have a sharp knife for that.

And you don't apply too much pressure.

You just turn around so that you remove that long strip that I have here.

And as you can see that ruby red to put that ruby red, the grapefruit is quite pale in color inside.

Then now we want to remove the segment here.

And what you do, you cut the first one this way to get the segment.

Next to the next membrane, you run your knife and twist it around, it'll come back up next to the next membrane.

And here you go.

This is the classical way of doing orange grapefruit and so forth.

Lemon, sometime we take wedge of lemon to serve with a fish.

Lime, of course it better or easier rather if you do that with a seedless fruit.

You know, when you have the seed, it's always a kind of a pain in the middle, you know?

Now when I get to the end of it at the last one, I have all of those membrane left with a lot of juice.

So I will press the remaining juice into it.

We need that to put on top.

Okay.

And into that juice here we are creating a sauce by putting a little bit of honey.

Honey.

Nice, and you have the tardness, you know, and the sweetness of the honey and the the acidity of the of the juice.

I have that here.

And now we wanna decorate our plate, arrange it.

And this I can put segment maybe of this here and segment of the orange in between to give two different color.

I will take the blood orange here because of course it has a more beautiful color than the other.

Blood orange are not available in all part of the country, but quite a lot now.

And as I say, regular orange will be fine also.

But look at that beautiful design that it makes here.

Now, we have a little bit of that skin, you know, on the outside just to dress up the plate.

And it's also good to eat.

I love the skin like that.

It's crunchy, it has a bit of bitterness in it, which I think goes well with it.

And our sauce on top.

Remember this is our honey sauce.

And maybe in the middle of this I can put a little spring of mint inside.

Remember that citrus fruit are very high in vitamin C. It's good for you actually.

It's good for your gum and your blood vessel.

So I'm sure not only is it good for you, but you're going to enjoy looking at it and enjoy eating it.

Of course there is no real breakfast without eggs.

And I know the eggs the last few years have been maligned a great deal.

Eggs is a terrific food, I mean, a complete food high in protein and so forth.

But the American Heart Association will recommend you not eating more than four eggs per weeks.

Four egg yolk actually.

So if you have to watch your intake of eggs, we do it certain way.

Like here we're going to do oeufs cocotte, we call cocotte eggs.

Those little thing, those little souffle mold, we call a cocotte, which in colloquial France mean a little chicken, a cocotte, you know, in a cute way.

So we cook them in there.

So like that you serve only one egg per person.

And as you can see I butter or oil lightly those mold.

And what you can do is to put a little bit of garnish in the bottom, whatever you have left over.

Like here I have some peas, you know, I could have some pea in the bottom to put my garnish there.

This one I put some herbs around a mixture of tarragon and chives and that I can unmold it.

And those we can put the garnish on top of it or no garnish at all.

So those are all different alternative.

And those are different way of cooking eggs, those oeufs cocotte, which actually are classic way of cooking eggs, you know?

You can see those peas, you know, right through here.

And those, we put, now, I have some ham here and I will put it in garnish and on top.

And what you do with this, very simply, you put them to cook in a double boiler, you know, as we are here, which is just a skillet with some water in it.

You put them directly in there and put them to cook with the lid on.

If you put a bit of salt in it or pepper, you put it in the bottom also so that you don't dirty, if you want, the top of your egg, you know?

And this has to cook about three and a half, four minute.

It depend how you like to cook it.

At three and a half minute, the yolk will still be a bit runny.

Now, if you're worried about salmonella, you will have to cook it a little more so that the temperature reach like 160 degree internal temperature.

And so this is done at the last moment.

Also, actually you could prepare your little cocotte, ready to have them poached.

If you have guests coming, you know, you have them all ready, put them and they are cooked in a couple of minutes.

Next, we're going to do an omelet, a classic French omelet.

And I wanna discuss this with you a little bit.

I am doing that with with mushroom this time.

And one large mushroom should be enough.

Those are a bit small so maybe I'll use a bit more than one half.

Usually you cut the bottom part of it in dice to saute.

And the top part of it, you know the cap, you keep it whole like that to decorate the top of the omelet.

So both of them, you know, the top as well.

The bottom, first, we saute, you know, lightly with maybe a little dash of salt on top, saute it for a minute or so.

I have three eggs here.

This is a three eggs omelet, (grinder scrapping) crack pepper in it, a dash of salt.

And I beat my eggs.

Now, I used to have chicken behind my house in Connecticut, and I had free ranch chicken.

And the egg that those chicken gave me were absolutely terrific, much deeper in color, high lecithin in the egg yolk, which is your thickening agent.

Much better quality.

And now that I don't have time to take care of my chicken, I still try to get my eggs in a health food place to get organic egg.

Actually I get it where I am from, a farm which is an organic farm, you know?

And that's important in term of the quality of the eggs.

What we wanna do here is to rearrange the slice of mushroom from the cap.

As I say, this will be in the decoration of the omelet.

So we put them on a little spatula or a knife here just to arrange it on top.

This way.

So the quality of the eggs for me is very, very important here.

Now those pieces, we put them in there.

(spoon clanking) Now, what I'm going to do here is a classic French omelet.

There is different type of omelet.

We do in France omelet which are a country type of omelet, just as they do standard American omelet where you put your eggs into the skillet and that you have large curd, you turn those curd into the liquid eggs, let it curdle again and eventually fold it together.

It makes large curd with a different texture.

And this is more of a country style omelet within.

In the case of what we are doing here, I think I should clean up that pot, that skillet after the mushroom.

And what we are doing here, it's a bit different.

I am moving, I will be moving the pan very, very fast so that I get the smallest possible curd of eggs.

And you don't want it because as soon as the eggs curdle in the bottom, the protein that is the albumin in the egg solidified and get hard, if you overcook your eggs, like when you do omelet, even when you do things with egg like custard, if you overcook, it toughen, you know?

So you don't want the eggs to toughen so you move it as fast as you can, you know?

And as soon as the egg is slightly thicken, you fold it, bring back both lips.

So put your eggs in the butter.

With your hand and the flat of the spoon here, you move that omelet.

(skillet scrapping) As you can see, as fast as you can bring back the side.

And now hold the egg down this end.

I like it's soft so I bring everything here so that I don't have a layer and roll a carpet.

Here, just let it take.

Run my fork around and I fold that lip, the first lip.

You see, you want to have a nice half moon shape.

Now to bring back that lip, bang it here, (skillet banging) which will bring back that lip as you see here.

Now, you change hand, take your plate, bang the omelet so that it's really to the edge then you can invert it.

And the omelet should be oval like that, very creamy and soft in the center.

It should not even be brown.

And no plate on top.

And finally here I'm putting the last touch on top of this, which is the end of your omelet.

Now, that omelet is soft as you can see here.

This is a question of taste.

Sometime you want your omelet to be much more cooked, and it's perfectly fine, you know, but it should be pointed and soft like this.

Now, I can put that omelet right here and we can look at our eggs.

I can see, you know, when I shake the eggs I can see whether it's cooked or not.

And at that point, again, my wife very often would like her eggs done this way, you know?

I like my eggs done a little more.

Those eggs need at least one more minute to cook.

And during that time I can do a couple of toast that we are going to have.

If you unmold one of those eggs, you will unmold it on a little croton like this.

So you just do your toast and unmold it and cut croton out of this.

I always keep this, you know, to do breadcrumb with it.

I do the breadcrumb and keep them sometime for a couple of days before I use them, in the freezer.

On those here, you wanna trim the edge of it if you wanna be a little fancy, you know?

and cut little strip like this.

We call that in French, mollet.

And mollet is just mollet meaning to wet.

So you eat your egg actually with this instead of using a spoon, you know, which is nice and cute.

And this is sometime arranged directly on a plate, you know?

We can put those this way, across.

You do like a pyramid out of it, you know, which is nice for breakfast, little toast like this.

Okay, so that's one way of arranging it, you know, if you want.

This one should be toasted a bit more.

Okay, here we are.

And that one mold, the other one.

Remember that this is, yeah, those are about cooked and up the first one here.

This and those.

You can see the inside how shaky they are, and that indicate the amount of cooking that they have.

I can see this one with the peas underneath is the first one.

And another garnish that we do here would be, let's say, if you have a little bit of ham, then you put some.

And what you do actually you put it all around the yolk, you know, or the garnish.

This is an ideal thing to use.

The little bit of sauce left over.

One of the greatest egg like that is with a truffle sauce with that very expensive mushroom, or a regular mushroom sauce, you know.

And if you have it, you just need maybe one and a half teaspoon per person of those eggs of the sauce left over, you know?

So let's see this one.

May still be a little bit soft to be unmolded really.

I'll take the chance and mold it.

Here, I have a napkin folded this way, which is a classical presentation to put those eggs in that I have here.

And you eat that with your little mollet on the side here.

And this one here can be unmolded directly on the toast.

As I say, it need a little more cooking, but I see it coming out.

That's it.

Nice and soft, you see?

We put that right in the middle here.

You would wanna put that on a plate.

And this is our egg breakfast.

Now, let's have our breakfast in the dining room.

This is not your everyday breakfast, of course.

This is a leisurely type of Sunday breakfast, brunch even.

Actually when you have that type of breakfast, most of the time you don't have lunch either.

We have a lot of savory dishes here.

I think we probably eat too much sugar usually, especially for breakfast.

So this is your savory, especially if you do a little bit of jogging or exercise on Sunday morning, you know, this is a great breakfast to have.

And of course like my soup now tend to be a little thick, so I may wanna put a little bit of milk in it.

Those things tend to thicken, but it's kind of good and healthy.

I mean with the soup after, remember we have our mushroom omelet here, which is nice and smooth.

I mean you can cook it a bit less, a bit more.

This is our cocotte eggs plain, with the little mollet.

And here we have the three variation with the pea in the bottom and mold it with the herbs round with a bit of ham on top.

And finally after that, the little mold of white fish.

Remember you can use white fish or another type of smoked fish.

And our beautiful citrus fruit dessert.

And with that, a nice mug of strong coffee.

And if you really festive, maybe a champagne cocktail, either your champagne plain, or maybe I like it with a little bit of orange juice in it.

And with that, I wanna toast you and wish you a happy cooking.