- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

Usually I'm pretty down-to-earth.

I rarely go in for fancy clothes or flashy cooking.

But every so often, it's fun to do something really classy and a little unusual.

Our menu today is fashionable, chic, and still very good for you.

Sauteed sweetwater trout with tomatoes and olives, a succulent grilled quail served with an unusual grain called quinoa, with pumpkin seeds and carrots, and a delicious no-fat raspberry granita for dessert.

It's a surprisingly easy and elegant dinner coming up on "Today's Gourmet."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) Sometimes at home, you know, I'm in the mood to cook something chic, a bit different, to demystify often what people consider complicated cooking, you know?

Often, French is considered very complicated, and today, we are going to do very classic dish.

Trout for example, we're going to grill quail, we're going to do quinoa, which is a special type of grain and unusual, and we're going to do a raspberry granita to finish, which is terrific.

And what we wanna do first is to start with our trout.

And I have trout here, those are raised trout.

Of course, you buy them at the market fresh.

Now they are very easy to come along with and very easy to handle.

I buy them often, you buy them live from even the super market, and they can kill them right there for you, and all you have to do is to usually the fish monger is going to eviscerate them for you.

All you have to do is pat them dry a little bit, those are rainbow trout so-called, you know type, usually the raised type.

They also raise the brook trout as well as the brown, but the most common is this one.

So a little bit of salt and paper on top.

And in there I am going to put a tablespoon of butter and a dash of canola oil again, you know, we use which is our monounsaturated oil, actually the least saturated of all oil.

Pepper on top of this.

And we start cooking.

Those are, you know, about 12 ounces trout, good weight.

We put them flat, I have a nice pan here, oval pan, which, you know, fit the configuration of the fish.

So they are nice to cook.

They will cook about four minutes on medium to high temperature there, and I'll shake them occasionally.

And while this is cooking or start cooking, we're going to move to the second dish, which is our quinoa.

It's unusual, it's a very-high protein grain from Inca origin, it comes from Peru, and there it was used, it was part of tradition, it has all the type of application like religious application and so forth.

And those are those tiny little grains like this, you know, and they kind of become transparent when they cook, as you will see.

We're going to do that with onion saute, and we have pumpkin seeds which are very good there.

And those tiny baby dry resins that we call currant, you know, they are not real currant because the currant doesn't dry.

This is the raisins.

So first we are going to do the onion and this has to be sauteed first.

(knife tapping) (pan sizzling) We chop the onion.

This is about two ounces onion, you could have a bit more, actually you could put some leek also for color in it.

Or another type of onion, you know, in the onion family you can use some shallot, you can use some scallion, you know, and all that is going to be fine.

You have to be imaginative a little bit in your cooking.

So what we do with this, we start sauteing this, and we are going to put a little bit of olive oil in there, olive oil or another type of oil, and saute that first for a couple of minutes.

And now you want those nuts to brown, you know.

A little bit.

So that will take a couple of minutes to brown.

I like to do that type of base, actually sometime I use other type of nuts, you know, those pumpkin seeds are nice because not only are they beautiful and green, they have a nice crunch to it.

We're going to cook this with chicken stock also.

So after this cooked a couple of minutes, you can saute.

You don't want the onion really too brown there.

Then you put your quinoa into it, and you wanna stir it nicely so that it's really coat, you know, the oil in the bottom will really coat the grain nicely.

The same technique that you do for rice.

Then we put our dry currants in there.

Nice color.

You have a lot of fiber in there.

And the chicken stock.

(pan sizzling) That's it.

Come to a strong boil right away.

You can cover it with a lid.

You want to lower the heat so it boils very gently, and you cook that for approximately 18 minutes.

You know, that's about the time that it will take to absorb.

I have a cup and a half of chicken stock here.

And now let's look at our trout.

I think they're about cooked on one side so I can flip them over.

You can see they're beautifully brown there.

I can actually, you know, if I wanna get them moist inside, cover them a little while for a couple of minutes and lower the heat, which is the right way.

By doing that it puts some moisture in them and they kind of steam and brown at the same time.

And during that time we're going to do the garnish for it.

You can, you know, the classic way what we call poisson, or the fish meuniere, you know, that is in the tradition of the baker or the bread baker, is to do it just sauteed like this with a little bit of mushroom.

For us, we have a larger type of garnish.

We have tomato here, we have mushroom of course, we have a lemon, and black olives, and you can put parsley in that, this is chive.

What you do with the lemon, we wanna use the lemon as a garnish.

So I'm cutting the lemon here.

That is the whole skin of the lemon.

And note that I'm using my knife in a jigsaw-fashion again, you know, to cut all around.

I may not need all of the lemon, but it's a nice way of peeling it.

And now on that lemon, I wanna cut it into dice.

So we are going to have little dice of lemon in there.

You know, it's a little bit like when you use capers, you know, it's a bit acid and so forth, and that goes well with it.

So there I'm cutting that into stick and each stick into little dice.

Okay, this is about, maybe a bit more.

The garnish for our trout here.

You know, we use a lot of sweetwater fish, you know, where I am.

And because at some time of the year it's hard to get other type of fish.

And fortunately now, all over the country you can get trout year round, which is terrific.

We're gonna put tomato in there.

So cut the tomato in half to expose the seed and we press the seed and juice out of it.

This one is quite fleshy, which is beautiful.

And that we are going to cut into dice again as a garnish, you know?

My knife.

Always sharpen your knife as you go along.

For a professional chef, it become almost a condition reflex, you know?

Sharp knife are important.

Actually, what is a sharp knife?

A sharp knife is a knife with which you can cut an over-ripe tomato with.

Then it's sharp, you know?

So here I have little dice of tomato that will be first.

Beautiful color.

Give me some acidity.

I have the chives and I also have, those are cured olive, cured type of olive, you know, same cure, we call it Moroccan style.

Then we put some mushroom there.

Here.

(knife tapping) (pan sizzling) The mushroom can be cut this way.

Couple of mushrooms should be fine.

And now let's see whether our trout are ready.

(pan sizzling continues) Put them on the side, by touching them that gives me an indication of how far ahead they are, you know?

And they are getting there, maybe another minute or so.

During that time, you know, I can show you a decoration that you do with large mushroom when you need pieces like that, you cut the top, the top you can use it for this of course.

And there like in our curve, I can draw a mushroom, a fish, rather, I'm doing a fish.

So I'm drawing a fish with the point of a knife.

This way.

I mark the fish.

I mean sometime I draw something else like a chicken or whatever.

And now that the fish is drawn, with the point of a knife, I can cut around the fish, that is to remove some of the flesh around and put that design into a relief.

So now I have a relief of a fish here.

I can trim it around and cut the top part of the decoration, meaning that actually what I've taken out of that is only a slice of fish.

And I can put a bit of lemon juice on top of it that I have here, that will stay white.

We can put that other decoration.

All those pieces can be added to your recipe so you don't lose anything at all.

Okay, so this is the garnish for my fish and now I want to remove the fish.

Grab our scoop.

They are brown on the other side also, as you can see.

Going to lower my heat here a little bit, put them there.

And in the dripping process, I'm going to put those mushrooms to saute.

They just get warm, you know, just basically gets warm.

And the mushroom, I mean the tomato on top of it (pan sizzling) just so that they get warm.

This can go right on top of it.

This is it, it doesn't have to cook more than that.

The lemon.

And now we're ready to serve our trout.

Clean up my table a little bit, and we're going to serve on that plate right here.

We'll bring the trout, and sometime, you know, people are a bit squeamish about cooking trout and serving it the whole trout.

I like it this way, you know?

So if your guest, you think, is going to complain a little bit, you can bone out the trout for it.

You cut in the center of the trout here, and with your knife, pull out.

You see?

Pull out the filet.

This is a quarter of the trout bone out.

Now with my knife, I pull out the other side, you see it slide right off the bone, which indicate that it's cooked anyway.

And now I take the tail of the trout, I lift up the bone right here at the end, take the tail and remove that whole bone and head together, which now I can get away with.

All I have to do is to replate that on top, that piece on top here.

The other filet on the other side is a bit nicer so I will turn it upside down to serve it on this side bone out.

And here of course you can do it into individual plates, you know?

You bring that on top of it, and with a nice spoon you can serve all of your garnish here and around.

That's it.

With a little bit maybe of cleaning around.

The green on top of it.

And here it is, a classic chic elegant dish.

(upbeat music) Now we're going to make a very elegant dessert.

No fat in it, no cholesterol, and a lot of flavor.

With raspberry.

Nice ripe raspberry.

And I use raspberry preserve rather than using sugar.

There is sugar in it but it intensify the flavor.

A bit of lemon juice.

So very simply, we put, this is the way you do sherbet.

We're doing a granita which is really close to the same thing as a sherbet.

And I'm putting this in there (utensil tapping) with a little bit of the lemon juice for acidity.

And we're going to process it, mm, this way.

(blender whirring) Won't take long.

A few seconds.

Now we want to strain it, because remember, the seed in the raspberry and in the raspberry preserve.

Now, if you don't object to seed it's fine, but usually I would tend to like to strain it.

So I strain it.

One way to clean up the knife, you know, of your food processor is to put it back when it's empty, process it one second, and take the knife out, then it's clean.

The speed of the machine will clean up the knife.

Take all the rest of it.

And, you know, most people when they strain this now are going to spread with the spatula.

I don't do this, I bang it.

(utensil tapping) You see, if you push with the spatula in it, what you do actually, you push each seed into a little hole, and within, you know, a couple of, 10, 15 seconds, the whole thing is plugged.

So by doing what I'm doing here, I'm banging it to make actually the seed jump like this so they don't plug the hole.

At the end, only at the end do I press it a little bit at the end because.

And you know what I do, even with those raspberry seed that I have left in it, I could spend a bit more time on it.

Even those raspberry seed, I put them in vinegar sometimes, people wanna do raspberry vinegar.

You can put that in vinegar.

So this, which is now nice and smooth, we freeze, you know?

Something, well, you don't have to do it in there, I do it in there because it goes faster.

But you can put them in a bowl and freeze them for a couple of hours until it get a bit solid, not completely.

And I have one which is done right here.

And this we put back in the food processor at that point here to emulsify it a little bit.

You see, it is not completely hard, but hard enough.

So I put it back in there just to give it a bit more texture.

And by doing this, what happened actually, you put some air into it and the air will make it fluffy and a bit lighter.

(blender whirring) It soften it a little bit too.

And that's all there is to it.

You put it back now, it's like a slush, you know?

And it's actually very good this way.

That slush you can put it back in your freezer, and then when it get very hard in your freezer, in two, three hours you can scoop it directly into your glass.

I like to serve it in glass to serve it, you know, maybe with a little sprig of mint or something like that on top.

And now we wanna go to the quail.

We are boning quail for our first course today.

And I have quail right here with the garnish that I'm going to do with it.

I have bone out quail here.

You can buy them like this on the market.

And I have one which need to be bone out.

And I can show to you how to bone them out.

The quail, the little bird is being held at the joint of the shoulder right here.

And I can cut the skin of the back to go faster and cut here at the joint of the shoulder.

I can feel on each side if I wiggle my knife a little bit, I am in the joint.

And all I do here is to pull it out this way, pull it out the other way, then I bring it down, pushing it down like this, breaking the back leg at the joint, the joint of the hip right there.

And I break it out and pull it out, and basically in a few seconds, the quail is bone out to that extent.

I can leave the bone of the back or push the bone this way to remove at least what we call the thigh bone.

I have here this one, and the other one again, grabbing it this way, putting your finger and pushing it down like that to clear out the bone, you see?

Very easy way of doing it.

And I can break the bone at the joint here.

Now it completely bone out leg except for the drum.

I have a little bit of the filet here that I can remove with my finger to put on top of it here.

And there, notice that there, you know, in that boning process, I don't really use too much of a knife.

Now, I have bone out that quail by opening the back.

Sometime I do it without opening the back.

You can do one or the other.

And I can reform it this way.

That's it.

It's much easier to eat.

So now what we are going to do is marinade for it.

And this is a mixture of garlic.

I'm going to do it in the tiny food processor, here it work well.

I have a clove of garlic in there, I have a shallot.

We're going to cut that red onion that we call a shallot, some jalapeno paper, hot pepper.

I mean, this is depending how you like it, you know, if you like it hot or not.

And we put in there what we call nuoc mam, it's a fish sauce, you know, that is used in different cooking, particularly Vietnam.

And a little bit of water.

That's it.

And we do the marinade here.

Just process it for a few seconds.

(blender whirring) And of course you can do that ahead, you know?

And put it directly on your bird here, I mean, in a gratin dish or something like this.

You can marinate your birds, a very pungent type of taste, you know, that you have.

And of course, even though you should theoretically leave it for a while, what I'm going to do is to cook it right away.

I put it on my grill here, and it's quite hot on the grill.

(grill sizzling) Putting the quail.

They cook a few minutes on each side.

And you can keep that marinade here to put it back into it, you know, for taste later on.

And while this is cooking, I wanna tell you a little bit about butter.

I know that in our cooking, I've got a great deal butter, but I still use butter.

When I use it, especially at the table, I like it to look nice.

And I wanna show you how to make it so it looks nice.

To start with, when you serve, if you have butter at the table, look, I put it in small container.

It's tightly covered with a piece of plastic, otherwise it pick up every taste that you have in your refrigerator.

So do it until the last moment.

And after that you can decorate the top if you want with a fork like this.

I mean you can put a little bit of red in it, like I have the piece of tomato skin here, you know, for color, you know, a bit of green if you want.

All of that is fine, just for color.

I have the leaf of tarragon, or in that case, watercress.

That looks good.

But one elegant way of doing it is to doing a flower with the butter and a knife.

So what you do, you scrape the top of the butter to get that texture that you roll on itself to do a base here.

Now look at that.

This is the base of the flowers that I can put here.

And I do another swirl, which is going to be the inside.

You see, the inside of that flower, which I put it there.

You can see it.

Beautiful.

The way to keep this, the best way is to drop it in ice-cold water.

It get immersed in the water, it doesn't pick up any taste.

And then it gets very hard and you can use it.

Remember that butter is caloric.

I have not quite maybe a tablespoon there.

A tablespoon of butter is a hundred calorie less, a bit less than oil.

I have here some paprika.

And what you can do is if you want to roll the edge in the paprika just to give another effect to your flowers here.

And you see, for example on that one, I can make a little hole in the center, place that in, and you really have a beautiful presentation of butter for your table.

And now I want to see whether my quail are cooked.

So let's get here.

The quail are doing good.

I like to have a very strong grill.

They are so nicely brown, I like them nice and char like this.

Mm, that's beautiful.

And it smells good, especially with the nuoc mam in it.

And what we want to finish now, we want to finish our quinoa that we had before here.

And that quinoa, that is very fluffy now as you can see, that beautiful grain, you know?

So it's fluffy.

We want to arrange it on a plate.

Remember, I have pumpkin seed in it, I have those tiny raisins that we call currants, and that we are going to put on as decoration.

So I put some of the quinoa on top here, spread it.

This is a terrific grain, you know, I spread it again to put my quail in the middle as it is here.

And it's beautiful.

Then I can get the quail.

(quail sizzling) A nice one here, right in the middle of it.

And maybe a bit of what we had at the beginning, a decoration, those raisins, a bit more on top.

Pumpkin seed, maybe a bit of the green if you want to put tarragon, I mean the watercress in it.

And here it is, a classic elegant dish, the quail and quinoa Now it's time to enjoy our classic chic dinner.

We enjoy that of course with friends.

I don't cook like that for myself alone, but I like to cook like that for friends.

We really have a very nice menu today I think, under 950 calorie for all that we have.

We have those trout, you know, again, sweetwater fish, but a fatty fish which is very good for you with that whole area of different type of vegetable.

We have the quail, a small quail, you know, those are unusual ingredients, maybe the pumpkin seeds, the quinoa.

You may or may not have cooked it before, but you shouldn't be afraid of it.

As you see, it's quite easy and nice, beautiful to look at.

The salad, and of course that great dessert of puree of raspberry, which is there's no fat in it.

And on top of this, we put a little bit of framboise, you know?

That I like, except for the children maybe of course.

This is a real raspberry brandy, you know, a very high-quality, which will really bring the taste up.

And with this, maybe a glass of our pure Burgundy.

We have here a Corton, which is a pure Burgundy, this is a terrific wine, fruity, which will go well with our meal.

I hope you're going to make the dinner, invite some friend, have a great time.

I enjoy making it for you.

Happy cooking.