- Hi, I'm Jacques Pépin.

When I was growing up in France, I used to love going into the countryside.

Outside the city there are a whole different way of life and our program today is my tribute to country French cooking.

Braised artichokes stuffed with breadcrumb and garlic, a fragrant bowl of mussel in white wine served with fried potato that are surprisingly low in fat, plus a creamy coffee flavored caramel custard.

So join me on an excursion into country style on "Today's Gourmet".

(light airy music) (light airy music) What is country French style?

Wallpaper, antique furniture, but there is style of cooking as well that is eating with your finger, easy type of food you know, that you eat with a friend on Sunday afternoon.

And this is what we are going to do today.

And we start with a classic dessert, which is a caramel custard, a creme caramel aux cafe with coffee.

And we've started there to make a caramel for it.

And as you can see here is sugar and water, which is cooking until it reach the caramel stage, which is close to now.

(speaking in French) Caramel indicate a color really.

And this is what we are going to have here.

So you cook your caramel into a saucepan like this, you can actually cook it directly into your oven proof container if it goes on top of the stove.

But as it reach the right color here, this is what you do.

You put it in there which is going to cool off the caramel and you slush it around so that the bottom of your container is covered with the caramel that we put here.

It has to cool a little bit.

And the second part of the recipe, we're going to warm up some milk.

I have a cup and a half of milk here and with this, a couple of tablespoon of sugar.

Don't put too much sugar.

And we are flavoring it with coffee here.

So I'm putting about a teaspoon or so of instant coffee.

Now we used to do those recipe with cream, a lot of cream and a lot of eggs and so forth.

We've cut down a great deal nowadays.

So even though this is a caramel custard, relatively rich, it has only one egg plus one egg yolk or rather one egg plus one egg white.

We use only one egg yolk in the recipe for 4.

So done with the milk.

And this is whole milk.

If you use defatted milk or lower type of fat milk, you will even lower your calorie content.

In that case here we have about 120 calorie per person.

One way of separating eggs, you know you can break your eggs and separate it this way that you sure you have all the egg white in there.

Remember that the egg white here is really the albumin which is going to give you the coagulating thing that you need.

I mix my egg and egg yolk in there.

I don't want that milk to be too hot, just hot enough actually to melt that instant coffee and it's about enough now.

So I'm going to put that in there.

Mix it well.

Of course if that milk was boiling hot here you will have problem putting your eggs in it because it would cook the eggs.

So make sure the eggs is lukewarm.

To be sure that you don't have any little pieces of eggs on top, we strain that directly on top of the caramel.

And notice here that I use a double mesh type of strainer thick and that double mesh strainer is very good to take all the little particle in it.

This has to cook in a double boiler, that is through the heat transfer of water.

So the protein that is the egg white coagulate very slowly.

If it cook too fast, you're going to have all kind of little air bubble around because it cook too fast, it start expanding.

So you want to cook it to a slow heat transfer.

We put that in a 350 degree oven and that will cook for about close to an hour.

If it goes too fast the water should not boil around because if the water boiled around it is going to cook too fast.

So make sure the water doesn't boil.

If it start boiling, you can always put a couple of ice cube around to lower the temperature of the water.

We continue the French style country cooking.

It is actually Belgium a great deal.

We are doing french fry.

And even though the french fry may come from France, in Belgium, this is really the natural dish and we are going to cook it later actually with mussel.

And mussel and french fry is typically Belgian.

So we have our potatoes.

The potato is peeled, I can leave it in water, it won't discolor it.

We cut it into about half inch slice and across again to do your standard french fry.

Sometime if we do them smaller, in France we call them pommes allumettes, matchstick potato if they're a bit smaller than that.

Then I wash them in water.

It takes some of the starch out of it.

And what we do in professional kitchen, we cook those ahead.

You know when you have a restaurant and you serve a lot of french fry, don't think that the french fry are cooked at the last moment because first if you cook them at the last moment like this, they will be dry.

Dry inside, too crunchy on the outside.

So what we do, we pre-cook the french fry.

And I have a cup and a half of oil here, not that much.

And at about 330 degree we're going to cook those potato in there.

So they cook about four, five minutes until they are cooked.

Until they are cooked, but white still and soft.

And this is your first part, you can do that hours ahead.

And I have some that I have done here.

As you can see those potato are soft, they are cooked now soft but they are not crunchy, they are not crispy and they are white still.

And this is what you do, you cover them, you can do that a few hours ahead, at the last moment you drop them back into very hot oil, then they crisp.

The classic way of doing potato.

And now the first course in our recipe we are doing artichokes.

So I want to talk to you about artichokes and show you those beautiful green artichoke specimen.

Artichokes is very good, very high in potassium.

You have about a third of your daily requirement in one artichoke.

Low in calorie.

It is about 50 calorie per artichoke.

Now the stem like that, we can peel it as I'm doing here and keep it you see.

Even when we cook a classic artichokes, we take the top off, you have to watch those needle.

So we take the top off.

There is really not much to be used there and those leave on the outside here, you can trim them this way so that when you grab them to eat them, you don't puncture your finger and it looked a little better.

That artichoke seal that I'm doing, I will put that in boiling water, put a plate on top of it to push the artichoke so it stay under the water and boil it for like 25, 30 minutes.

And this is the way we cooked artichokes.

Now when you want to do artichoke bottom like I have an artichoke bottom here, there is a couple of way of doing it.

You take an artichoke that I have here and I have already started and you break it like if you were eating artichokes and pull it out.

You see the part that you eat stay there.

If I break it and pull down, you see, so you don't lose anything really.

You have to be careful if you pull too much, look at this.

I've taken here that piece, which theoretically that piece which is eatable here, which belong right there.

So you have to break it, pull down, break it, pull down.

There is another way of doing it that I will show you.

When you finish doing that, you cut the top, you can retrieve those leaves from the center which are kind of tender, those here.

This you can cook with your artichokes and you cook that artichoke.

You can clean it up a little more around if you want with a vegetable peeler.

What I do also with another artichokes... This one is nicer.

I cut the end of it and cut it all around with a knife this way.

For that you need a little more practice.

Cut the center.

Again, this you can keep, you finish trimming it around and you have an artichokes bottom just like I have here and I keep the tail.

Most of the time the artichokes after they've been in that position, you cook them in water as we are going to do today.

And I have one cooked here a bit smaller than this one.

What you do, you grab the center of it when it's cooked and you pull out the whole center of those leaves like this.

You see, this is eatable.

Now what you've done there, you expose the choke inside and the choke here with a spoon, you remove that choke, you know that's no good.

This is your classic way.

You take this, put it back on top of it, you take a little sprig of parsley, you take that and this is your classic Artichauts Vinaigrette with a light hollandaise.

We don't do hollandaise anymore but maybe a little bit of vinaigrette to put on top.

And that's a terrific first course.

And now I'm going to finish the artichokes.

You know the artichoke that I show you there.

Remember I take the inside out, I take the choke and those leaves that I took out of it, very often I will take some part of it, like the bottom part of it, which is standard and add that to my stuffing along with the tail.

I mean the stem like that, if you cut it, this is perfectly fine.

So what we are doing it here we are mixing that with the stuffing.

I have a very simple stuffing here, made of chopped onion.

You saute a little bit of onion with olive oil, then I put mushroom in it, those little pieces of artichokes and finally breadcrumb.

Don't get it become too gooey.

The breadcrumb should be nice and fluffy.

So you cook the breadcrumb a little bit with the onion until the bread fry.

And when I talk about breadcrumb, really I'm talking about fresh bread.

You take a couple of slices of bread, put it in your food processor.

Now that is what I do here.

I can put some between the leaves.

You finish your stuffing.

Stuffing it a bit between the leaf and inside.

We have a famous dish in France like that called Artichoke Barigoule.

Barigoule is the name of the recipe.

Nothing special.

Remember that those artichokes are very high in potassium.

What we are doing here, putting them into, I have a cup of water here and a little bit of olive oil and we finishing brazing it in that mixture.

I have a bit of stuffing, I put it right on top of it here.

Basically by the time we finish cooking, I should have nothing left in that part.

So that will cook about 20 minutes.

We cover it here and let it cook.

Now I'm going to start the mussel.

Remember we are doing a French Belgian type of country menu.

The Belgian use mussel with french fry.

I have four pound of mussel here.

They are all clean.

And I will tell you a little more about the mussel later.

What I put in those mussel here, is some fresh tomato.

I put some scallion.

I have a lot of different vegetable.

I love the color as well as the taste, of course.

I have sliced garlic, all clove of garlic sliced like this, of course onion, a lot of onion here and mushroom.

I have all of that mixture here.

And finally a bit of olive oil on top of it.

I'm putting some white wine in it.

And Tabasco.

The white wine will of course mix with the juice of the mussel and create its own sauce.

A bit of Tabasco, if you like it hot.

You can put the jalapeno pepper or one of those.

I like the Tabasco.

You want to toss your mussel a little bit.

(mussels rattling) This way cover it and start cooking.

Actually when they are cooking you want to toss them a couple of time.

You can bring that across, hold this with your thumb and toss the mussel this way.

That's a good way of doing it.

So this has to cook a good five minute.

During that time we want to finish our french fry here.

Now the oil is very hot and those pre-cooked french fry as you saw before.

Here, where they go into that oil again.

Now the oil is about 400 degree.

Now you don't wanna go too high with the oil either because you don't want to burn the oil.

We use a polyunsaturated type of oil here, which can withstand high temperature like safflower oil or peanut oil is a bit heavy.

But safflower oil would be very good or canola oil would be very good too.

I wanna discuss mussel with you a little more.

Now you see that mussel here, there is a beard attached to it here.

Usually they are quite clean.

Remember that you have to buy your mussel in a reputable place.

Don't go and mussel yourself because a lot of place are polluted now.

So in that reputable place you have your mussel which are basically clean now.

They grow on the wire, suspended in water, yet we pull out that beard.

In Greece, you know they take that beard and wave it to do glove.

They give that from daughter to father and so forth father to son rather, and they use that to go fishing.

The knife doesn't go through it.

Remember that when you see one of those open like this one is open, it really doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad.

Look, if I touch that mussel inside, I touch the mussel here, I touch the inside and I see that mussel is closing.

So it's just opening to breathe and to get water.

It doesn't really necessarily mean that it's bad.

Otherwise if it smells strong, if it's unopened, then discard it.

But touch it a little bit inside to know whether it is alive or it is just... See this one I think is dead.

I would discard it.

So this is important.

Now those mussels are relatively inexpensive and they are very good in the protein and all that.

So they are nice things to do.

Now let's see our french fry are practically ready now.

As you can see they are nice and brown and crisp.

They will cook very fast there like a minute or so, they're real french fry now.

And I was saying when you go to Belgium they eat french fry every day or potato in one form or another.

When I go to friend of mine, which are Belgian, whatever the menu is, there is potato in it.

They will tell you about the menu, but there is always potato included.

Remember also that in Belgium we can put a little bit of salt on top of this.

In Belgium, the mussel that I did is a bit different because they don't really put all of the tomato and stuff that I put in it.

Usually they put celery and onion.

Now I have my artichokes here which are about finished.

So we are going to serve our artichokes.

Now you can see with our beautiful artichokes here, I'll take a little bit of the juice oil there mostly that I put around.

If you see this one has reduced a little too much.

You could always add two or three tablespoon of water that I could have done on top.

That on top and that's it.

You eat that like lukewarm.

Now I'm going to try the french fry.

Now I have my french fry nice and crispier you see and what we have done in those french fry and I know that there is a lot of calorie in french fry.

Remember I studied those french fry and I measure one and a half tablespoon of oil that I add in there.

One and a half cup of oil rather, no tablespoon that I had to start with.

I cooked those french fry the first time, I refry them the second time, then I measure the oil that I use and I actually add a cup and a quarter of oil leftover, meaning that in my recipe there, I used four table spoon of oil, which is for 4 people.

So it end up being 1 tablespoon of oil per person, which is relatively little.

I mean if those potato, I had done a potato salad with it, I will use at least the same amount of oil or more, and so even in a green salad also.

So we can dish out.

This is sailor style.

So very often, sometime if you want it a bit more fancy, you open the oyster, disregard that part and just serve that up shell.

But sailor style, now we serve the whole thing together, juice and all.

You know in that way there is a lot of juice in the bottom here and you have big portion of mussel here.

You eat a lot of this.

You know there is way of eating it also.

In the country very often you may take one empty thing like this and you use that actually to pick up your mussel out of it, use that other spoon if you want or other fork to get it out.

So I have my mussel ready here, maybe a little bit of herb, fresh herb on top of it.

And this is the whole menu that we have today.

You know, mussel or not, that common or that familiar to many people in the country because even though they're high in protein, they're very nutritious.

You don't get them all over the country.

But I wanna show you a couple of other dish that I do with mussel, which are terrific.

One of it which is very classic, either soup, you know we call it the Billi Bi.

And it's really done with the stock.

Obviously there's already a lot of stock coming out of it and you can reduce that, bind it with a little bit of cream if you want and this is a very, very good stock, maybe the best stock that you can have to do other type of fish soup also.

Another thing too, we serve the mussel like this, the whole mussel sometime in what we call a type of vinegarette, and the vinegar, a type of dressing you know with a lot of onion vinegar and so forth.

And for that, very often we take that strip around here, which is the (indistinct) really of the mussel which tend to be a bit elastic and strong.

I mean most of the time I don't remove it, but if you do a very elegant soup, that's another thing that you can do.

And more often than not, those mussel are served on the half shell like that just blanched.

And as I say, when you do this you keep the juice to do your soup, then you take your mussel this way, you arrange them and you can inside those mussels, if they are small you can put two, and you do them just like we do snail in France, escargot, you know that we call snail and by putting a little mixture of herbs on top of it and fresh breadcrumb.

And this is what you can do very easily if you have a small food processor.

Fresh breadcrumb makes a big difference, the fresh bread crumb to the dry one.

So I put a little bit of fresh breadcrumb here, I can put some parsley in it.

This is flat parsley but you can have another type of herb if you want directly with it and maybe a clove of garlic.

Put all of this together.

This is really what we call a snail butter.

We used to say butter.

Now we use munch less butter than we used to.

(machine whirring) But as you can see, that makes a terrific mixture.

Actually that mixture here of fresh breadcrumb with the herb like this, you can use that on a roast of lamb, on a rack of lamb and all that classic.

Now often when you put it on lamb, this may dry out.

On top of this, so what you do, you moisten it with a little bit of oil.

Not much just enough so that the oil, I mean the breadcrumb doesn't get gooey.

But as you can see it still say quite fluffy here but enough so that it brown nicely on top and that's what you fill up on top of your mussel.

Sometime I like on top of that even to put a little bit of Tabasco.

Now you can prepare that way ahead.

And after you've prepared ahead, keep it in the refrigerator.

By the time you serve, you put that on the broiler for a couple of minutes, let it get beautifully crust and you have another terrific dish with mussel.

(light airy music) You know the caramel custard is really a real French country dessert.

Remember I put it in the oven, tell you it'll take like 45 minutes to an hour depending on the thickness and the type of material you put it in?

Now when it comes out, this is the way it should look like.

You can see it is shaking a little bit.

It seems that soft shaking but it is cooked.

You can check it by putting a knife into it.

If it comes out completely clean here, the eggs are set.

So this is what you do.

But of course at that point this has to rest.

You can even do it overnight.

Often that type of the dessert is done overnight.

And I have one here which has been setting up overnight.

So what you do here, you run your knife around.

As you see I hold my knife steady and really pull the mold around rather than the opposite.

Then put it on the plate.

This is now the time you start praying.

And unmold it.

Here as it comes.

We have the caramel and as I told you before, if it's overcooked, which is what happened to mine the water must have boil in the oven.

I have those little dots here which indicate expansion.

It start expanding the protein develop.

But I'll show you the center and you'll see that in the center, it is nice and smooth.

See the center is not just holding enough and that's what you want.

As you see we just have one egg in there, remember, plus one egg yolk and our natural caramel sauce around.

Sometime in restaurant, they sponge out that type of sauce.

Do another type of caramel, thicker that you flavored with rum or cognac or a bit of vanilla and serve it this way.

So we are going to bring that to our meal to have the whole meal together now.

We put that here and recap a little bit what we did today, what we cooked today.

We have remember the stuffed artichokes here.

I also have the plane artichokes with the little thing put back on top of it.

This is the plain artichoke, which is 50 calorie.

Of course the stuffed artichokes is going to be more caloric with the bread and a little bit of olive oil.

But it's still quite nice.

You can see we have used no butter here in any of the dish.

I have the mussel.

Mussel rather French style if you want with all kind of vegetable, mushroom around, tomato and so forth.

Finally our french fry.

And remember the french fry, the way we did them there, we used 1 tablespoon of oil per portion of french fry.

Because we started with one and a half cup oil, we finish with one and a quarter for 4 portion, which is four tablespoon.

And done this way, those french fry will be about 275 calorie, which is not that much.

Finally, the caramel custard here done with one egg and one egg yolk for 4 will be about 120 calorie.

So that's quite a low calorie type of dessert.

We always have a nice salad with it.

Add fiber, add color to the the dish.

And maybe with this, a nice glass of Beaujolais.

This is a Gamay Beaujolais from the Napa Valley, which I love.

It's nice and very live with a strong taste of berry.

I think it would go very well with it.

I hope you're going to do our Belgium French country meal and enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed preparing it for you.

Happy cooking.