- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

I love to go foraging through the forest looking for wild mushroom.

Today, we'll cook a first course with the food from the forest, a combination of wild and domestic mushroom sauteed quickly and spooned over toast.

Pasta tossed with walnut and onion on a brilliant red cushion of sweet bell pepper sauce.

And last, country apple tart in a free-form crust.

Perhaps the most French of all the desserts.

So join me after I walk in the forest for a lovely meatless meal on "Today's Gourmet."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) I'm going to do a typical summer menu for you today, and actually a meatless menu.

And very often we do that in summer with stuff from the garden, I have a big garden at home, and from the forest because I like to go into the forest, especially to pick up mushroom.

And I'm going to start with a very country apple tart, which is a very, very French dessert, except I'm going to make the dough in the food processor.

Easier, it goes faster, makes a terrific dough.

And the first thing that I want is a cup of flour.

And as you can see, I go directly into the band and level it up.

If you do it this way, it makes a difference.

If I do it this way, three cup flour is a pound, if I were to take that pound of flour and sift it, I can go to four cup because it aerates the flour, you know.

Then we put about two third of a stick of butter in there.

And this is of course unsalted butter, which is the only butter that I use.

When I use butter in that recipe, we are splurging a little bit, and very cold butter, and a little dash of sugar.

Now we want to process this just a little bit, not too much, but a little bit so that here it goes.

So that maybe five, five, six seconds, so that I still have tiny little pieces of butter all over the place here.

And those tiny little pieces of butter, when I roll the dough, will actually give me flakiness, the same flakiness that I have in a puff paste, you know.

So what I want to do here, put that back on top, and put water now, about two three tablespoon of water.

Just enough to cohere the door together.

You have to check it.

At that point, I think I need a bit more.

But you don't want to have too much water.

And of course this is going to depend on the amount of moisture that you have in the flour.

And when you're in full summer somewhere, when it's very humid, you're going to add more water into the flour.

I'm gonna put that on the board here.

Actually that dough is a little wet, but it's okay.

And get rid of this so I can roll the dough.

Now that dough here, I could roll it actually with plastic, gather it with plastic like that, a piece of plastic wrap or whatever.

And actually use that between two layer to roll it if I don't want to use too much flour.

Actually that technique is the one that my wife likes the best.

And the reason is that I don't dirty the table and I don't dirty the bowl and I don't dirty the rolling pin.

So this is the best dough according to my wife, but we won't do it like that this way today.

So a little bit of flour here.

Rolling pin, and I'm going to extend it.

Of course, you know, it's always better to leave the dough rest a little bit after you finish doing it.

If you rest, you know, it relax the gluten, that is the protein in the flour, which is the stuff which stands to get sticky, get elastic when you do it.

In that case here, I don't have to worry too much.

And the reason is that I really didn't work it too much, so it's not too elastic.

What is it, is that a bit wet.

So what I'm going to do is to bring it back onto the rolling pin this way so that I can unroll it here.

That's set.

If you have little hole, just gather them together.

And we are going to put the apple on top of this now.

It'd be better if I save the dough rest a bit.

So the apple, use a small knife here, use your thumb as a pivot to really turn and take that piece out of it.

I use that as a decoration very often with a little bit of lemon juice on top and use this.

Again, I use the knife, as you can see, I'm holding the knife, the small knife here very tight, and the left hand is actually pushing the apple into the knife as well as the knife is curling with the right hand.

And that technique is very useful.

And you can dry this out and make tea with it.

According to my grandmother, it's very good for your kidney.

I haven't tried it, so I don't know.

Again, the same technique, taking the center of the core out of it.

And what we do now is to slice those half apple and keep only the nice center cut, leave the one on the side here.

What I want to do actually is to use the trimming that I have here.

I have another couple of apple done, and that we'll put on the dough directly.

So here we'll chop that very coarsely.

Remember this is the trimming of your apple.

And we'll put that right in the center of the dough about one inch from the edge.

Here we are.

Now you can spread that on top.

You can use the technique spreading it this way, which will be good, or arranging it all around putting your apple slice so that by the time you finish doing it, it look like a big petal of a flour.

You know, apple tart like this or apple galette is very, very French.

There is certain type of dishes which are French for me and the apple galette, we call it a galette because a galette is something flat and very crisp and thin, just like a pizza type of thing, it's very French.

And there is many, many recipe.

Every chef has different recipe for apple galette.

I have about five or six recipe for apple galette.

And when you ask anyone, everyone will tell you, I have the best recipe for apple pie.

This happens to be the best recipe for apple pie or apple tarts as we say in France.

Okay, so you arrange it along, you have like nice big flowers, and then we bring back the dough on top of it.

May stick a little bit, especially with the light in the studio, but we can bring it.

Again, as I say, it's always nice to roll your dough and put it in the refrigerator a little bit so that it has time to cool off.

And that's it.

And if it leaks, like here, it may leak in a couple of place, put a piece of aluminum foil underneath if it leaks.

Now I'm mixing two tablespoon of sugar with a bit of cinnamon.

We're going to put that on top, even a little bit on the... A little bit on the dough outside.

And what we add to it is a little bit of honey also, about a tablespoon of honey.

And I could have put that on the little pieces of apple in the bottom.

And about a tablespoon of butter here on top, again, in tiny pieces.

And this is all we do sometime, you know, if you wanna be a bit more sophisticated when the dough or the tart rather is cooked and come out of the oven, then we put a bit of jam on top, a glaze we call, like an apricot glaze.

But conventionally, it's sugar and butter, that's it.

And now I'm going to put that in the oven.

This has to go 400 degree for at least an hour.

We want to cook a long time at high temperature to have it really crisp, and usually in the middle of your oven.

And now I'm going to show you what we pick up in the forest where I go when I was a child, you know.

I used to go with my father to pick up mushroom, and I took my daughter when she was small picking up mushroom too.

But you should never pick up mushroom if you don't know what you're doing because it can be very dangerous.

I have a lot of fresh mushroom here and I have dry mushroom here, all kinds, some soaking, some dry.

I have shiitake mushroom here, which is a grown so-called oak mushroom, and white oak mushroom or golden oak mushroom.

We are here an interesting mushroom, bright red we call lobster mushroom, and that's very sweet.

We even do dessert with it.

That's an enoki mushroom.

This is Hydnum repandum, we call that ship's feet in France.

And it has a special underneath, it's like little needle, as opposed to guild mushroom.

We have a cremini mushroom here, which is grown, and those are a parasite mushroom that if it grows on that tree, we call that Jew's ears in France, usually it's called trees here.

And here we have the regular Chanterelle, we have oyster mushroom, we have a lot of different type of mushroom.

And what I'm going to do is to take on those cremini, the bottom dirt out of it, and we are going to wash our mushroom.

I know very often people say don't wash mushroom, but you should wash it if they are dirty.

This mushroom here, the the shiitake mushroom, the stem is very tough, so I would remove it.

Now the idea is not that you don't wash your mushroom, the idea is that you do it only and only when you are ready to use it.

Because if you do it before, they get soggy, wet, and the first thing you have to do actually is when you go to the market, be sure to take the mushroom out of the plastic bag when you come home because they will get spoiled in there.

But the wild mushroom should be cooked also quite a long time.

But as I say, again, be sure to go to the, you know, there is different society in each village, and you can go to your society to foray with them to know what you're doing in the wood.

Don't go by yourself if you don't know anything.

But in each village, there is what they call mycological society where you can go with them and learn something about mushroom.

And we are going to use those with different type of herb.

And I have of course a great array of different type of mushroom here as you can see.

And those are a bit tougher.

Some are dark, some are light.

So it's good for the color too.

And later on, we're going to saute that in skillet with a little bit of oil and a lot of herbs in it, and it's going to be a delicious first course.

Now I can add to this a little bit of dry mushroom also.

All of that we are going to use later on.

As you see, I have a beautiful, I have a pound of mushroom here.

But in addition to that pound of mushroom, you could also use more of those, those happen to be Boletus edulis, a dry mushroom which is very strong.

And when you soak it like that, one of the great advantage is keeping the stock, makes a terrific soup or whatever.

First, you don't have to use only the mushroom that I use.

As you can see here, we have a lot of other type of mushroom and you can do your own choice.

And now let's cook our mushroom.

You know, mushroom are very high in potassium.

They're especially extremely low in calorie, which is very good.

Of course we're going to put a little bit of oil in it and a little dash of butter to do it.

But again, a small portion, I have like a teaspoon of butter here, and we're going to saute that in that large skillet.

You want to saute them so they are spread out enough so that the water, there is a certain amount of water that is the water of vegetation of the mushroom itself will come out.

You see when I put those mushroom in the skillet, they sizzle, within one or two minute, they won't sizzle anymore because liquid comes out of it.

And I cover it.

I'm gonna put a dash of salt and a little bit of pepper in it.

I cover it to make the water come out of it.

And so that they cook in their own juice.

Eventually the juice will evaporate and concentrate.

So I have my mushroom cooking.

Now what I want to cook here is the pasta.

And as you can see here, I have a basket directly into the hot water, which make my life easier.

We put the spaghetti linguini directly in there, which is very good.

And I don't even have salt in my water.

I know it's unconventional.

Usually people put salt in the water for pasta.

But I have tried it many ways and I think that I rather use the salt at the end when I season it, that cook a little bit.

So that will cook about seven, eight minutes.

We'll put it back on top of it.

And during that time, what I'm going to do is to work again on the pasta because with that pasta, we're going to serve onion and walnut.

And I have onion and walnut here, and I'm going to put that skillet on to start sauteing the onion and the walnut in there.

Again with a little bit of, here I need the oil that I'm going to season the pasta with, and I could put only oil is perfectly fine.

Onion, we're going to chop like half a cup of onion.

This is a nice big (indistinct) onion which is terrific.

Very sweet.

We have so many onion now on the market that you can choose from.

Those are particularly sweet and nice, and I love them, especially in salad, you know?

With that, we have the walnut.

The walnut are fairly high in fat, you know, but of course it's mostly unsaturated fat, you know, which is good.

So we have our onion in there that we're going to saute and pieces of walnut.

You could of course use another type of nut if you want.

From pecan to actually pignoli, in Italy and all that, they will use a great deal of pignoli nuts.

So we're going to saute this, check on my pasta here.

As you can see, stir it, especially at the beginning, so that it doesn't stick together.

Then after it's okay.

I'll put the cover on the side so it doesn't jump and flip my mushroom a little bit.

Until those mushroom are beautiful.

Now they are cooking, and especially wild mushroom, you want to cook them long enough, at least four, five minutes, they'll probably cook longer than that.

This will get tossed a couple of time too.

So remember, this goes with the pasta, that's different.

Now there is another thing which goes with the pasta, and it's pepper sauce, a red pepper sauce.

And I have some red pepper right here cooking, you know?

They are cooked actually.

I have a dash of water in the bottom, and by the time they finish cooking, actually there is no more water left.

This is done with those beautiful, which are organic pepper here, thick wall and all that.

Just cut them into pieces and put them in there.

We're going to put garlic in it, and we're going to strain that through a food mill.

You don't want to put that in the food processor, you can put it in the food processor really, but it's a bit better there because the fiber or the skin of it, you know, I'm going to remove the skin.

And it's an easy way of removing the skin by cooking it and putting it through a food mill.

I use food mill a lot when I do tomato sauce for example.

Or even someone to put our cook tags in it to do certain type of decoration.

Well here we go, you can see at the end, you are going to have only the skin and fibers, you know.

And I'll put that back right into my pot.

Now we have a nice beautiful red pepper here.

We're gonna put a bit of garlic in there, a little dash of butter, a bit of salt, a bit of pepper, and garlic.

Let me put that on the side, and I'll chop the garlic.

The garlic, we want to crush it to release the essential oil, you know?

Two, maybe three clove of garlic.

I love garlic.

In a rocking motion, you chop the garlic into a puree.

Here we go, and we have a nice puree of garlic.

We're going to add this to our pepper sauce.

Actually this is about it.

I'll cover that, bring it to a boil, and this is it.

I mean pepper are very high in vitamin C and A, they are good for you, especially if they're organic, and those are.

So just to a boil and that's fine.

Now let's see this is browning nicely.

See again for our pasta.

Let's check our mushroom.

And you can hear now that the mushroom are sizzling, all the water which comes out of it disappeared, and now it's sizzling.

So I'm taking my cover and cooking them this way to brown them a little bit.

Remember, I have a lot of different type of mushroom in there.

Sometimes they're expensive, but when you pick them up in the forest yourself as I do usually, they cost nothing.

Again, as I say, you should know what you're doing.

So go with a friend.

Now shallots, the shallot is a type of red onion like that, which is going to go well with it.

I could also put garlic really, but I want to put shallot in my mushroom.

So here we are.

I can slice or chop the shallots.

And I should actually, you know, use, I use even those pieces here in stock.

So here we put them in there.

I'm putting a bit, I have oregano here, and a bit of parsley.

This is the flat parsley, so-called flat Italian parsley or flat parsley.

I'm gonna chop that coarsely, fresh, I like to chop it at the last moment, you know?

And we add that to our mushroom.

Remember I put a dash of salt at the beginning.

So basically they are about finished.

So there again, I will toss them one second.

Beautiful color.

So this, this is getting to be cooked too.

So I'm going to put that on low.

And now I'm going to serve those mushroom.

I have a nice tray here to put them on.

And we put them on toast.

I have four toasts here.

I could leave them whole or slightly trim the toast if I want to be a bit more elegant.

Actually I use that for breadcrumb, you know.

So here we are, we put that on top.

And here come our mushroom here.

Beautiful toast as you can see of color and a great aroma, you know?

Aroma of those mushroom from the forest.

Remind me when I was a child going through the forest with my father.

Now I do it with my daughter, occasionally with my brother also.

And here is our mushroom.

Well now, what we're going to do is to check whether our pasta is cooked, and it should be pretty cooked.

Here we are now.

It needs a little more, really.

I'm going to bring that in.

And what I do, usually what I like to do is to put a little bit of the liquid from the pasta in there.

As you can see.

Now I have all my seasoning there.

Remember that liquid, you're not going to see.

It's going to be totally absorbed, totally absorbed by the pasta itself.

Again, a bit of time as the pasta needs another minute.

I'm going to chop parsley now because this is what I need to put in it.

So let me put a bit of a parsley, give it some color and some taste.

Again, shred it at the last moment like this.

I like to do it this way.

Bring my parsley and put it directly with the nuts.

Okay, maybe cracked pepper in there we need.

We're going to need a bit of salt because I haven't put any salt in it yet.

We toast this.

And now let's check on the pasta.

The pasta is basically al dente, that is to the teeth.

It indicate when you break the pasta.

The center of the pasta will still have a little piece of uncooked dough.

A very tiny, tiny bit in the center.

That's what is called al dente.

And usually the way Italian like it, I like it also al dente, not too al dente, but with a bit of a bite, you know?

So we mix that in there.

I have a nice color there, as you can see.

I'm gonna bring that back to the main counter and put a bit of cheese in there.

And now we are practically ready to serve our pasta.

So remember, I still have the red pepper sauce to serve.

The red pepper sauce doesn't have to be with the pasta.

You can use it for other thing.

You can use your pasta just as I have it here.

But I have really a beautiful red color here as you can see that you can spread around.

And the pasta on top of it.

Here we are.

Beautiful.

I even have a little bit of the leaves on top.

And here is our pasta.

Now I'm going to check on my tart, if it's ready.

There is the tart, which is nice.

Now what I'm going to is just to slide it.

I have those cookie sheet, which makes it easy to slide it on top here.

I will cut it into pieces.

This I think will serve easy, eight people.

So that's what I have here, eight portion.

That's quite a large portion of about 200 calorie each.

A little bit of mint maybe and decoration around the side.

And here we have our dessert for today.

In that menu, we've gone from the forest to the garden, now the dining room, the best part of it.

And in that menu, it's a vegetarian menu, not in a didactic way, I'm not a vegetarian.

But very often at home, we cut down a great deal on the different type of meat.

And often, especially in summer, we do vegetarian menu.

We have those beautiful mushroom here, which is a great pleasure for me to pick up and enjoy during the summer.

Of course, very low calorie.

We have the pasta, the pasta has two sauce, you can do it with one sauce.

Remember that the pasta is very good.

Again, high in protein, even though it is a vegetarian menu, it is high in protein and good for you.

And finally, our apple tart, and our apple tart with a beautiful crust, nicely brown here.

And look underneath at about 200 calorie a portion, which is relatively little.

If you want to splurge a little bit, you can put a dash of whipped cream with it.

This is good too, and don't forget the salad.

The salad is from the garden.

We have a beautiful salad here.

And with this of course, what we like to serve, we have a deep rich Napa Valley Chardonnay, and this is going to go well with our menu today.

I know that I will enjoy it.

And with a little bit of wine, wine is good for you, and a great menu like this, I hope you're going to go to the forest, to the garden, make the recipe for your family and enjoy it.

And I'm going to enjoy it.

Happy cooking.